All entries by this author

They laughed when he sat down to the piano

Dec 26th, 2017 4:49 pm | By

Ermmmmmmmmm

No. Just being hated and despised by all and sundry does not make you a Churchill or Beethoven or Michelangelo or anyone else who was looked at askance for a time and then recognized as OMIGOD A GENIUS.

It’s entirely possible to be seen as a worthless fool by everyone who has an opinion on the subject and actually be a worthless fool. It’s not only possible, it’s dead easy. … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 8 comments
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They worried he was sharing white supremacist ideas with her

Dec 26th, 2017 4:00 pm | By

A couple in Virginia were shot to death three days before Xmas by a teenage boy they’d told their daughter to stop seeing on account of he was a racist.

The teenager shot Scott Fricker, 48, and his wife, Buckley Kuhn-Fricker, 43, around 5 a.m. Friday before shooting himself, the police said.

The couple, who lived in Reston, Va., about 20 miles west of Washington, were pronounced dead at the scene. The teenager survived and was hospitalized in “life-threatening condition,” according to a statement from the Fairfax County Police Department.

…

Family members recently tried to persuade Ms. Kuhn-Fricker’s 16-year-old daughter to stop seeing the teenager because they worried he was sharing white supremacist ideas with her, Janet Kuhn,

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


The River of Blood just off the 15th tee

Dec 26th, 2017 11:31 am | By

Let’s go back a couple of years, to November 2015.

STERLING, Va. — When Donald J. Trump bought a fixer-upper golf club on Lowes Island here for $13 million in 2009, he poured millions more into reconfiguring its two courses. He angered conservationists by chopping down more than 400 trees to open up views of the Potomac River. And he shocked no one by renaming the club after himself.

But that wasn’t enough. Mr. Trump also upgraded its place in history.

Between the 14th hole and the 15th tee of one of the club’s two courses, Mr. Trump installed a flagpole on a stone pedestal overlooking the Potomac, to which he affixed a plaque purportedly designating “The River of

… Read the rest

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Defaming the Moster

Dec 26th, 2017 10:48 am | By

This crap again.

Police have arrested a blogger [at] Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on Monday evening on charge of defaming Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) in a blog post.

According to the officer-in-charge of Barguna’s Amtali police station, the blogger Asaduzzaman Nur, more commonly known as Asad Nur, has been on the run after a case was filed against him on January 11 this year under ICT act. The case was filed for a blog post which allegedly carried defamatory language against the prophet.

You can’t “defame” dead people. Defamation applies to alive people only, people who can be harmed in their real, contemporary lives. The law doesn’t protect the reputations of dead people. They don’t mean “defamatory,” they mean “obnoxious … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


Is that not a problem though?

Dec 25th, 2017 3:59 pm | By

Barry Duke at The Freethinker reports that the BBC recently appointed James Purnell Radio and Education Director at the BBC, and then word got out that he’s…hold onto your hats…A Natheist.

He was talking to Nick Robinson on Radio 4’s Today about the BBC’s plan to set up a new unit for improving religious coverage, and Robinson asked him if he’s a godbotherer. (Not his exact words.) Purnell said he wasn’t.

I’m not. I’m an atheist but I think the issues around belief are incredibly important to how we live.

Robinson asked him:

Is that not a problem though? You are head of the BBC’s religious programming, you got the job because the BBC decided to abolish the post of

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 6 comments


Guest post: The same stereotypes that are used to oppress women

Dec 25th, 2017 3:24 pm | By

Originally a comment by Dave Ricks on The meeting should never have happened at all.

I appreciate the university addressing the problem as an employment issue:

We hired an external fact-finder with expertise in human resources issues. I have received the report and we are taking decisive action to ensure these events will not be repeated.

The employment issue gave a concrete framework for procedure (including legality). That was different than arguing for freedom of expression in the abstract (which was the popular argument, and maybe valid, but would lead to a different chain of logic, and probably conclude in terms of ideologies).

I see two remaining issues.

One issue is the so-called apology that Shepherd’s supervisor Prof. Rambukkana … Read the rest

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Table talk

Dec 25th, 2017 1:11 pm | By

The cat escaped the bag.

President Trump kicked off his holiday weekend at Mar-a-Lago Friday night at a dinner where he told friends, “You all just got a lot richer,” referencing the sweeping tax overhaul he signed into law hours earlier. Mr. Trump directed those comments to friends dining nearby at the exclusive club — including to two friends at a table near the president’s who described the remark to CBS News — as he began his final days of his first year in office in what has become known as the “Winter White House.”

No, it hasn’t “become known” as that. Trump calls it that. Trump also spends our money to go there and profits further by … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments
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Illuminations

Dec 25th, 2017 1:02 pm | By

Also Happy Return of the Light.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog


Proud to have led the charge

Dec 25th, 2017 11:08 am | By

Twitter’s algorithm has a sense of humor. Today the first things I saw in my feed were John Lewis, Adam Schiff, and Barack Obama telling us to have a merry or happy Christmas.

So then naturally I had to check out what the current “president” has been up to.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 14 comments
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The meeting never should have happened at all

Dec 24th, 2017 4:54 pm | By

Nearly a week ago the president of Wilfred Laurier University issued a statement.

It’s a gratifying thing to read.

When the issue first broke, I erred on the side of caution. As a person, and as the president of Laurier, I am sensitive to the viewpoints and concerns of our students, staff and faculty. As an employer, I am cognisant that the four people who were in that meeting room are employees and one is also a student. All four are entitled to due process. I did not want to rush to judgement; rather, I wanted to ensure we were able to objectively assess the facts and make sound decisions flowing from that assessment.

We hired an external fact-finder

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 9 comments


But enforcement has lagged

Dec 24th, 2017 3:16 pm | By

A not very festive item I was unaware of: a friend mentioned the deregulation of neurotoxins “resulting in an entire generation of cognitively impaired humans” and I asked what he meant and he replied with Children of Color Hit Hardest as Environmental Enforcement Tumbles Under Trump. Ah yes. I knew that – I knew that poison and pollution in general is much more likely to be perpetrated on poor people than on rich people and more on people of color than white people – but I didn’t know about this particular example. It’s not cheerful.

Public health researchers have found elevated levels of manganese, a heavy metal that can cause neurological disorders and other health problems, in the toenails

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments


The risk of reputational damage

Dec 24th, 2017 12:28 pm | By

In the Telegraph:

Academics say they have been forced to leave the country to pursue their research interests as British universities are accused of blocking studies over fears of backlash on social media.

The Twitter armies are marching, marching.

The academics have decided to speak out as James Caspian, one of the country’s leading gender specialists, revealed that he is planning to take Bath Spa University to judicial review over its decision to turn down his research into transgenderism.

Well but you see there’s no need to research transgenderism, because we already know all there is to know: that gender is how people “identify” and that sex is wholly beside the point.

Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans, a fellow

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 6 comments


It’s not “partisan”

Dec 24th, 2017 10:43 am | By

The Post tells us how the campaign to discredit the FBI in hopes of protecting the most corrupt incompetent mendacious malevolent president we’ve ever had has picked up steam lately.

This is Republicans and “conservatives” trying to discredit the FBI, which is quite a turn-up for the books. Time was, the FBI and the Republicans were best buddies and their common enemy was anyone to the left of Gerald Ford. The FBI has a long long history of treating everyone on the left as suspect and “UnAmerican”…but now suddenly everything is switched, all to defend a guy who is both criminal and hateful in every possible way.

If I were a Republican I would be doing the opposite, because I … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments
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Pushing back

Dec 23rd, 2017 5:20 pm | By

There is resistance.

More than 40 former U.S. attorneys and Republican and conservative officials are pushing back against efforts to discredit the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In a pair of letters, the groups say Robert Mueller and his team must be allowed to continue their work, unimpeded.

The 22 former U.S. attorneys, who served under presidents from Richard Nixon through Barack Obama, say it is “critical” to the “interests of justice and public trust to ensure that those charged with conducting complex investigations are allowed to do their jobs free from interference or fear of reprisal.”

Seeking Mueller’s removal “would have severe repercussions for Americans’ sense of justice here at home and for our

… Read the rest

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Sneers from Florida

Dec 23rd, 2017 5:01 pm | By

No Baby Jesus’s Pretend Birthday truce for Mean Donnie: he’s bullying the deputy director of the FBI now.

The F.B.I.’s embattled deputy director, Andrew G. McCabe, an unlikely lightning rod who has been attacked repeatedly by President Trump and congressional Republicans, is expected to retire after he becomes eligible for his pension early next year, according to people familiar with his decision.

While Mr. McCabe’s plans to leave aren’t unexpected, his decision should take some of the pressure off Christopher A. Wray, who was confirmed as F.B.I. director in August. Mr. Trump has complained to confidantes that Mr. Wray has not moved fast enough to replace the senior leadership that he inherited from his predecessor, James B. Comey, whom 

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 3 comments
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They win you lose

Dec 23rd, 2017 4:26 pm | By

From Occupy Democrats:

Image: Trump pointing at us in the manner of a recruiting poster, with caption

I LIED TO YOU

BILLIONAIRES COME FIRST

SO YOU LOSE YOUR HEALTHCARE

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments
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Believe what we tell you to believe

Dec 23rd, 2017 12:18 pm | By

Egypt plans to make not believing in god a crime.

The Egyptian parliament’s committee on religion has announced plans to make disbelief in God a crime. Under the current law against “contempt of religions” atheists can be prosecuted for expressing their disbelief in public but the committee’s proposal would go further and criminalise disbelief itself.

I wonder how they plan to detect that crime, or collect evidence for it, or present the evidence in court.

They don’t really, I suppose, it’s just a fist under the nose. But there’s nothing quite like people trying to tell you what to believe to bring out the defiance in most of us.… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 2 comments


Known for edgy content

Dec 23rd, 2017 11:34 am | By

Least surprising news ever: Vice is another hotbed of sexism. No, really?!

One woman said she was riding a Ferris wheel at Coney Island after a company event when a co-worker suddenly took her hand and put it on his crotch. Another said she felt pressured into a sexual relationship with an executive and was fired after she rejected him.

A third said that a co-worker grabbed her face and tried to kiss her, and she used her umbrella to fend him off.

These women did not work among older men at a hidebound company. They worked at Vice, an insurgent force in news and entertainment known for edgy content that aims for millennial audiences on HBO and

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 8 comments
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A sensitive conversation in the Oval Office

Dec 23rd, 2017 10:22 am | By

The Times shares a disgusting little vignette of life with “President” Trump:

Late to his own meeting and waving a sheet of numbers, President Trump stormed into the Oval Office one day in June, plainly enraged.

Five months before, Mr. Trump had dispatched federal officers to the nation’s airports to stop travelers from several Muslim countries from entering the United States in a dramatic demonstration of how he would deliver on his campaign promise to fortify the nation’s borders.

But so many foreigners had flooded into the country since January, he vented to his national security team, that it was making a mockery of his pledge. Friends were calling to say he looked like a fool, Mr. Trump said.

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 5 comments
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From e pluribus unum to MAGA

Dec 22nd, 2017 5:34 pm | By

Oh gawd.

There’s such a thing as a presidential coin. Presidents give them out as little presents. Trump decided they weren’t flashy enough so he came up with his own new design.

The presidential seal has been replaced by an eagle bearing President Trump’s signature. The eagle’s head faces right, not left, as on the seal. The 13 arrows representing the original states have disappeared. And the national motto, “E pluribus unum” — a Latin phrase that means “Out of many, one” — is gone.

Instead, both sides of the coin feature Trump’s official campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

The presidential seal has been replaced by an eagle bearing President Trump’s signature. The eagle’s head faces right, not

… Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 4 comments
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