Archive for the ‘Briefly Noted’ Category
Signs of High Blood Sugar
Sometimes I get to be a spokesman/resource for diabetes, and people will ask how they can know if they might be showing signs of its onset. I happened across this set of "7 signs of high blood sugar" yesterday, and I think they are practical and cover most of the ground.
In: All, Briefly Noted, Explaining Things, Naming Things, Wanderings
The Gettysburg Address turns 150
Earlier today I read somewhere that some teabagger (yes, I know which one but I prefer this more dismissive reference) was upset because (if I'm following the details correctly) in the short film Ken Burns made about "The Gettysburg Address" for the occasion, today, of its 150th anniversary, President Obama was filmed reading The Address […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, Laughing Matters
Ricks on Bergen on Bush
Bergen[, in his book The Longest War,] is evenhanded but ferocious in reviewing the failures of the Bush administration, noting that in the wake of the worst security failure in American history, no one was fired, no one resigned and no one took responsibility. It’s widely understood that the White House ceded the moral high […]
A Small Basket of Links
Rather than link those things that caught my eye and give a footnote to Avedon Carol for them, here instead is a brief excerpt from "Look over your shoulder" (The Sideshow, 5 January 2011), with links: Like that former senior House aide said: "You can't blame the voters. In 2006 they voted out the party […]
Should Science-Deniers Chair Technical Congressional Committees?
It should come as no surprise that I think the answer is a resolute "no". This is from Bob Park's "What's New" for 27 November 2010. 4. FAITH: LIFE IN A MULTICULTURAL DEMOCRACY. I have a number of devoutly religious physics colleagues who are able to partition their life: scientist on one side, devout believer […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, Common-Place Book
SPLC on AZ's New Anti-Hispanic Law
Arizona’s controversial anti-immigrant law was written by a lawyer at the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as an anti-immigrant hate group since 2007. The law, a recipe for racial profiling, would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, Current Events
He Doesn't Know
For example, one of the arguments that the anti-gay-marriage side has increasingly turned to outside the courtroom is that allowing same-sex marriage would hurt heterosexual marriage. At the pretrial hearing, Judge Walker kept asking Charles Cooper, the lawyer defending Proposition 8, how exactly it did so. “I’m asking you to tell me,” he said at […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Possible or Impossible?
Love her or loathe her, Lady Gaga is impossible to ignore. [Napoleon Perdis, "Going Gaga for Lady Gaga: Makeup Lessons of a Pop Diva", Huffington Post, 17 December 2009.] Um, not true, actually.
In: All, Briefly Noted, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
James on Christie
From her new book, Talking About Detective Fiction, P.D. James is quoted in the New York Times* saying, of the overrated Agatha Christie: Perhaps her greatest strength was that she never overstepped the limits of her talent. ———- * Janet Maslin, "Mysteries of Crime Fiction? P. D. James Is on the Case", New York Times, […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, Common-Place Book
"Too Big to Fail", et al.
Specious elements of the current financial crisis I'd like to see laid to rest: We have to pay high bonus to retain the top talent–but that talent is by now clearly untalented since that "top talent" precipitated the current crisis We give the money to the financial institutions ("nationalize the risk") and let the experts, […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, Common-Place Book
Reich on Income Distribution
The incomes of the top 1 percent have soared for thirty years while median wages have slowed or declined in real terms. As economists Thomas Piketty and Emanuel Saez have shown, in the 1970s the top-earning 1 percent of Americans took home 8 percent of total income; as recently as 1980 they took home 9 […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, Common-Place Book, Current Events
Wall-Street Gall: Handy Summary
Making such pronouncements particularly galling is the fact that many of the banks summarily raising interest rates [on credit-card debt] and piling on the penalties have received billions in bailout money. Our money. We gave Citi $45 billion, Bank of America $45 billion, JPMorgan $25 billion, AmEx $3.4 billion, Capital One $3.6 billion, and Discover […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, Common-Place Book
Repulsive Forces
I just saw today the table of contents for the February 2009 issue of Physics Today. In the "Search and Discover" section one finds an article with this title: Casimir forces between solids can be repulsive It's past my bedtime so this seemed much funnier than it will tomorrow morning. Now I can giggle myself […]
Greenspan's World Model "Flawed", he admits
For future reference, I wanted to note that Alan Greenspan has detected a flaw in his model of how the world works. Ayn Rand will be spinning in her grave! Accused of contributing to the meltdown, but denying that it was his fault, [former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan] Greenspan told a House panel the crisis […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, Current Events
Random Reading
Perhaps I was inspired by the idea of random in our recent discussion (okay, monologue) about random noise, but I thought of one more little bit of random noise to finish it off. Namely, I added a link, which should appear in the top of the right-side column, that, if you click on it, will […]
Park Validates Ars Hermeneutica's Mission
Here is one item from this week's "What's New", by Bob Park (5 September 2008 issue). I take it as validation of Ars Hermeneutica's view that increasing science literacy in America is vitally needed and will help enfranchise voters who find themselves at a loss to judge the words or deeds of politicians when it […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, It's Only Rocket Science, Snake Oil--Cheap!
Ennuyeuse
Matthew Guerrieri was writing about the reasons for the relative popularity of avant-garde painting over avant-garde music. It seems an interesting essay that I'll finish later because that's not the point right now. Near the beginning he quotes fellow art critic Charles Baudelaire (i.e., the Baudelaire) on the superiority of painting to sculpture. Again, it's […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, Such Language!
On A Bus, Irregularly
It's not something that happens regularly on a bus. — RCMP Staff Sgt. Steve Colwell at a news conference, talking about a gruesome incident on a Greyhound bus from Edmonton to Winnepeg in which a man apparently stabbed to death and then beheaded his seat partner [source]
Aspirations
I've always aspired to be a polymath, But so far I've only made it to dilettante. —me, last night
In: All, Briefly Noted, Reflections
Old Ideas for New Crises
The context was a blog entry about financial difficulties for Border's bookstores, but this excerpt jumped out and grabbed my cuffs. In 1932, according to the author of The Coming of the New Deal [Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.], more than a quarter million families lost their homes through mortgage foreclosures; this at a time when […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, Common-Place Book