So long as you've got orders, you don't care what you do to people

The Dalai Lama on Truth

“We Buddhists think that truth is ineffable—but not very ineffable.”

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Oppenheimer on Einstein

Einstein is often blamed or praised or credited with these miserable bombs. It is not in my opinion true. The special theory of relativity might not have been beautiful without Einstein; but it would have been a tool for physicists, and by 1932 the experimental evidence for the inter-convertibility of matter and energy which he had predicted was overwhelming. The feasibility of doing anything with this in such a massive way was not clear until seven years later, and then almost by accident. This was not what Einstein really was after. His part was that of creating an intellectual revolution, and discovering more than any scientist of our time how profound were the errors made by men before then. He did write a letter to Roosevelt about atomic energy. I think this was in part his agony at the evil of the Nazis, in part not wanting to harm any one in any way; but I ought to report that that letter had very little effect, and that Einstein himself is really not answerable for all that came later. I believe he so understood it himself.

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Monet on wheat

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Sound like we'll need some Federal oversight here

[T]he State Ethics Commission determined that in a “general and largely hypothetical context,” sexual encounters between legislators and registered lobbyists do not have to be reported as expenditures.

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io9 Nimoy roundup

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Too soon?

Crying for the Carolines- Spooney Melodies, 1930

A dark and wonderful bit from the Looney Tunes folks.

Skiffle on steroids

Can't get enough of this:

 

Also:

• Donegan's original, slow, version (link)
• Sensational Nightingales better at the more measured pace (link)
• Shelby Gospel Four (link)
• Willie Williams (link)
• ? from Early Field Recordings (link)

News that stays news

The dunk contest was LaVine’s birthday, bar mitzvah, World Series, Super Bowl, All-Valley Karate Tournament, and Wimbledon rolled into one.  (link)

The Space Jam dunk, from 10 different angles:




Not a tough call for the judges (man on the right gets two votes, btw):

This just in

Council abandons plans to name path Hitlers Walk

James Mustoe, Cornwall councillor for Mevagissey:  "The timing of the whole thing was very poor."

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Davies '73

Q:  Do you still feel that harshly about the critics, that they don’t really…I’ve forgotten the phrase you used now, but it’s a very strong one, almost to suggest that you think that, well, the general newspaper critics are pretty useless, and that the academic critics, the very best ones, are interesting because they themselves have imaginations, and the rest are people who just write rather bad books...?

A:  Yes. Well, I do think that.



Early in this interview, Davies talks about the odd problem of being a young reader in a remote place - how as a child he lived in Canada, but was learning about boyhood from British and American books.

If you read anything, you were always conscious of the fact that you were always reading about some place other than the place you were.  And when I was a boy I read a very great deal, and I read both American books and English books about boys, and what boys did...  Always you were reading about someplace else and another way of life.  You were reading about English schoolboys who went to boarding school, and were taught solely by men, whereas I went to a school where we were taught almost exclusively by women.  And it was all very puzzling - you didn't seem to be like anybody that you ever read about.

Someone can count...pitchforks

Former Goldman Sachs CEO calls for “measures that facilitate collective bargaining” and “increased redistribution”: http://t.co/2jbJXcyESM

— Felix Salmon (@felixsalmon) February 21, 2015

Comment Not Even Theoretically Possible

A record of ordinary American dentist, Dr. Gay Hitler.

The Dagger of Yglesias

"[I]n some hypothetical universe in which Congress was interested in working constructively on real problems, this is what they would be thinking about."

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What every schoolchild knows

History

• [...is familiar with] Lincoln's speech at Cooper Union.  (link)
• July 5th marks the anniversary of the Olive Branch Petition, the letter sent by the Continental Congress to the King in 1775, advising him to chill and stop being whack, and stuff.  (link)
• [I]n March 1861 [Alexander Stephens] sought to explain the reasons for the secession of the southern states in an extemporaneous oration known as the Cornerstone Speech.  (link)
• [The Song Dynasty] roughly coincides with the accession of Edgar the Peaceful to the throne of England, although it very slightly predates his murder of Æthelwald. (link)
• [The Varda bridge] was built by the Germans in 1912 as part of the Berlin-Basra railway.  (link)

Music

• Martin Hayes...is one of the two or three finest Irish fiddle players.  (link)
• [Al] Stewart got his start in the big skiffle craze, which was led by Lonnie Donegan, also known as The King of Skiffle.  (link)
• Two piece bands are a la mode [2006].  (link)

Military History

• [E]very schoolchild is well-versed in the Quasi-War nowadays.  (link)
• [Ernst Udet] killed himself in 1941 for reasons of love, disappointment, or possibly because he'd been caught sleeping with a diplomat's wife who was working for the Russians.  (link)
• [A] portion of the [USS San Francisco's] bridge, removed during repairs, resides at Lands End in San Francisco, California.  (link)
• [T]he Battle Off Samar was not only the windup to the largest sea battle ever fought (the Battle of Leyte Gulf), it was one of the greatest moments in U.S. naval history, as a small squadron of light U.S. ships drove off the main battle fleet of the Japanese Navy.  (link)
• Collingwood was one of the leading naval men of his day. He was in the thick of things at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, and first into action at Trafalgar.  (link)
• [T]he Poles saved the German people from annihilation at the Battle of Vienna when the estimable John III Sobieski routed the Turks at the head of 20,000 lancers, the Largest Cavalry Charge in the History of the World. (link)
• [T]he 4th Armored was the pointy end of Patton's stick, leading Operation Cobra (the breakout from St. Lo), running amok through the German rear areas, and later liberating Bastogne as an encore.  (link)
• [T]he British retreat from Tobruk might have turned into a complete rout, but for the heroic stand of the Free French at Bir Hakim.  (link)

Culture

• [Max] Beerbohm was a renowned caricaturist.  (link)
• [T]he 1960s television series, Jonny Quest owed a significant, albeit uncredited debt to the Rick Brant books, a series of 23 juvenile adventure novels published between 1947 and 1968, beginning with The Rocket's Shadow and concluding with Danger Below! (link)
• [T]he fallout of this behavior [putting gum on a painting by Helen Frankenthaler] is best described by a Python sketch... (link)
• [T]he Kalevala...is a compilation of ancient Finnish rune-songs.  (link)
• "There Are Wheels Within Wheels" ... is the mantra of [P.G.] Wodehouse's scheming and witless, but also unsinkable Monty Bodkin, borrowed from verses in Ezekiel that describe an extraterrestrial visit (or not).  (link)
• Fletcher Pratt was an American original, a prolific author who, after writing a series comprehensive histories of the American military, went on to a career as one of the pioneer American science fiction writers.  (link)
• G.K. Chesterton was a popular author and raconteur in early 20th-century England, a close friend of the estimable Hillaire Belloc.  (link)

The World of Sport

• [T]he greatest pennant race collapse was the epic implosion of the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1964 National League race.  (link)
• [George] Sisler was not only a devastating hitter, but the finest defensive first baseman of his generation.  (link)
• Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was the model European 20th Century Man.  He survived the Russian Revolution and World War I, lived in France, dominated world chess in the 1930s, collaborated with the Nazis, married four times, defeated the immortal Capablanca, fathered a bastard child with a Baroness, lost to Euwe but then won his title back, died under mysterious circumstances, and drank too much and was a lawyer.  The Russians idolize him.  (link)

Potpourri

• [P]ower sharpeners are all very well and good for the pencil laity, but the professional pencil technician will generally stand by the precision and superiority of a high quality hand-cranked sharpener model, which like shoes, are generally better the older they are.  (link)
• E8 is the 248 variable symmetrical mathematical object that has stumped mathematicians for oodles of decades.  (link)
• [T]he Seattle fireboat Duwamish was designed with a built-in ram to use as a last resort.  (link)
• “Every contact leaves traces” ([is from] Edmond Locard’s 1923 Manuel de Technique Policiere).  (link)
• [W]hen you want to know whether the world is round or flat, the truth is obviously exactly in the middle: a giant lozenge.  (link)

Addendum:  What schoolchildren arguably do not know well enough

• [N]ot one schoolchild in five can tell you what a hitter Turkey Mike Donlin was, or remember the name of the The Peerless Leader.  (link)
• [O]n this day and age, I'm not sure every schoolchild knows about the Battle of Monmouth (1778).  (link)

No way to go through life, Bristol

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Norm M explains about Eddie Murphy

Read Norm Macdonald's backstage account of SNL 40. http://t.co/4Z5vqCMDkZ pic.twitter.com/IsKacdKCIq

— Vox (@voxdotcom) February 19, 2015

You'll be amazed when you see this new video of pets greeting returning soldiers

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It only takes one to create a real distraction

(Reuters) - A Belarusian delegate at a United Nations disarmament forum warned fellow diplomats about an unusual type of weapon: jars of mayonnaise being thrown by topless women during discussions about war and peace. 

The delegate issued a statement of concern during the Geneva-based U.N. Conference on Disarmament's discussion on Tuesday about improving its transparency. Belarus asked whether there was a plan to open up the meetings to members of the general public. 

According to the official record of the session, the delegate said such a policy could create difficulties for security and support staff. 

"What if there were topless ladies screaming from the public gallery throwing bottles of mayonnaise, asked Belarus," the official summary said. The record added that the president of the Conference on Disarmament, a diplomat from Mexico, replied that "members of the public were already entitled to attend plenary meetings of the conference and sit in the public gallery, and so in theory could already drop mayonnaise onto delegates." 

The Mexican said it was unlikely the gallery would ever be flooded with thousands of people, noting that there were only two people in the public gallery during Tuesday's meeting.

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Gotta watch 'em every minute

The will to planetvernichten

I noticed this image while riffling through an excellent report about the Mars Attacks trading cards of 1962:

As a neo-quasi-post-Jungian, it seems to me that there is a strong sense of human destiny around this image (so good Lucas used it twice), a strong shared sense of urgency around the idea that at some point we will need to attack a planet-sized thing, deliver a payload from manned craft, and get out of Dodge before it blows into bazillion pieces.  And that the future of our species will depend upon success.

I wonder what that's all about.

Worth noting

Jed S. Rakoff on the U.S.'s failure in prosecuting corporate crime http://t.co/f2hFWsGW3w @nybooks #longreads

— Longreads (@Longreads) February 6, 2015

He goes by many names

You are CORRECT, sir

[A]ny good ranking of quarterbacks should also give credit for performance in the playoffs, and Brady’s trump card over Manning has always been the postseason. But here’s where the twist comes in: After crediting playoff passing value over average (according to the same formula described above) with weight given to each game according to how much it changes a team’s probability of winning the Super Bowl relative to the average regular season game — a form of leverage index for the importance of football games — Brady passes Manning but is surpassed by two others: Joe Montana and our old friend Kurt Warner...

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Wong With Good Stuff

David Wong on the scoreboard of violence, driving war and horror: if you look at the score, you've lost.

They do what they do, because they know we're too weak to resist striking back.
Our knee-jerk, bomb-dropping reflex is our weakness.

Seahawks' goal-line flub? Game theory says it wd have been brilliant if it had worked. A life lesson there. @NYtimes http://t.co/tbmLYSpofP
— Strobe Talbott (@strobetalbott) February 3, 2015

The summit remains secure

A good, but not great game from Mr. Brady, passer rating of 101.1...4 TDs, but 2 INTs.  Brady's Super Bowl passer rating is far below the threshold of 112.0 needed to classify his performance as "immortal".  The Immortality Screen - playoff performances with passer rating > 112 - remains the sole possession of one man:

• Joe Montana, 6

• Tom Brady, 5
• Peyton Manning, 5
• Troy Aikman, 5
• Joe Flacco, 5 (will not be ignored, moves up a notch on 114.0 vs. Steelers)

• Bret Favre, 4
• Eli Manning, 4
• Kurt Warner, 4
• Aaron Rodgers, 4 (moves up a notch this year on the 125.4 vs. Dallas)

• Drew Brees, 3
• Jeff Hostetler, 3
• Jim Kelly, 3
• Joe Theisman, 3
• Philip Rivers, 3
• Terry Bradshaw, 3

One other point on Brady vs. Montana...Super Bowl passer ratings:

• Brady - 86.2, 100.5, 110.2, 82.5, 91.1, 101.1 --> 0 immortal performances
• Montana - 100.0, 127.2, 115.2, 147.6 --> three immortal performances

Still taking Montana.  

Crikey

This is like the highlight reel from Ragnarök...

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I'm just going to assume that was inadvertent

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Looking forward to someone bringing this up at the Presidential debates

Why don't these 1-in-5 American children get a goddamn job? h/t @bgg2wl @existentialfish pic.twitter.com/mjIFQEVncd

— edroso (@edroso) February 1, 2015

Addendum

Education situation resolved via Sugar Daddies.  Sound the all-clear.