I turned on MSNBC for just a few minutes to hear Kelly O'Donnell say, twice, that Donald Trump “argued forcefully” for the inclusion of a citizenship question in the 2020 census. That’s an odd claim, partly because it uses a near-Trumpian adverb (Trump might have said “very strongly”), partly because Trump's insistence has nothing to do with making an argument. To argue is “to give reasons for or against something.” To demand or insist is not to argue.
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
No argument
“Like a pair of trousers”
A planning session for the Parallel Campaign has ended. Diotima is alone in her apartment with Paul Arnheim, industrialist and writer. She realizes that no man other than her husband “had ever been so domestically alone with her that one palpably felt the mute life of the empty apartment.”
Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. 1930–1943. Trans. Sophie Wilkins (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).
Musil’s gift for metaphor and simile is unending.
Related reading
All OCA Robert Musil posts (Pinboard)
Futurliner
[“His Mind Is a Bus.” Zippy, July 3, 2019.]
Days of future past. A Wikipedia article says that “There are still two Futurliners unaccounted for.” I think that number is now done to one.
Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
The challenge and responsibility
of personhood
John Green, from “Hawaiian Pizza and Viral Meningitis,” an episode of The Anthropocene Reviewed:
The challenge and responsibility of personhood, it seems to me, is to recognize personhood in others, to listen to others’ pain and take it seriously, even when you yourself cannot feel it.These words are relevant at our southern border, and everywhere else.
Islands for sale
Two of them. Price: $13 million. Says their owner, “I thought I would have great thoughts out here.”
Committees, committees
It’s 1913. Diotima Tuzzi has a plan for the development of the Parallel Campaign, a public-relations project to celebrate Austria and the Emperor Franz Joseph in 1918:
Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. 1930–1943. Trans. Sophie Wilkins (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).
Related reading
All OCA Robert Musil posts (Pinboard)
[Committees and more committees: it all sounds mighty familiar.]
Monday, July 1, 2019
TSWOCABTTS
It’s the easy-to-say acronym that’s sweeping this blog post: TSWOCABTTS, pronounced \ ˈswō-ka-bits \.
It is an acronym, not an initialism. The first T is silent, as in General Tso. The letters stand for Television Show Whose Opening Credits Are Better Than The Show.
My nominee: Welome Back, Kotter, whose opening credits I could watch (and have watched) again and again. Elaine’s nomination: The Flintstones. What’s yours?
The Irish “grand”
Stan Carey looks at the Irish “grand.” A bit late, but I better understand one of my grandmothers now. Worth clicking through for the astonishing headline from The Irish Times.
A related post
“Mother, you always pick the grandest things”
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Spotted on a walk
Yes, spotted on Friday. Spotted. We placed this lost tiger leopard cub right in the middle of the sidewalk, so that any searcher would also spot it. Yesterday the cub was gone.
Thanks to Fresca for pointing out that it’s a leopard.
Saturday, June 29, 2019
“Western-style liberalism”
From The Washington Post:
As the news conference wore on, Trump seemed to confuse a broader discussion of the fight over global governance with his personal grievances against Democrats.I’d say that what’s sad to look at is the ignorance on display here. Compounded by cognitive decline?
When a reporter asked if the president agreed with Putin’s suggestion, in a recent newspaper interview, that “Western-style liberalism” was in decline, Trump had another thing in mind.
He criticized the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, which he said are “sad to look at” because they are “run by liberal people.”
*
The full exchange (with Peter Baker of The New York Times) is even worse. Thanks, C-SPAN:
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