“What’s he doing?!”

[“Three Strikes.” Zippy, September 10, 2020. Click for larger rocks.]

The rocks have assumed their positions. But what’s up with Zippy? Click to read today’s strip and find out.

“Some rocks” are an abiding preoccupation of these pages.

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Human?

From a robo-call voice mail: “Sorry, you did not reveal yourself to be human. Goodbye.”

In Indiana

“When you need wigs and novelties, and you’re in Indiana, you can hang it up, buddy!” Tom Waits on stage, in Big Time (dir. Chris Blum, 1988).

“The scale of betrayal”

"The scale of betrayal is almost beyond political analysis": Mara Gay of The New York Times, just now on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour. Gay is still recovering from the effects of COVID-19.

#TrumpKnew

#TrumpKnew pic.twitter.com/rWKzj5Ti1i

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 9, 2020

A reminder

I was out doing errands this morning. I came home to the news. The news. The news. And now I want to repost this image, which I first posted on May 15:



And to preserve the asterisk, which signifies impeached and carries a bonus Kurt Vonnegut overtone:


[Click either image for a larger view.]

Donald Trump*’s revelations to Bob Woodward are further evidence of the Dunning-Kruger effect at work, made worse by dementia. What did Trump* think Woodward was going to make of these revelations? And how did Trump* think people would respond?

Richard Nixon at least had cunning enough to keep his tapes under wraps, at least until he couldn’t.

*

Yep, Dunning-Kruger. From Kaitlin Collins (CNN):

One reason Trump was so irritated aides didn't tell him about Woodward’s attempts to interview him for his last book [Fear ] was because he thought he could have made himself look better in it.

And from Maggie Haberman (The New York Times):

Mr. Trump gave Mr. Woodward extensive access to his White House and to top officials in the hopes the eventual book would be “positive,” in his eyes. Mr. Trump did not speak to Mr. Woodward for his first book on the Trump presidency, Fear, and the president has maintained publicly and to advisers that it would have turned out better had he personally participated.

An essay topic

If I were teaching a writing course, any level, I’d ask my students to write this essay:

What blame should be assigned to administrators and students for the rising number of COVID-19 cases on campus, and why? Do administrators and students share equally in the blame? Or does one group deserve a greater share?

This essay is meant as an exercise in moral reasoning, not legal judgment. These questions ask you to consider broad questions of responsibility, not particular cases. You may present and explain your reasoning by comparing the situation at hand with hypothetical situations, by making distinctions between different kinds of error or wrongdoing, by considering implications (if . . . , then . . .), by developing a relevant analogy — whatever seems appropriate. You should consider objections to your argument too. Think of yourself as writing an essay that explains your reasoning.

[Today’s Trump* news makes this essay feel a bit pointless. Things happen.]

Zweig’s world

“A friend of mine opened her closet the other day and felt she was gazing at the clothes of a dead person. They belonged to the world of yesterday”: in the age of the coronavirus, the title of Stefan Zweig’s memoir acquires new significance.

See also Anna Seghers’s “Earlier Time.”

Related reading
All OCA Stefan Zweig posts (Pinboard)

Images in the new Blogger

[Notes to self and any fellow Blogger users.]

To remove the extra space that Blogger now adds below a centered image, switch from Compose to HTML and change padding: 1em 0px; to padding: 0em 0px.

To remove the extra space that Blogger now adds below a left- or right-justified image, switch from Compose to HTML and change margin-bottom: 1em; to margin-bottom: 0em;.

To resize an image, click on it in Compose and choose an image size by selecting the dotted-window icon or gear icon. To make further changes, switch to HTML and enter new values for height and width. Original height and width should stay the same. Changing the display values by hand is how I get 800-pixel-wide screenshots to display at 400 pixels. I figure out the values I need for a given image with the Mac Preview app.

I remove all the <div></div> stuff that now begins and ends the HTML for an image. If any problems result from doing so, I trust I’ll begin to notice them.

Biddle = Weegee

[Reporter Steve McCleary (John Derek), photographer Biddle (Harry Morgan), and “Terrified Neighbor at Murder Scene” (Helen Brown). Scandal Sheet (dir. Phil Karlson, 1952). Click either image for a larger view.]

Harry Morgan’s Biddle is no doubt meant to suggest the famous Weegee, photographer of all manner of urban nightmare. The Bowery denizens we see later in this movie seem to have stepped straight out of, or into, a Weegee photograph.