A commercial to go with it

David Plouffe’s description of Donald Trump*: “A spray-tanned, drugged-up pitchman for Regeneron.” Now there’s a TV commercial. Or a “TV commercial.”

[Plouffe’s words: yesterday, on MSNBC.]

“I might as well”

Maria Magdalena Theotoky is a graduate student at Spook, the College of St. John and Holy Ghost. She has signed up for New Testament Greek with a professor she calls Prof. the Rev., Simon Darcourt. Prof. the Rev. is checking his students’ Latin skills by asking for a translation of a short passage. It forms the motto, he says, for the work of his seminar: “Conloqui et conridere et vicissim benevole obsequi, simul leger libros dulciloquos, simul nugari et simul honestari.“ Maria is the only woman in the class of five. And she is the only student who can provide a translation.

Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels (1981).

The Rebel Angels is the first novel of The Cornish Trilogy. Only one-thousand-and-something pages to go!

Related reading
All OCA Robertson Davies posts (Pinboard)

[The source for the passage: book 4, chapter 8. Augustine is describing pleasures with friends.]

A concise description

“A spray-tanned, drugged-up pitchman for Regeneron”: on MSNBC, David Plouffe just offered this concise description of Donald Trump* on the White House lawn yesterday.

*

Oh, look: now there’s a TV commercial.

Recently updated

Opportunities A Washington Post article about how systemic racism shaped George Floyd’s life has more on Floyd’s time in college. There are more articles to come. The next one is to be all about education.

Sluggo, the Sultan of Swat

[Nancy, May 19, 1950. Click for a larger view.]

There’s a Nancy for every occasion. Get on that stage, Sluggo, and give Mike Pence what for.

Thanks to Chris at Dreamers Rise for this strip.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[Post title with apologies to George Herman Ruth Jr.]

Cursive is good for you

Psychology Today reports on new research suggesting that cursive is good for your brain:

Data analysis showed that cursive handwriting primed the brain for learning by synchronizing brain waves in the theta rhythm range (4-7 Hz) and stimulating more electrical activity in the brain's parietal lobe and central regions. . . .

The latest (2020) research on the brain benefits of cursive handwriting adds to a growing body of evidence and neuroscience-based research on the importance of learning to write by hand.

Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts (Pinboard)

Reality just got a little weirder

I’m not linking, but I just read that Stormy Daniels (yes, that Stormy Daniels) will be conducting a paranormal investigation at a nearby location, once a poorhouse, later a psychiatric hospital. Tickets are $75.

Advice from Colbert

Stephen Colbert just now, offering advice to Susan Page, the moderator of tonight’s debate:

“Susan, if you want to make Mike Pence shut up, you have to ask him to say ‘Black lives matter.’”

I feel sorry for Daniel Dale

Oh, the work of a legit fact-checker. My fact-checking of Mike Pence can be much more casual. No. No. No again. Nope. False, I’m afraid. Uh-uh. No, not that one neither.

*

Kamala Harris was impressive. Though Pence seemed to be using up more time, CNN clocked the candidates as virtually equal. I think Harris was able to turn Pence’s endlessness against him: she waited as he went on and on, then insisted on time to respond, and, in so doing, had the last word in a number of exchanges. I believe that rhetorical strategy is known as rope-a-dope.

Two posts in retrospect

I spent a little time today going through recent OCA posts in Pinboard, having finally decided that I had to tag some of them with pandemic. Two of those posts look newly strange:

~ in a March 6 post, I linked to a Borowitz Report citing Donald Trump* as “the source of the community spread of coronavirus misinformation throughout the United States.” That was satire. And now in October, the Cornell Alliance for Science has identified Trump* as the “single largest driver” of misinformation about COVID-19.

~ In a March 9 post about Trump*’s paranoia and magical thinking, I quoted the journalist Gabriel Sherman:

Last week Trump told aides he’s afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One, a person close to the administration told me.

Given such dark imaginings, can we rule out the possibility that Trump* might have been hoping, even if vaguely, to infect Joe Biden at last week’s debate? I don’t think so.