A great week for the odious Right Wing in the US

Here’s just an appy:

News Analysis

The Same Words, but Differing Views

By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: June 29, 2007

The five opinions that made up yesterday’s decision limiting the use of race in assigning students to public schools referred to Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 school desegregation case, some 90 times. The justices went so far as to quote from the original briefs in the case and from the oral argument in 1952.

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Multimedia

Graphic

Supreme Court Decisions on the Racial Makeup of Schools

All of the justices on both sides of yesterday’s 5-to-4 decision claimed to be, in Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s phrase, “faithful to the heritage of Brown.”

But lawyers who represented the black schoolchildren in the Brown case said yesterday that several justices in the majority had misinterpreted the positions they had taken in the litigation and had misunderstood the true meaning of Brown.

And as those reactions make clear, yesterday’s decision has reignited a societal debate about the role of race in education that will almost certainly prompt divisive lawsuits around the country. Indeed, the decision has invited a fundamental reassessment of Brown itself, perhaps the most important Supreme Court decision of the 20th century.

And here’s the wingnut who is cheering!

I am doing my best to let off some steam and get on with less self-indulgent thinking, ala Buddhism without beliefs. Henceforth the latter reference will be written BWB in this and my other blogs.

Too much to read, see, comment about and store . . .

This is another day that I find there is definitely too much to read et al on the web-o-sphere. The TOC at LRB offers one example of many. I am on the point of doing something drastic about reducing the list of things I try to keep current about and with. AOL has a neat new riverofnews format, but I have no time to go there every day.

I got a new camera phone today, the Sony Ericcson K790i. 3.2 MP and image stabilization. I don’t have a great need to cell phone with my vast audience of contacts and friends. But having a good quality camera in a smaller and more mobile format is a plus, I think. My notion here is that I will be able to get candid photos that could anchor and trigger some fiction or non-fiction writing. Its a plan. Now I have to do something about it! Once I start doing that I will have even less time to “waste” keeping au fait.

So to anybody who is reading this please note that I am doing things to get more traffic. No sign of that yet but you never know. But my blogs (yes I will be developing a new set. I just cancelled my hosting deal with Blue Host and have moved to a Mac comfortable hosting service. And I will definitely do something more with my iMac site generating abilities. So I will need more of my own content.

This day in history . . .

Eisenhower took over the US Armed Forces European command in ‘42 and Kim Campbell took over as PM in ‘93. I have some history with Campbell’s political effort to get re-elected that year. Not successful! And now I play bridge opposite her first husband, the mathematician Nathan Divinski, who is still an active partner in Bridges, the Granville Island eatery. In 1950 the Korean War began and I have rueful thoughts about how I felt in those days. Feelings that got me successfully through the entry interview to CMR de St-Jean. I feel some shame now about my naive enthusiasm in supporting the execution of the Rosenberg’s in the US for nuclear spying activities in the ’40s. In 1876 Geronimo’s aboriginal horde defeated Custer’s unruly Union cavalry troops at the Little Big Horn.

How about Woody, that kvetching philosopher clown?

From NYT:

Mr. Allen’s absurdism is a welcome respite in this age of bitterly held ideologies. Overseas, religious extremists are on the march. Here at home, several hands flew up at a Republican presidential debate when the moderator asked who did not believe in evolution. There are outspoken nonbelievers, but books like Christopher Hitchens’s “God Is Not Great” are just as full of certitude, and as angry at the other side, as the belief systems they criticize.

Mr. Allen offers a more bemused brand of skepticism. “Whosoever shall not fall by the sword or by famine,” he declares, “shall fall by pestilence so why bother shaving?”

Existentialism long ago went out of fashion. But Mr. Allen remains, in his way, one of its most prominent exponents. He has not let the increased religiosity of the times, or his own advancing years, shake his firmly held uncertainty.

He does make clear, though, in “Mere Anarchy,” that he cannot take even absurdism seriously. In one essay, a writer is hired to do a novelization of a Three Stooges movie. The draft he produces contains Mr. Allen’s own version of the existential struggle. Moe smashes crockery “with pent-up fury that masked years of angst over the empty absurdity of man’s fate,” while Curly weeps: “We are at least free to choose. Condemned to death but free to choose.”

Lawrence has a new career/work focus

Based on three current facts/truths he has decided to take on a new goal, while not abandoning or resigning from Creative Commons CC. One of the key triggers was, according to him:

That our government can’t understand basic facts when strong interests have an interest in its misunderstanding.

He continues this core thought:

As the Gowers Commission concluded in Britain, a government should never extend an existing copyright term. No public regarding justification could justify the extraordinary deadweight loss that such extensions impose.

Yet governments continue to push ahead with this idiot idea — both Britain and Japan for example are considering extending existing terms. Why?

The answer is a kind of corruption of the political process. Or better, a “corruption” of the political process. I don’t mean corruption in the simple sense of bribery. I mean “corruption” in the sense that the system is so queered by the influence of money that it can’t even get an issue as simple and clear as term extension right. Politicians are starved for the resources concentrated interests can provide. In the US, listening to money is the only way to secure reelection. And so an economy of influence bends public policy away from sense, always to dollars.

The point of course is not new. Indeed, the fear of factions is as old as the Republic. There are thousands who are doing amazing work to make clear just how corrupt this system has become. There have been scores of solutions proposed. This is not a field lacking in good work, or in people who can do this work well.

His final thought is:

Finally, I am not (as one friend wrote) “leaving the movement.” “The movement” has my loyalty as much today as ever. But I have come to believe that until a more fundamental problem is fixed, “the movement” can’t succeed either. Compare: Imagine someone devoted to free culture coming to believe that until free software supports free culture, free culture can’t succeed. So he devotes himself to building software. I am someone who believes that a free society — free of the “corruption” that defines our current society — is necessary for free culture, and much more. For that reason, I turn my energy elsewhere for now.

I think that one way of seeing this is that he is telling all of us who plod away in the active blogosphere to get more involved in things IP locally, nationally and globally. It’s not enough to depend on LL to be all and do all for fair and balanced IP in this world of media revolution and new corporate frameworks and domineering capitalist interests, money as the be all and end all!

June 19th in History

According to history.com:

1917 : Britain’s King George V changes royal surname

On this day in 1917, during the third year of World War I, Britain’s King George V orders the British royal family to dispense with the use of German titles and surnames, changing the surname of his own family, the decidedly Germanic Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, to Windsor.

The second son of Prince Edward of Wales (later King Edward VII) and Alexandra of Denmark, and the grandson of Queen Victoria, George was born in 1865 and embarked on a naval career before becoming heir to the throne in 1892 when his older brother, Edward, died of pneumonia. The following year, George married the German princess Mary of Teck (his cousin, a granddaughter of King George III), who had previously been intended for Edward. The couple had six children, including the future Edward VIII and George VI (who took the throne in 1936 after his brother abdicated to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson). As the new Duke of York, George was made to abandon his career in the navy; he became a member of the House of Lords and received a political education. When his father died in 1910, George ascended to the British throne as King George V.

News to me that George V, as Prince of W became a member of the House of Lords.

The Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel, were executed this day in 1953. When I was being interviewed at CMR de St-Jean by Major Lamontagne, if memory serves well, I was asked for my opinion about their pending execution. I gave it the “thumbs up” in my youthful naivete. I don’t know that I would do that today in a similar case before GWB’s govt.

Also on this day the Lady Liberty arrived in the US from France. And Emperor Max (Mexico), a Hapsburg, was executed by firing squad in Mexico.

Stanley Fish about Richard Rorty who died this past week

In a Slate article that included testimonials from many Rorty friends and intellectual allies, Stanley Fish recalls these ten sentences that embody Rorty’s thinking:

“The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.” “A conviction which can be justified to anyone is of little interest.” “One would have to be very odd to change one’s politics because one had become convinced, for example, that a coherence theory of truth was preferable to a correspondence theory.” “What counts as rational argumentation is as historically determined and as context-dependent, as what counts as good French.” “It seems to me that I am just as provisional and contextualist as the Nazi teachers who made their students read Der Sturmer; the only difference is that I serve a better cause.”

My goodness, things do change!

From BBC News:

 

Amazon river ‘longer than Nile’

 

By Gary Duffy BBC News, Sao Paulo

The new study puts the Amazon at 6,800km

Researchers in Brazil are claiming to have established as a scientific fact that the Amazon is the longest river in the world.

The Amazon is recognised as the world’s largest river by volume, but has generally been regarded as second in length to the River Nile in Egypt.

The claim follows an expedition to Peru that is said to have established a new starting point further south.

It puts the Amazon at 6,800km (4,250 miles) compared to the Nile’s 6,695km.

Mountain source

The precise length of a river is not easy to calculate and depends on correctly identifying the source and the mouth.

The new claim in Brazil follows an expedition by scientists which is said to have discovered a new source for the Amazon in the south of Peru and not the north of the country as had been thought for many years.

While the exact location has yet to be confirmed from two choices, scientists say either would make the river the longest in the world.

What will change next? Is this an example of change, or is it just a change in our ability to see, measure, or assess?

Crabbe about the press

NYT is a fount of quotable stuff for me. Here are the latest shining wordbits in rhyme from an 1812 commentator describing the meanness of the MS press:

Crabbe:

I sing of News, and all those vapid sheets

The Rattling hawker vends through gaping streets;

Whate’er their name, whate’er the time they fly,

Damp from the press, to charm the reader’s eye

…

Like bats, appearing, when the sun goes down,

From holes obscure and corners of the town.

…

In shoals the hours their constant numbers bring,

Like insects waking to th’advancing spring;

Which take their rise from grubs obscene that lie

In shallow pools, or thence ascend the sky:

Such are these base ephemeras, so born

To die before the next revolving morn.

…

Like baneful herbs the gazer’s eye they seize,

Rush to the head and poison where they please:

Like idle flies, a busy, buzzing train,

They drop their maggots on the trifler’s brain

…

Like bees for honey, forth for news they spring,-

Industrious creatures! ever on the wing;

Home to their several cells they bear the store,

Cull’d of all kinds, then roam abroad for more.

All of this is meant to contrast with Tony Blair’s best attempts in his era-ending words about those bad boys, who seem to want to bedevil him into his political grave.

And it goes in with back and forth from Blair and Crabbe:

Mr. Blair: Scandal or controversy beats ordinary reporting hands down. News is rarely news unless it generates heat as much as or more than light.

Crabbe:

These are the ills the teeming press supplies,

The pois’nous springs from learning’s fountain rise;

Not there the wise alone their entrance find,

Imparting useful light to mortals blind;

But, blind themselves, these erring guides hold out

Alluring lights to lead us far about;

Screen’d by such means, here scandal whets her quill,

Here slander shoots unseen, whene’er she will;

Here fraud and falsehood labor to deceive,

And folly aids them both, impatient to believe.

Mr. Blair: The final consequence of all of this is that it is rare today to find balance in the media. Things, people, issues, stories, are all black and white. Life’s usual gray is almost entirely absent. “Some good, some bad”; “some things going right, some going wrong”: these are concepts alien to today’s reporting. It’s a triumph or a disaster. A problem is “a crisis.” A setback is a policy “in tatters.” A criticism, “a savage attack.”

Crabbe:

So the Sibylline leaves were blown about,

Disjointed scraps of fate involv’d in doubt;

So idle dreams, the journals of the night,

Are right and wrong by turns, and mingle wrong with right.—

Some champions for the rights that prop the crown,

Some sturdy patriots, sworn to pull them down;

Some neutral powers, with secret forces fraught,

Wishing for war, but willing to be bought;

While some to every side and party go,

Shift every friend and join with every foe.

Mr. Blair: It is sometimes said that the media is accountable daily through the choice of readers and viewers. That is true up to a point. But the reality is that the viewers or readers have no objective yardstick to measure what they are being told.

Crabbe:

A master-passion is the love of news,

Not music so commands, nor so the Muse:

Give poets claret, they grow idle soon;

Feed the musician, and he’s out of tune;

But the sick mind, of this disease possesst,

Flies from all cure and sickens when at rest.

…

Their careless authors only strive to join

As many words as make an even line;

As many lines, as fill a row complete;

As many rows, as furnish up a sheet:

From side to side, with ready types they run,

The measure’s ended, and the work is done

…

And such this mental food, as we may call

Something to all men, and to some men all.

What was up yesterday may go down today!

I will risk copyright infringement by copying in the whole print-friendly version of this neat article from BBC News today:

Pluto status suffers another blow

Pluto has suffered yet another blow to its status. Not only has it been demoted from planet to “dwarf planet”, research now shows that it cannot even lay claim to being the biggest of these.

A study has confirmed that the dwarf planet Eris – whose discovery prompted Pluto’s relegation from planet to dwarf – outranks it in mass.

The US team, whose work is published in the journal Science, described their finding as “Pluto’s last stand”.

Reclassification

The discovery of Eris, formerly known as 2003 UB313, marked the beginning of the end for Pluto as a planet.

Previous measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed that Eris was larger in diameter than Pluto, leading the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to rule in 2006 that Pluto could no longer be classed as a planet.

ERIS – WORLD OF DISCORD First seen in 2003 but finally recognised in 2005 Given the designation 2003 UB313 until formal naming Highly elongated orbit around Sun lasting 560 years Currently positioned some 14.5 billion km from Earth Has extremely frigid surface temperature of -250C May have thin atmosphere when closest to Sun Is accompanied by a satellite called Dysnomia

A new category of dwarf planets was adopted, into which Pluto, Eris and another body called Ceres, which is located in the asteroid belt, were placed.

Eris lies some 14.5 billion km from Earth in a region of space known as the Kuiper Belt. It has a highly elongated orbit around the Sun that lasts 560 years.

It also has a moon, which is called Dysnomia, and scientists used this satellite, along with the Keck Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope to calculate its mass.

The researchers, led by Eris’ discoverer Mike Brown from the California Institute of Technology, discovered that the more distant world has 27% more mass than Pluto.

They wrote: “In addition to being the largest, Eris is also the most massive known dwarf planet.”

This could be subtitled “How the ordinary can become even less with new information!