Of course everyone is drinking although the styles look postwar. Andy Volstead would be critical.
I have a photo of my mother in 1925 dressed casually but in a dress with a low waist and shoes like those in the video. She was 27 at the time and was with two man friends. She had many stories about the Twenties. I took her to see the movie “Titanic” when it came out and she laughed at much of the sex scenes. She was 14 when it sank. She did not marry until the late 30s, as was so common in the Depression, and I came along when she was 40. She lived in three centuries and was fun into her hundreds. My children spent much time with her.
If the linked article (it’s about the Kennedy assassination) below, is true, it’s just more evidence that our govt. is a den of corruption; that our govt. is lawless.
No better than Putin’s govt.
I have always found it incomprehensible that anybody would think a career criminal with mob ties – Jack Ruby- eliminated Oswald, because he, Ruby, was pissed off that Oswald shot Kennedy; esp. with the knowledge that Joseph Kennedy Sr (the dad) had long standing ties with organized crime and RFK, as US Attorney General, went after the mob with all guns blazing.
It still is a mystery to me why any details of the JFK “hit,” are still secret and not open to public view. After all, it happened nearly 60 years ago.
John Tyler:
Read Reclaiming History (by Bugliosi), a book I’ve discussed on this blog. There is virtually no question in my mind that Oswald alone shot JFK and Ruby alone shot Oswald.
I’ve read a number of books about the assassination and I have stood in the Book Depository window where Oswald fired. It was an easy shot, especially with the slow progress of the limousine. I have wondered about Oswald’s motivation and whether the Russians had any connection to him. The story of the windshield is interesting. Maybe two shooters ? LBJ was in trouble. Life magazine had a huge issue on his corruption scheduled for the next week. It was immediately canceled after the shooting and vanished.
I’ve just heard from a very credible, local source that Russia does these same military operations annually, at this time, on the Ukrainian border and the locals do not understand why the United States press is now sensationalizing the activity.
She was 14 when [the Titanic] sank.
When I was a kid, I bought a paperback copy of Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember, a well-known account of the disaster that was made into a movie. I got particularly interested in the chronology at the end of the book– Lord included detailed dating of the ship’s planning and construction as well as an hour-by-hour description of Titanic‘s fatal voyage. For some reason I had never previously connected the year– 1912– with family history, but I realized that my grandmother on my dad’s side of the family was four months pregnant with him when the ship sank.
Like Mike K’s mother, my dad didn’t marry until the late 1930s, and he was 36 when I was born. I once asked my mother why it took them 11 years to have me, and her two-word answer was “Blame Hitler.”
I have always found it incomprehensible that anybody would think a career criminal with mob ties – Jack Ruby- eliminated Oswald, because he, Ruby, was pissed off that
Well, try some clear thinking. Ruby wasn’t a career criminal, he just was not antiseptic. He was a businessman who cut corners and dealt with shady characters. His ‘mob ties’ were a function of working in a trade where paying protection money is common and where you employ people who are often members of mobbed-up union locals.
What is known of Ruby as a human being is that he was sentimental and given to intense bursts of emotion. Doing something crazy-impetuous was in character for him. He was a garrulous man who could not keep secrets. Fun little detail. He was running a banal errand when he happened upon Oswald’s transfer; his dog was marking time in his parked car. Friends said he adored that dog.
I have wondered about Oswald’s motivation and whether the Russians had any connection to him.
Newsweek delineated a satisfactory hypothesis in 1993, supported by interviews with members of the Russian emigre community in Dallas who had been acquainted with the Oswalds at the time. Oswald blamed Gov. Connolly, who had at one time been Secretary of the Navy, for his dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps. Kennedy was never the target.
Derek Chauvin is a political prisoner, treated shamefully by the Minneapolis legal establishment, something countenanced by Scott Johnson. If Scott Johnson wants to know why police officers sit on their hands, the answer is a guest of the Minnesota prison system. No sympathy for the bourgeois twits of Minneapolis, especially those members of the bar. Sympathies with Minneapolis put upon wage earners and small merchants, who have no influence in that town.
Covid update: well, I was wrong on my prediction of the data trend last week. Then I said I expected the new active case numbers to start showing the usual “tailing off” common to all Gaussian functions which has described the previous variant waves. That did not happen in the national data. Instead, the omicron shows a very asymmetrical aspect where the rise 2 months ago showed the “tail”, but the decline has been straight down. I think this is a very good sign that the omicron has helped to achieve herd immunity and that this covid thing is close to being totally over. The 2 week rolling average for new cases nationally is now -10k, and the 1 week average is -74k. Serious cases continue their steady decline, now at 0.04% of active cases.
State level: some states do show the “tail” in the decrease like Florida, Georgia; others are more in line with the national trend. All approaching low levels of cases averaging around 20% of peak. CT is now showing a definite decline in deaths. Colorado continues to have a problem with deaths. While cases in Colorado now at 25% of peak from over 3 weeks, deaths continue to hold steady at about 40/day rolling average.
“Sympathies with Minneapolis put upon wage earners and small merchants, who have no influence in that town.”
AD…I reckon those folks voted at least in part for what they’re getting now. They’ve allowed Minnesota to be turned into a diversity-is-our-strength nightmare.
There may well be only one way out of that.
Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald by Edward Jay Epstein is a worthwhile read. Anything by Epstein is terrific.
Amazon description: A biography of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kemmedy. This book succeeds in finally breaking the legend created for Oswald. It begins by revealing an incredible series of contacts between rival intelligence officers concering the JFK assassination and culminates in a series of events that turn the CIA inside out. Investigative author Edward Jay Epstein managed to obtain Oswald’s address book and interview more than 150 people who knew him.
I suppose the British accent, but this reminded me of something I read in a British newspaper around the centennial of the Great War and the remembrances. It was an article interviewing a woman who had just been leaving school as the war came to a close. She related how the headmistress gathered the girls in the chapel then laid bare a truth. “Most of you will never marry,” she said. “To many men have died.”
These were the young women of the 1920s. Brought up in the staid first two decades of the new century, but then just leaving school confronted with a harsh reality. If you’ve no hope of marrying well, then why obey the rules of Society? The old people had sent off all the young men to die in the Cousins’ War and left many young women with out prospects in a world were they weren’t even allowed to work if they were of above a certain social standing.
” … The fashionable androgynous silhouette. ”
Perhaps a comparatively trivial indicator, but: it looks like all the pervs and gender benders didn’t suddenly spring into existence with the discovery of the birth control pill.
There seem to have been subterranean lineages of these types propagating within the greater race for millennia.
I wonder if they have secret newsletters and handshakes and cotillions where they meet, greet, and propagate with others of their kind. LOL
Seriously, or semi seriously, it seems that the female of the species – with an honorable and noble plurality of exceptions- can be induced to do almost anything if it promises acceptance and attention.
Add in the crazy conscienceless males, and Houston we have a real problem. Up to 70? of the human race must on this surmise be either self-induced mentally ill, or else cooperatively deconstructed into barely closeted nihilists.
The actions of the left in fabricating the Trump-Russia scam is an indicator of what a society wherein all objective standards have been rejected by a significant portion of the population, comes to look like
The flight from sexual dimorphism being perhaps a seemingly frivilous example, which upon consideration, has much more profound implications than it would seem to merit at a glance.
Why, would a woman want to look like a boy?
Yes, Virginia, apparently there is a Hell, and most people do choose to go there … Or to become it. It being understood that any question of there being an afterlife or a supernatural realm, constitutes an entirely separate matter.
RE: JFK assassination
So what I am hearing from all of you is that the article I linked to is total baloney.
So what I am hearing from all of you is that the article I linked to is total baloney.
Gunshot wounds have front spatter and back spatter. The former is high volume, the latter low volume. The backspatter was liquid and hit one of the motorcycle cops. The front spatter hit the Connollys.
The wound in Kennedy’s back and neck had a downward trajectory. Ditto the wound in Gov. Connolly’s back, wrist, and thigh.
physicsguy,
I also wonder if home test kits haven’t caused an apparent, faster drop in cases? Most everyone I know who has gotten COVID (likely Omicron) in the past six weeks learned through self-administered, at home tests and I don’t think any of them reported the results to official sources; they just stayed home. So maybe Omicron’s tail is more typical, but we are relying much less on official reporting sites for testing so that many positive cases go unreported.
Rufus, great point. As we know, the case data is not very good in general and I think the best is that we can see relative trends in terms of cases. To me, the better indicator is the “serious” cases which are supposedly a representation of the hospitalization rate, is also showing the asymmetry.
Why not the Nebraska legislature (1) limit mandatory charges to students to tuition and room-and-board; (2) require that any other charges be customer decisions (e.g. whether to rely on reference reading or purchased textbooks), (3) end the practice of electing “student government”, (4) debar the distribution of institutional revenues to student clubs, and (5) provide in law for prosecuting university officialdom for embezzlement if they violate point number 4?
In re private institutions, you could add provisions to consumer protection law requiring points (1) and (2).
DNW,
“Why, would a woman want to look like a boy?” I met my wife in 1987 and may have dated one or two women prior, so I’ve spent some time thinking about this.
I started pursuing women in the late ’70s and was confused by the image magazines and some media were putting forward regarding what men were supposedly attracted to. There seemed to be near, mutual agreement among the young men I knew, and it was not inline at all with what was being sold as the ideal.
Around the age of 17, or so, I pieced together a theory that much of women’s fashion, Hollywood, photography… was run by gay men and maybe they were fond of boy’s figures? Or, maybe they were afraid of women who looked like women?
Some women’s fashions seem to be specifically designed to negatively accentuate a woman’s figure. It’s very odd. I think many women dress more out of concern of what other women will think, rather than a concern over what men prefer.
I got particularly interested in the chronology at the end of the book– Lord included detailed dating of the ship’s planning and construction as well as an hour-by-hour description of Titanic‘s fatal voyage. For some reason I had never previously connected the year– 1912– with family history, but I realized that my grandmother on my dad’s side of the family was four months pregnant with him when the ship sank.
My uncle, who married my mother’s older sister, was taken to England by his parents as a young man to get his mind off that Catholic girl he was in love with. They were Anglican and disapproved of “Mixed Marriages.” They were booked on the Titanic for their return but were “bumped” as it was overbooked for that maiden voyage. Had they been on it and were lost, I would probably not have appeared as my mother lived with them after her mother died in 1926 (Her father died when she was 18 months old).
DNW,
Regarding the appearance of mental illness in such a high percentage of people…
That’s a big, broad topic; but I can’t help but think it is greatly exacerbated by our culture not encouraging natural, gender roles. I have no issue whatsoever for folks who want to live their lives differently; but we are still animals, after all. Keep any species of animal from mating rituals and procreating and see how long things remain copacetic.
I have seen it among my children and their friends. So many are in severe, dire, mental anguish and depression. But if they meet someone they care about and that grows into a romantic relationship their lives quickly get on track.
Ignore nature at your own peril.
Wow, dressing in the ’20’s took SO much less time than even ten years before! Fascinating.
Another unsolicited idea for the Nebraska legislature:
(1) Require honoraria be financed out of event-specific donation funds and ticket sales. Certainly should always be the rule at public institutions.
(2) Debar the issuance of honorary degrees. Let the silly practice die.
That’s incredible, Mike K!
(Although I still feel sad your Uncle missed out on the girl of his dreams!)
Oswald blamed Gov. Connolly, who had at one time been Secretary of the Navy, for his dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps. Kennedy was never the target.
I’ve seen that argument. I think Oswald had other opportunities at Connolly without all the security. He shot at the general Walker in an isolated situation.
Epstein’s books are great,
The simplification of women’s clothing was a desirable thing, but that dame’s overexposed. When Fr. Neuhaus said ‘every society gets sex wrong’, he spoke the truth.
(Although I still feel sad your Uncle missed out on the girl of his dreams!)
No, they got married after his return from England. He was a great guy. He had all my mother’s family living with him.
JohnTyler,
One thing that came to my mind when I saw the cracked windshield on display; when windshields get a small hole, especially older, 1960s windshields, the holes often quickly branch out and create cracks. Several times I’ve had a rock hit my windshield on a long trip and hoped the vibration from driving the remaining miles to my destination would not generate those cracks. It’s very inexpensive and easy to repair a windshield “ding,” but once they crack the entire windshield must be repaired.
I’ve watched several tiny, circular dings propagate into spider’s webs of cracks as I’ve sped along, trying to reach my destination and avoid such a costly repair. If the windshield took the path the government claims it did it would have met with a lot of disruption and vibration.
The article claims the original was destroyed. One guy’s word. Could be, but who knows?
I think Oswald had other opportunities at Connolly without all the security.
Good point. The thing is, Oswald one might argue was an impetuous man himself. I think he was court-martialed twice during his time in the Marines (unless my memory is failing me). He also had a talent for getting fired from his job. (He’d been at the Book Depository for about six weeks, IIRC; he’d worked for a coffee roaster in New Orleans during the summer ‘ere getting fired).
1. I watched Ruby shoot Oswald on live TV. I will never ever forget that. I believe that Oswald was a lone shooter.
2. Interesting about my state, CO. We are touted as one of the healthiest states, yet we are having the COVID death tolls.
3. My Father In Law was born in 1912, joined the 82nd at age 32 and jumped out of planes with the 18 yr olds. Only thing I have tying into the Titanic, one of three in the Olympic class. Except her sister ship, the Britannic was sunk by mine during WWI. The other ship, the Olympic sailed until 1935.
Don’t know what to think about all this. It’s just too crazy.
But it doesn’t seem very likely that the official version describes what really happened. Could be, but not likely.
Problem is I saw this thick book in the bargain cart and figured, what a deal!
“The Man Who Knew Too Much”.
Read it (couldn’t put it down) and life’s never been the same since.
(I think the last book that did that to me was “Lord of the Rings”….)
The only moral I can come up with is NEVER buy a book from the bargain cart…(and if you feel you HAVE TO buy it, then don’t read it).
This podcast with Dr. Vinay Prasad and Prof. Shamez Ladhani is really good but especially the part at about 21:00 where they talk about Long COVID which is high up on a really long list of stupidities of this profoundly stupid time.
Hey, neo! Do you have a video of a woman getting UNdressed in the 20s?
Rufus T. Firefly on February 15, 2022 at 2:21 pm said:
DNW,
Regarding the appearance of mental illness in such a high percentage of people…
That’s a big, broad topic; but I can’t help but think it is greatly exacerbated by our culture not encouraging natural, gender roles. I have no issue whatsoever for folks who want to live their lives differently; but we are still animals, after all. Keep any species of animal from mating rituals and procreating and see how long things remain copacetic.
I have seen it among my children and their friends. So many are in severe, dire, mental anguish and depression. But if they meet someone they care about and that grows into a romantic relationship their lives quickly get on track.
Ignore nature at your own peril.”
If I were to try and do a back of the envelope tabulation of the percentage of mentally or emotionally disturbed or troubled people in this country whose behaviors have a negative effect on those around them, I’d probably start by adding up low-ball percentages of incest perpetrators and other molesters, the seriously emotionally troubled who act out, and those with narcissism and histrionic disorders, before even proceeding to the schizophrenic and the like.
In class, we were advised that about a rough quarter of the population were either in need of or already availed themselves of therapy be it drug or otherwise as a means of dealing with their behavioral disorders.
That was well over thirty years ago and I really have not bothered to look up the figures since graduating.
However, now and again you run across some flabbergasting figure such as that reported in the PEW poll which claimed that 56% of the young white politically progressive females interviewed, admitted to a disorder. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVgN4oDXYAEMxII.jpg
How are you supposed to deal with such persons as if they are moral peers, or to even take their lives and opinions seriously in any moral sense?
To do so is suicidal … as the trajectory of this republic indicates.
In class, we were advised that about a rough quarter of the population were either in need of or already availed themselves of therapy be it drug or otherwise as a means of dealing with their behavioral disorders.
They were talking book.
” … that dame’s overexposed. …”
Given her face and figure, I’d tend to agree no matter what the context.
Art Deco on February 15, 2022 at 3:29 pm said:
In class, we were advised that about a rough quarter of the population were either in need of or already availed themselves of therapy be it drug or otherwise as a means of dealing with their behavioral disorders.
They were talking book.
Possibly. Most of the psych profs beyond intro were clinicians as well. But when it came to doing clinical work that is where I flushed the credits and dropped off. I don’t mind reading about the effed up. Dealing with people who won’t see reason, is another matter.
Dealing with people who won’t see reason, is another matter.
I take it you lost your mother at a young age and never had any sisters.
SHIREHOME says, “My Father In Law was born in 1912, joined the 82nd at age 32 and jumped out of planes with the 18 yr olds.”
There’s another coincidence with my dad’s history: he joined the 82nd Airborne, though at age 30 (in 1942), but he also jumped out of planes with the “kids” who were just out of high school. Now I can’t help wondering whether your father-in-law and my dad might have run into each other at some point, particularly because of the reshuffling of some of the regiments within the division during the course of the war.
Sadly, my dad is no longer around to tell me about his experiences, including the guys he knew in the 82nd; he died suddenly of a heart attack in 1964. The medical examiner told my mother that it was likely a delayed reaction to combat fatigue.
From an online short history of the 82nd: “Total wartime casualties for the Division stood at close to 2,000 men killed in action or died of wounds, having suffered an additional 6,500 men wounded in action. The Division made four combat jumps over the course of the Second World War and remains an elite amongst the units of the present-day United States Army.”
On the subject of mental illness, I have a chapter on my own experiences with them as a medical student in my memoir book. I took my medical student group when I was teaching to the downtown LA homeless shelters. That was well before the present crisis. The directors of the shelters told us that 60% of the homeless were psychotic, 60% were addicts and half of each group was both. The “situational” homeless, living their car, etc were about 10% and turned over every month or so. Homeless with children were quickly identified and taken to a shelter for families.
Now, with this government created crisis, I don’t know how the distribution has changed. Probably more addicts.
Rufus & Physicsguy – my state has seen a big drop (87%) in the 7 day avg since the max on 1/21/22. Part of the reason is that OK had an arctic front come through with lots of snow on Feb 3rd. OKC cleans the main streets, but the neighborhoods just have to wait for a warm up to clear the streets.
So schools and many activities were closed until the following Monday. Today, the local school district report had only 5 students sick out of 27,500. And today, the whole state reported only 378 new cases. So, in this case, isolation worked as well as the lack of reporting the results of home tests.
The hospital case load is still high, but I think it is because people are going to the hospital for a variety of reasons and finding out that they have Omnicron. So, the people are in the hospital WITH C19, not because of it.
Did anyone else notice that freedom has been suspended in Canada? How little we know of our neighbors. I read somewhere that this guy in Germany once used “emergency” powers to nefarious ends.
“I take it you lost your mother at a young age and never had any sisters.”
All is forgiven!
T-Rex:
I put a link about Trudeau in another of today’s posts. Here’s the link.
This wave has been the worst for deaths in Snohomish County. We’ve experienced over 200 deaths in the last two months – 20% of all deaths since 3/2020. So, for Snohomish County Omicron has been lethal. Also, hospital admissions have been far higher in the last two months than any previous period. I guess that with very high case rates (3,527 per 100,000 per week -seven times as high as any previous wave) you would expect more hospitalizations and deaths even if it’s “mild.” The deaths as a percentage of cases are probably as low or lower than in previous waves. Although they don’t break out those numbers. Hmm, wonder why?
Anyway, the case rates are plummeting as are the hospitalizations and number of people on ventilators.
For anyone interested, the charts are here: ttps://www.snohd.org/546/Local-Case-Counts
Good King Jay is going to lift the outdoor mask mandate on Friday. Who knew there was an outdoor mask mandate in effect? Not many people were aware there was one. 🙂 The pols are beginning to realize that many, many people no longer trust them.
J.J.
That’s awful! A true tragedy. I am sorry.
I have seen a photograph of my mother’s mother dressed like the young woman in this video. I wish I had asked my grandmother to tell me about the day the photo was taken and her life during that time.
Graduated a midmiddli class high school i 62.
Never seemed to me the girls were going out of their way to look non-female. Of course, when you have a lot on your mind and the bulk of the school year you’re on the bus stop for a quarter of an hour in one or more layers, a girl might get casual, or even sloppy on the below-zero days.
And then there was the last month of school–no air conditioning–and seeing the girls in other situations, say weddings or whatever.
I suspect what we see of the Twenties’ fashion is left over from top-end magazines and photos of the great or near-great.
Then there would have been those who really wanted to follow the fashions.
Then those who might try.
Then those constrained by what was available because the women’s stores read the fashion magazines.
But if a woman wanted to collect some guy eyeballs…probably not.
Here’s Hemingway describing Brett, the femme fatale of “The Sun Also Rises” (1926):
______________________________
Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy’s. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.
Brett sure sounded hot to me. She was based on Duff Twsden. You can see a group photo including Hemingway and Twysden in a Pamplona cafe on the wiki page:
______________________________
Mary Duff Stirling Smurthwaite, Lady Twysden was a British socialite best known for being the model for Brett Ashley in Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.
Twysden was famous for adopting a boyish, androgynous fashion style, with a bobbed haircut and workingmen’s clothes, before this was fashionable. She was also sexually adventurous without apology at a time when this was scandalous.
An interesting factoid about the sinking of the Titanic: The “misinformation” spread by amateur radio operators about the sinking led, at least obliquely, to the federal regulation of radio and eventually the FCC. Wikipedia #1:
The 1906 International Radiotelegraph Convention, held in Berlin, called for countries to license their stations, and although United States representatives had signed this agreement, initially the U.S. Senate did not ratify the treaty. However, the U.S. was told it would not be invited to the next International Radiotelegraph Convention scheduled to be held in London in June 1912 unless it completed ratification, so on April 3, 1912, the U.S. Senate formally accepted the 1906 Convention, and began work on legislation to implement its provisions. The issue gained importance twelve days later due to the sinking of the Titanic,[2] and the new law would also incorporate provisions of the London Convention signed on July 5, 1912, although the United States had not yet ratified the new treaty. The resulting Radio Act of 1912 was signed by President Taft on August 13, 1912, and went into effect December 13, 1912.
—–
2. “House Strengthens New Wireless Law”. The New York Times. June 4, 1912. The Alexander substitute for the Hitchcock bill, which recently passed the Senate, amending the Wireless act of 1910 so as to take advantage of some of the lessons of the Titanic disaster, easily passed the House to-day without amendment.”
RMS Carpathia took three days to reach New York after leaving the scene of the disaster. Her journey was slowed by pack ice, fog, thunderstorms and rough seas. She was, however, able to pass news to the outside world by wireless about what had happened. The initial reports were confusing, leading the American press to report erroneously on 15 April that Titanic was being towed to port by the SS Virginian.
Later that day, confirmation came through that Titanic had been lost and that most of her passengers and crew had died.
– – –
Carpathia docked at 9:30 pm on 18 April at New York’s Pier 54 and was greeted by some 40,000 people waiting at the quayside in heavy rain.
This claims it was more a matter radio interference and spectrum “pollution” rather than misinformation.
For Congress, this disaster was an example of what could happen when technology developed faster than regulation. The emergency signal broadcast by wireless operators on board the ship [Titanic] was received by a Marconi telegraph station in Newfoundland, but, as the news broke, amateur radio operators up and down the U.S. East Coast filled the airwaves with radio noise that prevented the distress signal from being relayed promptly.
Well, damn.
P.J. O’Rourke is dead.
One could do worse than wander among his quotes and raise a glass:
@ Rufus > “I’ve just heard from a very credible, local source that Russia does these same military operations annually, at this time, on the Ukrainian border and the locals do not understand why the United States press is now sensationalizing the activity.”
I saw the news that Russia had started withdrawing their troops after their exercise, but not that it was an annual event.
However, John Hinderaker’s speculation about the saber-rattling appears to explain why the press got so excited: first you tell everyone that a war is at our very doorsteps, then you praise the magnificent statesmen who headed it off.
So long as you never tell the rubes that there was never any war coming at all.
What follows is pure speculation, but I have had a sneaking suspicion for a while that the Ukraine crisis is ready-made for an international “solution” that benefits a number of leaders politically while avoiding any serious down-side. Like a war, for example.
That suspicion is strengthened by the positive turn that reporting on Ukraine has suddenly taken. Thus, the London Times headlines: “Diplomacy with Russia can still save Ukraine, insists Johnson.” Subhead: “Britain and US talk of ‘crucial window’ as Moscow hints at peaceful solution.”
You can see it coming:
Boris Johnson and President Biden have said that there remains a “crucial window” to avoid a Russian invasion of Ukraine as Moscow hints that it is still open to a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
In a marked change of tone the two western leaders agreed there was an opportunity to avert conflict as international efforts to ease tensions increased. The Russian foreign minister used a televised meeting with President Putin to hold the door open to peace.
“It seems to me that our possibilities [of diplomacy] are far from being exhausted,” Sergey Lavrov said. “[Talks] certainly should not continue indefinitely, but at this stage I would suggest that they continue and be intensified.”
Separately the Russian defence minister said that some military drills, which have fanned fears of invasion, had ended or were coming to a close.
So why might war fever suddenly be subsiding? U.S. officials warned that Russia planned an invasion for Wednesday, preceded by a “false flag” operation to serve as a pretext. Then Joe Biden had a long phone conversation with Vladimir Putin in which Biden supposedly conveyed stern warnings. If war is now called off, who benefits? Joe Biden.
The U.K. jumped into the fray on Ukraine’s side, asserting British standing in world affairs and coming to Ukraine’s defense, including, I believe sending some troops to the area. So if the Russian invasion is called off, who benefits? Someone who needs a boost almost as badly as Joe Biden: Boris Johnson.
Emmanuel Macron, following in the footsteps of Charles DeGaulle, charted his own course independent of NATO and tried to be a broker via independent conversations with the Russians. He is engaged in a tough re-election race; if the Ukraine crisis dissipates, he will take credit for it.
And Vladimir Putin, by far the most secure of these four leaders, will benefit as long as Russia gets something out of its mobilization of troops at the Ukraine border. Putin is popular because he is seen as a strong leader, but no leader’s popularity is enhanced by soldiers being killed. So Putin gets the best of both worlds if he takes an aggressive position, mobilizes troops and threatens war, but then achieves Russia’s ends by peaceful means. And, of course, he avoids sanctions that could threaten Russia’s creaky economy.
That last paragraph, and the rest of the post, actually make the assumption that Putin was really putting troops out seriously, not just running an annual exercise.
I don’t know which is true, but either one works out for the people taking credit where, in fact, no credit is due.
huxley,
Thanks for the information on the inspiration for Brett. I didn’t know that.
Rufus T. Firefly:
You’re welcome!
Hemingway was the first lit writer I fell for and in my twenties I fell hard. More than any other writer Hemingway could convey direct experience, where the words dropped away and I was in the picture he was painting.
It’s a shame he’s fallen into disrepute as a dead white male and macho man to boot.
Turns out he was sexually more complicated than most people know. He had a fetish for women with short hair. They “crop” up in his writing and in his life.
His novel, “The Garden of Eden,” was published after his death and portrayed a couple who switch sex roles. In his last wife’s journal he added a curious paragaph:
_______________________________
She has always wanted to be a boy and thinks as a boy without losing any of her femininity. If you should become confused on this, you should retire. She loves me to be her girls, which I love to be, not being absolutely stupid… In return she makes me awards, and at night we do every sort of thing which pleases her and which pleases me. […] I loved feeling the embrace of Mary, which came to me as something quite new and outside all tribal law.
Of course everyone is drinking although the styles look postwar. Andy Volstead would be critical.
I have a photo of my mother in 1925 dressed casually but in a dress with a low waist and shoes like those in the video. She was 27 at the time and was with two man friends. She had many stories about the Twenties. I took her to see the movie “Titanic” when it came out and she laughed at much of the sex scenes. She was 14 when it sank. She did not marry until the late 30s, as was so common in the Depression, and I came along when she was 40. She lived in three centuries and was fun into her hundreds. My children spent much time with her.
If the linked article (it’s about the Kennedy assassination) below, is true, it’s just more evidence that our govt. is a den of corruption; that our govt. is lawless.
No better than Putin’s govt.
https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/thomas-lipscomb-hidden-in-plain-sight
I have always found it incomprehensible that anybody would think a career criminal with mob ties – Jack Ruby- eliminated Oswald, because he, Ruby, was pissed off that Oswald shot Kennedy; esp. with the knowledge that Joseph Kennedy Sr (the dad) had long standing ties with organized crime and RFK, as US Attorney General, went after the mob with all guns blazing.
It still is a mystery to me why any details of the JFK “hit,” are still secret and not open to public view. After all, it happened nearly 60 years ago.
John Tyler:
Read Reclaiming History (by Bugliosi), a book I’ve discussed on this blog. There is virtually no question in my mind that Oswald alone shot JFK and Ruby alone shot Oswald.
I’ve read a number of books about the assassination and I have stood in the Book Depository window where Oswald fired. It was an easy shot, especially with the slow progress of the limousine. I have wondered about Oswald’s motivation and whether the Russians had any connection to him. The story of the windshield is interesting. Maybe two shooters ? LBJ was in trouble. Life magazine had a huge issue on his corruption scheduled for the next week. It was immediately canceled after the shooting and vanished.
I’ve just heard from a very credible, local source that Russia does these same military operations annually, at this time, on the Ukrainian border and the locals do not understand why the United States press is now sensationalizing the activity.
She was 14 when [the Titanic] sank.
When I was a kid, I bought a paperback copy of Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember, a well-known account of the disaster that was made into a movie. I got particularly interested in the chronology at the end of the book– Lord included detailed dating of the ship’s planning and construction as well as an hour-by-hour description of Titanic‘s fatal voyage. For some reason I had never previously connected the year– 1912– with family history, but I realized that my grandmother on my dad’s side of the family was four months pregnant with him when the ship sank.
Like Mike K’s mother, my dad didn’t marry until the late 1930s, and he was 36 when I was born. I once asked my mother why it took them 11 years to have me, and her two-word answer was “Blame Hitler.”
I have always found it incomprehensible that anybody would think a career criminal with mob ties – Jack Ruby- eliminated Oswald, because he, Ruby, was pissed off that
Well, try some clear thinking. Ruby wasn’t a career criminal, he just was not antiseptic. He was a businessman who cut corners and dealt with shady characters. His ‘mob ties’ were a function of working in a trade where paying protection money is common and where you employ people who are often members of mobbed-up union locals.
What is known of Ruby as a human being is that he was sentimental and given to intense bursts of emotion. Doing something crazy-impetuous was in character for him. He was a garrulous man who could not keep secrets. Fun little detail. He was running a banal errand when he happened upon Oswald’s transfer; his dog was marking time in his parked car. Friends said he adored that dog.
I have wondered about Oswald’s motivation and whether the Russians had any connection to him.
Newsweek delineated a satisfactory hypothesis in 1993, supported by interviews with members of the Russian emigre community in Dallas who had been acquainted with the Oswalds at the time. Oswald blamed Gov. Connolly, who had at one time been Secretary of the Navy, for his dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps. Kennedy was never the target.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/02/inside-the-bizarre-hellworld-of-minneapolis-andy-brehm-brings-the-news.php
Derek Chauvin is a political prisoner, treated shamefully by the Minneapolis legal establishment, something countenanced by Scott Johnson. If Scott Johnson wants to know why police officers sit on their hands, the answer is a guest of the Minnesota prison system. No sympathy for the bourgeois twits of Minneapolis, especially those members of the bar. Sympathies with Minneapolis put upon wage earners and small merchants, who have no influence in that town.
Covid update: well, I was wrong on my prediction of the data trend last week. Then I said I expected the new active case numbers to start showing the usual “tailing off” common to all Gaussian functions which has described the previous variant waves. That did not happen in the national data. Instead, the omicron shows a very asymmetrical aspect where the rise 2 months ago showed the “tail”, but the decline has been straight down. I think this is a very good sign that the omicron has helped to achieve herd immunity and that this covid thing is close to being totally over. The 2 week rolling average for new cases nationally is now -10k, and the 1 week average is -74k. Serious cases continue their steady decline, now at 0.04% of active cases.
State level: some states do show the “tail” in the decrease like Florida, Georgia; others are more in line with the national trend. All approaching low levels of cases averaging around 20% of peak. CT is now showing a definite decline in deaths. Colorado continues to have a problem with deaths. While cases in Colorado now at 25% of peak from over 3 weeks, deaths continue to hold steady at about 40/day rolling average.
“Sympathies with Minneapolis put upon wage earners and small merchants, who have no influence in that town.”
AD…I reckon those folks voted at least in part for what they’re getting now. They’ve allowed Minnesota to be turned into a diversity-is-our-strength nightmare.
There may well be only one way out of that.
Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald by Edward Jay Epstein is a worthwhile read. Anything by Epstein is terrific.
Amazon description: A biography of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kemmedy. This book succeeds in finally breaking the legend created for Oswald. It begins by revealing an incredible series of contacts between rival intelligence officers concering the JFK assassination and culminates in a series of events that turn the CIA inside out. Investigative author Edward Jay Epstein managed to obtain Oswald’s address book and interview more than 150 people who knew him.
I suppose the British accent, but this reminded me of something I read in a British newspaper around the centennial of the Great War and the remembrances. It was an article interviewing a woman who had just been leaving school as the war came to a close. She related how the headmistress gathered the girls in the chapel then laid bare a truth. “Most of you will never marry,” she said. “To many men have died.”
These were the young women of the 1920s. Brought up in the staid first two decades of the new century, but then just leaving school confronted with a harsh reality. If you’ve no hope of marrying well, then why obey the rules of Society? The old people had sent off all the young men to die in the Cousins’ War and left many young women with out prospects in a world were they weren’t even allowed to work if they were of above a certain social standing.
” … The fashionable androgynous silhouette. ”
Perhaps a comparatively trivial indicator, but: it looks like all the pervs and gender benders didn’t suddenly spring into existence with the discovery of the birth control pill.
There seem to have been subterranean lineages of these types propagating within the greater race for millennia.
I wonder if they have secret newsletters and handshakes and cotillions where they meet, greet, and propagate with others of their kind. LOL
Seriously, or semi seriously, it seems that the female of the species – with an honorable and noble plurality of exceptions- can be induced to do almost anything if it promises acceptance and attention.
Add in the crazy conscienceless males, and Houston we have a real problem. Up to 70? of the human race must on this surmise be either self-induced mentally ill, or else cooperatively deconstructed into barely closeted nihilists.
The actions of the left in fabricating the Trump-Russia scam is an indicator of what a society wherein all objective standards have been rejected by a significant portion of the population, comes to look like
The flight from sexual dimorphism being perhaps a seemingly frivilous example, which upon consideration, has much more profound implications than it would seem to merit at a glance.
Why, would a woman want to look like a boy?
Yes, Virginia, apparently there is a Hell, and most people do choose to go there … Or to become it. It being understood that any question of there being an afterlife or a supernatural realm, constitutes an entirely separate matter.
RE: JFK assassination
So what I am hearing from all of you is that the article I linked to is total baloney.
https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/thomas-lipscomb-hidden-in-plain-sight
Do I have that right??
So what I am hearing from all of you is that the article I linked to is total baloney.
Gunshot wounds have front spatter and back spatter. The former is high volume, the latter low volume. The backspatter was liquid and hit one of the motorcycle cops. The front spatter hit the Connollys.
The wound in Kennedy’s back and neck had a downward trajectory. Ditto the wound in Gov. Connolly’s back, wrist, and thigh.
physicsguy,
I also wonder if home test kits haven’t caused an apparent, faster drop in cases? Most everyone I know who has gotten COVID (likely Omicron) in the past six weeks learned through self-administered, at home tests and I don’t think any of them reported the results to official sources; they just stayed home. So maybe Omicron’s tail is more typical, but we are relying much less on official reporting sites for testing so that many positive cases go unreported.
Rufus, great point. As we know, the case data is not very good in general and I think the best is that we can see relative trends in terms of cases. To me, the better indicator is the “serious” cases which are supposedly a representation of the hospitalization rate, is also showing the asymmetry.
https://omaha.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/bill-would-prohibit-nebraska-colleges-from-denying-money-to-groups-based-on-beliefs/article_92d68cc8-8dc5-11ec-8709-ffaf4469c79d.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1
Why not the Nebraska legislature (1) limit mandatory charges to students to tuition and room-and-board; (2) require that any other charges be customer decisions (e.g. whether to rely on reference reading or purchased textbooks), (3) end the practice of electing “student government”, (4) debar the distribution of institutional revenues to student clubs, and (5) provide in law for prosecuting university officialdom for embezzlement if they violate point number 4?
In re private institutions, you could add provisions to consumer protection law requiring points (1) and (2).
DNW,
“Why, would a woman want to look like a boy?” I met my wife in 1987 and may have dated one or two women prior, so I’ve spent some time thinking about this.
I started pursuing women in the late ’70s and was confused by the image magazines and some media were putting forward regarding what men were supposedly attracted to. There seemed to be near, mutual agreement among the young men I knew, and it was not inline at all with what was being sold as the ideal.
Around the age of 17, or so, I pieced together a theory that much of women’s fashion, Hollywood, photography… was run by gay men and maybe they were fond of boy’s figures? Or, maybe they were afraid of women who looked like women?
Some women’s fashions seem to be specifically designed to negatively accentuate a woman’s figure. It’s very odd. I think many women dress more out of concern of what other women will think, rather than a concern over what men prefer.
I got particularly interested in the chronology at the end of the book– Lord included detailed dating of the ship’s planning and construction as well as an hour-by-hour description of Titanic‘s fatal voyage. For some reason I had never previously connected the year– 1912– with family history, but I realized that my grandmother on my dad’s side of the family was four months pregnant with him when the ship sank.
My uncle, who married my mother’s older sister, was taken to England by his parents as a young man to get his mind off that Catholic girl he was in love with. They were Anglican and disapproved of “Mixed Marriages.” They were booked on the Titanic for their return but were “bumped” as it was overbooked for that maiden voyage. Had they been on it and were lost, I would probably not have appeared as my mother lived with them after her mother died in 1926 (Her father died when she was 18 months old).
DNW,
Regarding the appearance of mental illness in such a high percentage of people…
That’s a big, broad topic; but I can’t help but think it is greatly exacerbated by our culture not encouraging natural, gender roles. I have no issue whatsoever for folks who want to live their lives differently; but we are still animals, after all. Keep any species of animal from mating rituals and procreating and see how long things remain copacetic.
I have seen it among my children and their friends. So many are in severe, dire, mental anguish and depression. But if they meet someone they care about and that grows into a romantic relationship their lives quickly get on track.
Ignore nature at your own peril.
Wow, dressing in the ’20’s took SO much less time than even ten years before! Fascinating.
Another unsolicited idea for the Nebraska legislature:
(1) Require honoraria be financed out of event-specific donation funds and ticket sales. Certainly should always be the rule at public institutions.
(2) Debar the issuance of honorary degrees. Let the silly practice die.
That’s incredible, Mike K!
(Although I still feel sad your Uncle missed out on the girl of his dreams!)
Oswald blamed Gov. Connolly, who had at one time been Secretary of the Navy, for his dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps. Kennedy was never the target.
I’ve seen that argument. I think Oswald had other opportunities at Connolly without all the security. He shot at the general Walker in an isolated situation.
Epstein’s books are great,
The simplification of women’s clothing was a desirable thing, but that dame’s overexposed. When Fr. Neuhaus said ‘every society gets sex wrong’, he spoke the truth.
(Although I still feel sad your Uncle missed out on the girl of his dreams!)
No, they got married after his return from England. He was a great guy. He had all my mother’s family living with him.
JohnTyler,
One thing that came to my mind when I saw the cracked windshield on display; when windshields get a small hole, especially older, 1960s windshields, the holes often quickly branch out and create cracks. Several times I’ve had a rock hit my windshield on a long trip and hoped the vibration from driving the remaining miles to my destination would not generate those cracks. It’s very inexpensive and easy to repair a windshield “ding,” but once they crack the entire windshield must be repaired.
I’ve watched several tiny, circular dings propagate into spider’s webs of cracks as I’ve sped along, trying to reach my destination and avoid such a costly repair. If the windshield took the path the government claims it did it would have met with a lot of disruption and vibration.
The article claims the original was destroyed. One guy’s word. Could be, but who knows?
I think Oswald had other opportunities at Connolly without all the security.
Good point. The thing is, Oswald one might argue was an impetuous man himself. I think he was court-martialed twice during his time in the Marines (unless my memory is failing me). He also had a talent for getting fired from his job. (He’d been at the Book Depository for about six weeks, IIRC; he’d worked for a coffee roaster in New Orleans during the summer ‘ere getting fired).
1. I watched Ruby shoot Oswald on live TV. I will never ever forget that. I believe that Oswald was a lone shooter.
2. Interesting about my state, CO. We are touted as one of the healthiest states, yet we are having the COVID death tolls.
3. My Father In Law was born in 1912, joined the 82nd at age 32 and jumped out of planes with the 18 yr olds. Only thing I have tying into the Titanic, one of three in the Olympic class. Except her sister ship, the Britannic was sunk by mine during WWI. The other ship, the Olympic sailed until 1935.
Don’t know what to think about all this. It’s just too crazy.
But it doesn’t seem very likely that the official version describes what really happened. Could be, but not likely.
Problem is I saw this thick book in the bargain cart and figured, what a deal!
“The Man Who Knew Too Much”.
Read it (couldn’t put it down) and life’s never been the same since.
(I think the last book that did that to me was “Lord of the Rings”….)
The only moral I can come up with is NEVER buy a book from the bargain cart…(and if you feel you HAVE TO buy it, then don’t read it).
This podcast with Dr. Vinay Prasad and Prof. Shamez Ladhani is really good but especially the part at about 21:00 where they talk about Long COVID which is high up on a really long list of stupidities of this profoundly stupid time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n2akjTxMOY
Hey, neo! Do you have a video of a woman getting UNdressed in the 20s?
Rufus T. Firefly on February 15, 2022 at 2:21 pm said:
If I were to try and do a back of the envelope tabulation of the percentage of mentally or emotionally disturbed or troubled people in this country whose behaviors have a negative effect on those around them, I’d probably start by adding up low-ball percentages of incest perpetrators and other molesters, the seriously emotionally troubled who act out, and those with narcissism and histrionic disorders, before even proceeding to the schizophrenic and the like.
In class, we were advised that about a rough quarter of the population were either in need of or already availed themselves of therapy be it drug or otherwise as a means of dealing with their behavioral disorders.
That was well over thirty years ago and I really have not bothered to look up the figures since graduating.
However, now and again you run across some flabbergasting figure such as that reported in the PEW poll which claimed that 56% of the young white politically progressive females interviewed, admitted to a disorder. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVgN4oDXYAEMxII.jpg
How are you supposed to deal with such persons as if they are moral peers, or to even take their lives and opinions seriously in any moral sense?
To do so is suicidal … as the trajectory of this republic indicates.
In class, we were advised that about a rough quarter of the population were either in need of or already availed themselves of therapy be it drug or otherwise as a means of dealing with their behavioral disorders.
They were talking book.
Given her face and figure, I’d tend to agree no matter what the context.
Art Deco on February 15, 2022 at 3:29 pm said:
Possibly. Most of the psych profs beyond intro were clinicians as well. But when it came to doing clinical work that is where I flushed the credits and dropped off. I don’t mind reading about the effed up. Dealing with people who won’t see reason, is another matter.
Dealing with people who won’t see reason, is another matter.
I take it you lost your mother at a young age and never had any sisters.
SHIREHOME says, “My Father In Law was born in 1912, joined the 82nd at age 32 and jumped out of planes with the 18 yr olds.”
There’s another coincidence with my dad’s history: he joined the 82nd Airborne, though at age 30 (in 1942), but he also jumped out of planes with the “kids” who were just out of high school. Now I can’t help wondering whether your father-in-law and my dad might have run into each other at some point, particularly because of the reshuffling of some of the regiments within the division during the course of the war.
Sadly, my dad is no longer around to tell me about his experiences, including the guys he knew in the 82nd; he died suddenly of a heart attack in 1964. The medical examiner told my mother that it was likely a delayed reaction to combat fatigue.
From an online short history of the 82nd: “Total wartime casualties for the Division stood at close to 2,000 men killed in action or died of wounds, having suffered an additional 6,500 men wounded in action. The Division made four combat jumps over the course of the Second World War and remains an elite amongst the units of the present-day United States Army.”
http://www.worldwar2facts.org/82nd-airborne.html
On the subject of mental illness, I have a chapter on my own experiences with them as a medical student in my memoir book. I took my medical student group when I was teaching to the downtown LA homeless shelters. That was well before the present crisis. The directors of the shelters told us that 60% of the homeless were psychotic, 60% were addicts and half of each group was both. The “situational” homeless, living their car, etc were about 10% and turned over every month or so. Homeless with children were quickly identified and taken to a shelter for families.
Now, with this government created crisis, I don’t know how the distribution has changed. Probably more addicts.
Rufus & Physicsguy – my state has seen a big drop (87%) in the 7 day avg since the max on 1/21/22. Part of the reason is that OK had an arctic front come through with lots of snow on Feb 3rd. OKC cleans the main streets, but the neighborhoods just have to wait for a warm up to clear the streets.
So schools and many activities were closed until the following Monday. Today, the local school district report had only 5 students sick out of 27,500. And today, the whole state reported only 378 new cases. So, in this case, isolation worked as well as the lack of reporting the results of home tests.
The hospital case load is still high, but I think it is because people are going to the hospital for a variety of reasons and finding out that they have Omnicron. So, the people are in the hospital WITH C19, not because of it.
Did anyone else notice that freedom has been suspended in Canada? How little we know of our neighbors. I read somewhere that this guy in Germany once used “emergency” powers to nefarious ends.
“I take it you lost your mother at a young age and never had any sisters.”
All is forgiven!
T-Rex:
I put a link about Trudeau in another of today’s posts. Here’s the link.
This wave has been the worst for deaths in Snohomish County. We’ve experienced over 200 deaths in the last two months – 20% of all deaths since 3/2020. So, for Snohomish County Omicron has been lethal. Also, hospital admissions have been far higher in the last two months than any previous period. I guess that with very high case rates (3,527 per 100,000 per week -seven times as high as any previous wave) you would expect more hospitalizations and deaths even if it’s “mild.” The deaths as a percentage of cases are probably as low or lower than in previous waves. Although they don’t break out those numbers. Hmm, wonder why?
Anyway, the case rates are plummeting as are the hospitalizations and number of people on ventilators.
For anyone interested, the charts are here: ttps://www.snohd.org/546/Local-Case-Counts
Good King Jay is going to lift the outdoor mask mandate on Friday. Who knew there was an outdoor mask mandate in effect? Not many people were aware there was one. 🙂 The pols are beginning to realize that many, many people no longer trust them.
J.J.
That’s awful! A true tragedy. I am sorry.
I have seen a photograph of my mother’s mother dressed like the young woman in this video. I wish I had asked my grandmother to tell me about the day the photo was taken and her life during that time.
Graduated a midmiddli class high school i 62.
Never seemed to me the girls were going out of their way to look non-female. Of course, when you have a lot on your mind and the bulk of the school year you’re on the bus stop for a quarter of an hour in one or more layers, a girl might get casual, or even sloppy on the below-zero days.
And then there was the last month of school–no air conditioning–and seeing the girls in other situations, say weddings or whatever.
I suspect what we see of the Twenties’ fashion is left over from top-end magazines and photos of the great or near-great.
Then there would have been those who really wanted to follow the fashions.
Then those who might try.
Then those constrained by what was available because the women’s stores read the fashion magazines.
But if a woman wanted to collect some guy eyeballs…probably not.
Here’s Hemingway describing Brett, the femme fatale of “The Sun Also Rises” (1926):
______________________________
Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy’s. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.
https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/hemingwaye-sunalsorises/hemingwaye-sunalsorises-00-h.html
______________________________
Brett sure sounded hot to me. She was based on Duff Twsden. You can see a group photo including Hemingway and Twysden in a Pamplona cafe on the wiki page:
______________________________
Mary Duff Stirling Smurthwaite, Lady Twysden was a British socialite best known for being the model for Brett Ashley in Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.
Twysden was famous for adopting a boyish, androgynous fashion style, with a bobbed haircut and workingmen’s clothes, before this was fashionable. She was also sexually adventurous without apology at a time when this was scandalous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff_Twysden
An interesting factoid about the sinking of the Titanic: The “misinformation” spread by amateur radio operators about the sinking led, at least obliquely, to the federal regulation of radio and eventually the FCC.
Wikipedia #1:
Wikipedia #2:
This claims it was more a matter radio interference and spectrum “pollution” rather than misinformation.
Well, damn.
P.J. O’Rourke is dead.
One could do worse than wander among his quotes and raise a glass:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=pj+o%27rourke+quotes&t=opera&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images
@ Rufus > “I’ve just heard from a very credible, local source that Russia does these same military operations annually, at this time, on the Ukrainian border and the locals do not understand why the United States press is now sensationalizing the activity.”
I saw the news that Russia had started withdrawing their troops after their exercise, but not that it was an annual event.
However, John Hinderaker’s speculation about the saber-rattling appears to explain why the press got so excited: first you tell everyone that a war is at our very doorsteps, then you praise the magnificent statesmen who headed it off.
So long as you never tell the rubes that there was never any war coming at all.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/02/whos-wagging-whose-dog.php
That last paragraph, and the rest of the post, actually make the assumption that Putin was really putting troops out seriously, not just running an annual exercise.
I don’t know which is true, but either one works out for the people taking credit where, in fact, no credit is due.
huxley,
Thanks for the information on the inspiration for Brett. I didn’t know that.
Rufus T. Firefly:
You’re welcome!
Hemingway was the first lit writer I fell for and in my twenties I fell hard. More than any other writer Hemingway could convey direct experience, where the words dropped away and I was in the picture he was painting.
It’s a shame he’s fallen into disrepute as a dead white male and macho man to boot.
Turns out he was sexually more complicated than most people know. He had a fetish for women with short hair. They “crop” up in his writing and in his life.
His novel, “The Garden of Eden,” was published after his death and portrayed a couple who switch sex roles. In his last wife’s journal he added a curious paragaph:
_______________________________
She has always wanted to be a boy and thinks as a boy without losing any of her femininity. If you should become confused on this, you should retire. She loves me to be her girls, which I love to be, not being absolutely stupid… In return she makes me awards, and at night we do every sort of thing which pleases her and which pleases me. […] I loved feeling the embrace of Mary, which came to me as something quite new and outside all tribal law.
https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/books/a36004141/ernest-hemingway-pbs-documentary-sexuality-ken-burns/