The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Hector Owen:

Serge @ 106: Had the young woman with the poster of Obama as Hitler answered Barney Frank's question, she would have had to say, "Planet LaRouche." Those posters are a LaRouche production. "LaRouchePAC.com" is clearly visible on the poster here. If you actually go to that site, the Nazi stuff is explicit. This LaRouche supporter had a four-hour drive to get to that town hall meeting. And four more hours home again, afterwards. I do not understand the LaRouchies at all, but they do seem to be worked up about this.

I'm not fond of Barney Frank, but to give him credit, he answered that one right.

My best wishes for a speedy recovery, and a good weekend on the Vinyard.

Rikibeth #57: Yes, there is research backing up your guess about "Streets of Laredo," and a wonderful collection to go with the research: The Unfortunate Rake. "Saint James Infirmary" is a member of this ballad family also.

Graydon # 23, "a US court recently found that the CIA really did assassinate Martin Luther King Jr."

Can you be more specific? A link, maybe? Are you referring to the Jowers trial in 1999, which might seem recent or not, for variable values of recent, or to something more current?

GiacomoL @ 54: From your link I see you are a Mancunian. Do you not follow the football at all? Or could that Scotsman have been from Edinburgh? A Glaswegian would know of the Celtic ["Seltic"] Football Club the same way that a New Yorker, fan or not, would know about the Yankees, and that Houston ["Howston"] Street does not sound like the name of the city in Texas ["Hewston"]. Here's a discussion of the pronunciation. Here's a video that starts with a song, "Hail, hail, the Çelts are here." Perhaps it's a general exception for sports teams. Or perhaps that Scotsman had studied classical Latin, and was having a 1066 and All That ("weeny, weedy, and weaky") moment. Or are you playing a joke on Cat Meadors (#24) and have taken me in as well? Once the hoaxing begins, there are so many possibilities …

I apologize for my comments above. I would delete them myself, if I could. I know better than to post when hot; should have stepped away from the keyboard, but did not. Making Light is a wonderful party; I am sorry I made a mess on the rug.

Scott Taylor, #88: You are just where I was on this, 20 years ago. I can't argue with you , or even discuss what you said, much. Reading your comment, I hear my own, younger voice.

James D. Macdonald #87, I want to write clearly, but sometimes maybe I just don't make it. If you were to ask either of those Mikes "Wasn't that guy [Horton, Dumond, pick your Mike] supposed to be kept away from the general public for a long time?" the answer would be, "That was what the court said … but I knew better, and so in my capacity as Governor, I over-rode the court's judgment." I am paraphrasing the quote, of course. That is to say, it doesn't matter so much if the court gives "life without," etc, if there's a Mike to parole or pardon or commute. So yes, the problem for the Mikes was exactly that. You did not miss a thing.

Earl, isn't an "effect multiplier" one of those nifty gadgets that we see from time to time in the manga illustrations? How could I, with only a wooden leg (just a chunk of oak!) to work with, possibly damage the owner of an such a piece of high-tech equipment?

====

But that's not the point. What it seems to me that you are really objecting to is that someone could be closer to this issue than someone else. My question was sincere, and I'll reiterate it: who has personal experience ?
So if we're going to argue about ... about whatever this is; I think I am talking about the death penalty; you seem to be talking about whether I am allowed to talk about, well, anything, much, since in your view, personal experience counts for less than philosphical stringency. But I know I am missing something; what am I missing? I have opened a new thread just for you over at my blogspot site; please come on over, taste the blinis, tell me what's wrong with my thinking.

Earl votes for "abstract gas." Verbalciously.

That's one!

Ethan #38: Rhode Island always is left off those lists. It's just too darn small. Do you remember that TV commercial with the unseen girl's voice saying, "It's not an aah-land, bean-brain! It's a road!"

More seriously: The story of John Gordon and Amasa Sprague, or why Rhode Island does not have the death penalty.

Is anyone else here personally involved in this, or is this whole thread a lot of abstract gas? I mean, have you murdered a relative? Do you have a relative who has been murdered? If you had been murdered by a relative, then working the keyboard might be kinda tricky. (If that paragraph seems cold, wait twenty-five years after your own father was murdered, and come back and look at it again.)

My father was shot dead (his obit is online, but I do not want to post that link here; email me if you feel that you need verification) by a man who, well, nobody knows what he had in mind; once he fired the pistol, he was in flight, and was never caught. Even after that, I remember arguing against the death penalty, on the old GEnie boards, basing my arguments on the Gordon/Sprague story linked above. I think I have backups somewhere, but from memory, I recall basing my opposition to the death penalty on the basis that "it's so darn final!" Once the suspect is killed, there's no going back. But if you're sure, and I mean really positive, that you've got the right one, then hang 'em high. The deterrence factor is real: A dead murderer will not commit any more murders. Heck, that's tautological, isn't it? Life without possibilty of parole sounds like it's equivalent to a death sentence, but it really is not. Ask either of the Mikes, Dukakis or Huckabee.

So, to try to come to a conclusion: I am not surprised to see that Governor Corzine is doing the wrong thing. This is the man who told his driver to do 90 on the turnpike, so that he could get to a press conference that he did not even need to attend.

Oh, Xopher, I'd just as soon warm locally, a nice fire in the fireplace, a down comforter, "warm sweetie to embrace" rhymes with fireplace, may be on to something here. Start of another song, perhaps? It's not like I hadn't thought about it much.

About 6 to 8 inches here in southern Rhode Island. To the tune of "Old Time Religion:"
Gimme that old global warming,
Gimme that old global warming,
Gimme that old global warming [spoken] where is it?,
It's good enough for me!

I remember John Cameron Swayze, and the Camel News Caravan. Much talk about the Korean war, and the Iron Curtain, which I visualized as a half-mile-high construction of iron plates and rivets. So then, it was a major accomplishment for the SabreJets and MiGs to fly over that so that they could fight. Estes Kefauver and his coonskin cap. We were marched into the school gymnasium/auditorium to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, on a tiny black-and-white (of course there was no other kind) TV set up on the stage.

Tim Walters, #527: Objecting to amateur artists is just as wrong as objecting to amateur athletes. Aside from the benefits to the amateurs themselves, a nation of Sunday painters and parlor pianists is going to have better artists and better audiences. Hear, hear! As a music teacher, I am personally involved in enabling such amateurs. People who do it for love, from the etymology. But -- who objected to amateur artists? What I was referring to in the "crap modern poetry" thing upthread was not amateur poetry, but vacuous poetry produced by academics with paid positions, who must publish or perish, and having not much to say, publish a lot of stuff of dubious merit. Which then, because it is produced by "professional poets," becomes a standard; which then may lead some of the gifted amateurs to think that they are doing it wrong, and consequently lose the view of their own guiding vision. Which means that the work that could have been their best, is never produced at all, and that's a loss for everyone. Fortunately, there's no worrying about that around here. If anyone is counting votes in favor of a Making Light poetry anthology, count this as another "aye."

Dan Layman-Kennedy, #485: Well all right then, I'll take you off the guest list for the next dinner party with Dorothy Parker!

Lee, # 480: Thank you for that link! I may have to blog it, it's that good. And what you said about poetry in your reply to Jonathan, definitely. Lord Byron was the Jim Morrison of his era. (Though Byron was a better writer.)

Richard Brandt, #481: You seem to be addressing me, but there is so much tone-of-voice in your post that I can't tell what you really mean to be saying.

Dan Layman-Kennedy, #482: "there's a lot of crap modern poetry out there" No kidding! An interesting blog post on this topic, with some pretty good poems in comments. (The writer is an unaffiliated Discordian, so watch out for the fnords.)

Eyewitness tells of the end of the church shootings in Colorado: Vet lauds female guard who felled gunman. Includes links to video interviews with the guard (unpaid, plainclothes, volunteer, parishioner) and others. The impression I get from this is that the church schedules permit-holding parishioners like greeters or members of the altar guild, so as to make sure that there are always some present. According to the witness, two other guards could have fired, but did not.

Of course, Guy Fawkes has a blog.

NY Times catches up to Making Light: Best Defense Against Drug-Resistant Bacteria: Wash Your Hands. Nice electron micrograph image of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Comment statistics for Hector Owen on the Making Light blog

Total: 28 comments. View all these comments on a single page.