The New York Times reports: Gao Yu, a 71-year-old Chinese journalist who has repeatedly challenged the Communist Party during a decades-long career, was sentenced to seven years in prison on Friday after a court in Beijing found her guilty of leaking state secrets abroad. Gao Yu is in fact a true hero of the freedom…
The fact that the “Cheryl Question” went viral shows not only that Americans are ignorant of mathematics, they don’t know how they are ignorant of mathematics
Here is the “Cheryl Question” from Singapore that, according to Terrance Ross of the Atlantic, provoked “hysteria” around the web: Albert and Bernard just became friends with Cheryl, and they want to know when her birthday is. Cheryl gives them a list of 10 possible dates. May 15 May 16 May 19 June 17 June…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here “I was wrong, Sylvia. You do have a death wish.” “I was just telling Harry we needed a window. Thanks to you the job’s half done!” “Sylvia, am I to consider this an expression of dissatisfaction with your ranking on this week’s tennis ladder or simply a boiling over of general ill…
Miles Davis & John Coltrane, Stockholm, 1960
No video again, but nice sound, especially for a 1960 live concert. Oh, and great musicians, too. Numbers: 1. So What. 2. Fran Dance. 3. All Blues/The Theme. 4. On Green Dolphin Street. 5. Walkin’ / The Theme. With Paul Chambers, bass, Wynton Kelly, piano, and Jimmy Cobb, drums. Posted by Fan No Sekai
Warts? Fuck yeah, we got warts!
I’ve been reading, with a great deal of pleasure, John Lewis Gaddis’ estimable We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, written in 1997 after the release of much formerly secret material from the former Soviet Union. While writing about the Korean War, Gaddis quotes an unnamed (of course) source with the CIA to the effect…
The Judith Miller Show: Weaving new false narratives to replace the old
After the French Revolution, it was said that of the old aristocracy that they had forgotten nothing and learned nothing. After the disastrous second Iraqi war, it may be said of the Wall Street Journal that it had learned nothing and forgotten everything. The latest entropy effusion from the WSJ Memory Hole is Judith Miller’s…
Monk Inc—“Boo Boo’s Birthday”
According to the “Norfolk Gig Guide” (that’s Norfolk, UK, not Norfolk, Virginia), “Monk Inc” is, or was, a band led by Ben Higham and Simon Youngman. I’m not sure if the group is still functioning, but they have a very nice sound. Posted by tmrn21
How much is that senator in the window? Now we know
Ark. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, well he don’t plant cotton, but he sure can harvest the long green. Over at the New York Times, Eric Lipton reports the following: The Emergency Committee for Israel, led by William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, spent $960,000 to support Mr. Cotton. In that same race, Paul…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here “Listen, bub, I’ve been goin’ to the moon for thirty years. You can take that space-time continuum crap and shove it up Uranus. Ha, ha! Get it?” “So he says ‘Where have I seen you before?’ and I says ‘Oklahoma’ and he says ‘Where in Oklahoma?’ and I says ‘The third act’….
What Daniel Larison gets wrong about what Iran hawks get wrong
I find The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison to be indispensable reading. Dan never wearies in his pursuit of interventionist nonsense from both the right and left. His only problem, shockingly, is his overabundance of innocence. All too often, he really believes that the neo-cons, and their liberal interventionist counterparts, really believe what they say. A…