Michael Bates: September 2016 Archives
BRRRT / A-10 Thunderbolt II Firing Sound | Know Your Meme
It may sound like a flatulent warthog, but it's really an A-10 delivering hundreds of 30 mm, armor-piercing, depleted-uranium rounds. For US ground troops, it's the sound of deliverance.
MORE: A-10 Warthog is now a possible choice of sexual identity.
SMU's Meadows Symphony opens a new season with an unusual mix | Classical Music | Dallas News
"Between music director Paul Phillips and a fine instrumental faculty, Southern Methodist University maintains a student orchestra worthy of reviewing as a professional ensemble. If Saturday night's Meadows Symphony Orchestra concert hadn't all the polish of the group's best, each school year--this one only a month old--starts with significant turnover of players....
"Strings were on their own in a warmly rendered Meditation on the Old Bohemian Chorale 'Saint Wenceslas,' by Dvorak's son-in-law Josef Suk. Although this lush, yearning music, from 1914, probably encoded a wish for Bohemian independence from Austro-Hungarian dominance, it could pass for the work of Vaughan Williams or several other early 20th-century English composers.
"The Dvorak [Cello Concerto] had a passionate and technically accomplished soloist in cellist Andres Diaz, one of the stars of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts faculty. From an aptly urgent beginning, the orchestra was in its glory here, Phillips giving the music just enough room to expand, contract and catch its breath.
"Paired clarinets and oboes played with expressive warmth, and the three horns displayed superb breath control. There were notable solos from Garrett Law (horn), Isaac Beu (clarinet) and Hannah Cruse (oboe).
"Alas, the acoustics of SMU's Caruth Auditorium disadvantage any soloist in the usual position left of the conductor, and Diaz was repeatedly swamped by the winds. Fine as Caruth is for smaller-scale music, it is too physically and sonically cramped for orchestral performances. An orchestra of this quality deserves better."
How We Met: Ray Galton & Alan Simpson | The Independent
The British comedy writing duo who brought us Hancock's Half Hour and Steptoe and Son met as teenagers in a tuberculosis sanitarium and bonded over their shared love of American comedy on the American Forces Network -- "Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Don Ameche."
Simpson: "Sometimes we'll reminisce. Some of my fondest memories are from the Hancock days. He was a dream to work with - one of those rare performers who could read something perfectly first time. He had his problems and was never a great party man, but he was funny. When we had readings with Hancock, Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Bill Kerr - some of the biggest laughers in the business - they would be on their knees roaring, eyes watering. It was incredible, and Ray and I would stand there like kids thinking, 'We did that.'"
Is the party over for free wi-fi in cafes? - BBC News
One cafe hides its electrical outlets and, between 11 am and 4 pm, cuts off wifi. Another eliminated wifi completely, only to have to reverse its course a few weeks later. Yet another cafe is leasing out a basement as a co-working space. How does a coffeehouse cultivate loyal customers without encouraging table hogs?
A couple techniques I've observed: Printing a unique wifi key, good for two hours, on the customer's receipt. Offering bandwidth priority to customers who spend above a certain threshold. Seems like it would be simple to grant a DHCP lease with the duration proportional to the amount of money spent on food and drink.
Workshop Cafe in San Francisco's Financial District has a small free wifi space, but most of the coffeehouse is reserved for people who pay $2 to $3 per hour. In exchange, customers get faster wifi, outlets, access to printers, scanners, and large screen displays, private phone booths, and ergonomic chairs. Members can order drinks and food from their seats, can reserve a specific spot using the app, and can optionally share their info with other members, opening the door to collaboration. I am not a tax expert, but it seems the money paid specifically for a place to sit would be deductible as a business expense, while the money you spend in a conventional coffeehouse on coffee and paninis to justify your continued occupancy of a table would not be.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Remarks at the United Nations General Assembly
The first part of the speech focuses on Israel's rising reputation in the world, as the nation builds deeper ties with more nations, as nations seek Israel's advice in counterterrorism, water conservation, agriculture, and other fields. Netanyahu looks forward to the day when UN ambassadors stop passing resolutions against Israel because their governments back home have strong, positive relationships with Israel.
Netanyahu reviewed the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and identifies its root:
"But this conflict has never been about the settlements or about establishing a Palestinian state. It's always been about the existence of a Jewish state, a Jewish state in any boundary....
"Had the Palestinians said yes to a Jewish state in 1947, there would have been no war, no refugees and no conflict. And when the Palestinians finally say yes to a Jewish state, we will be able to end this conflict once and for all."
Netanyahu went on to contrast official Palestinian applause for violence against Israelis with official Israeli crackdowns on anti-Palestinian extremists.
"Now here's the tragedy, because, see, the Palestinians are not only trapped in the past, their leaders are poisoning the future.
"I want you to imagine a day in the life of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, I'll call him Ali. Ali wakes up before school, he goes to practice with a soccer team named after Dalal Mughrabi, a Palestinian terrorist responsible for the murder of a busload of 37 Israelis.
"At school, Ali attends an event sponsored by the Palestinian Ministry of Education honoring Baha Alyan, who last year murdered three Israeli civilians. On his walk home, Ali looks up at a towering statue erected just a few weeks ago by the Palestinian Authority to honor Abu Sukar, who detonated a bomb in the center of Jerusalem, killing 15 Israelis.
"When Ali gets home, he turns on the TV and sees an interview with a senior Palestinian official, Jibril Rajoub, who says that if he had a nuclear bomb, he'd detonate it over Israel that very day. Ali then turns on the radio and he hears President Abbas's adviser, Sultan Abu al-Einein, urging Palestinians, here's a quote, 'to slit the throats of Israelis wherever you find them.' Ali checks his Facebook and he sees a recent post by President Abbas's Fatah Party calling the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics a 'heroic act'. On YouTube, Ali watches a clip of President Abbas himself saying, 'We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem.' Direct quote.
"Over dinner, Ali asks his mother what would happen if he killed a Jew and went to an Israeli prison? Here's what she tells him. She tells him he'd be paid thousands of dollars each month by the Palestinian Authority. In fact, she tells him, the more Jews he would kill, the more money he'd get. Oh, and when he gets out of prison, Ali would be guaranteed a job with the Palestinian Authority....
"We in Israel don't do this. We educate our children for peace. In fact, we recently launched a pilot program, my government did, to make the study of Arabic mandatory for Jewish children so that we can better understand each other, so that we can live together side-by-side in peace.
"Of course, like all societies Israel has fringe elements. But it's our response to those fringe elements, it's our response to those fringe elements that makes all the difference.
"Take the tragic case of Ahmed Dawabsha. I'll never forget visiting Ahmed in the hospital just hours after he was attacked. A little boy, really a baby, he was badly burned. Ahmed was the victim of a horrible terrorist act perpetrated by Jews. He lay bandaged and unconscious as Israeli doctors worked around the clock to save him.
"No words can bring comfort to this boy or to his family. Still, as I stood by his bedside I told his uncle, 'This is not our people. This is not our way.' I then ordered extraordinary measures to bring Ahmed's assailants to justice and today the Jewish citizens of Israel accused of attacking the Dawabsha family are in jail awaiting trial.
"Now, for some, this story shows that both sides have their extremists and both sides are equally responsible for this seemingly endless conflict.
"But what Ahmed's story actually proves is the very opposite. It illustrates the profound difference between our two societies, because while Israeli leaders condemn terrorists, all terrorists, Arabs and Jews alike, Palestinian leaders celebrate terrorists. While Israel jails the handful of Jewish terrorists among us, the Palestinians pay thousands of terrorists among them."
The Intellectual Yet Idiot - Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Medium
"What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking "clerks" and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think... and 5) who to vote for....
"Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats who feel entitled to run our lives aren't even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking. They cant tell science from scientism -- in fact in their eyes scientism looks more scientific than real science. (For instance it is trivial to show the following: much of what the Cass-Sunstein-Richard Thaler types -- those who want to "nudge" us into some behavior -- much of what they would classify as "rational" or "irrational" (or some such categories indicating deviation from a desired or prescribed protocol) comes from their misunderstanding of probability theory and cosmetic use of first-order models.) They are also prone to mistake the ensemble for the linear aggregation of its components as we saw in the chapter extending the minority rule....
"The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn't understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests, particularly if they are "red necks" or English non-crisp-vowel class who voted for Brexit. When plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the IYI uses the term "uneducated". What we generally call participation in the political process, he calls by two distinct designations: "democracy" when it fits the IYI, and "populism" when the plebeians dare voting in a way that contradicts his preferences. While rich people believe in one tax dollar one vote, more humanistic ones in one man one vote, Monsanto in one lobbyist one vote, the IYI believes in one Ivy League degree one-vote, with some equivalence for foreign elite schools and PhDs as these are needed in the club."
Clinton's Samantha Bee Problem - Ross Douthat - The New York Times
"The culture industry has always tilted leftward, but the swing toward social liberalism among younger Americans and the simultaneous surge of activist energy on the left have created a new dynamic, in which areas once considered relatively apolitical now have (or are being pushed to have) an overtly left-wing party line.
"On late-night television, it was once understood that David Letterman was beloved by coastal liberals and Jay Leno more of a Middle American taste. But neither man was prone to delivering hectoring monologues in the style of the 'Daily Show' alums who now dominate late night. Fallon's apolitical shtick increasingly makes him an outlier among his peers, many of whom are less comics than propagandists -- liberal 'explanatory journalists' with laugh lines.
"Some of them have better lines than others, and some joke more or hector less. But to flip from Stephen Colbert's winsome liberalism to Seth Meyers's class-clown liberalism to Bee's bluestocking feminism to John Oliver's and Trevor Noah's lectures on American benightedness is to enter an echo chamber from which the imagination struggles to escape.
"It isn't just late-night TV. Cultural arenas and institutions that were always liberal are being prodded or dragged further to the left. Awards shows are being pushed to shed their genteel limousine liberalism and embrace the race-gender-sexual identity agenda in full. Colleges and universities are increasingly acting as indoctrinators for that same agenda, shifting their already-lefty consensus under activist pressure.
"Meanwhile, institutions that were seen as outside or sideways to political debate have been enlisted in the culture war. The tabloid industry gave us the apotheosis of Caitlyn Jenner, and ESPN gave her its Arthur Ashe Award. The N.B.A., N.C.A.A. and the A.C.C. -- nobody's idea of progressive forces, usually -- are acting as enforcers on behalf of gay and transgender rights. Jock culture remains relatively reactionary, but even the N.F.L. is having its Black Lives Matters moment, thanks to Colin Kaepernick."
An open letter to the Sooner Nation from an Ohio State fan - OUDaily.com: Opinion
"As we wandered around in our Buckeye regalia, you greeted us with 'Welcome to Norman, we're glad you came.' You asked if you could help us find anything. You offered advice on where to park on game-day. You suggested restaurants we might enjoy. (We tried Blackbird Gastropub and enjoyed it so much that we returned to it on Saturday.)...
"We returned to the Blackbird, where we enjoyed more Norman hospitality. Our server even remembered us from the day before. As we were enjoying a drink and waiting for our meal, a gentleman approached our table with yet another 'welcome.' During the conversation, he recommended a restaurant in OKC that we might want to try after the game. As he was singing its praises, I jokingly asked if he was a stockholder in the place. He replied that, no he wasn't. He said, 'I'm a local legislator and I like to promote the area.' He later came back to the table and offered to take a group photo of us with one of our phones. We took him up on the offer. During the afternoon he sent beer to our table. Twice. I wish I had asked his name so I could thank him publicly....
"As game-time approached, we wandered across your campus, taking in the festival atmosphere that you are obviously very good at creating. As we passed tailgate parties, we received more welcomes.
"After the game, you proved to be very gracious over the loss of a great football game between two of the most storied programs in the country. Many of you told us that you are looking forward to going to Columbus for the game next year. I hope we can be the hosts that you were."
TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Awards: Top 25 Museums - Worldwide
I've only visited five: the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago, the British Museum, National Air and Space Museum, and Yad Vashem.
Concert Posters Tulsa Poster Project Archive of Tulsa area Concert Posters Handbills and Flyers
Ephemera can capture history that newspapers and textbooks miss. David Dean has photographed and uploaded his collection of concert posters going back into the late 1950s, but with a special focus on the '70s and '80s. Most of the photos are from Tulsa venues, but you'll also find Oklahoma City, Norman, Wichita, and other regional cities represented. Many are for events at Cain's Ballroom.
Progressively Regressive Sexuality - Eric Metaxas - Breakpoint
"How often have you heard sexual progressives claim that those of us who hold to traditional sexual morality and marriage are 'on the wrong side of history?'
"But as one new book points out, it's the proponents of the sexual revolution who are embracing a sexual morality that history left behind millennia ago--in the dusty ruins of the Roman Forum....
"It's precisely in times like this that we need some historical perspective. Which is why Lutheran pastor Matthew Rueger's new book, Sexual Morality in a Christless World, is a timely godsend. In it, Rueger shows how Christian sexual morality rocked the pagan world of ancient Rome. The notions of self-giving love, sexual chastity, and marital fidelity were foreign, even shocking to the people of that time."...
"Folks, we can't look away and ignore this unholy revival of pagan sexuality and its cheapened view of human beings. But we also can't wring our hands in fear or throw them up in defeat. As Rueger points out, Christ and His Church radically transformed a far more sexually cruel and chaotic world than ours.
"Look to those ancient believers who went before us: Rather than succumbing to or accommodating the spirit of the age, new converts in the early Church came to understand, as Rueger writes, that 'Christian morality is based on Christ's all-encompassing purity and self-emptying love...Christians could no longer live as the Greeks or Romans. Their worldview and self-view was distinctly different. They were now one with Christ in heart and soul.'
"Now, their distinctiveness, as Rueger writes, 'would not spare them from suffering; it would invite suffering.' It's pretty clear now that the same holds true for us. Will we bend the knee to this revived pagan sexuality, or will we hold out to a needy world the freedom of God's plan for human sexuality?"
The Uses of Patriotism - The New York Times
You want change? Sing the National Anthem. David Brooks explains how patriotic ritual reinforces social cohesion, which is essential for producing the kinds of societal change that the protesters say they want:
"Sitting out the anthem takes place in the context of looming post-nationalism. When we sing the national anthem, we're not commenting on the state of America. We're fortifying our foundational creed. We're expressing gratitude for our ancestors and what they left us. We're expressing commitment to the nation's ideals, which we have not yet fulfilled.
"If we don't transmit that creed through shared displays of reverence we will have lost the idea system that has always motivated reform. We will lose the sense that we're all in this together. We'll lose the sense of shared loyalty to ideas bigger and more transcendent than our own short lives.
"If these common rituals are insulted, other people won't be motivated to right your injustices because they'll be less likely to feel that you are part of their story. People will become strangers to one another and will interact in cold instrumentalist terms."
Come On, Fhqwhgads: A Look Back at the Music of Homestar Runner - Noisey
A conversation with Mike and Matt Chapman, the creators of the early web cartoon sensation, about how Homestar Runner grew in the years before social media made it easy to share things on the web.
"British laws and traditions such as the celebration of Christmas are under threat and must be vigorously upheld to stop ethnic segregation dividing society, according to major government review.
"Waves of immigration have rapidly changed the character of some state schools and left residents in parts of Britain feeling unsettled, the landmark report will say.
"These issues must be tackled head on, rather than swept under the carpet by politically correct council officials who fear being labelled 'racist' if they assert British values or raise concerns, it will say....
"[Dame Louise Casey, Government integration 'tsar,'] criticised councils for 'over worrying' about causing offence among minority groups. This attitude led one community centre she visited to put up a 'festive tree' because the 'incredibly well-meaning white manager' did not want to offend his Asian and Muslim staff by using the word 'Christmas'.
"'What offence did he think he was causing? What did we ever think would be offensive about celebrating Christmas with a tree?' Dame Louise said....
"Only by promoting 'core' British laws, traditions and cultures in every ethnic community can Britain hope to ensure that diverse communities integrate fully, and defeat the 'hate mongers' from the far Right and Islamist extremists who want to divide the country, she argued.
"'I have become convinced that it is only the upholding of our core British laws, cultures, values and traditions that will offer us the route map through the different and complex challenge of creating a cohesive society.'...
"'It is not racist to say that the pace and rate of immigration has created a lot of change in Britain and for some people that feels too much. Or that when a large number of people from a different ethnic or religious background suddenly move into an area that it can be unsettling for those already resident there; or that when a school has a large religious minority population, it can change its character quite quickly.
"'Not talking about this and the issues that arise from it only creates more tensions.'"
Making Sense of Bioethics: Parents and "Sex Ed"
Perspective from Father Tad Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center:
"At the end of the day, the parental duty to influence in a positive way a child's upbringing around sexuality cannot be abdicated or delegated. Parents know their children in a personal and individual way and are able to determine their readiness for, and receptivity to, sexual information.
"Moreover, the reality of parental love toward their children enables a parent to say certain 'hard things' in love that may need to be said, in a manner that only a parent may effectively be able to say it."
Local effects of the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack
How a central California newspaper reacted to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
"An article, titled 'What to do in the Event of an Air Raid,' listed several practical suggestions. A few were terrifying.
- When the alarm sounds, householders must extinguish all lights.
- Don't go into streets. Stay indoors and find a place safe from flying glass.
- All motorists must pull over to the curb. Extinguish lights, abandon car and seek shelter.
- Householders should supply themselves with bags of sand to be placed throughout their dwellings.
- Fill all household receptacles including bathtubs with water as a precaution against fires.
- The blast of a high-explosive bomb may cause injury within 150 yards. Get behind any solid cover and lie down.
- If an incendiary or burning bomb penetrates your house, DO NOT THROW WATER on the bomb as this will cause an explosion. Throw sand or dirt.
After 74 years, bones from Pearl Harbor tomb ship may be identified
Renewed efforts at Offutt AFB to identify the remains of USS Oklahoma crew who died on December 7, 1941:
"Inside an old aircraft factory here, behind the glass windows of a pristine laboratory, the lost crew of the USS Oklahoma rests on special tables covered in black foam.
"Their bones are brown with age after 50 years in the ground and, before that, months entombed in their sunken battleship beneath the oily waters of Pearl Harbor.
"Legs, arms, ribs, vertebrae. Some have blue tags tied with string, identifying the type of bone. Some have beige tags, indicating that experts also want samples for DNA testing.
"They are the unidentified remains of hundreds of sailors and Marines who perished 74 years ago Monday, when Japan launched a surprise air attack on Hawaii and plunged the United States into World War II.
"Now, seven decades later, the government is trying to put names to the old salts and teenage sailors who died when their ship was sunk by enemy torpedoes Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941.
"Over the past six months, with a fresh mandate from the Defense Department, the bones were exhumed from a cemetery in Hawaii and most were brought to a new lab here, where scientists have begun the task."
Hindu 'cattle patrols' in India seek to protect cows from beef eaters
From The Washington Post, December 2015, Yadavnagar, India: Hindu vigilantes attack beef-eating Muslims.
"'Our gods and goddesses reside inside the body of the cow,' said Satya Pal Acharya, a Sanskrit school teacher and a cow protector. 'As long as our cows are healthy and alive, our civilization will thrive. Sometimes we have to strengthen the hands of the government to implement the laws.'
"The recent violence began in September, when an angry Hindu mob broke down a door and dragged a 50-year-old Muslim man from his home outside New Delhi, following rumors that he had eaten beef. The mob then kicked him and beat him with bricks until he died. When the police sent the meat stored in his refrigerator for forensic testing, it turned out to be goat.
"Two weeks ago, another vigilante group fatally beat a truck driver transporting cows in the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh. In Kashmir, a mob burned a Muslim teenager over rumors of cow slaughter. When a Muslim lawmaker in Kashmir held a 'beef party' in protest, he was assaulted by lawmakers from the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the floor of the statehouse, as cameras rolled."
Sleep critical for children's, teens' well-being
Pediatrician Kate Land writes the dangers of insufficient sleep for children. Lack of sleep increases risk of car accidents, poor impulse control, obesity, depression. Dr. Land offers specific suggestions for parents regarding their children's bedtimes and sleep habits.
Oklahoma town knows how to survive oil busts: a backup plan
November 4, 2015, Associated Press story by Tammy Webber about the how residents of Ponca City, Oklahoma were coping with the collapse of oil prices on the local economy, drawing on experience of past oil crunches.
Voices of Variety » Chesney Allen
A page devoted to British comedian of music hall and movies Chesney Allen, one-sixth of the Crazy Gang, half of "variety's greatest double-act," Flanagan and Allen.
"The act always featured a number of songs - nostalgic or patriotic or, more likely, evoking hard times and the camaraderie of ordinary people bonding against misfortune. And they invariably ended with that song, which had been growing slowly in popularity.
"'Underneath the Arches was written by Bud, words and music, in some digs in 1928,' said Ches, 'and we sang it for two or three years before it really caught on. In those days, you see, a lot of people really did have to sleep under the arches and I think the song was written partly with them in mind. Bud had roughed it a lot earlier. He'd been a taxi driver and he'd been to America and roughed it there. He once walked from London to Glasgow. So he did know something about 'the arches.' Then, in 1934, the song became the best-seller in this country. Later on it was a tremendous seller in America after the war, too, because American soldiers used to come over here and they got to know the song.'"
