vdare--2020-08-30--Surprise, Surprise! Vicky Osterweil, Author of In Defense of Looting, Used to be Willie Osterweil

As I ’ ve been pointing out for some time , more than a few of our New Idols of Utmost Diversity , male-to-female trans folks , tend to be nasty sons-of-a-gun .
Not surprisingly , therefore , a wildly disproportionate percentage of Antifa appear to be trans .
For example , many are currently talking about this NPR interview with Vicky Osterweil , author of In Defense of Looting .
Personally , I find this a pretty intelligent point of view , but just from a fundamentally bad person : … Writer Vicky Osterweil ’ s book , In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tuesday .
When she finished it , back in April , she wrote ( rather presciently ) that “ a new energy of resistance is building across the country.
” Now , as protests and riots continue to grip cities , she argues that looting is a powerful tool to bring about real , lasting change in society .
The rioters who smash windows and take items from stores , she says , are engaging in a powerful tactic that questions the justice of “ law and order , ” and the distribution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ society .
I spoke with Osterweil about this summer ’ s riots , the common narratives surrounding looting , and why “ nonviolence ” can be a misleading term .
Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity .
A. Looting is a highly racialized word from its very inception in the English language .
It ’ s taken from Hindi , lút , which means “ goods ” or “ spoils , ” and it appears in an English colonial officer ’ s handbook [ on “ Indian Vocabulary ” ] @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Can you talk about rioting as a tactic ?
What are the reasons people deploy it as a strategy ?
A .
It does a number of important things .
It gets people what they need for free immediately , which means that they are capable of living and reproducing their lives without having to rely on jobs or a wage—which , during COVID times , is widely unreliable or , particularly in these communities is often not available , or it comes at great risk .
That ’ s looting ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political mode of action .
It also attacks the very way in which food and things are distributed .
It attacks the idea of property , and it attacks the idea that in order for someone to have a roof over their head or have a meal ticket , they have to work for a boss , in order to buy things that people just like them somewhere else in the world had to make under the same conditions .
It points to the way in which that ’ s unjust .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that way , obviously , is for the profit of the people who own the stores and the factories .
So you get to the heart of that property relation , and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression , we can have things for free .
Importantly , I think especially when it ’ s in the context of a Black uprising like the one we ’ re living through now , it also attacks the history of whiteness and white supremacy .
The very basis of property in the U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ oppression , through the history of slavery and settler domination of the country .
Looting strikes at the heart of property , of whiteness and of the police .
It gets to the very root of the way those three things are interconnected .
And also it provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps them imagine a world that could be .
And I think that ’ s a part of it that doesn ’ t really get talked about—that riots and looting are experienced as sort of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what the videos of black youths looting Targets tend to show : they are having a blast .
My impression is that the first night of a riot is usually local black kids looting stores .
The second night is more white Recreational Rioters who have driven in for the political arson .
Another trope that ’ s very common is that looters and rioters are not part of the protest , and they ’ re not part of the movement .
That has to do with the history of protesters trying to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movement , and not wanting to be too frightening or threatening .
Another one is that looters are just acting as consumers : Why are they taking flat screen TVs instead of rice and beans ?
Like , if they were just surviving , it ’ d be one thing , but they ’ re taking liquor .
All these tropes come down to claiming that the rioters and the looters don ’ t know what they ’ re doing .
They ’ re acting , you know , in a disorganized way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But the history of the movement for liberation in America is full of looters and rioters .
They ’ ve always been a part of our movement .
Q .
In your book , you note that a lot of people who consider themselves radical or progressive criticize looting .
Why is this common ?
A. I think a lot of that comes out of the civil rights movement .
The popular understanding of the civil rights movement is that it was successful when it was nonviolent , and less successful when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s a myth that we get taught over and over again from the first moment we learn about the civil rights movement : that it was a nonviolent movement , and that that ’ s what matters about it .
And it ’ s just not true .
Nonviolence emerged in the ’ 50s and ’ 60s during the civil rights movement , [ in part ] as a way to appeal to Northern liberals .
When it did work , like with the lunch counter sit-ins , it worked because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a Southern condition .
This was also in the context of the Cold War and a mass anticolonial revolt going on all over Africa , Southeast Asia and Latin America .
Suddenly all these new independent nations had just won liberation from Europe , and the U.S. had to compete with the Soviet Union for influence over them .
So it was really in the U.S. ’ s interests to not be the country of Jim Crow , segregation and fascism , because they had to appeal to all these new Black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Those two things combined to make nonviolence a relatively effective tactic .
Even under those conditions , Freedom Riders and student protesters were often protected by armed guards .
We remember the Birmingham struggle of ’ 63 , with the famous photos of Bull Connor releasing the police dogs and fire hoses on teenagers , as nonviolent .
But that actually turned into the first urban riot in the movement .
Kids got up , threw rocks and smashed police cars and storefront windows in that combat .
There was fear that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That created the pressure for Robert F. Kennedy to write the Civil Rights bill and force JFK to sign it .
But there ’ s also another factor , which is anti-Blackness and contempt for poor people who want to live a better life , which looting immediately provides .
One thing about looting is it freaks people out .
But in terms of potential crimes that people can commit against the state , it ’ s basically nonviolent .
You ’ re mass shoplifting .
Most stores are insured ; it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ level .
It ’ s just money .
It ’ s just property .
It ’ s not actually hurting any people .
Q .
During recent riots , a sentiment I heard a lot was that looters in cities like Minneapolis were hurting their own cause by destroying small businesses in their own neighborhoods , stores owned by immigrants and people of color .
What would you say to people who make that argument ?
A .
People who made that argument for Minneapolis weren ’ t suddenly celebrating the looters in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ richest part of Chicago , the Magnificent Mile , and attacked places like Tesla and Gucci—because It ’ s not really about that .
It ’ s a convenient way of positioning yourself as though you are sympathetic .
But looters and rioters don ’ t attack private homes .
They don ’ t attack community centers .
In Minneapolis , there was a small independent bookstore that was untouched .
All the blocks around it were basically looted or even leveled , burned down .
And that store just remained untouched through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is just trolling with the “ Korean small business owner ” perpetrating “ white supremacist violence ” by this point .
Q .
What would you say to people who are concerned about essential places like grocery stores or pharmacies being attacked in those communities ?
A .
When it comes to small business , family owned business or locally owned business , they are no more likely to provide worker protections .
They are no more likely to have to provide good stuff for the community than big businesses .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , over the last 20 years , really crawled into even leftist discourse : that the small business owner must be respected , that the small business owner creates jobs and is part of the community .
But that ’ s actually a right-wing myth .
A business being attacked in the community is ultimately about attacking like modes of oppression that exist in the community .
It is true and possible that there are instances historically when businesses have refused to reopen or to come back .
But that is a part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that people live in places where there is only one place where they can get access to something [ like food or medicine ] .
That question assumes well , what if you ’ re in a food desert ?
But the food desert is already an incredibly unjust situation .
There ’ s this real tendency to try and blame people for fighting back , for revealing the inequity of the injustice that ’ s already been formed by the time that they ’ re fighting .
Q. I have heard a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weren ’ t part of the movement , but they just came in to smash windows and make a ruckus .
A.
It ’ s a classic trope , because it jams up people who might otherwise be sort of sympathetic to looters .
There ’ s a reason that Trump has embraced the “ white anarchist ” line so intensely .
It does a double service : It both creates a boogeyman around which you can stir up fear and potential repression , and it also totally erases the Black folks who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It makes invisible the Black people who are rising up and who are initiating this movement , who are at its core and its center , and who are doing its most important and valuable organizing and its most dangerous fighting .
Not surprisingly , Vicky Osterweil was previously peddling the same line under the name of Willie Osterweiler : Either Vicky Osterweil is Willie Osterweil ’ s plagiarist sister or … Thanks to a commenter for this from Vice : Sophie Lewis is more or less the real-life ( ? )
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ pointed out a couple of times .
Back to Vice : … Earlier that month , at a lecture in Lower Manhattan hosted by the arts journal e-flux , Lewis , who is 31 , reflected on what some might see as an obvious irony to her crisscrossing the ocean to care for her ailing mother : Verso Books had just published her first book , Full Surrogacy Now , a polemic that calls for abolishing the family .
… When Lewis demands “ full surrogacy now , ” she isn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Surrogacy™ , ” as she puts it .
Instead , she uses the surrogacy industry to build the argument that all gestation is work because of the immense physical and emotional labor it requires of those who do it .
… She imagines a future where the labor of making new human beings is shared among all of us , “ mother ” no longer being a natural category , but instead something we can choose .
… Her radical proposition is that we practice “ full surrogacy ” by abolishing the family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not in discrete private units ( also known as nuclear households ) , but rather within larger systems of care that can provide us with the love and support we can ’ t always get from blood relations—something Lewis knows all too well .
Even those of us who might call our family situations relatively “ happy ” should sign onto this project of demolishing their essential structure , Lewis says .
Nuclear households create the infrastructure for capitalism , passing wealth and property down family trees , concentrating it in the hands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our class hierarchy .
Maintaining the traditional family structure over time has also meant exploiting people of color and disowning queer children .
… When I visited Lewis in Philadelphia in December , we met at a cafe across the street from her apartment around 1 pm .
We ’ d planned to meet earlier , but that morning Lewis had texted me asking if we could push back our breakfast date a couple of hours—she ’ d stayed out until 5 am dancing at her partner Vicky Osterweil ’ s birthday party @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a posting entitled : “ Sophie Lewis : Is She Titania McGrath ’ s Sister by a Different Mister ?
, ” “ As far as I can tell , Sophie ’ s career is either for real or a truly elaborate hoax.
” What if the reality is that Osterweiler and Lewis are simply a normal young white heterosexual couple trying to make it in the intellectual business in an era that is increasingly hostile to normal young white heterosexuals , so , as self-promoting but also self-defensive branding exercises , they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Family !
In Defense of Looting !
— standpoints ?
`` No , see , we 're not a hetero couple at all !
We 're in a lesbian trans-femme relationship '' you might be onto something — Based Antiochus ( @ AntiochusXI ) August 30 , 2020 This sounds like a couple of characters in an Evelyn Waugh satire updated 90 years to 2020 .
Or maybe they are sincere …

As I’ve been pointing out for some time, more than a few of our New Idols of Utmost Diversity, male-to-female trans folks, tend to be nasty sons-of-a-gun. Not surprisingly, therefore, a wildly disproportionate percentage of Antifa appear to be trans.
For example, many are currently talking about this NPR interview with Vicky Osterweil, author of In Defense of Looting. Personally, I find this a pretty intelligent point of view, but just from a fundamentally bad person:
AMERICA RECKONS WITH RACIAL INJUSTICE
One Author’s Argument ‘In Defense Of Looting’
Code Switch
August 27, 202012:08 PM ET
Natalie Escobar … Writer Vicky Osterweil’s book, In Defense of Looting, came out on Tuesday. When she finished it, back in April, she wrote (rather presciently) that “a new energy of resistance is building across the country.” Now, as protests and riots continue to grip cities, she argues that looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society. The rioters who smash windows and take items from stores, she says, are engaging in a powerful tactic that questions the justice of “law and order,” and the distribution of property and wealth in an unequal society. I spoke with Osterweil about this summer’s riots, the common narratives surrounding looting, and why “nonviolence” can be a misleading term. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. … Q. Is Looting a Loaded Word? A. Looting is a highly racialized word from its very inception in the English language. It’s taken from Hindi, lút, which means “goods” or “spoils,” and it appears in an English colonial officer’s handbook [on “Indian Vocabulary”] in the 19th century. … Q. Can you talk about rioting as a tactic? What are the reasons people deploy it as a strategy? A. It does a number of important things. It gets people what they need for free immediately, which means that they are capable of living and reproducing their lives without having to rely on jobs or a wage—which, during COVID times, is widely unreliable or, particularly in these communities is often not available, or it comes at great risk. That’s looting’s most basic tactical power as a political mode of action. It also attacks the very way in which food and things are distributed. It attacks the idea of property, and it attacks the idea that in order for someone to have a roof over their head or have a meal ticket, they have to work for a boss, in order to buy things that people just like them somewhere else in the world had to make under the same conditions. It points to the way in which that’s unjust. And the reason that the world is organized that way, obviously, is for the profit of the people who own the stores and the factories. So you get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free. Importantly, I think especially when it’s in the context of a Black uprising like the one we’re living through now, it also attacks the history of whiteness and white supremacy. The very basis of property in the U.S. is derived through whiteness and through Black oppression, through the history of slavery and settler domination of the country. Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police. It gets to the very root of the way those three things are interconnected. And also it provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps them imagine a world that could be. And I think that’s a part of it that doesn’t really get talked about—that riots and looting are experienced as sort of joyous and liberatory.
That’s what the videos of black youths looting Targets tend to show: They are having a blast.
Q. What are some of the most common myths and tropes that you hear about looting? A. One of the ones that’s been very powerful, that’s both been used by Donald Trump and Democrats, has been the outside agitator myth, that the people doing the riots are coming from the outside. This is a classic. This one goes back to slavery, when plantation owners would claim that it was Freedmen and Yankees coming South and giving the enslaved these crazy ideas—that they were real human beings—and that’s why they revolted.
My impression is that the first night of a riot is usually local black kids looting stores. The second night is more white Recreational Rioters who have driven in for the political arson.
Another trope that’s very common is that looters and rioters are not part of the protest, and they’re not part of the movement. That has to do with the history of protesters trying to appear respectable and politically legible as a movement, and not wanting to be too frightening or threatening. Another one is that looters are just acting as consumers: Why are they taking flat screen TVs instead of rice and beans? Like, if they were just surviving, it’d be one thing, but they’re taking liquor. All these tropes come down to claiming that the rioters and the looters don’t know what they’re doing. They’re acting, you know, in a disorganized way, maybe an “animalistic” way. But the history of the movement for liberation in America is full of looters and rioters. They’ve always been a part of our movement. Q. In your book, you note that a lot of people who consider themselves radical or progressive criticize looting. Why is this common? A. I think a lot of that comes out of the civil rights movement. The popular understanding of the civil rights movement is that it was successful when it was nonviolent, and less successful when it was focused on Black power. It’s a myth that we get taught over and over again from the first moment we learn about the civil rights movement: that it was a nonviolent movement, and that that’s what matters about it. And it’s just not true. Nonviolence emerged in the ’50s and ’60s during the civil rights movement, [in part] as a way to appeal to Northern liberals. When it did work, like with the lunch counter sit-ins, it worked because Northern liberals could flatter themselves that racism was a Southern condition. This was also in the context of the Cold War and a mass anticolonial revolt going on all over Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. Suddenly all these new independent nations had just won liberation from Europe, and the U.S. had to compete with the Soviet Union for influence over them. So it was really in the U.S.’s interests to not be the country of Jim Crow, segregation and fascism, because they had to appeal to all these new Black and Brown nations all over the world. Those two things combined to make nonviolence a relatively effective tactic. Even under those conditions, Freedom Riders and student protesters were often protected by armed guards. We remember the Birmingham struggle of ’63, with the famous photos of Bull Connor releasing the police dogs and fire hoses on teenagers, as nonviolent. But that actually turned into the first urban riot in the movement. Kids got up, threw rocks and smashed police cars and storefront windows in that combat. There was fear that that kind of rioting would spread. That created the pressure for Robert F. Kennedy to write the Civil Rights bill and force JFK to sign it. But there’s also another factor, which is anti-Blackness and contempt for poor people who want to live a better life, which looting immediately provides. One thing about looting is it freaks people out. But in terms of potential crimes that people can commit against the state, it’s basically nonviolent. You’re mass shoplifting. Most stores are insured; it’s just hurting insurance companies on some level. It’s just money. It’s just property. It’s not actually hurting any people. Q. During recent riots, a sentiment I heard a lot was that looters in cities like Minneapolis were hurting their own cause by destroying small businesses in their own neighborhoods, stores owned by immigrants and people of color. What would you say to people who make that argument? A. People who made that argument for Minneapolis weren’t suddenly celebrating the looters in Chicago, who drove down to the richest part of Chicago, the Magnificent Mile, and attacked places like Tesla and Gucci—because It’s not really about that. It’s a convenient way of positioning yourself as though you are sympathetic. But looters and rioters don’t attack private homes. They don’t attack community centers. In Minneapolis, there was a small independent bookstore that was untouched. All the blocks around it were basically looted or even leveled, burned down. And that store just remained untouched through weeks of rioting.
I wonder why?
To say you’re attacking your own community is to say to rioters, you don’t know what you’re doing. But I disagree. I think people know. They might have worked in those shops. They might have shopped and been followed around by security guards or by the owner. You know, one of the causes of the L.A. riots was a Korean small-business owner murdering 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, who had come in to buy orange juice. And that was a family-owned, immigrant-owned business where anti-Blackness and white supremacist violence was being perpetrated.
I think Vicky is just trolling with the “Korean small business owner” perpetrating “white supremacist violence” by this point.
Q. What would you say to people who are concerned about essential places like grocery stores or pharmacies being attacked in those communities? A. When it comes to small business, family owned business or locally owned business, they are no more likely to provide worker protections. They are no more likely to have to provide good stuff for the community than big businesses. It’s actually a Republican myth that has, over the last 20 years, really crawled into even leftist discourse: that the small business owner must be respected, that the small business owner creates jobs and is part of the community. But that’s actually a right-wing myth. A business being attacked in the community is ultimately about attacking like modes of oppression that exist in the community. It is true and possible that there are instances historically when businesses have refused to reopen or to come back. But that is a part of the inequity of the society, that people live in places where there is only one place where they can get access to something [like food or medicine]. That question assumes well, what if you’re in a food desert? But the food desert is already an incredibly unjust situation. There’s this real tendency to try and blame people for fighting back, for revealing the inequity of the injustice that’s already been formed by the time that they’re fighting. Q. I have heard a lot of talk about white anarchists who weren’t part of the movement, but they just came in to smash windows and make a ruckus. A. It’s a classic trope, because it jams up people who might otherwise be sort of sympathetic to looters. There’s a reason that Trump has embraced the “white anarchist” line so intensely. It does a double service: It both creates a boogeyman around which you can stir up fear and potential repression, and it also totally erases the Black folks who are at the core of the protests. It makes invisible the Black people who are rising up and who are initiating this movement, who are at its core and its center, and who are doing its most important and valuable organizing and its most dangerous fighting.
Not surprisingly, Vicky Osterweil was previously peddling the same line under the name of Willie Osterweil:
Either Vicky Osterweil is Willie Osterweil’s plagiarist sister or …
Thanks to a commenter for this from Vice:
We Can’t Have a Feminist Future Without Abolishing the Family The feminist thinker Sophie Lewis has a radical proposal for what comes next.
Sophie Lewis is more or less the real-life (?) Titania McGrath, as I’ve pointed out a couple of times. Back to Vice:
By Marie Solis
February 21, 2020, 6:00am … Earlier that month, at a lecture in Lower Manhattan hosted by the arts journal e-flux, Lewis, who is 31, reflected on what some might see as an obvious irony to her crisscrossing the ocean to care for her ailing mother: Verso Books had just published her first book, Full Surrogacy Now, a polemic that calls for abolishing the family. … When Lewis demands “full surrogacy now,” she isn’t talking about commercial surrogacy, or ”Surrogacy™,” as she puts it. Instead, she uses the surrogacy industry to build the argument that all gestation is work because of the immense physical and emotional labor it requires of those who do it. … She imagines a future where the labor of making new human beings is shared among all of us, “mother” no longer being a natural category, but instead something we can choose. … Her radical proposition is that we practice “full surrogacy” by abolishing the family. That means caring for each other not in discrete private units (also known as nuclear households), but rather within larger systems of care that can provide us with the love and support we can’t always get from blood relations—something Lewis knows all too well. Even those of us who might call our family situations relatively “happy” should sign onto this project of demolishing their essential structure, Lewis says. Nuclear households create the infrastructure for capitalism, passing wealth and property down family trees, concentrating it in the hands of the few at the top of our class hierarchy. Maintaining the traditional family structure over time has also meant exploiting people of color and disowning queer children. … When I visited Lewis in Philadelphia in December, we met at a cafe across the street from her apartment around 1 pm. We’d planned to meet earlier, but that morning Lewis had texted me asking if we could push back our breakfast date a couple of hours—she’d stayed out until 5 am dancing at her partner Vicky Osterweil’s birthday party.
Okaaaaay …
As I wrote in 2019 in a posting entitled: “Sophie Lewis: Is She Titania McGrath’s Sister by a Different Mister?,” “As far as I can tell, Sophie’s career is either for real or a truly elaborate hoax.”
What if the reality is that Osterweil and Lewis are simply a normal young white heterosexual couple trying to make it in the intellectual business in an era that is increasingly hostile to normal young white heterosexuals, so, as self-promoting but also self-defensive branding exercises, they have concocted absurdly radical — Abolish the Family! In Defense of Looting! — standpoints?
Can't load tweet https://twitter.com/AntiochusXI/status/1299989687969423360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1299989687969423360%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.com%2Fisteve%2F: Sorry, that page does not exist
This sounds like a couple of characters in an Evelyn Waugh satire updated 90 years to 2020.
Or maybe they are sincere …
[Comment at Unz.com]


vdare--2020-08-31--Trump Keeps Convention Focused On America First, Sort Of, Despite His Kids And Stupid Party Hacks

The Republican National Convention seems like a year ago .
Antifa goons murdered Trump supporter Jay Bishop in Portland OR on Saturday night .
And Kyle Rittenhouse , 17 , was charged on Thursday for killing two Antifa and wounding a third in self-defense during BLM riots in Kenosha WI .
President Trump has tweeted in memory of his Portland supporter , but his daughter-in-law Lara Trump said on Sunday that her father wants to meet with the family of lowlife Jacob Blake whose stupid fracas with police sparked the latest saturnalia [ President Trump wants to meet Jacob Blake @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump says , by Mark Moore , New York Post , August 30 , 2020 ] .
This schizophrenia ran right through the RNC .
Bottom line : Trump is still Trumpier that his pandering party—and his kids .
The convention offered red meat on illegal immigration , wars abroad , trade protectionism and law and order .
But it also had cringingly cuckish moments .
Speech after speech hit the Democrats for tolerating arson , looting , and rising crime .
Mark and Patricia McCloskey , the St. Louis couple who defended @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , warned that the Left will seize your suburban home , curtail your right to self-defense , and coddle thugs like Blake and those who threatened their home .
“ It seems as if the Democrats no longer view the government ’ s job as protecting honest citizens from criminals but rather protecting criminals from honest citizens , ” Mark McCloskey said .
“ Make no mistake : No matter where you live , your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats ’ America ” [ St. Louis couple warn of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , by Caitlin Oprysko , Politico , August 24 , 2020 ] .
But then again , we suffered through attacks on Sniffer-in-Chief Biden for his 1990s tough-on-crime record , and completely contradictory praise for Trump ’ s releasing hundreds of criminals with the Javanka jail break bill .
Former NFL player Jack Brewer , who is black , attacked Biden and Kamala Harris “ for locking up countless black men for nonviolent crimes ” [ RNC Highlights Few Democrats As Biden Continues Gaining Prominent GOP Backers , by Andrew Solender , Forbes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A convicted bank robber and a major drug distributor praised Trump for forgiving criminals .
South Carolina black Senator Tim Scott ’ s main theme was this “ criminal justice reform.
” Even worse , speakers offered prayers for Kenosha criminal Jacob Blake .
Speaking of the thug who police say resisted arrest and sexually assaulted the mother of his children , police allege , White House black staffer Ja ’ Ron Smith celebrated America ’ s “ national racial consciousness ” and claimed Trump cares deeply about the black criminals killed by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Thursday night , Trump dumped the soft-on-crime eyewash .
He mentioned “ reform ” just once and blamed leftist Democrats for rising crime and municipal chaos .
“ If the Democrat Party wants to stand with anarchists , agitators , rioters , looters , and flag burners , that is up to them .
But I , as your president , will not be a part of it , ” he declared .
“ The Republican Party will remain the voice of the patriotic heroes who keep America safe and salute the American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Americans build their future , they don ’ t tear down the past.
” Just as I feared last week , immigration was not a major issue for most speakers despite being a wedge issue that Democrats can not answer .
Of course , speakers condemned jumping the border and attacked Open Borders .
But it was not at the forefront , and Angel Mom Mary Ann Mendoza , scheduled to discuss the horrors of illegal alien crime , was withdrawn with trademark GOP cowardice after a Leftist media hit .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , implicitly suggesting support for more legal immigration and demographic dispossession of the Historic American Nation .
At least Trump did not burble the usual “ nation-of-immigrants ” nonsense .
And immigration was a central part of Trump ’ s keynote address .
He touted his toughness on illegals , his devotion to the wall , and his fight against the Tennessee Valley Authority ’ s replacing American workers with H1-b foreigners : He hammered Biden for his radical agenda that , aside from an Amnesty , would stop border control , boost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from dangerous countries .
“ They want to open our borders while living in walled-off compounds and communities , ” Trump said .
“ They want to defund the police , while they have armed guards for themselves.
” The glaring omissions : Zero talk about his temporary immigration moratorium , a major achievement that has halted most immigration for the rest of 2020 and protected more than 500,000 American jobs .
It ’ s a massively popular idea that connects with unemployment , particularly with help from the Chinese Virus .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ TVA and not to mention the bigger stand against foreign workers .
Nor did Trump discuss reducing legal immigration or eliminating birthright citizenship—two ideas he ’ s championed in the past .
This is very bad news for immigration patriots .
Overall , Trump delivered a good speech : It laid out an America First vision that returned him to his 2016 roots .
He also offered a stirring conception of American identity—Americans aren ’ t defined by ideas or the pursuit of money , but by the brave settlers who crossed the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This Winning Of The West narrative contrasts significantly with current Ellis Island mythologizing and was a welcome respite from typical Conservative Inc. blathering Unhappily , Tiffany Trump had already contradicted him with that typical Conservatism Inc. blathering : “ We believe in the American spirit , ” she said .
“ A country founded on ideas , not identity.
” Trump was far and away the most nationalist of any speaker .
The Tim Scotts and Nikki Haleys delivered speeches that re-imagined the platform of George W. Bush : tax cuts , pro-Israel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and immigration .
They certainly didn ’ t talk about America as the land of frontiersmen .
Matt Gaetz was the only GOP lawmaker who sounded like Trump .
We can like or loathe Trump , but without him the Stupid Party hacks would be running on a platform that ignored immigration and law and order and instead focused on tax cuts and racial pandering This is Trump ’ s party in the sense that no-one will oppose him .
But he hasn ’ t fully remade it in his image .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will attempt a Bushist coup .
But a Trump win would further marginalize his enemies and leave open the possibility that a National Conservative GOP may yet emerge .
Trump knows the base better than anyone else in the party and he knows how to win an election .
The America First message of his address is the platform for victory—he just needs to remember that , and his immigration moratorium , to make it unassailable .
Washington Watcher II [ Email him ] is an anonymous DC insider .

washingtonwatcherii@protonmail.com (Washington  Watcher II)

The Republican National Convention seems like a year ago. Antifa goons murdered Trump supporter Jay Bishop in Portland, OR on Saturday night. And Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, was charged on Thursday for killing two Antifa and wounding a third in self-defense during BLM riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin. President Trump has tweeted in memory of his Portland supporter, but his daughter-in-law Lara Trump said on Sunday that her father wants to meet with the family of lowlife Jacob Blake, whose stupid fracas with police sparked the latest saturnalia [President Trump wants to meet Jacob Blake’s family in Kenosha, Lara Trump says, by Mark Moore, New York Post, August 30, 2020].
This schizophrenia ran right through the RNC. Bottom line: Trump is still Trumpier than his pandering party—and his kids.
The convention offered red meat on illegal immigration, wars abroad, trade protectionism and law and order. But it also had cringingly cuckish moments.
Speech after speech hit the Democrats for tolerating arson, looting, and rising crime. Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who defended their home from BLM thugs in June, warned that the Left will seize your suburban home, curtail your right to self-defense, and coddle thugs like Blake and those who threatened their home. “It seems as if the Democrats no longer view the government’s job as protecting honest citizens from criminals but rather protecting criminals from honest citizens,” Mark McCloskey said. “Make no mistake: No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America” [St. Louis couple warn of chaos in the suburbs if Democrats elected, by Caitlin Oprysko, Politico, August 24, 2020].
But then again, we suffered through attacks on Sniffer-in-Chief Biden for his 1990s tough-on-crime record, and completely contradictory praise for Trump’s releasing hundreds of criminals with the Javanka jail break bill.
Former NFL player Jack Brewer, who is black, attacked Biden and Kamala Harris “for locking up countless black men for nonviolent crimes” [RNC Highlights Few Democrats As Biden Continues Gaining Prominent GOP Backers, by Andrew Solender, Forbes, August 27, 2020]. A convicted bank robber and a major drug distributor praised Trump for forgiving criminals. South Carolina black Senator Tim Scott’s main theme was this “criminal justice reform.”
Even worse, speakers offered prayers for Kenosha criminal Jacob Blake. Speaking of the thug who police say resisted arrest and sexually assaulted the mother of his children, police allege White House black staffer Ja’Ron Smith celebrated America’s “national racial consciousness” and claimed Trump cares deeply about the black criminals killed by police.
WH adviser Ja’Ron Smith: “In the wake of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Legend Taliferro — a moment of national racial consciousness, I have seen [Trump’s] true conscience. I just wish everyone can see the deep empathy he shows to families.” https://t.co/xGlz4EpgEP pic.twitter.com/M68LvEdp03 — World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) August 28, 2020
But in his acceptance speech Thursday night, Trump dumped the soft-on-crime eyewash. He mentioned “reform” just once and blamed leftist Democrats for rising crime and municipal chaos. “If the Democrat Party wants to stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters, and flag burners, that is up to them. But I, as your president, will not be a part of it,” he declared. “The Republican Party will remain the voice of the patriotic heroes who keep America safe and salute the American flag.”
As well, he said, “Americans build their future, they don’t tear down the past.”
Just as I feared last week, immigration was not a major issue for most speakers despite being a wedge issue that Democrats cannot answer. Of course, speakers condemned jumping the border and attacked Open Borders. But it was not at the forefront, and Angel Mom Mary Ann Mendoza, scheduled to discuss the horrors of illegal alien crime, was withdrawn with trademark GOP cowardice after a Leftist media hit. Worse still, five non-whites were naturalized, implicitly suggesting support for more legal immigration and demographic dispossession of the Historic American Nation. At least Trump did not burble the usual “nation-of-immigrants” nonsense.
And immigration was a central part of Trump’s keynote address. He touted his toughness on illegals, his devotion to the wall, and his fight against the Tennessee Valley Authority’s replacing American workers with H1-b foreigners:
When I learned that the Tennessee Valley Authority laid off hundreds of American Workers and forced them to train their lower-paid foreign replacements, I promptly removed the Chairman of the Board. And now, those talented American Workers have been RE-HIRED and are back providing power to Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia.
He hammered Biden for his radical agenda that, aside from an Amnesty, would stop border control, boost refugee admissions, and end travel bans from dangerous countries. “They want to open our borders while living in walled-off compounds and communities,” Trump said. “They want to defund the police, while they have armed guards for themselves.”
The glaring omissions: Zero talk about his temporary immigration moratorium, a major achievement that has halted most immigration for the rest of 2020 and protected more than 500,000 American jobs. It’s a massively popular idea that connects with unemployment, particularly with help from the Chinese Virus. It makes no sense to discuss fighting the TVA and not to mention the bigger stand against foreign workers.
Nor did Trump discuss reducing legal immigration or eliminating birthright citizenship—two ideas he’s championed in the past. This is very bad news for immigration patriots.
Overall, Trump delivered a good speech: It laid out an America First vision that returned him to his 2016 roots. He also offered a stirring conception of American identity—Americans aren’t defined by ideas or the pursuit of money, but by the brave settlers who crossed the ocean to build a new land:
Our American ancestors sailed across the perilous ocean to build a new life on a new continent. They braved the freezing winters, crossed the raging rivers, scaled the rocky peaks, trekked the dangerous forests, and worked from dawn until dusk. These pioneers didn’t have money. They didn’t have fame. But they had each other. They loved their families. They loved their country, and they loved their God.
This Winning Of The West narrative contrasts significantly with current Ellis Island mythologizing and was a welcome respite from typical Conservative Inc. blathering.
Unhappily, Tiffany Trump had already contradicted him with that typical Conservatism Inc. blathering: “We believe in the American spirit,” she said. “A country founded on ideas, not identity.”
Um, no, “we” don’t, Tiffany.
Trump was far and away the most nationalist of any speaker. The Tim Scotts and Nikki Haleys delivered speeches that re-imagined the platform of George W. Bush: tax cuts, pro-Israel, more regulations. Forget law and order and immigration. They certainly didn’t talk about America as the land of frontiersmen. Matt Gaetz was the only GOP lawmaker who sounded like Trump.
We can like or loathe Trump, but without him the Stupid Party hacks would be running on a platform that ignored immigration and law and order and instead focused on tax cuts and racial pandering
This is Trump’s party in the sense that no one will oppose him. But he hasn’t fully remade it in his image. A loss in November will mean Never Trumpers will attempt a Bushist coup. But a Trump win would further marginalize his enemies and leave open the possibility that a National Conservative GOP may yet emerge.
Trump knows the base better than anyone else in the party and he knows how to win an election. The America First message of his address is the platform for victory—he just needs to remember that, and his immigration moratorium, to make it unassailable.
Washington Watcher II [Email him] is an anonymous DC insider.


vdare--2020-08-31--It's Come to Blood: White Trump Supporter Gunned Down by "100% Antifa" Member in Portland

This much is true : Kyle Rittenhouse is the hero we ’ ve been waiting for throughout the turbulent summer of 2020 , where a Black Lives Matter/Antifa/Bolshevik revolution has our country on the brink of total chaos .
Even President Trump acknowledged this tonight , when addressing the media about what happened in Kenosha , he said Rittenhouse was , “ `` trying to get away from them , I guess , it looks like '' and said that protesters `` violently attacked him , ” and `` I guess he was in very big trouble ...
He would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been killed .
But it 's under—it 's under investigation . ''
To echo President Trump ’ s remarks , Kyle Rittenhouse is the hero of the day .
Though we can celebrate Rittenhouse and even President Trump for standing by as the former beleaguered by the corporate media , we must remember Aaron Danielson ( known by Jay Bishop to other friends ) who was murdered in cold-blood by an alleged “ 100 % Antifa ” member on the streets of Portland .
Danielson was affiliated with Patriot Prayer and during the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was shot pointblank by an individual who targeted him solely for wearing a “ Blue Lives Matter ” hat : An ex-military man who calls himself “ 100 % ANTIFA ” and ready for “ war ” is being investigated over the deadly shooting of a President Trump supporter in Portland , according to a report .
Michael Forest Reinoehl , 48 , is being investigated over the death of Aaron Danielson , a “ supporter ” of the right-wing Patriot Prayer group who was part of a caravan of Trump supporters who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told The Oregonian .
He was identified in part by a distinctive tattoo on his neck of a “ black power ” fist — as well as a call from his estranged sister who recognized him in video and photos of the deadly attack , the paper said .
The 36-year-old sister — whom The Oregonian agreed not to name — was first alerted after a threatening call that woke her at 8 a.m. Sunday warning that “ our whole family was in danger unless we turned him over.
” “ We reached @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recognized Michael in the screenshots ” from the shooting , she told the paper .
“ Every Revolution needs people that are willing and ready to fight , ” he wrote in June , comparing it to his time in the Army .
“ I am 100 % ANTIFA all the way !
I am willing to fight for my brothers and sisters !
” he said , insisting he would not “ run ” from violence .
“ It will be a war and like all wars there will be casualties , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Antifa “ my brothers in arms.
” He also claims to have been hit by a rubber bullet while working “ security ” at protests , and most recently posted video of a flag being burned by a mob chanting , “ F–k Trump.
” Reinoehl was cited at a July 5 protest on allegations of possessing a loaded gun in a public place , resisting arrest and interfering with police , The Oregonian said .
He was given a date to appear in court later that month , but the allegations were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no complaint , ” according to court records .
No reason was given , and the Multnomah County District Attorney ’ s Office said it was reviewing the case .
[ Man suspected in deadly Portland shooting calls himself ‘ 100 % ANTIFA ’ , by Lee Brown , New York Post , August 31 , 2020 ] Alas , the prophecy of Peter Brimelow on January 20 , 2017 has come to pass : It has come to blood .
Let ’ s hope in the coming days President Trump gives a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the memory of Aaron/Jay and how he died , but dedicates the memory of his death to finally fulfilling a Tweet he made on May 31 , 2020 and fully designates Antifa a terrorist organization and utilizes the RICO Act to crush them for good .
That ’ s the way to remember Aaron/Jay .

This much is true: Kyle Rittenhouse is the hero we’ve been waiting for throughout the turbulent summer of 2020, where a Black Lives Matter/Antifa/Bolshevik revolution has our country on the brink of total chaos.
Even President Trump acknowledged this tonight, when addressing the media about what happened in Kenosha, he said Rittenhouse was, “"trying to get away from them, I guess, it looks like" and said that protesters "violently attacked him,” and "I guess he was in very big trouble... He would have been, he probably would have been killed. But it's under—it's under investigation."
To echo President Trump’s remarks, Kyle Rittenhouse is the hero of the day.
Though we can celebrate Rittenhouse and even President Trump for standing by him as the former is beleaguered by the corporate media, we must remember Aaron Danielson (known by Jay Bishop to other friends) who was murdered in cold blood by an alleged “100% Antifa” member on the streets of Portland.
Danielson was affiliated with Patriot Prayer, and during the melee of August 29th in Portland, was shot point-blank by an individual who targeted him solely for wearing a “Blue Lives Matter” hat:
An ex-military man who calls himself “100% ANTIFA” and ready for “war” is being investigated over the deadly shooting of a President Trump supporter in Portland, according to a report. Michael Forest Reinoehl, 48, is being investigated over the death of Aaron Danielson, a “supporter” of the right-wing Patriot Prayer group who was part of a caravan of Trump supporters who flooded the city Saturday, police sources told The Oregonian. He was identified in part by a distinctive tattoo on his neck of a “black power” fist — as well as a call from his estranged sister who recognized him in video and photos of the deadly attack, the paper said. The 36-year-old sister — whom The Oregonian agreed not to name — was first alerted after a threatening call that woke her at 8 a.m. Sunday warning that “our whole family was in danger unless we turned him over.” “We reached out to police and confirmed that we recognized Michael in the screenshots” from the shooting, she told the paper. “Every Revolution needs people that are willing and ready to fight,” he wrote in June, comparing it to his time in the Army. “I am 100 % ANTIFA all the way! I am willing to fight for my brothers and sisters!” he said, insisting he would not “run” from violence. “It will be a war and like all wars there will be casualties,” he wrote, calling protesters and Antifa “my brothers in arms.” He also claims to have been hit by a rubber bullet while working “security” at protests, and most recently posted video of a flag being burned by a mob chanting, “F–k Trump.” Reinoehl was cited at a July 5 protest on allegations of possessing a loaded gun in a public place, resisting arrest and interfering with police, The Oregonian said. He was given a date to appear in court later that month, but the allegations were dropped on July 30 with a “no complaint,” according to court records. No reason was given, and the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said it was reviewing the case. [Man suspected in deadly Portland shooting calls himself ‘100% ANTIFA’,by Lee Brown, New York Post, August 31, 2020]
Alas, the prophecy of Peter Brimelow on January 20, 2017 has come to pass: It has come to blood.
Let’s hope in the coming days President Trump gives a speech where he not only brings up the memory of Aaron/Jay and how he died, but dedicates the memory of his death to finally fulfilling a Tweet he made on May 31, 2020 and fully designates Antifa a terrorist organization and utilizes the RICO Act to crush them for good.
That’s the way to remember Aaron/Jay.


vdare--2020-08-31--Lawrence Auster On Genetics, Homosexuality, And Sycamore Trees

In a current post here at VDARE.com , Steve Sailer quotes New York Times writer Ben Smith quoting bigfoot journalist Andrew Sullivan : I 'd dispute the claim that `` everything is genetic for the right '' —people on the right recognize that both genetics and environment play important roles in human outcomes .
More interesting for me is Sullivan 's assertion that `` everything is environmental for the left except gays , '' because it brings to mind some musing on the subject from the late Lawrence Auster , in 2012 : I don ’ t think liberals have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the races as regards physical and biochemical features .
What they deny is genetic differences that have anything to do with mentality .
As Sam Dickson put it at the 1994 American Renaissance conference , liberals believe that the entire biological world is determined by the mechanics of heredity , except for the one little part of the biological world that ’ s inside the human skull .
But wait .
More recently liberals have added an exception to their exception .
They say that the inside of the human skull is completely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as it makes some people homosexual .
Unlike everything else about human mentality , the disposition to homosexuality is strictly genetically determined .
Homosexuals have no more choice over their homosexuality , than sycamore trees have over being sycamore trees .
[ Emphasis in original ; Will Wonders Never Cease ?
Study Finds Genetic Differences Between Blacks and Whites , April 2 , 2012 ] Larry was unsurpassed in seeing to the essences of things and stating them memorably .
( I think of what 's above as his `` sycamore '' statement @ @ @ @ @ @ @

In a current post here at VDARE.com, Steve Sailer quotes New York Times writer Ben Smith quoting bigfoot journalist Andrew Sullivan:
“Everything is environmental for the left except gays, where it’s totally genetic; and everything is genetic for the right, except for gays,” [Sullivan] said sarcastically.
I'd dispute the claim that "everything is genetic for the right"—people on the right recognize that both genetics and environment play important roles in human outcomes.
More interesting for me is Sullivan's assertion that "everything is environmental for the left except gays," because it brings to mind some musing on the subject from the late Lawrence Auster, in 2012:
I don’t think liberals have denied that there are genetic differences between the races as regards physical and biochemical features. What they deny is genetic differences that have anything to do with mentality. As Sam Dickson put it at the 1994 American Renaissance conference, liberals believe that the entire biological world is determined by the mechanics of heredity, except for the one little part of the biological world that’s inside the human skull. But wait. More recently liberals have added an exception to their exception. They say that the inside of the human skull is completely free of genetic determinism, except insofar as it makes some people homosexual. Unlike everything else about human mentality, the disposition to homosexuality is strictly genetically determined. Homosexuals have no more choice over their homosexuality, than sycamore trees have over being sycamore trees. [Emphasis in original; Will Wonders Never Cease? Study Finds Genetic Differences Between Blacks and Whites, April 2, 2012]
Larry was unsurpassed in seeing to the essences of things and stating them memorably. (I think of what's above as his "sycamore" statement.) How I miss him ...


vdare--2020-08-29--DERB'S AUGUST DIARY: Hot Young Women At Rifle Ranges; "Anti-Racism" Oath At Rite-Aid; Woke Math; ETC

DERB'S AUGUST DIARY: Hot Young Women At Rifle Ranges; "Anti-Racism" Oath At Rite-Aid; Woke Math; ETC. (12 ITEMS)

In Antiracism We Trust .
Walking up to my local chain drugstore , I saw a two-panel notice that I had n't seen before , pasted on the inside of the automatic glass door .
The quote is attributed to Heyward Donigan , President and CEO of Rite Aid .
`` A home '' —what ?
So I can bring a sleeping bag and crash in the Rite Aid storeroom ?
`` Our communities '' —what ?
You mean the neighborhoods where you are located ?
How , exactly , shall you police `` racism , injustice and intolerance '' @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
How long will it be before oaths of allegiance to the Church of Antiracism will be compulsory for any kind of paid employment ?
( I mean , other than on the faculties of our universities , where such oaths are already compulsory . )
How long before witnesses in our courts of law swear their oath on some Antiracist tract ?
How long before annual sessions of Congress are opened with Antiracist prayers ?
How long before Antiracist slogans are printed on our paper currency and inscribed on the lintels of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I thought a trip to the range for some rifle practice would be in order .
I do n't know any better than you do what will happen this November 3rd , but I want to be armed and ready for the worst .
I 'm low on ammo , though , so off to the local gun store .
They wanted $ 43 for twenty rounds of .303—more than two dollars a round .
Say what ?
My Lee Enfield is somewhat of an antique , I know , and I do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but that 's ridiculous .
Me : `` Two dollars a round ?
That 's a bit steep , is n't it ? ''
He : `` You 're lucky we have any in stock .
We ca n't get deliveries .
Something with the factories . ''
Me : `` Is demand higher than usual ? ''
He : `` Yep , that too . ''
Me : `` How about actual guns ?
I 've been reading about record sales .
You been seeing that ? ''
They , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ '' I went on the internet , easily found some .303 at one-third the store price ; but for purchasers in New York State they 'll only deliver to a federally licensed dealer .
Emailed the only friend with an FFL .
He 's a Late Silent like me , though , cutting down on his commitments , and has given up the business , he told me .
Back to the store .
$ 130 for sixty rounds .
Grrr .
The guns of August .
So off to the range .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ This was midday on a sunny August Wednesday .
Brookhaven Range has thirty-six stations for rifles at 100 and 200 yards , twenty-two stations* for 25 and 50 yards .
When I arrived there were four parties waiting to shoot at 100 yards .
One told me he 'd been waiting half an hour .
I waited twenty minutes for a 50-yard station .
This seems to me a good sign .
Citizens are n't just buying guns , they 're learning to use them .
Would the range require a mask ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yes , they did , according to a notice at the entrance .
Compliance was patchy , though .
There was a twentysomething couple at the station next to mine .
He wore a mask most of the time ; she did n't wear one at all , just went bare-faced the whole time I was there .
The range officers did n't seem to care .
( And I was pleasantly surprised , not for the first time , to note how many hot young women you see at the range .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a mask on , assuming that the range officers might be less tolerant of me than they were of Suzy Creamcheese in the adjacent bay .
I could n't make it work , though .
For one thing , the mask messed up my breathing rhythms somehow .
In shooting , as in swimming , you have to breathe right .
For another , my glasses kept fogging up .
The ingenuity of man seems not yet to have devised a breathing mask that does n't fog up eyeglasses .
How on earth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stitching veins and nerves together with fogged-up glasses ?
( I asked a medical friend .
He : `` The surgeon has a nurse standing by him just to wipe his glasses clear . ''
Really ?
Come on . )
So I fired my last twenty rounds with mask down under chin .
No-one seemed to mind .
* Not twenty as advertised .
Have they been expanding to meet increased demand ?
Let 's hope so , but I did n't think to ask .
Mask rage .
That insouciance at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mask-wearing has been politicized , like every other damn thing nowadays .
Masks are virtuously woke ; going maskless is dissident , probably white supremacist .
I wear a mask when required to—at the range , the Post Office , the stores—but not otherwise .
I do n't , for instance , wear a mask when walking my dog around my quiet suburban neighborhood .
When I meet people walking towards me , I call out a cheery greeting .
Of those who are masked , most will greet me back ; but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and an angry glare from over the mask .
The signal I 'm reading is : Wear a damn mask , you fascist !
Mask rage is already a thing , and has generated acts of violence , at least in England .
There have already been two mask rage fatalities in North America , one in Michigan ( blacks ) , one in Minden , Ontario , Canada : elderly rural white male .
Man-management secrets .
Heading out the door to the range , I reminded my lady of the old @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on how to keep a man happy : `` Let him get drunk once in a while , let him shoot guns once in a while . ''
She : `` Drunk once in a while ?
Ha !
The rate you scarf down the bourbon ? ''
That is very unfair .
Perhaps I have been taking one too many nightcaps recently ; but hey , what 's more important than a good night 's sleep ?
And if the definition of an alcoholic is someone who drinks liquor before breakfast , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never drink liquor before dinner , except when visiting and pressed by hosts .
I do n't want to be a bad guest , do I ?
And I always thought the old wife left out the most important part of her advice : `` … but not both at the same time . ''
Hurricanes , real and imaginary .
My sympathy to the unfortunate residents of Louisiana and Texas who found themselves in the path of Hurricane Laura on August 26th .
A 20-ft storm surge ?
Hoo-ee .
If it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been a lot worse .
Here 's a New York Times story from four years ago .
The way things have been going in 2020 , I would n't have been surprised if we 'd been visited by a horror on the scale of Isaiah .
Laura was bad enough , though , goodness knows .
My sympathies again to those afflicted .
No power to deliver .
We Long Islanders did n't get Isaiah , but we did get Isaias , barreling in on August 4th , with top wind speeds over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; entire trees came down ; they brought the utility wires down with them ; in a few places the utility poles themselves came down—one of them on top of a parked car in the next street to mine .
Power and cable were out for four days .
All the grumbles I emitted in my April Diary apply again .
Overhead utility wires , in a heavily wooded area , strung on utility poles that are allowed to get wormy and rotten ?
Is n't this supposed to be a First World @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Moon , ca n't we ?
Oh wait ; actually we ca n't , not any more .
So … never mind .
But , `` Isaias '' ?
What kind of name is that ?
I had to look it up .
It 's the Latin form of `` Isaiah . ''
Apparently the names awarded to hurricanes , even imaginary ones , can only be used once .
Since `` Isaiah '' and `` Isaias '' are basically the same name , like `` Jack '' and `` Jacques , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are cheating here , but no doubt they can make a case .
`` Isaiah '' is anyway apt for trying to find out when the utility companies would have us back in service .
And I can not forbear reporting with smug pride that the Derbyshire treehouse , now in its seventeenth year , emerged from the storm intact and unscathed .
I build for the ages .
A miserable war .
Chatting with a friend who knows a lot about the Korean War , I was made aware that I do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ considering that my father-in-law fought in that war … on the other side .
After asking around for recommendations I settled on Fehrenbach 's This Kind of War , first published 1963 .
The author , the book jacket tells me , `` commanded U.S. Army units in Korea at platoon , company , and battalion levels . ''
It shows .
Fehrenbach 's accounts of military actions convey a vivid sense of what happened in mid-20th-century battles .
His diversions into political and diplomatic events , although of course essential to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but I could n't skip a page .
What a wretched , miserable war it was !
What made it so was , that the Allies did n't want to win it , they only wanted not to lose it—to restore the prewar status of a Korea divided between communist North and free South .
There were excellent geostrategic and political reasons for this half-heartedness .
• Geostrategic : This was the first big conflict of the Atomic Age .
The U.S.A. could not be sure how the U.S.S.R. would react to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Action in Europe ?
Nuke strikes on the South ?
• Political : Just five years after WW2 , Americans had no stomach for major mobilization on behalf of a small , distant country whose affairs did not directly concern us .
Draftees slouched off reluctantly to Korea , and there were few enthusiastic volunteers .
Within those constraints , I do n't see how we could have done other than what we did .
It made the war mighty frustrating for our troops , though .
Once things stabilized after the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few months , our guys were stuck in a WW1-type stalemate ; but with the difference that while the two sides on the Western Front were well-matched , the Allies in Korea faced an enemy far inferior in every kind of technology .
It did n't help morale at all that , as Fehrenbach tells us in Chapter 32 : `` Everything in Korea happened at night . ''
With the Allies totally dominating the skies , that was the only time the communists could conduct movements without being strafed , bombed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ n't just a miserable , frustrating war for our troops ; it was miserable and frustrating in the dark .
Of the situation in late 1951 , the author writes : It 's possible he was ( he wanted to actually win , at the risk of WWIII ) but it was not possible , strategically or politically , for Truman to take the chance of MacArthur being wrong .
( 1 ) T*H*E*R*E A*R*E N*O M*A*P*S !
!
!
Who the hell publishes a book about a major military campaign without including @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that 's who .
This should be a felony .
( 2 ) The text is not edited .
Having written books myself , I 'm tolerant of the occasional blooper .
Some of Fehrenbach 's are common enough to raise no more than a weary sigh .
I 've long since reconciled myself to the fact that I am the last living human being that knows how to spell `` Attlee , '' for instance , and one of the last few that knows the difference between the words `` affect '' @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of errors in this 1994 Brassey 's edition—31 years after the book 's first publication !
—is shameful , though .
Three decades in print , and no publisher saw fit to correct horrors like this : The war without a song .
One indicator of the low spirits in which the Allies fought that war is , there is no Korean War song .
Every war with any enthusiasm at all behind it has a song .
When I was a kid , the oldest living cohort of big-war veterans in England @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1899-1902 .
Any one of them could sing you a couple of verses of `` Goodbye , Dolly Gray . ''
( Over here , I am told , that same song accompanied the Spanish-American War . )
Dang , I heard it so often I can sing the chorus myself unprompted .
For WW1 the Brits had `` Keep the home fires burning , '' while America had `` Over there '' : a telling contrast between the mist of melancholy that , to some degree or other , hangs over all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ youthful bumptiousness of the early 20th-century U.S.A. By WW2 the radio and gramophone were universal .
You can get an argument going about which song was the song characteristic of that war .
I 'd say it 's a toss-up between `` I 'll be seeing you '' and `` Lili Marlene . ''
The latter was popular on both sides of the conflict—a thing that , so far as I know , never happened before and has never happened since .
But Korea ?
I just scanned the Top Thirty hits for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but nothing that really prompts the thought : `` Oh yeah , the Korean War . ''
Vietnam was almost as miserable a war as Korea , but at least we had Country Joe and the Fish .
Fiction of the month .
Also military .
A few years ago I read and much enjoyed William Boyd 's 1981 novel A Good Man in Africa , from which a movie ( Sean Connery , Diana Rigg ) was made .
I meant to follow up and read more of Boyd 's fiction , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , prompted by a chance reference to Boyd in some news story , I impulse-bought his second novel , An Ice-Cream War , which is about WW1 fighting in East Africa .
Remember that Germany participated enthusiastically in the late-19th-century colonial carve-up of Africa .
Their biggest resulting possession was German East Africa , `` nearly double the size of Germany , '' according to the 1911 Britannica .
Nowadays this land , plus the Zanzibar islands , is the nation of Tanzania .
German East Africa had a 400-mile border on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kenya ) ; so when WW1 broke out in 1914 , there was bound to be trouble .
That 's the background to the story .
An Ice-Cream War is not such boisterous fun as A Good Man in Africa , but Boyd knows the landscape well—he grew up in Africa—and he keeps a strong narrative thread going .
He is very good on the messiness of life : how things—business ventures , wedding nights , battles—hardly ever work out the way the participants expected .
This is especially the case with battles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at all a coincidence that we owe the acronym `` SNAFU '' to the military .
( Along with some lesser-known variants like `` JANFU '' —the all-too-common result of a joint Army-Navy operation . )
Having just finished Fehrenbach 's history of the Korean War , I was nicely primed for this .
And Boyd 's novel , unlike Fehrenbach 's history , has a map !
Manual labor .
Back when I learned computer languages for a living , I approached each new one on the same schedule : • Get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ task or tasks you want to code for .
• If possible ( it was n't always ) find a primer text with some simple examples you could try out .
• Get The Manual—a full reference , containing everything you might ever need to know about the language .
More than once over the past few years I have made a resolution to get my coding skills up to date , without much of a follow-through .
With this latest resolution , though , taking on the C # ( pronounced `` @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at least advanced to the Manual stage .
• My task : Just some basic file processing and string manipulation , mainly to get my personal website in better shape .
• My primer : Jamie Chan 's Learn C # in One Day .
Simple and straightforward , although I seriously doubt that anyone coming completely cold to programming could absorb it in one day .
On the upside , my inner reactionary is glad to know that the application of choice for beginners is still a payroll program , just as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ My manual : I am now the proud owner of Albahari and Johannsen 's C # 8.0 in a Nutshell .
This is one heck of a nutshell : over a thousand small-print pages of description and definition .
Thread pools !
Jagged arrays !
Coarse-grained concurrency !
Lazy quantifiers !
This should be fun .
From the current ( August/September 2020 ) issue of MAA Focus , newsmagazine of the Mathematical Association of America , page 12 : And so on and driveling on for a full page and a quarter .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in town .
Here is the current ( September 2020 ) issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society .
Once past the table of contents and masthead , the first page of any interest is Letters to the Editor .
The first letter is from one William Yslas Vélez , Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Arizona .
And so on and driveling on for 300 words .
To be fair to these journals , there is actually some math in both of them .
They are not cover-to-cover Antiracism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ month , just a note on the Collatz Conjecture .
Everyone knows that there are longstanding open problems in math : statements of mathematical fact that no-one has been able to either prove or disprove .
Most of them are too abstruse for non-mathematicians to understand without a patient and friendly guide .
A few , however , concern nothing more than basic arithmetic .
Probably the most famous of these is the Goldbach Conjecture : The Goldbach Conjecture is dear to my heart because Prof. Estermann , who taught us analysis at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his name in math many years previously by proving that almost every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes .
( There is a rigorous mathematical definition of that word `` almost . ''
) The Collatz Conjecture is even more simply arithmetical .
You do n't even need to know what a prime number is .
So if , for example , you start with 17 you get 52 , 26 , 13 , 40 , 20 , 10 , 5 , 16 , 8 , 4 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you must of course prove rigorously that this will always be true ; or at least , in the spirit of Teddy Estermann , that it will almost always be true .
This month 's news story is that Marijn Heule , a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University , thinks he can prove the Collatz Conjecture using a computerized technique called `` satisfiability solving . ''
No , I wo n't try to explain it , because I do n't understand it ; read the news story for yourself if you 're @ @

In Antiracism We Trust. Walking up to my local chain drugstore, I saw a two-panel notice that I hadn't seen before, pasted on the inside of the automatic glass door.
Left panel, blue letter on white:
To our customers, team members and loved ones whose lives have been affected by discrimination: You will always have a home at Rite Aid.
Right panel, white letters on blue:
"LET ME BE CLEAR: RACISM, INJUSTICE AND INTOLERANCE HAVE NO HOME IN THE RITE AID ORGANIZATION OR IN OUR COMMUNITIES"
The quote is attributed to Heyward Donigan, President and CEO of Rite Aid.
"A home"—what? So I can bring a sleeping bag and crash in the Rite Aid storeroom?
"Our communities"—what? You mean the neighborhoods where you are located? How, exactly, shall you police "racism, injustice and intolerance" therein? Foot patrols? Video surveillance?
How long will it be before oaths of allegiance to the Church of Antiracism will be compulsory for any kind of paid employment? (I mean, other than on the faculties of our universities, where such oaths are already compulsory.)
I pledge allegiance to Black Lives Matter, and to the world for which it stands, one community under Antiracism, indivisible, with free stuff and social justice for all, except white supremacists.
How long before witnesses in our courts of law swear their oath on some Antiracist tract?
How long before annual sessions of Congress are opened with Antiracist prayers?
How long before Antiracist slogans are printed on our paper currency and inscribed on the lintels of our public buildings?
How long, O Lord, how long?
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Buying ammo. I thought a trip to the range for some rifle practice would be in order. I don't know any better than you do what will happen this November 3rd, but I want to be armed and ready for the worst. I'm low on ammo, though, so off to the local gun store.
They wanted $43 for twenty rounds of .303—more than two dollars a round. Say what? My Lee Enfield is somewhat of an antique, I know, and I don't mind paying premium for the ammo, but that's ridiculous.
Me: "Two dollars a round? That's a bit steep, isn't it?"
He: "You're lucky we have any in stock. We can't get deliveries. Something with the factories."
Me: "Is demand higher than usual?"
He: "Yep, that too."
Me: "How about actual guns? I've been reading about record sales. You been seeing that?"
They, in smiling unison: "Oh yeah!"
I went on the internet, easily found some .303 at one-third the store price; but for purchasers in New York State they'll only deliver to a federally licensed dealer.
Emailed the only friend with an FFL. He's a Late Silent like me, though, cutting down on his commitments, and has given up the business, he told me.
Back to the store. $130 for sixty rounds. Grrr.
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The guns of August. So off to the range. Business was good here, too. This was midday on a sunny August Wednesday. Brookhaven Range has thirty-six stations for rifles at 100 and 200 yards, twenty-two stations* for 25 and 50 yards. When I arrived there were four parties waiting to shoot at 100 yards. One told me he'd been waiting half an hour. I waited twenty minutes for a 50-yard station.
This seems to me a good sign. Citizens aren't just buying guns, they're learning to use them.
Would the range require a mask? I wondered as I drove in. Yes, they did, according to a notice at the entrance.
Compliance was patchy, though. There was a twentysomething couple at the station next to mine. He wore a mask most of the time; she didn't wear one at all, just went bare-faced the whole time I was there. The range officers didn't seem to care. (And I was pleasantly surprised, not for the first time, to note how many hot young women you see at the range.)
At first I tried shooting with a mask on, assuming that the range officers might be less tolerant of me than they were of Suzy Creamcheese in the adjacent bay. I couldn't make it work, though. For one thing, the mask messed up my breathing rhythms somehow. In shooting, as in swimming, you have to breathe right.
For another, my glasses kept fogging up. The ingenuity of man seems not yet to have devised a breathing mask that doesn't fog up eyeglasses. How on earth do surgeons manage in the OR, stitching veins and nerves together with fogged-up glasses? (I asked a medical friend. He: "The surgeon has a nurse standing by him just to wipe his glasses clear." Really? Come on.)
So I fired my last twenty rounds with mask down under chin. No one seemed to mind.
——————————
* Not twenty as advertised. Have they been expanding to meet increased demand? Let's hope so, but I didn't think to ask.
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Mask rage. That insouciance at the range keys in to the way mask-wearing has been politicized, like every other damn thing nowadays. Masks are virtuously woke; going maskless is dissident, probably white supremacist.
I wear a mask when required to—at the range, the Post Office, the stores—but not otherwise. I don't, for instance, wear a mask when walking my dog around my quiet suburban neighborhood. When I meet people walking towards me, I call out a cheery greeting. Of those who are masked, most will greet me back; but from others I get back only silence and an angry glare from over the mask. The signal I'm reading is: Wear a damn mask, you fascist!
Mask rage is already a thing, and has generated acts of violence, at least in England. There have already been two mask rage fatalities in North America, one in Michigan (blacks), one in Minden, Ontario, Canada: elderly rural white male.
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Man-management secrets. Heading out the door to the range, I reminded my lady of the old wife's advice to a young wife on how to keep a man happy: "Let him get drunk once in a while, let him shoot guns once in a while."
She: "Drunk once in a while? Ha! The rate you scarf down the bourbon?"
That is very unfair. Perhaps I have been taking one too many nightcaps recently; but hey, what's more important than a good night's sleep? And if the definition of an alcoholic is someone who drinks liquor before breakfast, I am not even close. I never drink liquor before dinner, except when visiting and pressed by hosts. I don't want to be a bad guest, do I?
And I always thought the old wife left out the most important part of her advice: "… but not both at the same time."
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Hurricanes, real and imaginary. My sympathy to the unfortunate residents of Louisiana and Texas who found themselves in the path of Hurricane Laura on August 26th. A 20-ft storm surge? Hoo-ee.
If it's any consolation, it could have been a lot worse. Here's a New York Times story from four years ago.
Imagine a hurricane, a hurricane like Matthew, aimed straight at the heart of the American petrochemical industry.
Isaiah whirls through the sky, gathering strength from the Gulf of Mexico's warm waters. Beach towns are evacuated. Citizens and companies in Texas' petro-industrial enclaves from Bayou Vista to Morgan's Point are warned: Prepare for the worst …
Isaiah's monstrous arm reaches across the bay toward Houston, some 50 miles inland, adding water to water, and when it smashes into the Exxon Mobil Baytown refinery, the storm surge is over 25 feet high. It crashes through refineries, chemical storage facilities, wharves and production plants all along the Houston Ship Channel, cleaving pipelines from their moorings, lifting and breaking storage tanks.
As Isaiah passes inland, the iridescent, gray-brown flood rises, carrying jet fuel, sour crude and natural gas liquids into strip malls, parks, schools and offices. More than 200 petrochemical storage tanks have been wrecked, more than 100 million gallons of petroleum and chemicals spilled. Damages for the region are estimated at more than $100 billion. More than 3,500 are dead. It is one of the worst disasters in United States history …
The good news is that Isaiah hasn't happened. It's an imaginary calamity based on research and models. The bad news is that it's only a matter of time before it does.
[When the Next Hurricane Hits Texas, by Roy Scranton; New York Times, October 7th, 2016].
The way things have been going in 2020, I wouldn't have been surprised if we'd been visited by a horror on the scale of Isaiah. Laura was bad enough, though, goodness knows. My sympathies again to those afflicted.
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No power to deliver. We Long Islanders didn't get Isaiah, but we did get Isaias, barreling in on August 4th, with top wind speeds over 70 mph. Tree branches came down; entire trees came down; they brought the utility wires down with them; in a few places the utility poles themselves came down—one of them on top of a parked car in the next street to mine. Power and cable were out for four days.
All the grumbles I emitted in my April Diary apply again. Overhead utility wires, in a heavily wooded area, strung on utility poles that are allowed to get wormy and rotten? Isn't this supposed to be a First World country? We can put men on the Moon, can't we? Oh wait; actually we can't, not any more. So … never mind.
But, "Isaias"? What kind of name is that? I had to look it up. It's the Latin form of "Isaiah." Apparently the names awarded to hurricanes, even imaginary ones, can only be used once. Since "Isaiah" and "Isaias" are basically the same name, like "Jack" and "Jacques," it seems to me the meteorologists are cheating here, but no doubt they can make a case.
"Isaiah" is anyway apt for trying to find out when the utility companies would have us back in service.
Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem? or have I no power to deliver? [Isaiah 50.ii.]
And I cannot forbear reporting with smug pride that the Derbyshire treehouse, now in its seventeenth year, emerged from the storm intact and unscathed. I build for the ages.
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A miserable war. Chatting with a friend who knows a lot about the Korean War, I was made aware that I don't. That's mildly embarrassing, considering that my father-in-law fought in that war … on the other side.
After asking around for recommendations I settled on Fehrenbach's This Kind of War, first published 1963. The author, the book jacket tells me, "commanded U.S. Army units in Korea at platoon, company, and battalion levels."
It shows. Fehrenbach's accounts of military actions convey a vivid sense of what happened in mid-20th-century battles. His diversions into political and diplomatic events, although of course essential to the story line, are less gripping; but I couldn't skip a page.
What a wretched, miserable war it was! What made it so was, that the Allies didn't want to win it, they only wanted not to lose it—to restore the prewar status of a Korea divided between communist North and free South.
There were excellent geostrategic and political reasons for this half-heartedness.
Geostrategic: This was the first big conflict of the Atomic Age. The U.S.A. could not be sure how the U.S.S.R. would react to a crushing defeat for their Korean puppet regime. Action in Europe? Nuke strikes on the South?
Political: Just five years after WW2, Americans had no stomach for major mobilization on behalf of a small, distant country whose affairs did not directly concern us. Draftees slouched off reluctantly to Korea, and there were few enthusiastic volunteers.
Within those constraints, I don't see how we could have done other than what we did. It made the war mighty frustrating for our troops, though. Once things stabilized after the great retreats and advances of the first few months, our guys were stuck in a WW1-type stalemate; but with the difference that while the two sides on the Western Front were well matched, the Allies in Korea faced an enemy far inferior in every kind of technology.
It didn't help morale at all that, as Fehrenbach tells us in Chapter 32: "Everything in Korea happened at night." With the Allies totally dominating the skies, that was the only time the communists could conduct movements without being strafed, bombed, and napalmed to oblivion. Korea wasn't just a miserable, frustrating war for our troops; it was miserable and frustrating in the dark.
Of the situation in late 1951, the author writes:
It was now, not openly, but in mess tents and private gatherings along the brooding lines of entrenchments, that some men began to say, "MacArthur was right."
It's possible he was (he wanted to actually win, at the risk of WWIII) but it was not possible, strategically or politically, for Truman to take the chance of MacArthur being wrong.
A gripping story, a worthwhile read, but …
(1) T*H*E*R*E A*R*E N*O M*A*P*S!!! Who the hell publishes a book about a major military campaign without including a single map? Brassey's, that's who. This should be a felony.
(2) The text is not edited. Having written books myself, I'm tolerant of the occasional blooper. Some of Fehrenbach's are common enough to raise no more than a weary sigh. I've long since reconciled myself to the fact that I am the last living human being that knows how to spell "Attlee," for instance, and one of the last few that knows the difference between the words "affect" and "effect."
The quantity of errors in this 1994 Brassey's edition—31 years after the book's first publication!—is shameful, though. Three decades in print, and no publisher saw fit to correct horrors like this:
But what the editors of Time believed, and what was truth, were, as it so often is, two different things. [P. 253.]
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The war without a song. One indicator of the low spirits in which the Allies fought that war is, there is no Korean War song.
Every war with any enthusiasm at all behind it has a song. When I was a kid, the oldest living cohort of big-war veterans in England were those of the Boer War of 1899-1902. Any one of them could sing you a couple of verses of "Goodbye, Dolly Gray." (Over here, I am told, that same song accompanied the Spanish-American War.) Dang, I heard it so often I can sing the chorus myself unprompted.
For WW1 the Brits had "Keep the home fires burning," while America had "Over there": a telling contrast between the mist of melancholy that, to some degree or other, hangs over all English cultural productions, and the cheery youthful bumptiousness of the early 20th-century U.S.A.
By WW2 the radio and gramophone were universal. You can get an argument going about which song was the song characteristic of that war. I'd say it's a toss-up between "I'll be seeing you" and "Lili Marlene." The latter was popular on both sides of the conflict—a thing that, so far as I know, never happened before and has never happened since.
But Korea? I just scanned the Top Thirty hits for 1950-53. Some great songs there, but nothing that really prompts the thought: "Oh yeah, the Korean War."
Vietnam was almost as miserable a war as Korea, but at least we had Country Joe and the Fish.
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Fiction of the month. Also military.
A few years ago I read and much enjoyed William Boyd's 1981 novel A Good Man in Africa, from which a movie (Sean Connery, Diana Rigg) was made.
I meant to follow up and read more of Boyd's fiction, but never did. Then this month, prompted by a chance reference to Boyd in some news story, I impulse-bought his second novel, An Ice-Cream War, which is about WW1 fighting in East Africa.
Remember that Germany participated enthusiastically in the late-19th-century colonial carve-up of Africa. Their biggest resulting possession was German East Africa, "nearly double the size of Germany," according to the 1911 Britannica. Nowadays this land, plus the Zanzibar islands, is the nation of Tanzania.
German East Africa had a 400-mile border on the north with British East Africa (nowadays Kenya); so when WW1 broke out in 1914, there was bound to be trouble. That's the background to the story.
An Ice-Cream War is not such boisterous fun as A Good Man in Africa, but Boyd knows the landscape well—he grew up in Africa—and he keeps a strong narrative thread going. He is very good on the messiness of life: how things—business ventures, wedding nights, battles—hardly ever work out the way the participants expected.
This is especially the case with battles, of course. It is not at all a coincidence that we owe the acronym "SNAFU" to the military. (Along with some lesser-known variants like "JANFU"—the all-too-common result of a joint Army-Navy operation.) Having just finished Fehrenbach's history of the Korean War, I was nicely primed for this.
And Boyd's novel, unlike Fehrenbach's history, has a map!
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Manual labor. Back when I learned computer languages for a living, I approached each new one on the same schedule:
Get some fairly clear idea what kind of task or tasks you want to code for.
If possible (it wasn't always) find a primer text with some simple examples you could try out.
Get The Manual—a full reference, containing everything you might ever need to know about the language.
Start coding.
More than once over the past few years I have made a resolution to get my coding skills up to date, without much of a follow-through. With this latest resolution, though, taking on the C# (pronounced "c-sharp") language, I have at least advanced to the Manual stage.
My task: Just some basic file processing and string manipulation, mainly to get my personal website in better shape.
My primer: Jamie Chan's Learn C# in One Day. Simple and straightforward, although I seriously doubt that anyone coming completely cold to programming could absorb it in one day. On the upside, my inner reactionary is glad to know that the application of choice for beginners is still a payroll program, just as it was fifty years ago.
My manual: I am now the proud owner of Albahari and Johannsen's C# 8.0 in a Nutshell. This is one heck of a nutshell: over a thousand small-print pages of description and definition. Thread pools! Jagged arrays! Coarse-grained concurrency! Lazy quantifiers!
This should be fun.
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Math Corner. Math is now fully woke.
From the current (August/September 2020) issue of MAA Focus, newsmagazine of the Mathematical Association of America, page 12:
Resources for learning how to be an anti-racist
edited by Jacqueline Jensen-Vallin
As a community we are finally starting to hear more clearly the voices of our BIPOC colleagues. One of the many things that I have heard is that to dismantle the implicit and explicit racism in our academic institutions and workplaces, we need white colleagues to do their share of the work …
And so on and driveling on for a full page and a quarter.
The MAA isn't the only game in town. Here is the current (September 2020) issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
Once past the table of contents and masthead, the first page of any interest is Letters to the Editor. The first letter is from one William Yslas Vélez, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Arizona.
The video of Mr. George Floyd dying on the street is too difficult to watch yet its impact has been profound. Academia needs to reflect on this incident …[Letter to the Editor: Recognize Professional Privilege, August 1, 2020]
And so on and driveling on for 300 words.
To be fair to these journals, there is actually some math in both of them. They are not cover-to-cover Antiracism. Not yet.
No brainteaser this month, just a note on the Collatz Conjecture.
Everyone knows that there are longstanding open problems in math: statements of mathematical fact that no-one has been able to either prove or disprove. Most of them are too abstruse for non-mathematicians to understand without a patient and friendly guide. A few, however, concern nothing more than basic arithmetic.
Probably the most famous of these is the Goldbach Conjecture:
Every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes.
The Goldbach Conjecture is dear to my heart because Prof. Estermann, who taught us analysis at University College, London, had made his name in math many years previously by proving that almost every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes. (There is a rigorous mathematical definition of that word "almost.")
The Collatz Conjecture is even more simply arithmetical. You don't even need to know what a prime number is.
Think of a positive whole number. If it's even, divide it by two; if it's odd, multiply it by three and then add one.
Whatever number you got from doing that, perform the same process on it.
Keep doing this. Sooner or later your answer will be one.
So if, for example, you start with 17 you get 52, 26, 13, 40, 20, 10, 5, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1.
(Once you have arrived at one, you are forever after stuck in the cycle 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1, …)
For worldwide fame you must of course prove rigorously that this will always be true; or at least, in the spirit of Teddy Estermann, that it will almost always be true.
This month's news story is that Marijn Heule, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, thinks he can prove the Collatz Conjecture using a computerized technique called "satisfiability solving." No, I won't try to explain it, because I don't understand it; read the news story for yourself if you're inclined.
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