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Bolt? No way! And if we did, where on Earth would we GO?
See? The DOG gets it…
Our good friend Bryan may be taking a hiatus from the blog, but does that mean we can't comment on what he posts on social media?
Of course not!
So let's consider this:
We are almost at the stage where Biden's supporters bolt. https://t.co/SM6I7hIEit
— Bryan Caskey (@BryanCaskey) August 11, 2019
Oh, come on, Bryan! Joe's had some slip-ups here and there, but that one's not even worth mentioning.
Seriously, did you have the date of the Parkland shooting memorized? I didn't. If you had asked me out of the blue to say when it was, without looking it up, I'd have said maybe 2017 (and I'd have been two months off). And if you corrected me and said no, it was 2016 — when Obama and Biden were still in office — I'd have accepted it without question or surprise. It would still seem about right.
As it was, Joe was less than 13 months off. NOT "two years." It happened in February 2018. Obama and Joe were still in office for most of January 2017. Learn to read a frickin' calendar, people.
Now, real quick, when was the Sandy Hook massacre? When did that guy shoot up the theater where they were showing a Batman movie? If you can tell me within a year, good for you. But I won't think less of you if you can't.
So no, there's nothing in this incident that makes me or (I hope) anyone else want to "bolt" from supporting Biden.
But let's go to a bigger question: What if we DID want to "bolt" — where would we go?
It would be nice to have a backup plan, because humans are fallible, and for that matter Joe could get sick or something.
But I don't have one. Oh sure, some of you will say there are plenty of good options, and in fact better ones than Joe, yadda-yadda. Well, yeah — for you. But not for me, speaking as a quintessential Biden supporter. Which is the kind of person that Bryan's tweet was about.
I have my reasons for supporting Joe, which we've discussed here, and I don't see anyone else measuring up according to the standards that matter to me — such as experience, understanding of the job, character and ability to win. I don't see anyone even coming close, among the three or four other Democrats who might be seen as viable at this point. (Viable for the nomination, I mean — I don't see any of those three or four as promising for the general. There are others who might do well in the general, but I don't see them getting the nomination.)
And we — Americans I mean, not Democrats — have to get rid of Trump, as an essential first step in marginalizing Trumpism, and restoring our country to what it was from 1790-2016.
Only Joe is in a position to do that.
So stop trying to seize on every little human mistake, and let's focus on the big things.
Because we need to get this thing done…
This entry was posted in 2020 Presidential, Democrats, Feedback, Joe Biden, Social media, The Nation on August 13, 2019 by Brad Warthen.
Politics today can just sap the joy out of life
You know those header images at the top of my blog pages, which generate randomly? This morning I saw the one you see below, featuring Kathryn Fenner — and James Smith, too (and his Dad, Jim) — at a Rotary meeting a long time ago. More than 10 years, I'm thinking.
And that caused me to reflect how long it had been since we'd heard from Kathryn. Two or three years at least, I'm thinking. I need to send a note and see how she's doing.
But she isn't the only longtime member of the fellowship who has been missing in recent days. We haven't heard from Bryan Caskey since July 16.
Today, I got an email from him explaining why:
I read news, see comments, see how people tear each other apart, and I feel resigned to living in a country of perpetual anger, resentment, and it causes me to despair. We're at such a toxic place that I just want nothing to do with politics, policy, or even talking about it. Mostly, when I do talk about it, it's just gallows humor to cope. No one really convinces anyone of anything anymore. Maybe we never did. No one ever compromises anymore.
We used to do that. Americans used to compromise and reach deals that gave each side something they wanted, each giving up something. That's a relic of the past, as much as Lincoln or Washington, or Jefferson. America used to be a melting pot of people who shared common ideals and beliefs. That's a relic, too.
Lately, I've tried to just focus on building my law practice, coaching baseball, spending time with my kids, and being a good husband. I'm doing pretty well at all those, and I'm happier for it. I used to be so excited to talk about politics, but it's all so pointless now. Why argue with people who hate my point of view, who I'll never convince? How is that a productive use of my time?
I don't know what the answer is, but I'm tired of trying to figure it out. I think I've given up trying to figure it out, actually.
I'm reading a good biography/history book right now called The Long Gray Line, by Rick Atkinson. It's the true story that follows the lives of a dozen or so boys who enroll in West Point in 1962, and are the class of '66. They are the boys who are commissioned as 2Lts and deploy to Vietnam as the war peaks. Casualties are high. The war is awful, death is random, and the Army isn't run the way the West Pointers are taught it would. Disillusionment is the main effect. The "First Captain" is the title given to the senior ranking cadet at West Point. It's the cadet who is highest in academics, military proficiency, and otherwise is the ideal cadet. The best of the best.
The First Captain usually goes on to great success in the Army. For the class of '66, the First Captain does his time in Vietnam, and immediately resigns his commission in the Army as soon as his commitment time runs. It's unprecedented for a First Captain to do that. It sent shockwaves through the Army when he resigned
That's how I feel, not that I was a First Captain in anything, by any measurement. The boys who went to West Point in 1962 did so for the same reasons that other boys went into the Peace Corps. They wanted to make America better, and they wanted to serve. They wanted to serve in a way that had honor. The country let them down. Our leaders, our people at home, everyone let them down. Everyone's letting me down today with our awful divisiveness.
In any event, I miss our talks. I can't bring myself to comment on the blog. It's so pointless. Hope you're doing well.
You know, I just don't blame him a bit. I'm feeling much the same, which is why I so seldom post these days. It's just all so depressing. Also, I devoted so much intense energy to the campaign last year, and now merely commenting from the sidelines seems particularly pointless.
Besides, no one is ever persuaded of anything. What are we doing sharing our thoughts if we don't achieve greater understanding of one another as a result?
Hence this ennui…
This entry was posted in Blogosphere, Confessional, Feedback on August 8, 2019 by Brad Warthen.
Yeah, that was kind of what I was on about…
CIA photograph of Soviet medium-range ballistic missile in Red Square, Moscow, some time between 1959 and 1968: It really DOES look like a giant pencil, doesn't it? A freshly sharpened one….
Just noticed that a piece in the Charleston paper over the weekend made reference to something I wrote last week.
The Post and Courier piece was headlined "Where does South Carolina's teacher labor movement go after 10,000 person march?" (They left the hyphen out of "10,000-person," not I. Y'all know I love hyphens. And commas.)
"May Day? Really? Are we thinking of the State House grounds as Red Square?" opined Brad Warthen, a former editor at The State who worked as a spokesman for Democrat James Smith's failed gubernatorial campaign in 2018.
As for the choice of date for the first protest action, Walker said her group chose it to stand in solidarity with North Carolina teachers, who were marching on their Statehouse the same day. She said she hadn't heard of May Day or its socialist connotations before critics brought it up online…
Yeah, exactly. They chose it "to stand in solidarity" with workers elsewhere. Kind of what I was on about.
Before someone gets worked up: No, I don't think the teachers are commies. Apparently, this one doesn't even know about commies.
I'm all for the teachers. I'm all for public education. Always have been, the record will show.
I'm just saying what I said: That this is not a way to win friends and influence people — at least, not the people who make policy in this GOP-dominated state. While few enough among them remember the Cold War, one assumes it lurks somewhere in their collective unconscious (as much as they might deny, upon questioning, possessing a collective anything).
And especially not when the Republican speaker of the House has stuck his neck out trying to accomplish some of the things you say you want.
That's all I have to say… except that I wish they'd quoted the part about the giant pencils. That was the good bit. The part they quoted was just the setup for the good bit. Ask Norm. He appreciated it, even within the context of taking me to task…
This entry was posted in Blogosphere, Education, Feedback, Media, Protest, South Carolina on May 6, 2019 by Brad Warthen.
The problem is pulling that one lever to vote straight ticket
For some reason, when someone links to my blog, it sometimes shows up as a comment awaiting my approval. I don't know why. Anyway, that happened today, and it led to a response from me, so I thought I'd share it.
I was being quoted in the context of a much longer post. Actually, I'm not sure why what I had said fit into this post — as the writer said, it was about conservative propaganda, and as he or she said, my point comes from the center — but it did, so I'm just going to address that portion of the post.
The writer was referring to this post from this past Election Day. It was one in which I (and others) objected to people who actually vote on Election Day "late voters." I then went on to object to the term "ticket-splitting." My point was that there should be no such term, that the practice should simply be called "voting." As opposed to what people who pull the party lever and ignore the ballot itself, thereby abdicating their responsibility to think, to discern, to discriminate, to make decisions about each individual candidate, to vote.
Here's the passage of mine that was selected for quotation:
You know what I call ticket-splitting? "Voting." True voting, serious voting, responsible voting, nonfrivolous voting. I am deeply shocked by the very idea of surrendering to a party your sacred duty to pay attention, to think, to discern, to discriminate, to exercise your judgment in the consideration of each and every candidate on the ballot, and make separate decisions.
If you don't go through that careful discernment, you aren't a voter, you are an automaton — a tool of the false dichotomy presented by the parties, a willing participant in mindless tribalism.
Sure, you might carefully discern in each case and end up voting only for members of one party or the others. And that's fine — kind of weird, given the unevenness of quality in both parties' slates of candidates — but if that's where you end up.
And here's what the person quoting it had to say about it:
Kernel of truth:
Human beings are certainly tribal, just in general. The idea that political parties are becoming tribes is an obvious extension of this, especially bolstered by worrying observations like increasing polarization of political opinion in the U.S. and (very likely related) increasing physical separation (segregation) between red (suburbs/country) and blue (cities) tribes. You also don't have to look very long or hard to find a person who has a basic, surface-level understanding of politics, who doesn't have an elaborate, well-thought-out intellectual theory of politics guiding their positions (in fact, their positions might be a contradictory mish-mash of things) but know very well who they're supporting in the next election.
Tribal chauvinism can be scary — the ability to ascribe Deep Differences between in-group and out-group justifies (and thus creates) violence. People instinctively wish to bridge gaps between groups. Doing so stems future violence and can even be an ego boost to the person capable of doing so — being able to see how both sides are just tribal takes the person able to see it out of the realm of primitive partiality into the era of enlightenment and clear sight free from petty bias.
Why is the use of "tribalism" messed up?
There are at least three things messed up about analyzing political disagreement as largely tribalism.
First thing: it disrupts public democratic discourse by giving people the ability to dismiss people's positions as born from blind, unenlightened loyalty rather than being sincerely held. The ability to say, "Well, you WOULD say that because that's your tribe's Doctrine" is not a good way to engage with fellow citizens' opinions.
Second thing: it elides the very real differences and very real societal implications that different positions have. Whether Muslims should be banned, in my opinion, really really isn't a matter of, "Well, you say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to. Who's to say what's right, really?" The concept of political disagreement boiling down, ultimately, to tribalism spreads a weird moralized amorality throughout society, where the ability to see the value of both sides becomes valorized (morally lauded) much more than the ability to take a side decisively (such preference for one over the other is close-minded, unenlightened, tribal). I'm not saying being able to see the logic or reasoning behind the other side is bad — I will never ever turn my back on the importance of empathy. But if your idea of enlightenment extends to "seeing through the bullshit of each side impartially" and no further, not to being able to evaluate the merits and awfulness of various positions, choose a side, and fight for the more moral option, your ability to see free from bias serves you and no one else.
The example above finds it unusual that someone would uniformly choose politicians of one party after careful evaluation because the "quality" of candidates varies so much that there is likely to be overlap, which means that a straight ticket will probably select a bad quality candidate over a better quality candidate. However, this doesn't really make sense to me as someone for whom political positions are the main criteria of "quality" in a candidate. The two parties agree on a lot, but on the issues they don't agree on, it is very rare for me to agree more with the political positions of a Republican over even a very right-wing Democrat — my notion of "quality" does not suggest there is much overlap at all. It's true that serious issues like corruption / criminal behavior might make me consider voting for the other candidate, or a very odd politician who runs on issues no other politician has a stance on might warrant a closer look. However, I think the view that political differences seem like the least relevant consideration only makes sense when you're in the center.
In the place of political stances, there is an unspecific notion of "quality", and as you can see in the post, the state of being indifferent to political differences is morally valorized.
Third thing: as someone who is not a centrist, I will tell you that you can have zero loyalty for a political party (in fact, actively have an antagonistic relationship with both), and still have a very clear preference for one party's politics. Having a preference between two teams ≠ being guided by tribalist loyalties. It just means your politics are not located midway between the teams.
Instead of / when you encounter "tribalism" you should:
Recognize that the existence of tribalism as a psychological feature of humans doesn't negate very real differences between political stances. Recognize that while it's good deed to reduce partisan bias in the world, there are sometimes things much worse than being partisan, and sometimes doing the right thing means decisively taking a side and fighting for it, rather than saying "well, I can see the value of both sides".
Yes, I know that a lot of people hate it when I say "I can see the value of both sides," and they let me know it, but this was not a case in which I was saying that.
Pleased that this writer was approaching my point thoughtfully, but distressed that my actual point had been ignored for the sake of concentrating on a word ("tribalism") that was neither here nor there, I responded:
I'm glad you found my blog worth quoting, and I appreciate your thoughtful approach.
But you didn't address my point.
No one's trying to paper over differences, or call genuine disagreement "tribalism."
I'm attacking the indefensible practice of party-line voting. I'm talking about people paying ZERO attention to the relative qualities of individual candidates, and simply pulling the party lever, choosing the very worst candidates that party is offering along with the very best. I'm referring a gross form of intellectual laziness, which I would think — given your thoughtful approach — you would abhor.
A person who pulls that lever abdicates the profound responsibility, as a voter, to think, to discern, to honestly compare each candidate to his or her opponent(s).
Sure, I can see how you can be a Democrat and vote for Democrats most of the time because you more often agree with Democrats. But it would be absurd to say, to assume, to believe, that ALL Democrats are automatically better than ALL Republicans, and vote accordingly, without taking a moment to test your proposition with each candidate on the ballot. In other words, without thinking.
If you're really, really into being a Democrat (and of course it works the same way with Republicans; I'm just choosing the side you're more likely to go with), then you will usually vote for the Democrat. In a particular election, you might even end up voting for every Democrat, without engaging in intellectual dishonesty. It seems to me unlikely, but then I can't imagine agreeing with either party — or any party in the world — on everything. But a person who truly leans that way might legitimately do that.
But if he or she has not thought through every choice on the ballot before arriving at that 100 percent, we have an abdication of responsibility.
And then — you ever notice how irritating it can be when you want to change what you wrote in a comment, but there's no edit feature (yes, I'm trying to be funny)? Well, those of you who complain about it so much can feel a little Schadenfreude at my having experienced it myself today. So looking back and seeing I had expressed something poorly, I had to add, immediately:
Rather than "I'm attacking the indefensible practice of party-line voting," I meant to say, "I'm attacking the indefensible practice of party-lever voting." As I go on to say, it's OK if you end up voting for every candidate of one party or the other — as strange as voting that way seems to me.
The irresponsible thing, the indefensible thing, is doing so without having considered the individual candidates and their relative qualities in each contest on the ballot.
This entry was posted in Blogosphere, Feedback, Marketplace of ideas, Parties, UnParty on June 13, 2017 by Brad Warthen.
Great images of Lynn's Mama back during the war
Says Lynn: "Here is my mother (2nd from right) dressed in a way that would have suited General Patton."
This is certainly the most awesome thing you'll see on this blog this week.
Back on Friday when I took note of the 72nd anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Bulge, mentioning my late father-in-law's experience then and there (being deployed on the front line at the very center of the overwhelming German assault, he would be captured and spend the rest of the war in a POW camp), Lynn mentioned her mother's experience thusly:
My mother was a nurse with the 95th General Hospital during the Battle of the Bulge, and was a member of Veterans of the B of the B until her death. She had some very sad stories, among them soldiers with terrible injuries from frostbite, along with the other wounds of war. She managed to be personally chewed out by Patton twice. Once was for not wearing a helmet, apparently a common event. The other was for being among the unit officers after they managed to get lost behind German lines for three days. I can't imagine that anyone trusted my mother with a map. Very bright woman, hopeless with a map.
We were all glad that she shared that, and I asked her for pictures. Today, she obliged. Here's her narration, slightly edited:
Lt. Tommie Dukes
Just caught up with the blog and saw your request for photos. I have a few photos of my mother during the war… One [right] is a regular portrait photo that I'm pretty sure was made soon after she became an Army nurse. [Below] is one of my personal favorites — Mama and two of her friends on the Champs-Élysées the day of the parade for the liberation of Paris. A French shopkeeper came out and suggested that she might want to try on some frivolous things after all her time in uniform, and this is the result. As you can see, it is in uniform, plus. She had leave, but wasn't actually supposed to be in Paris. She and her two friends couldn't stand not being in the city for the big event and hitched a ride from the hospital. They tried to be inconspicuous, but a French general saw them and pushed them into the parade, so they ended up marching down the Champs-Élysées in front of the tanks.
What great stories, and even greater pictures!
Y'all know how I feel I was born in the wrong time, having missed the titanic events that shaped the world I grew up in. So now I'm jealous of Lynn's Mom, who was There When It All Happened. (And yes, ere my antiwar friends tell me that these fun pictures are not what the war was about, I know that. I just wish I'd had the chance to Do My Bit when it truly mattered — I feel like a freeloader not having done so.)
Envious as I am, I wish I could have met her and thanked her for her service…
This entry was posted in Feedback, History, Mail call, Military, Personal, Photography, The Nation, The World on December 20, 2016 by Brad Warthen.
Here's what I mean when I say I'm a 'centrist'
I'm trying to blog smarter by converting long comments into separate posts. Here's the latest.
In this case, I had — in the interest of using words economically — referred to myself as a "centrist," as I frequently do. Both Bud and Harry Harris took exception to the reference.
I replied…
Dang, dang, dang! I wrote this somewhat involved, extremely insightful comment a little while ago on my iPad, and lost wifi in the middle of saving it. Let me see if I can reconstruct…
Of course I'm a centrist, to the point that the term has meaning (more on that in a second). I'm an adherent of the postwar governing consensus, the area that Clinton and Blair tried to get us back to in the 90s. I disagree with those who would pull us way from it.
That said, "left," "right" and "center" are fairly silly terms. I really don't HAVE a comfortable place on the artificial left-right continuum, and trying to place me, or anyone who THINKS about issues rather than buying them off the shelf prepackaged, on that line can present problems. But since I'm not "left" or "right," "center" is a convenient term to use.
It's also convenient because I am for CORE values, not those on the fringes. Here's what I mean by that…
Government is about solving problems together, or at least efficiently providing those basic functions that we have general agreement government should handle. So I'm interested in areas where the parties overlap, not the areas where they pull away from consensus. We need to identify and build upon those areas where we can work together. And if we get good enough at that, maybe we can branch out to some of the tough subjects.
For that reason, I generally don't like dealing with Culture War stuff, and get upset when it looks like an election is going to be about such things. Bud says, for instance, he assumes I "still advocate" for traditional marriage. I wasn't aware I HAD been advocating on that subject. At all. He also mentioned Blue Laws. At one point some years back I made a gentle, passing reference to the fact that opposition to blue laws is one of the sillier overinterpretations of the 1st Amendment's Establishment clause. Having a sensible agreement to have a day without commerce and hustle-bustle is hardly thrusting a particular form of religion on anyone. It's just a gesture to basic human sanity. And I say that whenever Doug and Bud bring it up, which they do a LOT, because such a sensible suggestion is DEEPLY offensive to their libertarian reflexes. But I can't recall advocating or campaigning for such. The most I've said is that it's a shame to see such a life-calming custom go away.
Seriously, when I start campaigning for something, everyone can tell. (See: Confederate flag.)
But back to my point — I don't see it as productive to invest a lot of political capital in those things, because the fights over them drive us apart and make it harder to agree on the things that should be easy.
The problem these days is that the parties and associated interest groups have polarized us so much that the area of consensus has gotten smaller and smaller.
Bud thinks this is a GREAT year. Well, in a couple of ways it is, but not the ways he thinks.
First, among thoughtful, informed participants and observers, there's a greater willingness to step out from the stupid left-right, Democratic-Republican dichotomy and consider candidates on their merits. Once people do that, you see the Bushes (whom Bud despises so much), Graham, Sasse, Romney, et al., distancing themselves from Trump or opposing him outright. The latest encouraging manifestation of that is Meg Whitman declaring for Hillary, and the formation of a PAC to encourage Republicans to vote for the lesser of two weevils.
Sure, there are still plenty of Republicans out there who think this is a normal, left-v.-right election and anyone who would support anyone but Trump is a liberal Democrat and therefore the enemy. But I prefer to celebrate the people out there who GET IT.
Also, with Trump as their standard-bearer the GOP has so abandoned the flag-and-country ground that the Democrats were able to co-opt it and position themselves as the party of traditional patriotism last week. In other words, the Dems celebrated the things that used to unite us all, rather than just concentrating on differences (the usual Identity Politics and class warfare stuff).
Of course, this deeply offended the centrifugal forces of our politics, who want to see us fly apart. For instance, Gen. Allen's speech offended both the military-hating portions of the left and the Democrat-hating elements on the right.
But these are positive developments, to a "centrist" like me…
This entry was posted in 2016 Presidential, Blogosphere, Feedback, Personal, Political science, Words on August 3, 2016 by Brad Warthen.
Response to Post series from James Flowers
I got this comment over the weekend from James Flowers, Leon Lott's opponent for the Democratic nomination for Richland County sheriff:
Brad Warthen. You should have reached out to me before writing this article so that you would have actual facts instead of what is written in this article by the civil attorney. First of all, as a SLED agent we investigate CRIMINAL actions. This was a CIVIL deposition. My only purpose is to gather the facts and provide them to the Solicitor. What you obviously don't know is that the Solicitor's office, the FBI, and the US Attorney's office reviewed my report and had ZERO issues with the work. The Solicitor's office made the determination that there was no criminal action on the part of the law enforcement officers not Me or SLED. Also, when 3 certified law enforcement officers that are serving 2 valid warrants have any sort of weapon pointed at them, they should by all means respond with deadly force. A real law enforcement leader stands behind and supports law enforcement officers 100% when they are right. Even if he has to be arrogant to do it. This article is nothing more than a hit piece orchestrated by an overzealous civil attorney who has a different legal standard than law enforcement does in reviewing shootings. I also noticed that you didn't mention the unflattering second article about your friend Lott. So please do some due diligence prior to your next blog. Thank you. James Flowers.
As it happens, the last person to get on my case for not having contacted him before posting something was… Leon Lott. And he kind of had a point, from his perspective, since the point of the post he called about was to wonder aloud why the sheriff hadn't done a certain thing. Turns out that he had an answer to the question that he wanted to share.
I will always, always be on the defensive when people say I should have contacted them before posting something. But here's the thing, folks: This is a commentary blog, not a primary news source. I read things, and I react to them. And invite you to react to my reactions. On the rare occasions that I have time to go out and cover an event myself, I do so. Look back — you'll see that's my M.O. It's not optimal; I wish I could afford to blog full-time. But WYSIWYG.
As it is, I don't find time to comment on as many things as I'd like to — not even close to it. I'm very straightforward with you about the basis of my comments, so you can look at what I'm looking at and challenge my conclusions. And your comments, like Mr. Flowers', get posted as well.
In this case, I spent way more time than I usually spend on a single post because it took so long for me to read that 7,000-word Washington Post article on which it was based. As I said, I'd read that one story and the fourth piece from the series by Radley Balko (more accurately, I skimmed the fourth piece). Now that Mr. Flowers has said Lott looks bad in the second installment of the series, I'll go read that, and share what I find. I probably won't have time to read the third piece today, but if you get there ahead of me, please share what you find.
Oh, and I don't plan to call Leon before sharing what I find in that second installment. The story says what it says, and that's what I'll be reacting to — as per usual.
Although if I can find the time later, this subject is interesting enough that I might go above and beyond (in other words, take the kind of time I did back when I got paid to do this) and give both Lott and Flowers a call. But it remains to be seen whether that will be possible between now and next Tuesday's primary.
Maybe some of my colleagues out there in the community who still get paid to do such reporting will get to it ahead of me. Let's hope so.
Anyway, I welcome Mr. Flowers to the conversation.
This entry was posted in Blogosphere, Crime and Punishment, Democrats, Elections, Feedback, Law enforcement, Media, Midlands, Rule of Law, South Carolina on June 6, 2016 by Brad Warthen.
On the binary paradigm in U.S. politics, with a digression on 'false equivalence'
Here's another case in which I got carried away with a comment response, and decided to turn it into a separate post.
This morning, Phillip observed:
Also, important to remember that parties have been born, fragmented, and died during the course of American history. The fact that we've had "Democratic" and "Republican" parties as the two main parties (even as each one's identity has changed radically over time in many ways) since 1856 has made us forget that a little bit. Perhaps we are seeing the real fragmentation of the Republican party, an upheaval in the two-party system unknown for a century and a half.
Some of this may be attributed to the unusual nature of Trump as a candidate himself, but the wave he sits astride will not vanish with his probable defeat this November. The GOP will not go all kumbaya after this election, whether Trump loses narrowly or loses by a "yuge" margin.
It was a trenchant, relevant comment of the sort we expect from Phillip, and it got me going along these lines…
We've had these two parties for so long not because of anything special about these two particular parties and their respective, shifting platforms.
It's about having two parties, period.
It's about the binary paradigm. It's about the fact that we decided some time ago that we had to have a dichotomy. Left and right. Winner and loser. Up and down. Black and white. American League (boo!) and National League. You get two choices, and that's it. There are only two teams on a football field — there are no players out there wearing a third uniform, or no uniform at all — so why should politics be any different? Isn't football the perfect analogy for life? (I may never fully extricate my tongue from my cheek after typing that.)
We've decided there have to be two parties. It doesn't much matter how those two parties define themselves, or what they are called. We're used to Democrat and Republican, so we stick with that. It's convenient. We don't care enough about the particulars of parties to try to start new ones, and besides, starting new parties means you might temporarily have three or four before they are winnowed back to two, and that's contrary to the whole idea of the game.
Worse — and this is particularly maddening to someone who engages in ideas in the public sphere and despises both options — if you reject one option, tout le monde automatically places you in the opposite category. Because you're not allowed other options.
And to digress – yes, my horror of being accused of adhering to Option B when I criticize Option A leads me often to make a point of noting that the same problem, or a problem of equal magnitude, exists with Option B. Hence the "false equivalence" that drives some of you to distraction. Except that it's not false. I really mean it. It's just that bringing up the fact may seem forced or out of place to you, no matter how elegantly I try to put it. You Option B folks wish I'd just point out the oh-so-obvious faults of Option A without gratuitously picking on your team. Sorry, but I've been conditioned to making a particular point of placing myself outside both camps to avoid confusion.
To digress from the digression: Interestingly, Option B in this analogy is pretty much always the Democrats. Y'all notice that? It's usually, if not always, my more liberal interlocutors who complain of the "false equivalence." A search for that phrase yields comments by Bud, Kathryn, Phillip, SCL and Tim. Not a conservative in the bunch. OK, not all of those accusations of "false equivalence" are aimed at me, but usually they are. SCL provides a particularly good example:
Honestly, you are the king of false equivalence. Have you EVER written a piece, going back to your editor days, that you didn't try to fit into that "both sides are at fault" template? I'm not a member of either party, but you're wrong to say the blame for this one lies anywhere other than 100% with the SCGOP….
I wonder why that is — that it's usually, if not always, liberals/Democrats. I have a couple of theories. The first is that, as holier-than-thou as the Republicans can be, it's Democrats who are more fully convinced of their own virtue, and of the other sides' failings. So they are outraged by observations that challenge that. Does that strike you as true? Perhaps not. Here's my second theory: That Democrats/liberals agree with Republicans/conservatives in seeing the media as liberal, and it particularly irks Democrats when they see a media type going out of his way to lay Democrats' sins alongside those of Republicans. They feel that he's letting down the side, breaking an unspoken pact. No? Well, offer your own theory.
Or maybe it's just that I seem to make more of a point of it when I'm describing Republicans' failings and feel the need to stick in the Democrats', as opposed to vice versa — being particularly sensitive to that "y'all are all liberals" meme. And therefore, the Democrats are more likely to notice it…
It was at this point that I decided to turn this into a separate post. Your thoughts?
This entry was posted in Democrats, Feedback, Marketplace of ideas, Parties, Political science, Republicans on May 19, 2016 by Brad Warthen.
Remembering the great, up in Boston
Doug Ross sent me this photo this morning with the message:
Here's where I am at today. .my son's train stop in Boston.
That's a reference to our discussion of John Quincy Adams on a previous post.
I've never been to Boston, but if they refer to John Quincy as often as we Southerners do to Andy Jackson, maybe I should go to there, if just for a visit…
This entry was posted in Feedback, History, Travel on April 22, 2016 by Brad Warthen.
I'm on my quarterdeck attending to duty, I assure you, sir…
Bud, and then Bryan, raised the alarm yesterday over my absence. Bryan wrote:
No, I haven't heard from him at all. I even asked him for a book recommendation on the Aubrey-Maturin series, and he never responded.
I hope he's okay.
That sounds alarming, indeed. But come on, y'all know that I frequently fail to post on the weekend, and yesterday I had business in my hometown of Bennettsville and didn't get back to the office until 4:30 or so — at which time I promptly gave y'all an Open Thread with more topics than ever before.
But yeah, there was a lot going on over the weekend in politics, so it seemed weird for me not to be commenting, but I assure you I was attending to duty, for the most part, and am now back aboard, pacing the quarterdeck and scanning the horizon for a suitable prize.
Oh, and as to Bryan's question:
I'm picking out my beach reading in advance. I'm thinking about starting the Aubrey-Maturin series. (Yeah. I've never read those books. Hangs head in shame.)
Which three would you recommend starting with, and in which order?
Here's my response — and I hope others among you will be interested as well, because I'm always glad to have someone else to discuss the books with:
Start from the beginning. They are chronological and sort of like one super-long novel, although O'Brian didn't intend it when he started out:
Master and Commander — Nothing at all like the movie, which was actually based very loosely on the 10th book, The Far Side of the World. It starts with Lt. Jack Aubrey being assigned to his first command, the 14-gun sloop Sophie, and meeting his soon-to-be best friend, Dr. Stephen Maturin. The actions that sloop engages in track closely with Cochrane's with the Speedy, including the memorable fight against the Gamo, renamed in the book the Cacafuego. Which you'll recognize as scatological if you talk foreign, which Maturin does and Aubrey doesn't. (O'Brian would later say that if he had known the series would go on so long he would have started earlier, with Jack as a midshipman. It apparently didn't occur to him to go back and write prequels after the series gained a following. He was scrupulously careful to keep to a realistic time frame from the first book to the final fall of Bonaparte.)
Post Captain — This one is in parts weirdly like Jane Austen, in which our heroes, stuck on shore during the brief peace with France, try their hand at being country gentlemen and become romantically entangled with a family of young ladies reminiscent of the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice, but with interesting variations. But don't worry, lads — there's still a good bit of action here and there — and quite a lot of character development important to later books. This and the first book are the two longest, and if there's one in the series that will seem perhaps a tad too long, it's this one, but be patient — the pace quickens after this. And the good bits are very rewarding. Be advised that the relationships with the ladies severely test Jack's and Stephen's friendship. (A constant theme of the books is that Jack is far better off at sea, well out of the sight of land and away from such complications — while Stephen, ever the lubber, is least at home aboard ship.)
HMS Surprise — For the first time Jack commands the frigate he will love the most for the rest of his career. You also learn more about Stephen's secret life — he is something more than an accomplished physician and respected naturalist. This is one of my very favorites in the series, chock full o' action and human drama from Port Mahon to Bombay.
So, there you have it. Get busy reading — quick's the word and sharp's the action.
I'll expect a full report upon your return. Before you have your clerk write it out fair, have Stephen look it over — he's a learned cove.
Hereof nor you nor any of you may fail as you will answer the contrary at your Peril…
This entry was posted in Blogosphere, Books, Feedback, Personal on March 8, 2016 by Brad Warthen.
Anyone having technical trouble on the blog?
Last night, I got this from Bryan:
@BradWarthen I can't pull up your site. Is it just me, or are you down?
— Bryan Caskey (@BryanCaskey) February 25, 2016
I responded that it was OK at my end, although a bit slow.
Then, this morning, I saw that I got this from the entity that hosts my site:
This email is to inform you that we had to kill one
of your MySql queries because it had been running
for over 1 minute and it was impacting other users.
Kill one of my MySql series? What should I do? I suppose could kill one of theirs back (if I could find out where it lived), but then the cycle of revenge could be never-ending…
In any case, have any of y'all experienced technical difficulties here on the blog in the last 24 hours?
This entry was posted in Blogosphere, Feedback, Social media, Technology on February 25, 2016 by Brad Warthen.
Fun to be on the page with Robert (and Cindi) again
"They're back and they're bad!"
"When they get together, Trouble comes a-runnin'!"
"Confederate Agenda II: Just when you thought it was safe to read the paper again…"
I'm thinking taglines for a cheesy sequel buddy action flick after seeing the page today in The State with Robert Ariail paired with me once again — my column with his cartoon. A lot of friends have commented on that — favorably. Although when Mike Fitts said it was "Just like old times," Neil White, being himself, responded that "they were celebrating Throwback Tuesday over there."
"It's Throwback Tuesday. Don't turn that page!"
Anyway, it's great to be back with Robert in print today, even though it's only today. And to be back with Cindi Scoppe, of course. I've been working with her off and on since the weekend, strategizing about what I was going to write and the best time to run it, then working together through the editing process. And I was aware that she was writing two editorials that would run with my piece — this one congratulating the Senate, and this one exhorting the House to follow the Senate's example — whereas Robert's cartoon was more of a nice surprise.
Now that was even more like old times. I haven't even seen my buddy Robert this week, but working on this with Cindi was a very pleasant return to the alternative universe where everything is as it should be.
I even called her to ask for a PDF of the page today, to have a souvenir of the occasion (nowadays, things don't seem real without a digital version). An inferior JPG image is above. Click on it, and you get the PDF.
This entry was posted in Cindi Scoppe, Confederate flag, Feedback, Friendship, Personal, Robert Ariail, Social media, The State, Working on July 8, 2015 by Brad Warthen.
Doug reports from London: He didn't have the time to wait in the queue…
The queue at Oxford Circus, 6 p.m., Nov. 25, 2014. Photo by Doug Ross
Yes, that's a paraphrase from a song written by Eric Clapton and George Harrison…
Anyway, you remember our discussion of mass transit back at the end of October, when Doug Ross mentioned he would be in London for a week in November, and would report on whether he thought the London Underground was as awesome as I say it is?
Well, he checked in via text last week (sorry, I failed to pass it on, what with trying to get my work decks cleared for Thanksgiving).
He sent the above photo, with this caption:
This is the line to get to the steps to get to the entry to the tube at 6 p.m. in Oxford circus. When it is not crowded it's fine. Otherwise it's a nightmare.
So there you have it; the opposite position from my own.
I never ran into anything that bad in London. I was in some crowded trains, and waited on some crowded platforms. But I never had to wait up on street level to get into the Tube. Maybe that's because I was there between Christmas and two days after New Years Day, so normal commuter traffic was lighter than usual. Or else Doug has just had phenomenally back luck.
I will quote this from Wikipedia: "At the end of the 2000s, Oxford Circus had the highest pedestrian volumes recorded anywhere in London." So, you know, it might be a place to avoid if you haven't got the time to wait in the queue.
But I've shared Doug's report, in the interest of fairness. Perhaps he would like to elaborate…
This entry was posted in Blogosphere, England, Feedback, Transportation, Travel on December 1, 2014 by Brad Warthen.
FYI, Legislative Black Caucus DID have a white member
Members of the Legislative Black Caucus, circa 2009.
On a previous thread, we got into the whole why-can't-there-be-whites-only-organizations-when-there-are-blacks-only-organizations thing (get enough white guys together, and this will eventually come up — you know how those people are), with the Legislative Black Caucus being mentioned, as per usual.
Which reminds me…
Last time we had such a discussion, I got an enlightening DM from Bakari Sellers. Our conversation follows:
Huh. "She paid her dues and asked." Doesn't sound like a terribly high bar.
By the way, here's evidence, if you need it.
Cathy Harvin, for those who don't recall, was elected to the SC House in 2005 in a special election to replace her late husband, Alex. She served for five years until her own death, at the age of 56, from breast cancer.
To my knowledge, the caucus does not currently have any white members.
This entry was posted in Feedback, Legislature, Race, South Carolina on October 31, 2014 by Brad Warthen.
Burl Burlingame's awesome second career
Actually, it's not so much a second career as it is a continuation and expansion of one that he had always pursued.
Even in high school, Burl Burlingame was a Renaissance Man. He was a photographer, a musician, an actor, a cartoonist, a writer, an editor and a publisher, putting out his own underground newspaper at Radford High School, from which he and I graduated in 1971.
He was also really into airplanes and their history.
So while he was spending 35 years working for newspapers, he had a parallel career as a military historian specializing in the Pacific. He published on the subject, and became the leading expert on Japanese midget submarines. While working at the paper, he was a volunteer at a local aviation museum there in Honolulu.
Who could have predicted, in 1971, that among his many enthusiasms, the one that would be employing him in 2014 was his passion for building model airplanes?
But that's the way it worked out, as Burl is now curator of the Pacific Aviation Museum on Ford Island in the middle of Pearl Harbor.
(By contrast, I was spending my 35 years in newspapers working 12-hour days so I had no time or energy for a outside pursuits, becoming expert in every aspect of the trade, innovating at every opportunity, leading the way on new technology, pioneering in blogging, leading other journalists, climbing the ladder to senior management — which led to nothing in the end. So let that be an object lesson to you, children.)
Anyway, since Burl is a regular here, I thought y'all might be interested in these video features about what he does, which seems to me like too much fun to get paid for. Above is an overall feature about his job and how he does it, while the clip below is Burl's bio.
Watch, and envy him…
This entry was posted in Blogosphere, Feedback, History, Working on August 21, 2014 by Brad Warthen.
Our own Burl wrote 'The Greatest Movie Review Ever Written'
Saw this via social media (and in an email from Burl) while I was at the beach last week…
It's apparently from a 2011 blog post by Adam Green, who describes himself thusly:
I am Vogue's theater critic. I also write for The New Yorker, and I'm writing a book, too. So there you have it.
Green wrote,
I first read this, xeroxed, in George Meyer's legendary Army Man magazine, and it has stayed with me ever since. Its author, Burl Burlingame, still writes and reviews movies for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Whatever else he has done, or will do, he will always be remembered for the phrase "gassy, recently embalmed appearance."
And then he quoted the review in its entirety. It was of the otherwise forgettable "Cannonball Run II."
A sample of Burl's immortal prose:
A minimum effort from all concerned, "Cannonball Run II" is this summer's effort by Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham to get the public to subsidize a month-long party for Burt and his pals. The home movies taken during the party are edited into something resembling a feature film, at least in length.
They're asking $4 for admission, and that doesn't include even one canape.
Burt's friends are musty, dusty attractions at the Hollywood Wax Museum. They include Dean Martin, whose skin has the texture and unhealthy pallor of a cantaloupe rind and who says things like "When I make a dry martini, I make a dry martini,"—a sure-fire Rat Pack knee-slapper—and Sammy Davis Jr., who looks like a cockroach. Director Needham also never bothered to make sure Davis' glass eye was pointing in the proper direction. It rolls wildly, independent of the other orb.
Other couch potatoes direct from "The Tonight Show" are the insufferable Charles Nelson Reilly; wheeze-monger Foster Brooks; Jim Nabors, who has swell-looking artificial teeth; and Don Knotts, who looks like a chimp recently released from Dachau….
I urge you to go read the whole thing, just to make sure you're never tempted to call up this chestnut on Netflix or something. Oh, I'll just go ahead and give you Burl's ending:
The movie is a genuine cultural artifact, a relic given to us by a band of entertainers from long ago, who live in self-imposed exile in the dusty, neon hellhole of Las Vegas.
They seem to have no trouble amusing each other.
It's not contagious.
This entry was posted in Blogosphere, Feedback, Mail call, Media, Social media, Words, Working on August 4, 2014 by Brad Warthen.
Images of Bob Coble welcoming the Somali Bantu
This morning, I ran into a friend while waiting for an elevator, and he, trying to raise his small-talk game above the talking-about-the-weather level, asked me one of my least-favorite polite questions:
Do you miss working at the newspaper?
He meant well. So, I believe, have most of the people who have asked me that question over the past five years. But I do have to wonder sometimes at the thought process that leads them to think that's a polite question.
Think about it. It could elicit a response of:
No, not at all. Which seems highly unlikely after having spent 35 years in the game. I could say it, but I would have to forgive anyone who heard it as false bravado. Or,
Yes, with all my being, every minute of the day. Which would sound pretty pathetic, and just embarrass everyone within earshot.
So I generally just say something in-between. Such as, "I'll tell you one thing I miss about it," etc. I then mention some routine thing that is different about life on the outside, something that's not particularly overburdened with emotional freight.
For instance, the other day, when I was reminded of former Mayor Bob Coble literally embracing the head of the first Bantu family to arrive in Columbia, was a day when I missed one thing in particular: Having access to The State's photo archives. As I mentioned here, I searched the web and came up dry. That wouldn't have happened when I was at the paper.
So that's one thing I miss.
Fortunately, a couple of folks came to my rescue on that one point. WIS veteran Jack Kuenzie sent me the image above, with the message:
Resolution is not great because I had to snag it off a computer screen. I seem to recall that photo being on the front page. Bob had it framed in his office.
Then, Bob's son Daniel Coble sent me an image of the very picture I had been thinking of, which you see below. Daniel wrote:
Brad, I saw you posted about the immigrant children the other day and mentioned the Bantus. Here's the picture of them together. Sorry I don't have the article to go with it
So thanks, Jack Daniel! I mean, thanks Jack, and thanks, Daniel!
This entry was posted in Feedback, Media, The State, Working on August 4, 2014 by Brad Warthen.
Today's evidence that everybody needs an editor
Bryan Caskey brought this headline to my attention, confessing that "I had no idea there were people out there who supported climate-change."
Well, yeah. And believe me, you really do have to "spend big" if you want to effect change in an entire planet's climate, so give that copy editor a break…
This entry was posted in Feedback, Media, Words, Working on August 4, 2014 by Brad Warthen.
Doug Ross claims title of 'highest commenter' on blog
Photo by Doug Ross
Yesterday, our own Doug Ross texted me the above photo, saying:
Fyi, my last post on your blog came from the top of a mountain in squaw valley… 8900 feet… which makes me your highest commenter
It is the official position of this blog to assume he meant "highest" in terms of physical altitude — even though he is a libertarian, vacationing out West, where smoking dope is legal…
When he gets back, we'll have to ask him whether there are plans to change the name of the valley…
This entry was posted in Blogosphere, Community, Feedback on July 9, 2014 by Brad Warthen.
On being accused of being 'pro-government' on every issue
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
I still don't understand what about the previous Bowe Bergdahl discussion prompted this (which is one reason why I'm moving the discussion to a separate thread), but Bud wrote:
Brad you're actually pretty easy to predict. If it involves more government intervention you're for it. Issues traditionally on the right that involved more government intervention: Iraq, military spending, abortion, marijuana laws, Sunday blue laws, gay marriage. Brad supports? Check, check, check, check. Liberal issues with more government involvement: healthcare, foreign aid, gun control, public education. Brad? check x 4.
Kathryn Fenner weighed in enthusiastically: "Nailed it."
Yes, I believe that as a society we can work together to address challenges that face us. I do not believe that we are islands, on our own in the void.
You interpret that as being pro-government (because any arrangement between people to work together, whether formal or informal, can be said to be government), and say it like it's a bad thing. Government is civilization's prerequisite.
But saying I'm pro-government suggests the straw men of libertarians, who go on about "statism" and "collectivism." They misrepresent a belief that we can come together as free people and build a decent civilization together as being Stalinist. That's at the extreme. At the least, though, being pro-government to them means you're pro-BIG government, as though size were particularly relevant.
I want government to be no bigger, and no smaller, than it needs to be in order to accomplish the legitimate tasks of enabling us to address common issues. And I've long been an advocate of subsidiarity, something that doesn't come up here a lot because most of y'all don't seem to want to get into the theoretical weeds quite that far. But put simply, it means governmental functions — and functions of other organizations and institutions as well — should be performed at the lowest, smallest, most local level that is competent to perform them adequately. That means, for instance, that whenever possible, I want to push functions down from the federal to the state level (think education) and from the state to the local (think all those MANY things that state legislators oversee in SC that should be local).
The purpose of the larger levels are to perform the things that the smaller ones can't, effectively. The federal level needs to handle relations with foreign countries, from diplomacy to trade to war, regulate interstate commerce (mostly to keep it free and flowing, unlike under the Articles of Confederation) and do a very few other things. One of those things, I've come to believe, should be setting up one gigantic, universal health insurance pool, because the economies to be gained far exceed what any state or locality could manage.
Oh, dang. You went and got me started. How did we get from Bergdahl onto this subject anyway?
One more point: What Bud is addressing is one of the reasons why I will never feel comfortable in either the "liberal" or "conservative" camps, as they are popularly defined and organized. I agree with one side on more or less as many issues on which I agree with the other. On some, I agree with neither. That's because I think about each issue. And my agreement or disagreement with each camp turns on a lot of points other than the relative involvement of "government."
But it's true that you will find consistency, for the most part, in my opposition to the propositions of libertarians. I say "for the most part" because there are areas of disagreement. I agree on the importance of the basic freedoms we enjoy as Americans, and in cases in which they are truly threatened, I will stand as staunchly as anyone in their defense. I just think libertarians tend to see threats where they don't exist. But I'm with them on issues here and there: For instance, I see "hate crime" laws as fundamentally unAmerican, and a violation of the first and most important human right, the right of freedom of conscience, which is enshrined in various forms (speech, press, religion, assembly) in the First Amendment.
But I regard their hand-wringing over Edward Snowden's revelations as absurd. You can no doubt think of many other areas of strong disagreement.
So I'm neither a liberal or a conservative. Or perhaps I'm a "liberal-conservative" or a "conservative-liberal." I would say you could call me a "Democratic-Republican," except that back when there actually was such a party, I probably would have been a Federalist…
This entry was posted in Blogosphere, Feedback, Marketplace of ideas on June 5, 2014 by Brad Warthen.
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Brad Warthen on More friction between the Pope, and American bishops who don't understand that the Pope is Catholic
Doug Ross on More friction between the Pope, and American bishops who don't understand that the Pope is Catholic
bud on More friction between the Pope, and American bishops who don't understand that the Pope is Catholic
Brad Warthen on Happy Day, Happy Day, Happy Day!
Bob Amundson on More friction between the Pope, and American bishops who don't understand that the Pope is Catholic
Mark Stewart on More friction between the Pope, and American bishops who don't understand that the Pope is Catholic
Randle on Happy Day, Happy Day, Happy Day!
Doug T on Happy Day, Happy Day, Happy Day!
More friction between the Pope, and American bishops who don't understand that the Pope is Catholic
Statement on the Inauguration from the McCain Institute
Happy Day, Happy Day, Happy Day!
The pope needs to have a chat with some of his clergy
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text:
Our Specialists.
Garron Hansen
Enabling Environment for Agriculture
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Inclusive Agricultural Market Systems and Value Chains
Director, Agriculture and Food Security Practice	Garron Hansen
Garron Hansen is an accomplished agriculture, economic growth, and private sector development professional. He currently serves as director of Chemonics' Agriculture and Food Security Practice. He previously worked for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on the Agricultural Development Team, where he served as a strategy officer and managed a $187 million investment portfolio. The portfolio linked farmers to markets in staple and cash crops, tested innovative delivery models, and spurred private sector involvement in Africa. He has also served as the director of food analytics for Fintrac and agricultural trade team leader at the East Africa Trade and Investment Hub. Mr. Hansen spent five years in Rwanda, where he served as a manager with the OTF Group, Rwanda country director for the Wood Foundation, and an embedded advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture. He has worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company and Dalberg Global Development Advisors. Mr. Hansen holds an M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
The OpenRoad: A Look at Khronos APIs
August 28, 2017 api, video
Khronos is responsible for bringing more than Vulkan, OpenGL, and WebGL to the world. The Khronos Group and its members have created over 25 standards to date, a list that continually grows as needs for new standards arise from growing industries.
Beginners Guide to Vulkan
August 24, 2017 vulkan, tutorials
Recently I asked the community for beginner-friendly resources on Vulkan, and I compiled a list of them that you can find below. For the beginners reading this, Vulkan is a new graphics API-- in other words, a way to communicate with your GPU and make it do things. It's managed by the Khronos Group, which means it's under multi-company governance - being managed by the industry for the industry. Anyone who wants to do work on GPUs (not restricted to graphics programmers!) should at least have a high level knowledge of what it is.
SIGGRAPH Highlights: OpenGL's 25th, BOF Blitz Party, and News
August 16, 2017 collada, vulkan, webgl, opencl, gltf, openxr, opengles, opengl, sycl, spir
In early August the team was at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles, where we celebrated OpenGL's 25th anniversary at the BOF Blitz Party. We also announced a new website, as well as OpenGL 4.6, a growing glTF ecosystem, and the Vulkan Portability Initiative.


text:
Application is divided into components. And each component can be loaded into `outlet`.

Lazy loading!

Only loads the necessary components based on the route.

**Tree<UrlSegment>**

my.app/user/1234/details -> user -> 1234 -> details

Convert component in route loader to string and rely on the specific structure so that System.js can do the lazy-loading for Angular.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


The Colour Box: Podlings and fairy crows!
I received the lovely package of ms Daisy Lupin yesterday (my sosf autumn partner), delivered by those mischievous fairy creatures, the infamous Fairy Crow messengers!
and a fairy podling who is and has been sleeping soundly for nearly an eternity and might wake up and turn into a fairy anyday now!
Oh Maya, your present looks wonderful, I hope you enjoy it all.
I love the quirky gifts that are being sent by the secret faeries. Did I tell you that one was sent to my partner ? well it was and the postie stepped into a faery ring (a no-no) and he was whisked off to faery land.
I've seen these packages around on a few sites, now...what's the story with them?
What a delightful package to get - it really must have made your day!
What a wonderful parcel to receive, Maya!
What a great Fairy package fellow fairy firends!
I promise!! I miss you too...haven't been around blogger for a while but you are never far from my thoughts!!


All services have been fully restored for Acquia Cloud Stack Metrics.
We have identified the cause of the interruption in Acquia Cloud Stack Metrics services. We are currently working to We are working to resolve this service interruption at this time. We will provide additional updates when services are fully restored.


We have been selling on the internet for 12 years with thousands of satisfied customers. Shop here for dinnerware, glassware and colletibles. Your items are packed professionally and shipped quickly.
Last Updated: Oct 25, 2018 Listing Expires: Fri Oct 25 20:04:02 2019 This listing has been viewed 5664 times.


text:
Bronze Dourado
Bronze Dourado is a tanning salon in Porto, Portugal, with 15 years of existence.
Our team revamped the existing logo and build a new website, as well as a social media presence. We have also optimised all the SEO, including Google Business with great results.
Denbigh, North Wales
2018 © N6 Digital Ltd is registered in England & Wales. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy


text:
How Accenture does IT
Accenture streamlines SAP® data archiving
Accenture's data archiving capability reduces risk, optimizes system performance and cuts costs, while adhering to legal and compliance requirements
Call for Change
When Tech Meets Human Ingenuity
A Valuable Difference
Data in systems today is growing at hyper levels, and data in SAP® ERP systems is no exception. As databases in organizations become larger, they result in increased risk, reduced system performance and increased total cost of ownership. Ever-increasing data volumes become more difficult to manage as part of an organization's normal IT processing. That growth in data volumes poses a risk in the ability of an internal IT organization such as Accenture's to meet service level agreements.
Given this trend, organizations look to improve system performance and data management through SAP data archiving solutions. Data archiving is the process of relocating data that must remain accessible for business or legal reasons. In Accenture's case, our global IT organization needed to migrate our archiving solution from on premise to the cloud when Accenture moved its SAP S/4HANA® system to Microsoft Azure, in keeping with Accenture's cloud-first strategy.
Our global IT team was challenged to lead in the "New" by innovating a solution that needed to "live in the cloud." Doing so would streamline communication between the production environments and the historical archives. This advantage would help improve performance, system stability and reduce costs, while adhering to legal and compliance requirements.
Our global IT team applied leading SAP data archiving practices using Accenture's SAP Delivery Methods to shape the migration to a cloud-based archiving solution. The team also analyzed data growth in business process areas that are vital to Accenture's business and prioritized them based on the rate of growth and impact to the business. As a result, the scope of business areas for archiving expanded into new and existing finance functions within SAP S/4HANA, including Controlling (CO), Requisition-to-Pay (RTP), Record-to-Report (RTR), Order-to-Cash (OTC), as well as Personnel Administration (PA), Time & Expense (T&E) and purging system administration data.
To move to the New, our global IT team migrated from an on-premise content management system that had its own infrastructure to a cloud-based SAP S/4HANA archiving solution serviced by a newly selected content management system, both of which are hosted in Microsoft Azure.
The new content management solution is hosted within the production SAP S/4HANA application and interfaces with an Azure Blob Storage device. The enterprise content management platform enables information to be organized, preserved and easily accessible while protecting privacy and security. It also addresses Accenture's needs for a solution that is enterprise-class, compliant, secure and cloud-based.
The migration involved pioneering a new cloud-based archiving solution embedded in the SAP S/4HANA application and hosted in Microsoft Azure. It also involved migrating the database and archiving attachments. The team replaced aging devices and built strategic partnerships to enable migration and retention management. Both are critical competitive advantages with cloud at the core.
To date, the SAP data archiving solution has delivered 26 SAP S/4HANA objects. Accenture will add more archiving objects accordingly to meet service level agreements. Data is archived on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis depending on the type of object. Archiving is scheduled and validated by the production support teams as part of normal operations.
To further mitigate concerns about archiving, the team developed a low-cost technology and process solution to reload SAP S/4HANA data in the event that critical data is needed faster or was incorrectly archived. Risk mitigation to Accenture's financial close process and other critical business processes is a prerequisite to any technology change. The ability to quickly reverse an archiving process helped our global IT organization to push the archiving agenda forward.
Accenture's ERP production support teams maintain the solution, with light oversight to ensure the technology stays current, stable and secure, and to maintain the long-term strategy to meet Accenture's scale.
Moving Accenture's data archiving capability to the cloud enabled our team to apply new thinking to shape a leading data archiving solution that takes advantage of the new architecture. Strong collaboration with SAP, Microsoft and the content management vendor helped our team to customize the archiving solution to meet the specific needs of our large, global enterprise. The new data archiving solution not only delivers enhanced business benefits, but also improves the work/life balance of our team as a result of reduced maintenance and a simplified execution architecture.
The new SAP S/4HANA archiving solution and content management system, both hosted in the cloud, are delivering numerous benefits. This combined solution is faster, more secure, requires less maintenance, has high availability and is lower in cost than the previous, on-premise solution. A cloud-based archiving capability enables Accenture to optimize system performance by managing data growth more effectively, while adhering to legal and compliance requirements.
The SAP data archiving approach optimizes system performance at levels appropriate for Accenture's growing business. The solution is doing so by keeping data that is needed for key business areas readily available online for end users and archiving data that is no longer needed day to day. It also results in faster searches and eliminates exposure to data that is not frequently used.
Improved performance in turn improves the user experience for finance functions such as Time & Expense, Controlling, or Order-to-Cash and the financial close as the volume of data to be processed is optimized. By archiving data, Accenture has been able to improve performance and build contingency in its financial close and online transaction processing. In addition, with archiving, the batch cycle processing time reduced by 250 hours.
SAP S/4HANA data that is archived and that is no longer active or used on a day-to-day basis is stored onto the content management system, which has enabled Accenture to avoid operational infrastructure costs related to memory and premium storage.
Managing the exponential growth of data volumes in today's information-intense world is an ongoing challenge for any organization, including Accenture's. Even as Accenture has continued to grow, our global IT organization can continue to meet the same service level agreements for the business as in the past. Going forward, a cloud-based SAP data archiving approach helps Accenture to keep its single SAP system instance in step with the needs of its constantly evolving business and workforce of more than 500,000 people.
"We are leading in the New, supporting growing business needs with faster, better and lower data-retention service costs, and maintaining system capacity with at least three years of headroom."
— ABDEL ALTABARANI, Senior Manager – Global IT, Finance Applications, Accenture
Eli Lambert
Managing Director – Global IT, Finance Platforms
Carsten Poulsen
Managing Director – Finance, Transformation Technology
Abdel Altabarani
Director – Global IT, Finance Platforms
Our global IT organization is driving technology-powered business transformation across Accenture.
Accenture + SAP
Helping you unlock the value of your SAP application portfolio with the power of intelligence, innovation and industry.
Finance at Accenture
Reimagining finance to drive further value for Accenture, our clients and our people.


If you want to rotate thumbs evey X clicks - set Refresh (Rotate) thumbs every X minutes = 0. If there are some numbers in both fields - script will use each. For example, Rotate every 5 minutes and 200 clicks, during 5 minutes you've get 120 clicks - script will do rotation.
Thumb casts (save last X results) - amount of saved rotation results. It affects 'hold of thumbs' at top posotions. Lemme explain this.
Lets say we have 100 thumbs, script rotates them for the first time - we get some stat (thumbs CTR), script rotates thumbs again - and we get some stats again. The same thumb can get diff. CTR during these 2 rotations due to some traffic fluctuations and so on. That's why we take an average of these 2 stats when we rearrange thumbs for the next third rotation.
An average CTR is 4%. If we save data for the last 5 rotations - avegare CTR will be 3.4% This is why thumb css are important.
For example, if you rotate thumbs every 5 minutes and 'save last X results' = 100 - that means that you'll have an average CTR for the last 500 minutes.
Basically longer period gives you more accurate stats but at the same time some 'old' thumbs can be at the tp positions too long.
% of cast shows for new thumbs - let's say average thumb in our DB has 100 casts, while you have 20% in this field. New thumbs will be shown at "Places for new" till they get 20 casts.
Ignore Cell K - The thumb having highest rank is shown at the best positions. Unique feature of StreamRotator is concluded in the fact, that you needn't activate special mode for counting ctr of cells, all coefficients are counted at background mode without loss of traffic. Moreover, when script generates your main page for the first time, it tries to adjust these coefficients to cells itself according to location of the cell, so changes of these coefficients will be minimal in the future. But some very small sites this can be usefulness or even bad.
Alternative thumb hosts - Due to some standards browser doesnt send more then 4 requests per domain. What that means for us: let's say you have 100 thumbs on page, browser won't request image number 5 till it has gotten one of the first 4 images. This slows down visual speed of your site. You can create hosts img.domain.com, img2.domain.com and so on and point it to domain.com.Please, contact your admin to do it.
Graber Save Settings Where do you want to save thumbs, dont mix up URL with PATH.
Thumb Settings - размеры и качество тумб. Тут можно отметить что тумбы можно делать 2мя псобами: GВ или IM (Image Magick) - это отражается в параметре Image Lib. GD - это внетрення библиотека ПХП, IM - это внешная биллиотека. Если вы используете IM (что обычно предпочтительнее) то надо проставить путь в Path to IM. Путь обычно /usr/local/bin/ или /usr/bin/. В этом поле можно увидеть autodetect если скрипт находит автоматически путь.
Replace specials (ampersant to %26) - as provided by RFC if you have '&' in gallery URL you have to replace it with '%26'. Lemme explain why RFC require it.
so there's not way to understant do you want to pass 60 to trade script or to gallery. Thats why you have to replace &.
Эта опция регулирует - будут ли показаны только лучшие тумбы из гали (если галя имеет более 1й тумбы в ротации) или будут показываться все.


This topic contains 6 replies, has 2 voices, and was last updated by Syam Mohan 3 years ago.
What is your plugin version?
Thanks. I'll test with 'realia' plugin and let you know.
Sorry, it took a while to test. Because it needed a newer version of PHP than I was using.
I couldn't find any issues. I was able to remove those menus by editing it. Can you try again by doing a restore first?
The topic 'menu iten problem' is closed to new replies.


text:
Two candidates running for Castaic Area Town Council
Vivianna Shields
The Castaic Area Town Council during a meeting. Vivianna Shields/The Signal
Two candidates are officially running for the vacant spot in Region 5 on the Castaic Area Town Council in the council's special election on March 14.
Christian Dittes and Richard Ortega are the two candidates who are on the ballot for the vacant spot on the board. The election is scheduled to be held at the Castaic Library on March 14, from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m..
Only residents who live in Region 5, which is north of Lake Hughes Road and includes the housing tracts of Hidden Lake, Double C Ranch, Stonegate, Northlake and Paradise Ranch Mobile Home Park, will be able to vote for this seat, according to Bob Lewis, Castaic Area Town Council president.
At Wednesday's Castaic Area Town Council meeting, both candidates attended to present their letters of interest to the board.
Christian 'Chris' Dittes, Northlake
Dittes has lived in Castaic since 1991, and in Northlake for the past 10 years. He is a managing partner for a manufacturing business in Los Angeles.
"I would like the opportunity to address the issues that concern our citizens," said Dittes in his letter of interest to the board.
According to Dittes, as a board member, he wants to address failing businesses, the overall degradation in the appearance of the area and accessibility during traffic in Castaic.
"I believe that planning and all decisions should be made with an interest in improving the town, attracting families and businesses, increasing property values, protecting the environment and preserving individual property rights," said Dittes.
Richard Ortega, Hidden Lake
Richard Ortega and his family have lived in Castaic for the past 21 years in Hidden Lake. In 1998, he moved his family to Castaic to raise his two sons in a small, family-friendly community with excellent schools, according to Orega in his letter of interest to the board.
"Even before moving to Castaic in 1998, I felt a connection to the area as these are the ancestral lands of the Tataviam People, my ancestors," said Ortega.
Two years ago, he retired from the collision-repair industry to work full-time for his tribe as a tribal heritage and cultural preservation monitor. Currently, he is also a senator for District 2, which accounts for the ancestral lands of the Santa Clarita, Antelope and Simi Valleys.
"I feel it is an honor and a privilege to live and work on the lands of my ancestors," said Ortega. "I would like to join the Castaic Area Town Council so I can help the council continue to make decisions in the best interest of the residents and families of Castaic."
For The Signal, Vivianna Shields covers county and health news in the Santa Clarita Valley and paginates for print issues. Vivianna is a Canyon Country local who graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2019. Know about something newsworthy? Let's chat! [email protected]
Missing person Lance Theodore Stone located by LASD
Sheriff's Station assists in search for burglary suspect


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WATERHEN (RAN), 30th June 1941, Eastern Mediterranean off Bardia, east Libya (32.15N, 25.20E) - by German divebombers on the 29th June. With Inshore Squadron carrying supplies on the 'Tobruk Run' to the besieged town. Damaged evening of the 29th, capsized early on the 30th; there were no casualties (North African Campaign).
WESSEX (Lt Cdr W A R Cartwright), 24th May 1940, Western Europe off Calais, northern France in English Channel - by German bombers. Supporting British land forces in the defence of Calais; 6 crew lost (German invasion of France).
WHITLEY (Lt Cdr G N Rolfe), 19th May 1940, Western Europe, between Nieuport and Ostend, Belgium - damaged by German bombers and beached. Supporting Allied land forces including blocking ports and lifting off refugees; 4 crew lost (German invasion of Holland and Belgium).
BLANCHE (Lt Cdr R M Aubrey), 13th November 1939, Western Europe in Thames Estuary, SE England - by German destroyer-laid mines. Escorting minelayer 'Adventure' (also mined) from Grimsby to Portsmouth. Mined one mile 80° from NE Spit Buoy, sank two hours later; two crew lost.
HARDY (leader) (Capt B A W Warburton-Lee+, awarded posthumous VC) and HUNTER (Lt Cdr L de Villers+), both 10th April 1940, Western Europe, off Narvik, northern Norway in Ofotfiord - by German destroyer gunfire and torpedoes. Attacking troop transports and destroyers during the German invasion of Norway. 'Hardy' lost 19 crew killed in action including the CO and 'Hunter' lost 103 (First Battle of Narvik - Norwegian Campaign).
INGLEFIELD (leader) (Cdr C F H Churchill), 25th February 1944, Central Mediterranean, off Anzio beachhead, western Italy (41.26N, 12.36E) - by German aircraft-launched, Hs.293 glider bomb. With cover force; 35 crew lost, 157 saved (Battle for Anzio - Italian Campaign).
MOHAWK (Cdr John Eaton), 16th April 1941, Central Mediterranean, off Kerkennah Island, eastern Tunisia – torpedoed by Italian destroyer 'Tarigo'. With three other destroyers in attack on five ship Italian convoy. All five ships and three escorts, including 'Tarigo' sunk. Finally scuttled by gunfire from 'Janus'; 41 crew lost, 161 survivors (Action off Sfax - North African Campaign).
JUNO (Cdr St J R J Tyrwhitt), 21st May 1941, Eastern Mediterranean, off SE Crete (34.35N, 26.34E) - by German bombers. In action with Mediterranean Fleet against the German sea-borne invasion of Crete. Hit by three bombs, sank in two minutes; 128 crew lost, 97 survivors (Battle for Crete).
JUPITER (Lt Cdr N V J T Thew), 27th February 1942, East Indies, off north Java coast in Java Sea (c06.45S, 112.00E) - by mines, probably Dutch. With Australian/British/Dutch/American (ABDA) cruiser force in action; 96 crew lost, 47 taken prisoner of whom 27 died in captivity (Battle of the Java Sea - Japanese Invasion of Java).
NESTOR (RAN) (Cdr A S Rosenthal RAN), scuttled 16th June 1942, Eastern Mediterranean, south of Crete (33.36N, 24.27E) – hit by German Ju.87 divebombers on 15th. With cover force for Alexandria/Malta convoy 'Vigorous'; four crew lost (Malta Convoys).
CAMERON, damaged 5th December 1940, Western Europe, at Portsmouth, southern England - by German bombers. In dry-dock for refit; 14 crew killed. Reduced to experimental ship for hull stress testing.
ROCKINGHAM (Lt Cdr J C Cooper RNVR), 27th September 1944, Western Europe, 30 miles SE of Aberdeen, Scotland in North Sea (56.29N, 00.57W) – believed British mine. Target ship for aircraft training, mined in 56.47N, 01.30W, taken in tow and sank; one rating killed.


Humana exceeded expectations this past quarter, as the insurer reported $901 million in earnings in the third quarter of 2018 and $1.63 billion since the start of 2018.
Earnings per share for the third quarter was at $4.65 and 9.58 in 2018 to-date.
Also, the health insurer touted its focus on preventing and addressing the social determinants of health through smart use of analytics and coordinating with clinicians.
Humana's analytics department has largely supervised its medication reconciliation work, using technology to catch discrepancies that, in turn, prevent adverse responses to drugs and hospital readmissions. CEO Bruce Broussard said the program alone had generated "significant" savings.
In August, Humana announced plans to open a digital health and analytics center in Boston called Studio H.
Humana also introduced social determinant strategies like these to the patients it serves through Kindred at Home, the home health provider it acquired in July, Broussard mentioned.
Addressing the problems members face outside of the hospital or doctor's office is vital to improving their health and, ultimately, reducing medical costs, Broussard said.


text:
Partial Solar Eclipse 13th July
A partial solar eclipse will take place today, 13th July, 2018, but will only be visible in extreme southern Australia and Antarctica.
The event begins at 01:48 UTC and ends at 04:14 UTC. The moment of greatest eclipse will take place at about 03:00 UTC, almost 5 hours before the Moon reaches perigee. The Sun will be in the constellation of Gemini.
Partial coverage of the Sun will be visible in parts of southern Australia, such as:
Melbourne, Victoria (maximum magnitude of 0.022558);
Geelong, Victoria (maximum magnitude of 0.031923);
Mount Gambier, South Australia (maximum magnitude of 0.045189);
Hobart, Tasmania (maximum magnitude 0.094527);
Launceston, Tasmania (maximum magnitude 0.072570).
The eclipse will also be visible in Stewart Island in the far south of New Zealand.
This eclipse belongs to Saros 117 and is number 69 of 71 eclipses in the series.
All eclipses in this series occur at the Moon's ascending node.
The Moon moves southward with respect to the node with each succeeding eclipse in the series and gamma decreases.
This is a very deep partial eclipse. It has an eclipse magnitude of 0.3365, while Gamma has a value of -1.3542.
Credit for Image at Top of Page: yisris
Sources: https://watchers.news/2018/07/12/partial-solar-eclipse-of-july-13-2018/


text:
List of Comedians
Comedians by State
Alabama Alaska Arkansas Arizona California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Iowa Idaho Illinois Indiana Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Massachusetts Maine Maryland Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Virginia Vermont Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming
Christian Comedians on YouTube Christian Comedians on Facebook Christian Comedians on Twitter Dry Bar Comedy Comedians List
Christian Comedians in Sioux Falls
List of Christian comedians in Sioux Falls, SD for your next meeting or event near the Sioux Falls, South Dakota area.
Comedians for Hire:
Larry Weaver
100% clean stand-up comedy with a positive message! Larry's humor is highly professional, culturally sensitive, and hilariously funny. After majoring in accounting, Larry left his CPA dreams behind to pursue his dream of making people laugh. As heard on SIRIUS XM Blue Collar Radio and Laugh USA, Larry's show includes tales of growing up in the country, home remedies, family gatherings, marriage, traveling, trying to eat right, and more.
More About Larry Weaver
Rik Roberts
Dynamic comedy show funny enough to headline comedy clubs across the country and clean enough to bring your grandkids or grandparents to see. It's family-friendly and full of fun, easy to relate to material.
More About Rik Roberts
Andy Beningo
Performing his clean, clever "every-man" style of material, Andy explores the joys of parenting, raising pets, and struggling to survive in his hilarious, relatable routines. His ability to find humor in subjects like growing up the middle child, his short lived career as a middle school teacher, and our society's obsession with technology has made him a crowd favorite nationwide.
More About Andy Beningo
David Ferrell
100% clean stand-up comedy show suitable for all ages and backgrounds. Plus, David is happy to customize his performance with jokes about your company or organization.
More About David Ferrell
Arthur Atsma
Arthur delivers skill-based, fast-moving, intriguing, and astonishing sleight-of-hand magic and mentalism. His comedy magic show is packed with feats of the impossible, audience participation, smart humor, and tricks no others perform. It is a positive, inspiring, and unforgettable experience.
More About Arthur Atsma
Leslie Norris Townsend
100% clean stand-up comedy, music and audience participation. Leslie can move audiences from tears to laughter while motivating, mesmerizing and captivating each one.
More About Leslie Norris Townsend
Recent Reviews from Sioux Falls
Andy Beningo - Christian Comedian in Sioux Falls, SD
"Andy was great, we really enjoyed having him here! Thanks for recommending him."
Office Adminstrator, Volunteer Appreciation
Arthur Atsma - Christian Comedian in Watertown, SD
"Outstanding performer!!! Would highly recommend Arthur to any and all organizations, especially faith based ones that welcome the gospel message. Arthur had a wonderful, family friendly performance!!"
Administrator, Fall Jubilee Fundraiser
Lyndy Phillips - Christian Comedian in Mitchell, SD
"Lyndy was unbelievable. I have all ready recommended him to two other organizations. We could not have been happier. Thank You!"
Development Director, Fall Banquet
David Ferrell - Christian Comedian in Watertown, SD
"Thank you so much to David Ferrell for providing great entertainment for our event. We were very pleased and had great feedback! I look forward to working with you again in the future!"
School Board President, Fundraiser
John Felts - Christian Comedian in Aberdeen, SD
"We had such a great event with John Felts. We spoke prior to his arrival and the morning of our event. He arrived early and was very professional and personable. His material was so relevant to our community and church. He covered a variety of subjects which all brought laughter from a wide age range. This was our church's first experience with a comedian. One of our pastors was a bit hesitant but shortly after John's performance he talked about having John back. I cannot say enough good things about John. He stayed a while afterwards and visited with several people. They really enjoyed him. Thank you so much for suggesting John. He was a hit. We will definitely recommend you both."
Secretary / Treasurer, Appeal Event
A few of the towns our nationally-touring keynote speakers have performed in include: Aberdeen, Brookings, Clear Lake, De Smet, Deadwood, Flandreau, Milbank, Mitchell, Pierre, Sioux Falls, Watertown, and others.
Request a Comedian for Your Event!