■ Proverbs
25:27 gets a little weird with the dietary/thinking advice:
27 It is not good to eat too much honey,
nor is it honorable to search out matters that are too deep.
Or maybe this is what
Wittgenstein
was talking about when he wrote "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof
one must be silent."
[He wasn't the Nazi, was he? No, that was
Heidegger.]
■ @kevinNR writes From
Americans to Americans. (Although the URL indicates a more
pedestrian title, like "A Second Civil War is a Dumb Idea".)
This is a dangerous moment in our history, about which we ought to be honest. President Donald Trump is an irresponsible demagogue who ought never have been elected to the office he holds — but he was, legitimately, fair and square, your favorite Muscovite conspiracy theory notwithstanding. That being said, the actual immediate problem of political violence in the United States is overwhelmingly and particularly a problem belonging to the Left. This is not a “both sides do it” issue: Paul Krugman can speak on any college campus in this country without enduring mob violence and organized terrorism — Charles Murray cannot. There is not anything on the right like the mass terrorism behind the Seattle riots of 1999 or the black-bloc riots of the day before yesterday. The Democratic party, progressive organizations, and college administrations have some serious political and intellectual housekeeping to do here — but, instead, they are in the main refusing to acknowledge that they have a problem. The line between “Punch a Nazi!” and “Assassinate a Republican congressman!” is morally perforated.
A lot of wisdom therein, and a touching tale of our first, last, and
only Civil War.
■ Charles C. W. Cooke Everything
Wrong with Our Gun Debate In One Tweet. And here's the tweet:
This in response to a reported comment from a GOP rep: “After today I wonder whether or not I will ever feel safe going to a baseball field.”
Charles comments insightfully.
I’m sure its author is sincere and means well. Nevertheless, this
line represents everything I hate about our debate over gun policy.
It’s mawkish, it begs the question, and it smugly assumes that the
disagreements over guns are the result of a lack of empathy or
experience rather than of conflicting views on the best way to shape
law.
It's all about feelings for some people. And it's a short trip from
"You disagree with me" to "You are a terrible person because you
must not share my feelings."
■ Can humans expect AI to just fight fake news for them? Find out
the answer to that pressing question from Tom Simonite at
Wired: Humans
Can’t Expect AI to Just Fight Fake News for Them. The (so far
meager) results of
a competition for a fake-news-detecting algorithm, the "Fake News
Challenge" are described.
You can expect Fake News Challenge contestants and others to
gradually ask more of their news-analyzing algorithms, but don't
hold your breath for fully autonomous fact checkers. Existing
technology isn't close to having the ability to understand language
and make decisions that would be needed. Giving machines to
effectively censor certain kinds of information would also come with
a lot of baggage. "I think there’s a chance to algorithmically
identify things that are more likely than not to be 'fake news,' but
they will always work best in combination with a person with a sharp
eye," says Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University.
Rosen also makes the subtle point: "There is almost no interest in
the demand for fake news." Gee, why not?
■ We are all outraged by this (I'm picking Jim Treacher, but I could
have picked many others): The
NYT Is Straight-Up Lying About Sarah Palin And Gabby Giffords.
Specifically, going out of its way to blame Palin's "incitement" for the
shooting of Giffords and others. That was clearly refuted back then,
but that didn't stop yesterday's NYT editorial from
resurrecting the libel.
I don’t believe that the New York Times editorial board believes this. They know it’s not true. They’re lying, because they think the lie is necessary. In order to maintain the fiction that they’re the good guys, they need to twist this around and blame the people who are being physically attacked for their beliefs. As Ben Shapiro puts it: “The facts don’t match the narrative, so the facts must die a gruesome, slow death.”
I'm so old, I can't remember when I expected honesty or decency from the New
York Times editorial board.
■ The WaPo covers the important story: The
surprising number of American adults who think chocolate milk comes
from brown cows.
Seven percent of all American adults believe that chocolate milk
comes from brown cows, according to a nationally representative
online survey commissioned by the Innovation Center of U.S. Dairy.
Well… Professor
Althouse
puts my reaction well:
There's nothing dumber than forgetting that other people might have a sense of humor and are screwing with you.
Let's all try to remember that.
■ Speaking of the important questions: How
long was Bill Murray's character (Phil Davis) supposed to be in a
time loop in the film “Groundhog Day”? This is at the "Science
Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange", a "question and answer site
for science fiction and fantasy enthusiasts" The neat thing about
this q-and-a thread is that it includes responses from the movie's
director, the late Harold Ramis, and the screenwriter Danny Rubin.
Spoiler: Rubin had a clever mechanism (and wrote some dialog) to let viewers know how many loop
iterations Phil had been through, but it was dropped from the actual
movie.