333,333,333
This is a repost from 2017. The current US Population is 336,438,002. … U.S. and World Population Clock gives an estimate of the population for the United States, and the World. On April 26,2017, at 13:41:31 UTC, an estimated 324,935,042 people lived in the United States (50 states, and District of Columbia.) The World population is 7,386,876,180.
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the time standard used here. UTC is similar to Greenwich Mean Time. “The reference line or starting point, the Prime Meridian, was determined to be the transit circle at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London.” UTC is four hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time. The population reading above was at 9:41:31 EDT.
The question for today is: When will the US population hit 333,333,333? Here are some hints: “Components of Population Change: One birth every 8 seconds, One death every 11 seconds, One international migrant (net) every 32 seconds, Net gain of one person every 15 seconds.”
The target population, 333,333,333, is 8,398,291 more than the current population of 324,935,042. Assuming a net gain of 5,760 per day, (one every 15 seconds, 4 per minute, 1440 minutes a day) we will hit the target number in 1458 days. 5,760×1,458=8,398,080, 211 less than the target.
Friday, April 23, 2021 is 1,458 days in the future. 211/4 is 52.75. This gives us a time of 14:34:16 UTC, or 10:34:16 AM EDT. At this time, the population of the United States will be 333,333,333.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Esther Bubley took the pictures in September, 1943. “A Greyhound bus trip from Louisville, Kentucky, to Memphis, Tennessee, and the terminals.”
#Tennessee3
#Tennessee3 has nothing to do with Johnny Cash And The Tennessee Three. One is a trending topic today. NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) “In an extraordinary act of political retaliation, Tennessee Republicans on Thursday expelled two Democratic lawmakers from the state Legislature for their role in a protest calling for more gun control in the aftermath of a deadly school shooting in Nashville. A third Democrat was narrowly spared by a one-vote margin. The split votes drew accusations of racism, with lawmakers ousting Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, who are both Black, while Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is white, survived the vote on her expulsion. Republican leadership denied that race was a factor, however. … “
You have to go down nine paragraphs to find out what the #Tennessee3 did. “Jones, Pearson and Johnson joined in protesting last week as hundreds of demonstrators packed the Capitol to call for passage of gun-control measures. As the protesters filled galleries, the three approached the front of the House chamber with a bullhorn and participated in a chant.”
In a bit of blogger synchronicity, chamblee54 reposted a story from 2021 about Democratic bad behavior in Georgia. In 2018 and 2021, Democratic legislators were arrested for disturbing the peace inside the state capitol. In both cases, the charges were quickly dropped, and Democrats cheered the bad behavior. One of the arrested legislators, Nikema Williams, was elected to the U.S. Congress. Few people seem to be concerned about the effect of this nonsense on the lawmaking process.
Getting back to the #Tennessee3, you have to dig a bit to find any details about the incident. Finally, this turned up: “Three Democratic lawmakers on Thursday led an impromptu rally in the midst of the morning session as hundreds protested against gun violence outside the door three days after a mass shooting at The Covenant School. Chaos erupted around 10:50 a.m. as the House voted on a bill dealing with expansion of the state’s education savings account program when Rep. Justin Jones complained aloud to Speaker Cameron Sexton that his voting machine was turned off. Sexton told Jones he was out of order, then called a five-minute recess. As Republican leaders huddled at Sexton’s dais, Jones of Nashville and Reps. Justin J. Pearson of Memphis and Gloria Johnson of Knoxville went to the podium armed with a megaphone, leading chants such as “Gun control now!” with people in the balcony seating areas.”
The popular response seems to be praise for the bullhorn-toting lawmakers, along with the traditional cries of racism. Nobody seems to worry that we do not seem to be capable of civil lawmaking. Is this how lawmakers will handle disagreements … cheer on disruptive visitors in the gallery, with a bullhorn? One wonders whether the #Tennessee3 will get bills passed into law, or if they are content to cause “good trouble.”
While doing research for this piece, I found a state website page for Rep. Gloria Johnson. I decided to look for Rep. Pearson and Rep. Jones. The state has already deleted the expelled two from the State House directory. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress
Why did the cow cross the road?
Why did the cow cross the road? The chicken was on vacation.
Knock knock. who’s there? boo. boo who?. Don’t cry it’s only a joke…
It’s six of one, half a dozen of the other.
A man walks up to a horse and says, “Why the long face?”
Two pretzels were walking down the street. one was a salted.
“He who laughs last thinks slowest.”
“Raise your hand if you’re here.”
Two nuns walk into a bar; the third one ducks.
Q: What did the radio say when it was dropped? A: “Ow. That hertz.”
What did the ranch say to the refrigerator door? “Close the door, I’m dressing”
Why don’t blind people skydive? It scares the heck out of their dogs…
What did the fish say when it ran into a wall? dam.
“I see.” said the blind man as he peed into the wind… “It’s all coming back to me now.”
What’s the last thing to go through a bug’s mind when it hits the windshield? Its butt.
You can tuna guitar, but you can’t tuna fish.
What do a duck and a bicycle have in common? They both have wheels… except the duck.
What’s brown and sounds like a bell? DUNGGGGG.
What’s brown and sticky? A stick
When people ask the mortician what he does for a living, he says he is a “boxer”.
What did the shy pebble say?… I wish I was a little boulder! .
What do you call an arrogant criminal falling out of a tower? Condescending.
Two guys walk into a bar… you would think the second guy woulda ducked.
A woman walks into a bar holding a duck. Bartender says, “What’s with the pig?”
Woman says, “It’s a duck.” Bartender says, “I was talking to the duck.”
Why do flamingos always lift one leg when they’re standing?
Cause if they lifted both, they’d fall over!
Q: How many Surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: To get to the other side.
Did you get a haircut? Actually, I got them all cut.
One mushroom said to another mushroom, “Hey – you’re one Fungi!”
What do you call an arrogant criminal falling out of a tower? Condescending.
A dyslexic man walked into a bra …
Q: What do you call a midget, psychic, prison escapee? A: A small medium at-large.
A mule walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey, buddy, why the long face?”
“Because my dad is a jackass.”
I have one about the roof but its over your head.
Shall I tell you the one about the skunk? Never mind, it stinks!
There’s nothing like a good joke… and that was nothing like a good joke.
A rabbi, nun, lawyer, mime, and horse all walk into a bar.
The bartender says, “What is this, some kind of joke?”
When’s the best time to eat reindeer meat? …. When you’re hungry.
These stories are borrowed from 22 words. Pictures are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. This is a repost.
Manley Pointer
Good Country People is a Flannery O’Connor story. Manley Pointer is a Bible salesman in rural Georgia. He calls on the Hopewell family. Manley doesn’t sell any Bibles, but he does get a date with Hulga Hopewell. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
“O’Connor portrays a one-legged, unemployed female with a Ph.D. in philosophy, who has nothing to do but stay at home and irritate her mother. When a Bible salesman, Manley Pointer, … arrives at the Hopewell house, Joy, who has changed her name to Hulga, much to the annoyance of her mother, joins her new friend in an excursion to a nearby barn, complete with a romantic hayloft.” source
The first few minutes of the Hulga-Manley date are special. “Smiling, he lifted his hat which was new and wide-brimmed. He had not worn it yesterday and she wondered if he had bought it for the occasion. It was toast-colored with a red and white band around it and was slightly too large for him. He stepped from behind the bush still carrying the black valise. He had on the same suit and the same yellow socks sucked down in his shoes from walking.”
“He crossed the highway and said, “I knew you’d come!” The girl wondered acidly how he had known this. She pointed to the valise and asked, “Why did you bring your Bibles?” He took her elbow, smiling down on her as if he could not stop. “You can never tell when you’ll need the word of God, Hulga,” he said. She had a moment in which she doubted that this was actually happening and then they began to climb the embankment. They went down into the pasture toward the woods. …”
“Wait,” he said. He leaned the other way and pulled the valise toward him and opened it. It had a pale blue spotted lining and there were only two Bibles in it. He took one of these out and opened the cover of it. It was hollow and contained a pocket flask of whiskey, a pack of cards, and a small blue box with printing on it. He laid these out in front of her one at a time in an evenly-spaced row, like one presenting offerings at the shrine of a goddess. He put the blue box in her hand. THIS PRODUCT TO BE USED ONLY FOR THE PREVENTION OF DISEASE, she read, and dropped it. The boy was unscrewing the top of the flask. He stopped and pointed, with a smile, to the deck of cards. It was not an ordinary deck but one with an obscene picture on the back of each card. “Take a swig,” he said, offering her the bottle first. He held it in front of her, but like one mesmerized, she did not move.” …
“Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman, who were in the back pasture, digging up onions, saw him emerge a little later from the woods and head across the meadow toward the highway. “Why, that looks like that nice dull young man that tried to sell me a Bible yesterday,” Mrs. Hopewell said, squinting. “He must have been selling them to the Negroes back in there. He was so simple,” she said, “but I guess the world would be better off if we were all that simple.” source (This is the only time Black people are mentioned in “Good Country People.”)
Erik Langkjær is the possible inspiration for Manley Pointer. A Russian-Danish young man, Mr. Langkjær worked as a textbook salesman. “Klaus Rothstein, a literary critic and commentator for the national Danish newspaper Weekendavisen” got Mr. Langkjær to tell his story.
“I searched for a job in publishing, in the hope that I would be hired as an editor. I did get a job, but it was as a sales representative in the South. During these travels, I met a professor at the University of Georgia. She suggested that I pay a visit to a local woman who had had her first book published by Harcourt, Brace & Company, where I was now a sales agent in the education branch. The professor believed that this author would enjoy meeting me because of her affiliation with the publishing firm. Weakened as she was by her disease, lupus, she wasn’t in contact with many people, so it would be nice to receive a visit from outside. A few years back, her father had died from the same disease, but the doctors had told her not to worry. …”
“Flannery and I quickly became friends. I made an effort to plan my sales route in a way that made it possible for me to visit her every two or three weeks. I would arrive in my own car, and then suggest going for a ride in the surrounding countryside. She was always up for it. We talked about our family backgrounds, and she was excited to hear about my mother’s Russian heritage and my father’s career as a consul general … Flannery herself was a devout Catholic, highly conscious of living in the Protestant South. She considered it a great challenge to be surrounded by Protestants, and to belong to a minority. She had a church to go to on Sundays, but she was aware of the growing secularism, which she considered a threat.”
“I was not really in love; I simply enjoyed the company of women during my lonely travels in the South. Although Flannery was both conventional and religious, we eventually became so close that she, while the car was parked, allowed me to kiss her. At that moment, her disease revealed itself in a new way: there was no strength in her lips. I hit her teeth with my kiss, and since then I’ve thought of it as a kiss of death. …
“I visited her twelve to fourteen times, and later we started exchanging letters. As I returned to Denmark to settle down, she wrote that she would like to hear more from me, and her first letter from June 1954 ends with a reference to our drives around Milledgeville: . . . I haven’t seen any dirt roads since you left and I miss you. I think Flannery was hoping for it to be the two of us. Between April 1953 and June 1954, when my visits were frequent, there was indeed enough contact between us for her to envisage something more. Her letters might also contain a certain disappointment in the fact that the contact wasn’t as strong on my part. …”
“When I later read one of Flannery’s short stories, ‘Good Country People,’ I noticed that the main character was a travelling Bible salesman. I didn’t sell bibles, but I used to call my binder with the records of the publishing firm ‘my bible.’ Also, the salesman in the story is named Manley Pointer, which has an obvious erotic connotation.”source
Miss O’Connor wrote Mr. Langkjær many times. 13 June 54 “My mother has just attended a dairy festival in Eatonton. The governor attended and Miss America. All the cows were in rope stalls around the Courthouse and Miss America, very sunburned, my mother said and in a white strapless evening dress (11 A. M.) had to pick her way among them and admire each one while she kept the tail of the dress out of the little piles of manure. She also had to kiss a calf. Universal suffering.” 18 July 54 “Everything here is busy electing the Governor. There are 9 candidates and the ones I have heard over the radio all sound like hound dogs that have learned to declaim. They are all but one running on keep-segregation platforms and everything is geared to the boys who sit in front of the wooden stores and tell you not to run into a street car down there. (On acct. of the rotten borough system their vote is worth three or four of a city vote.”) source
“Flannery first met Erik in April 1953, she was clearly taken with him and relished their time together, especially their drives through Baldwin County in his car. When he decided to break off their friendship and return to Europe a little over a year later, O’Connor, then using a cane, felt betrayed, as revealed in their short-lived correspondence. In early 1955, O’Connor took only four days to write this story; her intense feelings about Langkjær quickly found their outlet.”source
“Unfortunately, while she may have had romantic feelings towards him, they were not reciprocated. This was especially noticeable after he returned to Denmark in 1954. Flannery would write to him, and it would be weeks before she would hear back. … Eventually, she received a letter from him stating that he had met another woman and they were intending to get married. Flannery was devastated. However, instead of wallowing in her grief she threw herself into her art, writing one of her best short stories, “Good Country People.” Shortly after this story came out, Langkjær wrote Flannery and said that he recognized himself in the character of the salesman, Manley Pointer. Flannery responded with the epistolary equivalent of Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain, telling him in essence not to flatter himself so.” source
29 April 56 “I am highly taken with the thought of your seeing yourself as the Bible salesman. Dear boy, remove this delusion from your head at once. And if you think the story is also my spiritual autobiography, remove that one too. As a matter of fact, I wrote that one not too long after your departure and wanted to send you a copy but decided that the better part of tact would be to desist. Your contribution to it was largely in the matter of properties. Never let it be said that I don’t make the most of experience and information, no matter how meager. But as to the main pattern of that story, it is one of deceit which is something I certainly never connect with you. In my modest way, I think it’s a wonderful story. I read it over and over and nobody enjoys it as much as I do—which is more or less the case with all my productions.”source
Monetizing Andrew Sullivan
This is a repost from 2018. How Trump and identity politics reinforce each other is a recent presentation of Blogginheads.tv. It is hosted by Robert Wright, and guested by Andrew Sullivan. @sullydish, as twitter affectionately calls him, was a pioneer blogger. In those days a weblog was considered a “vanity website.”
The Dish was shuttered a few years ago, and Mr. Sullivan continues to be a thorn in the side of polite society. Towards the end of this show, he said he was “just being a contrarian,” to which Mr. Wright replied “it’s a living.” There were a few other zesty quotes in this show, some of which can lead to unsolicited blogger commentary.
Mr. Sullivan does not appreciate talk of an LBGT community. For one thing, it is structurally impossible to be more than one, or two, of those initials at one time. This segment goes into being defined by your oppressors, and the difference between gay and trans. A young boy who likes to wear dresses may be pigeonholed as trans, when he would otherwise evolve into gay. While some enjoy these semantics, PG tends to find the whole thing tiresome.
“I’m an exception, because I think about this a lot.” Actually, if you think at all, you are an exception. When consuming social media content, you quickly learn that “The advantages of extremism are great, and the advantages of moderation are very small.”
Mr. Sullivan recently penned an article about opiates. In a Bob Wright moment, there was a comparison of meditation with opiate use. Mr. Sullivan replies with a few remarks about fenatnyl. Apparently, fenatyl boosted heroin is killing 60,000 people a year.
Talk about fenatyl tnds to go over PG’s head. After years of being lied to about drugs, this is to be expected. In the current situation, with thousands of fresh od’s every month, the loudest voices PG hears are people saying that when black people had a crack problem, nobody cared. Now that white people are dying from opioid use, people are getting concerned. This is just another example of the faulty logic running rampant on anti-social media. (The spell check suggestion for fenatyl is fealty.)
“The ability to say things that are stupid and wrong is essential to the advancement of knowledge.” Eventually the time ran out, though not before Mr. Wright was reminded of some of his former articles. It was Mr. Sullivan who defended saying things wrong, stupid, and republican. Some unkind people would say he has had practice.
The Library of Congress supplies the pictures for today’s frolic. “Group singing hymns at the opening of the Sunday school. While there are no churches on the project there are five or six in the area close by. This one is just off the project and is attended by many project members. Dailey, West Virginia” Arthur Rothstein took the pictures in December, 1941.
Anita Aretha and Elton
In the early nineties, PG had too much free time. On March 25 of one year, he looked in the fishwrapper, and found a list of famous people with birthdays.
There was an unlikely trio celebrating that day. This would be (in order of appearance) Anita Bryant (1940), Aretha Franklin (1942), and Elton John (1947). All three have been paid for singing. The three have a total of five husbands, with Miss Bryant and Mr. John currently attached (Not to each other). Miss Franklin has good taste in hats.
Several other people have arrived on planet earth on March 25. They include , in 1911, Jack Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald (d. 1967) (They don’t say alleged when it was on live TV). 1918 produced Howard Cosell, American sports reporter (d. 1995). Flannery O’Connor (d. 1964) arrived in 1925. 1934 gave us Gloria Steinem. To make room for all this talent, Buck Owens died March 25, 2006. On August 16, 2018, Aretha Franklin was heaven bound.
March 25 is after the spring equinox, and has been Easter. A few noteworthy events have gone down on this day. In 1894, Coxey’s Army departed Massillon, Ohio for Washington D.C. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 garment workers in New York City. In 1939 Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli becomes Pope Pius XII, to the delight of Adolph Hitler. 1955 saw the United States Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” as obscene. In 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel.
HT and applause to wikipedia. This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Andrew Gillum
This is a repost from 2020. In recent news, “Ben Crump is crowdfunding for … Andrew Gillum’s legal defense. Gillum is facing charges of lying to the FBI and wire fraud in a campaign finance scheme.” … The first hints of a delicious scandal were on twitter. @RealCandaceO “Removing one page of report that had @AndrewGillum’s personal address listed which was wasn’t my intent— but YES— BREAKING: Democrat Andrew Gillum was involved in a crystal meth overdose incident last night in a Miami hotel. Orgy suspected, but unconfirmed.” 10:17 AM · Mar 13, 2020 The tweet had copies of a police report, featuring the prominent Florida Democrat.
At first, PG was leery. No corporate media outlets were reporting the story. It could have been another Andrew Gillum. The police report may have been counterfeit. PG started to google “Andrew Gillum” and “Dow Jones.” One of those items had a very bad day Thursday, but made a comeback on Friday. For Mr. Gillum, things got much worse.
Andrew Gillum involved in suspected crystal meth incident in Miami Beach, police say March 13, 2020, 11:50 am The confirmation did not take long to arrive. The Local 10 report had a remarkable comment: “I was in Miami last night for a wedding celebration when first responders were called to assist one of my friends,” Gillum said in the statement. “While I had too much to drink, I want to be clear that I have never used methamphetamines. I apologize to the people of Florida for the distraction this has caused our movement. I’m thankful to the incredible Miami Beach EMS team for their efforts. I will spend the next few weeks with my family and appreciate privacy during this time.”
Right now, we are in a world of trouble. We are facing a nation kept in solitary confinement. We don’t know how long this communal isolation will last, or what impact it will have on the spread of COVID-19. The sociological impact of keeping 333 million amped up hotheads inside, indefinitely, is horrifying. What is seriously needed now is a delicious sex scandal, to give a healing nation something to tut tut over. Once again, Florida Man™ delivers.
For those who just arrived, here is the story. “Miami Beach Fire Rescue crews were called to a hotel at 1100 West Avenue shortly before 1 a.m. regarding a suspected drug overdose. … Aldo Mejias, 56, told officers that he gave Travis Dyson, 30, his credit card information to rent a hotel room for the night. … Mejias arrived at the room later that night, at which time he found Dyson and Gillum inside the hotel room, appearing to be under the influence of an unknown substance. … Dyson opened the hotel room door and then immediately walked to the bed and collapsed in a prone position. … According to the police report, officers who responded to the hotel tried to speak with Gillum but he was too inebriated. … officers found three small clear bags inside the hotel room containing suspected crystal meth. … Gillum left the hotel room and “returned to his residence without incident.”
There were more developments. Travis Dyson is a piece of work. His now-private instagram account looks like something you would see from a Miami entrepreneur (NSFW). There is a chummy picture of Mr. Dyson, Mr. Gillum, and a third man.
@jessicalipscomb “Just spoke with Travis Dyson, a friend of @AndrewGillum who was in the hotel room last night. He says Gillum did not mention anything about a wedding.” Mr. Dyson spoke to a virus happy Miami web newspaper. “I personally was not celebrating a wedding. I don’t know if [Gillum] was in town for a wedding. He did not mention that.” Dyson said he has known Gillum since around last spring. “We’ve been friends for a while,” Dyson said. He then went silent on the phone and did not answer subsequent calls from New Times.” So much for discretion.
@AndrewGillum “I heard @realDonaldTrump ran home to @FoxNews to lie about me. But as my grandmother told me — never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it. So ignore him and vote, Florida!” 11:18 PM · Oct 29, 2018 As @realDonaldTrump should know, tweets are forever. Someone should explain this to the people tweeting to Mr. Gillum’s defense.
@cenkuygur “The @AndrewGillum headlines are very misleading. He was not in a seedy motel by himself. He was at high-end hotel with friends for a wedding. They were all intoxicated, as everyone in weddings are. Even if there was meth, it was on the floor. There were at least 3 people in room.”
@cmclymer “Let me see if I understand this correctly: conservative commentators are on here this morning attacking Andrew Gillum, who is not in office, over an alleged incident but NOT attacking Trump for intentionally enabling one of the worst catastrophes in modern U.S. history.”
@hshaban “a Florida friend suggested that Andrew Gillum is going to be tarnished by this, despite not being arrested or accused of any wrongdoing, in a way that is somehow worse than the sitting governor of Virginia, who was discovered to have worn blackface”
@Jasmyne “What’s interesting about this story is that this same publication called Gemmel Moore a prostitute when he was found dead at #EdBuck’s. But 30 y/o white Travis Dyson is a “male escort.” Interesting. That right there is the bias we’re always talking about in how the media reports.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Anthony Stephen Fauci
This is a repost from 2020. @maggieNYT “White House officials say they’ve given Fauci a lot of room to do interviews amid concerns he was being muted. But they question some of the interviews he’s given and how he has so much time for them.” Anthony Fauci has been in the hot seat before. In the eighties, he was blamed for not stopping AIDS. Now, Dr. Fauci is seen as a voice of reason.
“Anthony Stephen Fauci was born in New York City on Christmas Eve 1940, the second of Stephen and Eugenia Fauci’s two children. … Fauci has spent his entire professional career at the National Institutes of Health. He started as a clinical associate in the Laboratory of Clinical Investigation at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in 1968, after a two-year residency at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. By 1974, he was head of the clinical physiology section of the lab. In 1980, he became chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation (a position he still holds) and since 1984, he has been the director of NIAID.”
Things began to change in 1981. The “aha” moment was- it was the early summer of 1981. The CDC … puts out the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report … reported on their June 5, 1981 MMWR five men from Los Angeles who presented with a very unusual kind of pneumonia that you only see in people who have dramatically-suppressed immune systems. And I looked at it and said, “Wow, five gay men.” Why all gay men, and why this strange disease that you almost never see in healthy people? And they were supposedly completely healthy other than that. I thought it was a fluke.”
“And then one month later, on the July 4th of 1981, the next MMWR appeared … “Now 26 men, not only from L.A., but from San Francisco and New York, with not only this strange pneumonia, but this strange kind of cancer that you only see in people who are immunosuppressed.” And the thing that blew me away is that all of them were gay men. And I said, “Whoa. Something is going on here that’s really bad, and this is likely a new disease.””
“And I made what I consider the transforming decision in my own career: I decided I was going to stop what I had been doing-rather successfully-for the previous nine or ten years and devote myself completely to studying what I felt would be an enormously difficult disease, and it, unfortunately, turned out that that was the case.”
Seven years later, after staggering amounts of deaths and suffering, Dr. Fauci was scheduled to appear at a conference in San Francisco. ACT-UP was there to greet him. “An Open Letter to Dr. Anthony Fauci” San Francisco Examiner, June 26, 1988 “Anthony Fauci, you are a murderer and should not be the guest of honor at any event that reflects on the past decade of the AIDS crisis. Your refusal to hear the screams of AIDS activists early in the crisis resulted in the deaths of thousands of Queers. … You can’t hide the fact that you are nothing but a despicable Reagan-era holdover and drug company mouthpiece. With 270,000 dead from AIDS and millions more infected with HIV, you should not be honored at a dinner. You should be put before a firing squad. … You are a pill-pushing pimp that cooperates with drug companies in forcing dangerous concoctions down the throats of a desperate community that is brainwashed into believing that taking a pill, any pill, will help them. … Ten years of hope? Fuck that. Try a decade of death and greed. Go back to Washington you bastard.”
“Carol Brown Moskowitz … recalls running into a group of leather-clad men, many of them body pierced and draped in chains, in Washington’s Omni Hotel, in the fall of 1988. … When she asked one of them who they were, he told her that they were members of “Act Up,” and that they were going out to make some noise at the FDA about the AIDS epidemic and the lack of funding for research. … Fauci asked the police and the FBI on the NIH campus not to make arrests. He also asked that a handful of the demonstration’s leaders be brought to his office.”
“That began a relationship over many years that allowed me to walk amongst them,” Fauci says. “It was really interesting; they let me into their camp. I went to the gay bath houses and spoke to them. I went to San Francisco, to the Castro District, and I discussed the problems they were having, the degree of suffering that was going on in the community, the need for them to get involved in clinical trials, since there were no other possibilities for them to get access to drugs.”
In 2005, Fauci appeared on C-SPAN. “The toughest decision you’ve ever had to make?””Well, one of the toughest decision-I had a few-was when I made a decision during the middle of the early years of the AIDS pandemic to bring the activist community into our deliberations, because most of the scientific community, including my own staff, were totally against that. They said the activists would be disruptive, that they would get in the way of what the scientific approach would be.”
One of those activists was the infamous Larry Kramer, who wrote the open letter seen above. This 1993 chat with Kramer gives you a small taste.
“Natalie Angier wrote in The New York Times in February of 1994: “And through it all, Dr. Fauci accepts the criticisms, and he accepts that someone must absorb the anger and terror that AIDS has spawned, so why not somebody of strong vertebrae who was raised on the streets of Bensonhurst? “I was on a C-SPAN program a couple of months ago with Tony, and I attacked him for the entire hour,” said Mr. Kramer. “He called me up afterwards and said he thought the program went very well. I said, ‘How can you say that? I did nothing but yell at you.’ He said, ‘You don’t realize that you can say things I can’t. It doesn’t mean I don’t agree with you.” … “Dr. Fauci claims he does not take the intermittent blasts personally. “That’s the activist mode,” he said. “When there’s a disagreement their tendency is to trash somebody. But I know that when Larry Kramer says the reason we’re all in so much trouble is because of Tony Fauci, he’s too smart to believe that.”
A few years later, the outlook started to improve. “We have drugs right now … In the early ’80s, if someone came in to my clinic with AIDS … half of them would be dead in eight months. Now, if …someone comes into a clinic who is 20-plus years old who is relatively recently infected, and I put them on the combination of three drugs … if you take your medicine regularly, you could live an additional 50-five zero-years.”
“Fauci is married to Christine Grady … “I met him (Fauci) here over the bed of a patient who happened to be from Brazil. I was called in as a translator … And so they said, ‘Could you come translate for Dr. Fauci?’ whom I had not met—the inimitable Dr. Fauci— everybody was afraid of. When he came in, I thought, ‘What are they so afraid of him for? He is not so scary.’”
As Fauci tells the story on C-SPAN: “She was just this very attractive young nurse, and I said, “Very interesting.” … I was single. So I went back to my office. About a few days later, I told the head nurse, “Could you tell that nurse, Ms. Grady, to come to my office. I want to talk to her.” … So she walked into my office completely petrified that she was in trouble, and she sat there looking very nervous. I couldn’t figure out why she was nervous. So I looked at her and said, “Well, you know, I didn’t realize you had come here until just last week.” I said, “Would you like to go out for dinner sometime?” She just fell right through the chair, and she said, “Of course, I will.” And we got married a year later.”
In today’s #metoo atmosphere, the director romancing a young nurse might not work as well. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Thanks to Holy Cross Magazine and C-SPAN
Equality vs. Equity
This is a repost from 2017. … Equality vs. Equity is a recent bit of internet wisdom. It shows three kids watching a baseball game, from behind the outfield fence. In the left side, all three kids are standing on one box each. The tallest sees over the fence, as does the kid in the middle. The shortest kid is behind the wall. This all-caps EQUALITY is the bad news side of the picture.
In the right side frame, the tallest kid has feet on the ground, and sees over the fence. The middle kid is the same. The shortest kid stands on two crates, and can see over the fence. This is EQUITY.
To be fair, the graphic does make a point. People have different needs. If everyone gets the same help, then some will get too much, and others not enough. Maybe this is what is meant by the semantic wrangling. For those who think equity has something to do with home mortgages, the dictionary does recognize the kids-behind-the-fence definition.
Not all logic memes are equal. While the image of kids behind the outfield fence might have worked in Our Gang features, today you would need a ticket to get to the standing room section. And how did that little kid get on top of those two crates? Someone would have to help them up. Falling off is a painful possibility. Maybe the graphic gremlins can think of a better way to make their point.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Fritz Henle took the pictures in November, 1942. “Nurse training. Through classes in pediatrics, student nurses learn how the right toys can be almost as important in getting a sick child well, as medicine and diet. Encouraging an interest in play and normal activities of childhood hastens convalescence.” The pictures were taken in New York.
Is Dennis Prager Dennis The Menace?
Why Are So Many Good Things Being Destroyed? is a recent offering from public nuisance Dennis Prager. It is a doozy. If you want to see the video, you can follow the link. Prager University (PU) has a transcript, and a study guide. The original concept of this post was to work with the study guide, and answer questions like “Why do you think that the Left destroyed the Boy Scouts?” Before we could get to those questions, there is an internet rumor to consider.
Did Dennis the Menace grow older, and become Dennis Prager? As some of you know, cartoonist Hank Ketcham really did have a son named Dennis. “The comic-strip Dennis was conceived … in 1950 … Alice Ketcham stormed into his studio, fuming “Your son is a menace!”
“But the years have not been as kind to Dennis, the cowlicked kid who innocently launched a cartoon empire. Now 46 (in 1993), he works as a tire retreader, living with his second wife, Janet, a part-time office cleaner, in a trailer park in Grove City, Ohio, just south of Columbus.
It is more than just geography and lifestyle, though, that distance father and son. For the past 28 years, they have barely seen each other and spoken only occasionally by phone. “I hear from Dennis about once a year, mostly when he needs money,” says Hank tersely. “I don’t want a closer relationship—nor do I want a confrontation.” “Dad can be like a stranger,” counters Dennis, who has never met his two half-siblings. …
” … Alice meanwhile … became an alcoholic. In 1959 she filed for divorce, and as her condition deteriorated, Dennis, then 12, was sent to a boarding school near Carmel. “I didn’t know what was going on,” says Dennis, “except that I felt Dad wanted me out of the way.” A few months after he left for school, his mother died from an accidental overdose of alcohol and barbiturates at the age of 41.”
“Shaken by his wife’s sudden death, Hank could not bring himself to break the news to Dennis over the phone. Nor could he even tell him in person—until shortly after Alice had been buried. “Mom had always been there when I needed her,” says Dennis. “I would have dealt with losing her a lot better had I been able to attend her funeral. …”
“…In 1966 he joined the Marines; during his subsequent year-long tour of duty in Vietnam, he says, “my grandmother and aunt sent me letters. But never Dad.” … Discharged in 1970, Dennis underwent three months of counseling for post-traumatic stress syndrome at a VA hospital and drifted through a succession of jobs—ranch hand, poultry-farm worker, prison guard.”
Meanwhile, Dennis Prager was born August 2, 1948 into an Orthodox Jewish family in New York City. Through various twists and turns, he became a radio star. Mr. Prager, known for hawkish military opinions, apparently did not serve in the United States military. This contrasts to Dennis Ketcham’s service in Vietnam. In all probability, Dennis Prager is not Dennis the Menace.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the pictures in April, 1941. Ironing. Family on relief. Chicago, Illinois WPA (Work Projects Administration) work on playground on southside of Chicago, Illinois This is a repost.
Google Searches And Black Mortality
This is a repost from 2015. PG was trolling twitter one day when an item caught his eye. @Flyswatter “There’s a correlation where racist Google searches and high black mortality rates occur.” The tweet linked to an article at HuffPo (the long winded sister of PoPo) with the disturbing title The Connection Between Racist Google Searches And Black Mortality Rates.
“A new study shows a chilling correlation between the number of racist Google searches in an area and the long-term mortality rates of the black people living there. … David Chae … an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, determined how racist a geographic area was by how frequently an epithet for African-Americans appeared in area Google searches. Internet searches are a good way of measuring societal attitudes, Chae said, because people don’t self-censor in their own homes. Areas with the most searches for the epithet “n*****” had the highest mortality rates among African-Americans, found the study, which Chae and seven coauthors published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. “
The article refers to a serious scientific study, Association between an Internet-Based Measure of Area Racism and Black Mortality. Some people with degrees broke the country into 192 Designated Marketing Areas. In the DMA where people performed more Google searches for the “n-word,” Black people were more likely to die.
“In this study, we investigated the utility of a previously developed Internet search-based proxy of area racism as a predictor of Black mortality rates. Area racism was the proportion of Google searches containing the “N-word” in 196 designated market areas (DMAs). Negative binomial regression models were specified taking into account individual age, sex, year of death, and Census region and adjusted to the 2000 US standard population to examine the association between area racism and Black mortality rates, which were derived from death certificates and mid-year population counts collated by the National Center for Health Statistics (2004–2009) DMAs characterized by a one standard deviation greater level of area racism were associated with an 8.2% increase in the all-cause Black mortality rate, equivalent to over 30,000 deaths annually.”
“This previously developed variable was calculated as the proportion of total Internet search queries containing the “N-word” (singular or plural) using Google from 2004–2007. More colloquial forms of the “N-word” (i.e., ending in “-a” or “-as”) were not included given prior analysis of top searches revealing that these versions were used in different contexts compared to searches of the term ending in “-er” or “-ers” … Area racism was standardized so that a one-unit increase in area racism indicates a one standard deviation higher proportion of Google searches containing the “N-word.””
The study was inspired by a New York Times article, How Racist Are We? Ask Google. In this study, areas where people googled the “er” version of the “n-word” were less likely to vote for Barack Obama. “(I did not include searches that included the word “n**ga” because these searches were mostly for rap lyrics.)” LANGUAGE ALERT Use caution when reading this article. It uses the “n-word,” using all six letters without any euphemizing symbols.
The study claims to have been peer reviewed. It does not indicate the race of the people making google searches for the “n-word that ends in er.” This search statistic, which is not broken down on the internet, is the only measure of “racism” that is used. The mortality statistics for mixed race, and non black POC are not mentioned. Media coverage of sporting event riots was not discussed.
Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Thrunombulax
@KateParkerSB “Hmm. Trying to combine epiphany and ignoramus here. Epiphoramus for the person and epiphorant for the phrase?”@chamblee54 “I googled epiphoramus. It apparently has never been typed into the internet. I did find this: epiphora.” Epihora is doctorspeak for watery eyes.
The search for epiphoramus led directly to Thrunombulax, a word PG has tossed about for years. It came from a Frank Zappa song, Cheepnis. “The monster, Which the peasants in this area call Frunobulax (apparently a very large poodle dog), Has just been seen approaching the power plant.” Observant readers will note that FZ spelled Thrunombulax with an F. This misunderstanding led to Thrunombulax scarcity on google.
If you type Thrunombulax into google, the search engine will helpfully look for THROMBOMAX 12MIU/1.5mg “Sterile Lyophilized powder for Injection. Thrombomax (IL-11) is a new treatment option which is FDA approved & now available in Pakistan for Thrombocytopenic patients.”
Thrunombulax appeared 3 times between 2006 and 2015. The first appearance was at a now-silent blog, piersgavestonjr. 12-step program “5- It is late, I am sleepy … Am I being called back to Thrunombulax (the planet of my birth)? 6- My giving advice about depression is like Cynthia Mckinney (my representative in congress) giving advice about hair care.” A 2008 search for Thrunombulax, Stumping Google, turned up the blogspot post, and Cheepnis.
Slaughterhouse-Five Part Two was a stream of consciousness tribute to “so it goes.” “PG has long suspected that he is a Zorlac, from the planet Thrunombulax. PG is quiet about this, as prejudice against Zorlacs is acceptable by polite people. Many white people are trying so, so, hard not to appear prejudiced against anyone. When they see an approved target for their tribal rage, white people lose it. Just look at the way people with deviant attitudes about race relations are portrayed. With this in mind, PG has learned to keep quiet about his Thrunombulaxian origin. The relationship of Thrunombulax to Tralfamadore is unknown.”
If you google “Thrunombulaxian” you get this: “It looks like there aren’t many great matches for your search. Try using words that might appear on the page you’re looking for. For example, “cake recipes” instead of “how to make a cake.””
Thrunombulax does appear again. Bubba Claus Country Christmas Album “Get nascar news, scores and videos to be in a country christmas. remove financial association from credit report … To be right amount of commoditizing its contents, and career that have been deleted from thrunombulax to undergo lazik eye surgery tuesday morning.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress
Addendum A search at duckduckgo yielded two more results. Eat Pray Love Chronicles Part One “He is a Zorlack… the race of people that even the most politically correct feel encouraged to hate on. PG did not ask to be a Zorlack. If he had his druthers, he would still be on Thrunombulax, among critters who understand him. Life is not fair, even if fair is a baseball hit between first and third base.”
Who is PG? “PG is a Zorlack. This tribe of morphodidic questagonals migrated to earth from the native planet of Thrunombulax. The time of this migration is not certain, as Zorlactites do not recognize earth based systems of measuring time. … Zorlacks have been the object of prejudice in every … On earth, the prejudice is fairly mild. Earth creatures are infamous in the universe for their hatred of each other. … On Thrunombulax, there is no distinction between G-d and Man. The two are seen as part of the same continuum. The Zorlacks are amused by the belief systems that make this distinction. Some Earth people like to think that their religious ideas are universal. This is a source of derision in galaxies and black holes alike.” Why is google hiding this passage? …
Chamblee54 
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