Apparently, they decided against making my old elementary school into a shrine

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Over the weekend, my Mom said she wished she had taken pictures of some of the gazillion places we lived when I was growing up.

I said I’d try to find Google Maps Street View images of the ones still standing.

I had a little trouble finding the place in Norfolk where we lived when I was in the 3rd grade, but eventually prevailed.

I had found it on a previous occasion, and remembered I did it this way: I found my school, and then traced the well-remembered route that I walked home every day. Yes, kids, we did that back in the Dark Ages. We also had more than 30 kids in a classroom, and didn’t know how deprived we were.

But I had trouble finding the school this time. And I couldn’t seem to recall the name of it, either.

But I remembered that my teacher was named “Mrs. Crank.” She was a strikingly beautiful lady — the kind of teacher the Beave would have a crush on in a ’50s sitcom — but had an unfortunate married name. I thought if I could find her, I could maybe find the school she taught at.

I recalled that I had saved my class picture to my Ancestry profile, and that her full name had been on the picture, so I went there, and bingo! Not only did it name her as “Mrs. Elsie Crank,” but named the school as well. Meadowbrook Elementary (talk about sounding like something right out of “Leave it to Beaver”…). I then found a Facebook page for the school, which included the address, and I was home free.

There’s the picture above. I’m the second kid from the left in the back, hiding behind a book and looking miserable while my classmates smiled. I remember it. I was sick with a fever. I’m pretty sure Mrs. Crank sent me home immediately after the picture was taken (but obviously I only missed a few minutes of school, since the clock says 2:20). The only good thing going on here is that, you’ll notice, I’m sitting right next to Mrs. Crank. Way to go, Beave!

So I’m patting myself on the back for having found it detective-style, and I enter the address in Google Maps.

But no school. It had been replaced by… wait for it… a dog park. Meadowbrook Elementary had become Meadowbrook Dog Park. Really.

I mean, I didn’t expect them to turn it into a shrine to my youth or anything, but still…

Anyway, I put that behind me and found the house, which you can see below. I vaguely remembered it. It was a duplex. We lived downstairs, and upstairs was a lady who had a piano located right over my parents’ bedroom. She liked to practice at 10:30 p.m. I don’t remember it, but my Mom does.

I continue to think Google Maps is one of history’s greatest inventions. What’s the most fun you’ve had with it lately?

There's the house -- a bit worse for wear perhaps, but still recognizable.

There’s the house — it’s been almost 60 years, but it’s still recognizable.

So much for the clout of Nevada’s mighty Culinary Union

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We’ve seen initial results from that state whose name its residents insist on mispronouncing. Bernie came in first, quite bigly, and Biden in second, so far. There are a lot of results to come in still.

So on we move to South Carolina.

But before we do move on, we should pause and reflect upon the diminished clout of labor unions in the 21st century.

I urge you, if you haven’t already, to listen to Friday’s episode of the New York Times podcast, The Daily. It was titled “The Field: An Anti-Endorsement in Nevada.”

As always, it was good, and educational. It started with reporters making their way through Vegas, baby, Vegas, and asking the workers they encountered whether they belonged to a union, and if so, which one. Time and again the answer was, Culinary Union.

Then — and this is one of the things I love about these podcasts — it embarked on a history of the union. It was formed, or at least took its current form, after one of the longest strikes in U.S. history, lasting more than five years. But that paid off for the union members, who have the kind of medical benefits most of us can only dream about. Need open-heart surgery? It will cost you nothing. It has been called “the best insurance in America.”

The long-time union members remember what they went through to win that, and so they are less than enchanted with Bernie Sanders’ plans to do away their coverage in exchange for his “Medicare-for-all” proposal.

It’s fascinating. One of the Hispanic women who told the epic saga of the strike and what they went through is actually heard questioning Sanders at a campaign event.

Listening, I swing back and forth, rooting for one side, then the other. Of course I love it that the union was against Bernie, because Bernie’s gotta be stopped, right? But then I hear Bernie’s answer to the lady’s question, and I’ve gotta side with Bernie. Of course a plan that (were it to ever exist in any form remotely like what Bernie proposes) provides full coverage to everyone is more important than a plan that covers members of one union in one part of the country, however hard they fought to get it.

So, tell ’em, Bernie.

But they are not satisfied with his answer. A bird in the hand, and all that — and I can hardly blame them, given the political obstacles that stand in the way of Bernie achieving his dream.

The rest of the episode deals with the union’s rather weak way of communicating its opposition to Bernie. Rather than putting on their big-boy pants and endorsing somebody, they put out some sort of voter’s guide that indicates their displeasure with Bernie.

And the effect is less than overwhelming, as the reporters find talking to union members who have done early voting, many of whom had voted for Bernie.

So you come away thinking that Bernie’s probably going to win Nevada — which is what happened today.

I urge you to listen to the podcast. I urge you to do so daily, in fact. I gain a lot of insight into things while listening during my afternoon walks…

Michael Hollings on the importance of choosing Biden

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What can a Democratic president accomplish if most of these seats are filled with Republicans?

Bud Ferillo shared this letter from Michael Hollings, son of Fritz. It raises an important point I’ve seen others raise recently, such as Nicholas Kristof (“I Worry About Sanders, and His Coattails“): What can a Democratic president accomplish if he lacks the coattails to elect a Democratic Senate?

It’s Not Complicated.

A segment of the Democratic Party speaks of “revolution.” Obviously, no D agenda will occur unless the D’s regain the U.S. Senate. The nonpartisan Cook Report projects that the Senate D’s could gain 5 or 6 seats while needing only 3. The R’s are defending 23 seats, the D’s 12. Elements of the progressive agenda warrant consideration, but, given the current political disconnect, only a moderate can defeat Trump and also offer coattails to D Senate candidates. Do we really want to endure the next 8 months listening to Trump’s venomous rantings on the evils of socialism as the gateway drug to communism? Even if a Socialist D could conceivably win the presidency, we most likely will lose the Senate plus any opportunity to pursue any progressive agenda. The moderate of the group best qualified to score the “two-for” is not the D who switched twice to run as an R, supporting George Bush for President, then switched to an Indep. to run for the same office then switched back to a D, all the while spending a couple of $100 million to do so ( while masterminding the quota-driven stop and frisk police tactics later declared to be unconstitutional). The moderate with the tenacity, the fight, the temperament and the experience to score the “two-for” of defeating Trump and winning back the U.S. Senate, while advancing progressive ideas is Joe Biden, and Deborah, Chris and I enthusiastically endorse his candidacy. As Fritz would say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going!

Michael Hollings
Columbia, SC

Those are not exactly the same points Kristof raised: Hollings sees the solution as being Joe (as do I). Kristof is thinking more in terms of Klobuchar (who would be my very distant second choice).

But both raise the question: What good would all the plans in the world do, if you can’t help Democrats win the Senate?

Et tu, Bernie? The Russian plot sickens

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Well, boys, I reckon this is it – electoral combat toe to toe with the Roosskies.

I hadn’t even had a chance to post about the Russians working to help elect Trump again, when we learned they were trying to help Bernie, too.

Which makes sense, of course. It fits their M.O., and their interests, in two ways:

Their priority is helping Trump, because having Trump as president hurts America, sends us on a downward slide as a nation, and keeps us bitterly divided. And they feel quite sure, like many U.S. observers, that Bernie is the best possibly opponent for their boy.
If they can’t have Trump, might as well elect the most divisive figure on the Democratic side as a backup. Because the point is weakening America, and having us all stirred up and angry is a great way to do that. (It’s working for them so far, after their successful efforts in 2016.)

Putin may be evil, but he’s not stupid.

All of that said, I want to give Bernie a big pat on the back for showing how a presidential candidate should react to such news:

“Let’s be clear, the Russians want to undermine American democracy by dividing us up and, unlike the current president, I stand firmly against their efforts and any other foreign power that wants to interfere in our election,” Mr. Sanders said.

He also told reporters that he was briefed about a month ago.

“The intelligence community is telling us Russia is interfering in this campaign right now in 2020,” Mr. Sanders said on Friday in Bakersfield, Calif., where he was to hold a rally ahead of Saturday’s Nevada caucuses. “And what I say to Mr. Putin, ‘If I am elected president, trust me you will not be interfering in American elections.’”…

If only a certain other party would take a hint.

Basically, this is all part of a pattern that began in 2016. Then, workers at a Russian troll factory were told, “Use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest except for Sanders and Trump — we support them.”

Which brings me to the point I was going to post about all this before we learned about the Bernie wrinkle…

Remember that we learned several months ago that the key CIA asset who had let us know that the Russians were trying to elect Trump in 2016 had to be exfiltrated to save his life back in 2017? As the NYT reported at the time:

The move brought to an end the career of one of the C.I.A.’s most important sources. It also effectively blinded American intelligence officials to the view from inside Russia as they sought clues about Kremlin interference in the 2018 midterm elections and next year’s presidential contest….

OK, well… if this guy was so golden, so well-placed, so irreplaceable… how do we know they’re doing the same in 2020?

Obviously, we don’t know everything. Which is probably a good thing, if we’re still getting such good intel. Better that the new source not be compromised, too.

Or, is this one of those hyperclever inside-out deals where the idea of our key source being extracted was disinformation, which news media eagerly lapped up, meant to protect the real source?

If so, I hope these news revelations aren’t endangering him. Or her…

Did our top asset really come in from the cold? Or is he, or she, still out there?

Worst headline of the day (but not a bad column, actually)

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David Brooks almost ruined my day this morning:

Don’t SAY that, David Brooks! https://t.co/ih1nvBd9aU

— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) February 21, 2020

But then I read the column, and it was pretty good.

That’s because in setting out why he thinks this is so, he makes it clear why we must do all we can to keep the headline from coming true.

Let me see if I can excerpt enough of the argument without the Fair Use police coming after me (and I urge you to do what I do, and subscribe to the NYT — it’s worth it for the podcasts alone, not to mention the excellent op-ed stuff):

Successful presidential candidates are mythmakers. They don’t just tell a story. They tell a story that helps people make meaning out of the current moment; that divides people into heroes and villains; that names a central challenge and explains why they are the perfect person to meet it.

In 2016 Donald Trump told a successful myth: The coastal elites are greedy, stupid people who have mismanaged the country, undermined our values and changed the face of our society. This was not an original myth; it’s been around since at least the populist revolts of the 1890s. But it’s a powerful us vs. them worldview, which resonates with a lot of people.

Trump’s followers don’t merely believe that myth. They inhabit it. It shapes how they see the world, how they put people into this category or that category. Trump can get his facts wrong as long as he gets his myth right. He can commit a million scandals, but his followers don’t see them as long as they stay embedded within that myth.

Bernie Sanders is also telling a successful myth: The corporate and Wall Street elites are rapacious monsters who hoard the nation’s wealth and oppress working families. This is not an original myth, either. It’s been around since the class-conflict agitators of 1848. It is also a very compelling us vs. them worldview that resonates with a lot of people….

A couple of my interlocutors here tried to say earlier that in my support of Biden makes me the same as a Bernie Bros — other side of the same coin.

Nope. Bad use of a metaphor. The type who dwells in that plane, serving as the other side of the same thing, wears a MAGA hat. Biden is nowhere near that coin. Us-vs.-them is not his way. He doesn’t want to divide us; he wants to pull us all together — or at least give us all a hug. And let me stick up for the rest of the candidates on that score as well. Except for Elizabeth Warren, who essentially is pushing the Bernie myth, sans Bernie.

Why do more moderate, less divisive candidates struggle to get past Bernie? Because they “haven’t organized their worldview into a simple compelling myth.” With the emphasis on “simple.” Joe and Pete and Amy see nuance, and they don’t pretend otherwise. They want to lead us out of this morass of division, not further into it.

Brooks has been spending his time lately away from the rallies, observing actual people where they live, and he has seen people coming together to try to solve the problems they see in their communities. He sees people gathering, or trying to in the face of currents that pull us apart.

Meanwhile:

These gathering efforts are hampered by rippers at the national level who stoke rage and fear and tell friend/enemy stories. These efforts are hampered by men like Sanders and Trump who have never worked within a party or subordinated themselves to a team — men who are one trick ponies. All they do is stand on a podium and bellow….

And that must be defeated, wherever it crops up on the ideological spectrum.

This is yet another column where Brooks proves himself to be our most communitarian prominent public intellectual. And I believe as he does that the way forward involves pulling together around the things that unite us — whether they are our problems or our blessings.

The best political speeches try to do the same thing. See Bill Clinton’s 2012 convention speech, or … well, there was an Obama speech that I thought did many of the same things, and I’m having trouble finding it. But I appreciated that in that campaign, he offered us a clear choice between being pulled apart and coming together.

Those are the drummers we should listen to. And I’m for Joe because he marches to that beat.

No that’s the BEST time to try to do that, if you must do it…

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Following up on that last post, here are a couple of other ads that have been really bugging me, cropping up on my phone over and over. Might as well get this out of my system.

First, the Walgreens one, above.

This is amazingly stupid. If you really want to “shop till you drop” — and why you would want to do that is beyond me — then the best, most efficient time to get ‘er done is when you’re feeling bad. You’ll drop faster, and get the idiotic exercise over with.

Then, the Steyer one, below, which I really feel like ranting about…

The offending copy:

“Imagine a day when your concerns matter more to politicians in Washington than what’s said in corporate boardrooms.”

Perhaps it’s unfair to single Steyer out this way, since this is a cliche that you see across the political spectrum, but he’s the one who has caused this to pop up in front of me dozens of times, and I’m fed up with it.

People, listen to me: The problem is not that politicians aren’t paying attention to ordinary folks like you. If anything, the norm is that they pay too much attention to what they hear from constituents. (Rather than doing what they should, which is study the facts and make a rational decision, because we have delegated them to do what we don’t have time to do.)

When they do stupid stuff, they’re not doing it because they’re not listening to ordinary people — it’s because they’re listening to the wrong ordinary people, ones who are louder than you are.

If the things they do were dictated by people in corporate boardrooms, you might not like all the results, but their actions would, in general, be more rational. They’d pursue policies more likely to lead to economic growth and stability, with everyone having the money they need to buy stuff from the corporations.

Is this a perfect formula? No. Which is why I’m neither a “business is always right” or “the people are always right” guy. And why I hate bumper-sticker expressions such as this one, which suggest that it is that simple.

To give you one example of where I’d prefer the decision be made in the boardroom than by the blowhard at the end of the bar: If it were up to the boardrooms of the hospitals of this state, we’d have Medicaid expansion so fast it would make your head spin.

So why don’t we have it, even though the state is run by allegedly business-friendly Republicans? Because those Republicans would rather pander to the guy who doesn’t want a penny to go to anything called Obamacare. They care WAY more about what those ordinary folk think.

The problem isn’t one of failing to be populist enough. It’s a case of not being smart enough. Or listening to people who aren’t smart enough.

Oh, and it’s not necessarily about numbers, or at least not numbers in the population at large. I said something about this to a friend earlier, and he said if they’re doing what the people wanted, we’d have more gun control. Nah, it doesn’t work that way. MOST people would sorta, kinda like to have more gun control. They want it more right after a mass shooting than they want it at other times. And then they more or less forget about it. But the minority who are absolutely opposed to any new strictures placed on guns are thinking about this all the time, and they’re ALWAYS opposed to it. And will vote accordingly.

Another way to look at it: Those Republicans who vote against Medicaid expansion aren’t afraid of the majority of people in South Carolina. They’re afraid that a plurality of a small subset — certain voters in their districts — will vote for someone more extreme than they are in their next primary. Because that’s the way things are set up.

Want to see that change? Demand an end to gerrymandering…

But understand, it’s not about Blue Meanies in corporate boardrooms. Unless, of course, we’re talking about corporate taxes…

… because we’re sick of seeing these whippersnappers slouch!

Quickly, now: Thoughts on the debate?

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I’d rather Joe be Peter than Michael Bolton, but whatever…

I’m at the doctor’s office for my annual physical, so I don’t have time, but wanted to put up a place for y’all to comment if you’re inclined.

joe did fine, which is one of only two things I care about. But as a group, they set back the cause of defeating Trump, which of course is the other thing I care about.

Unpleasant to watch…

A friend of my daughter shared with her the image above…

Your Virtual Front Page for Tuesday, February 18, 2020

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The cover of the 1960 Boy Scout Handbook, when no one doubted that we could grow to be trustworthy, loyal, brave, clean, reverent and the rest.

Waving goodbye: The cover of the 1960 Boy Scout Handbook, when no one doubted that we could grow to be trustworthy, loyal, brave, clean, reverent and the rest. I certainly didn’t doubt it.

The weirdness of living in Anno Domini 2020 continues:

Trump grants clemency to ex-governor Rod Blagojevich and financier Michael Milken — You want to know how this plays out? Like this: When Trump pardons Roger Stone, he’ll say: “Hey, I’m fair. I granted clemency to a Democrat.”
Wuhan hospital director dies of coronavirus as infections mount — It truly does not inspire confidence when the victims include people who are not elderly or already sick or somehow cut off from medical health, but people who had full access to presumably the best health care available in the country.
Michael Bloomberg Surges in Poll and Qualifies for Democratic Debate in Las Vegas — Because what we really needed was more confusion and uncertainty in the process of nominating someone to beat Trump. I got an eblast from Slate that said, “We watched 185 Mike Bloomberg ads to see if they were any good.” Good or not, what’s bad is that there are 185 Mike Bloomberg ads to watch.
Boy Scouts of America Files For Bankruptcy As It Faces Hundreds Of Sex-Abuse Claims — Just in case you thought our culture hadn’t sunk low enough. Et tu, Boy Scouts? Meanwhile, over on The Guardian‘s main page is this headline: “I laugh maniacally when I orgasm – and my boyfriend can no longer reach climax.” We are some more kinda messed up. As I suggested earlier, it increasingly looks like something happened to shift me into the wrong universe. Maybe it was in 2016, maybe earlier…
NextEra purchase of Santee Cooper could shift risks, liabilities to taxpayers — OK, folks, I am going to say this one more time: As long as we own Santee Cooper, we have the chance to control it and have it do what we want. As soon as it’s privately owned, we will have lost that.
Why there are fewer male vegans — OK, I’m gonna mansplain this for those who find it mysterious: Because meat. Cue the Tim the Toolman noises.

Turns out ‘Bungalow Bill’ has a good eye for natural beauty

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That is, assuming this bit of Beatles trivia I found on Quora is accurate…

Normally I ignore most of the unsolicited emails I get from various social media outlets, but I bit on the one headlined, “Who is Bungalow Bill in that Beatles song?.” An excerpt:

The real life inspiration for Bungalow Bill was a 27-year-old American man named Richard A. Cooke III (known as “Rik” for short). In 1968, Rik was in Rishikesh visiting his mother, Nancy Cooke de Herrera, a publicist for the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. As the Maharishi’s publicist, Nancy would also serve as a liaison between the Maharishi and the Beatles, while the Beatles were learning Transcendental Meditation…

Anyway, he ends up going on a hunt and killing a tiger, and his mother is along, and when some criticized the kill, his mother objects that it was them or the tiger, all of which will sound familiar to you from the song.

As it happens in this telling, Cooke almost immediately felt bad about killing the tiger, and never hunted again. Wikipedia supports this version of events.

In face, “he chose to honor the natural world by working for 40 years as a photographer for National Geographic.

He took the amazing image you see above.

He’s not my favorite National Geographic photog. That would be my old friend Joel Sartore, of the famous Photo Ark.

But it looks like Cooke’s pretty good, too. And I don’t think we should hold the tiger thing against him, after all these years. I’m not entirely sure I trust Lennon’s version of events.

Y’all go hear Phillip on Saturday night!

No. No. No. Rob Gordon CANNOT be a woman

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It was bad enough to make Rob an American. But that, at least, WORKED.

OK, I’m a little upset now.

I sort of heard on the radio this morning that Nick Hornby was going to be on Fresh Air tonight. I got a little excited about that, being such a huge fan of High Fidelity and all.

So I went looking to confirm what I’d heard. And I ran across this.

It seems that “High Fidelity” is being rebooted for Hulu. And in this version, Rob is female.

No. Way.

Why do I love High Fidelity? Well, for one thing, it’s hilarious. And the pop culture stuff is fun, especially the Top Five lists. But those aren’t the reasons why I think it’s one of the most profound books written by a living author.

My reverence for the work stems from the fact that no one else has ever come close to expressing something essential about the relationships between men and women in the slice of history in which I have lived and had my being. In other words, it is to my time what Jane Austen’s work was to hers.

Rob’s problem — an inability to see that what is truly important in life is our relationships with other human beings — takes a form that is particular to young (and, perhaps, old) males in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Rob cares about, and devotes most of his mental and spiritual energy to, pop culture. Specifically pop music, but movies and other manifestations as well.

It’s a problem that feeds on itself when similarly emotionally stunted young males gather, such as when Rob, Dick and Barry stand about in the usually empty record store arguing about their Top Five lists — while women are (presumably, since we don’t see them in this venue) off somewhere actually living life.

That’s the problem he has in his relationship with his typically far more emotionally mature girlfriend Laura.

SPOILER ALERT: One incident in the book illustrates the dichotomy beautifully. After their spectacular breakup (which finally was so painful that finally makes Rob’s Top Five list of worst splits), Rob and Laura are trying to make a go of it again, and whether they will succeed remains very much in doubt — on account of, you know, Rob.

They go to have dinner with some friends of Laura’s, a couple Rob doesn’t know. During the initial stages of the evening, Rob is really impressed. He likes these people. Laura observes this.

Then, when the couple is out of the room, Laura urges Rob to indulge his habit of inspecting his hosts’ record collection. And he is appalled. Their taste, in his exquisitely refined opinion, is horrible.

Laura knew this would be his reaction. And she watches to see if there will be an epiphany.

There sort of is, as Rob admits, but only to himself:

… that maybe, given the right set of peculiar, freakish, probably unrepeatable circumstances, it’s not what you like but what you’re like that’s important. I’m not going to be the one who explains to Barry how this might happen, though.

And feckless Rob, who is feckless in a particularly male sort of way, takes a tiny step toward maturity. But grumbles about it, accusing Laura: “You did that deliberately,” he says on the way home. “You knew all along I’d like them. It was a trick.”

It’s not that every male is like Rob, and every female like Laura. But the conflict between them, the gap between them, was colored by an essential difference that stated impressively true things about the relationships and differences between men and women.

Listen, sometimes it’s OK to change the gender of a character. It worked in the TV adaptation of The Night Manager, when Jonathan Pine’s case officer — who was a man in the book — is played by Olivia Colman. There were other changes that didn’t work, but that one was a great move. It gave the case officer/agent relationship an extra something that it didn’t have in the book.

But that book wasn’t trying to say something deep and true about the relations between men and women, and ways in which they are different.

High Fidelity was. (Actually, I don’t know that Hornby was trying to do all that, but he did. When I recommend the book to friends, I always describe it in those terms. That’s what’s impressive about it.)

I’ll try watching it, if it’s on the level of Hulu that I can get. (Some things, including some things I’d really like to see, aren’t.) But I suspect I’m not going to like it. It was a big enough leap that the original movie made the characters American instead of English. But it still worked because American males can be just as stunted as British ones, and in the same ways.

But with this change, that remains to be seen.

Oh, drat these computers! They don’t have enough holes!

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As technology progresses, our devices have more and more features, something we’ve come to expect. We don’t have flying cars, but our phones do cool things.

But today I’m kind of frustrated that computer makers keeping taking features away.

Sure, mostly the stuff they ditch is stuff we don’t need any more. Like floppy disk drives. But even then, I hate to see them go. The first time I went to buy a computer after that trend started, I paid extra to have a floppy drive added in a vacant drive slot of the desktop.

But I only did it that once. On the next few machines I bought, I didn’t fret about the lack of such a feature. It still bothered me, though, that I had shoeboxes full of floppies containing data I could not access. Finally, a few months ago I bought an external floppy drive from Amazon — it only cost about 10 bucks — and when it came, I spent a couple of hours popping in disks from those shoeboxes, and I found that… I really didn’t need any of that stuff after all.

So I guess the industry knew what it was doing there.

I’m less sanguine about some of the more recent omissions. (Did I use that right? Should I have said “phlegmatic?” I get those confused.)

You know how I told you I bought a new laptop last month? It’s great and all that, but the freaking thing only has two USB ports! When I bought it, I decided that was OK. After all, my last laptop before that one only had three, which had worried me so much when I first got it that I ordered a USB hub that converts one USB orifice into four. And for awhile, I made heavy use of it, plugging in all sorts of peripherals.

But I had noticed that I hadn’t taken the hub out of my laptop bag in maybe a year, so maybe two would be enough. Maybe. Even though, if you’re me, that means you only have one. That’s because the other one is in use all the time for my mouse. I’m physically incapable of using a touchpad. The first thing I do when I sit down at a computer that has one is disable it, because I can’t keep the heels of my hands from touching it as I type, and making all sorts of insane things happen to the document I’m trying to write — including occasionally defining the whole document and deleting it (and I’m not even sure how I’m doing that, but it happens).

So, I have one free USB port.

And that would be fine if certain other features weren’t missing.

First, I got the computer home and had been using it for a couple of hours — installing software and the like — when something dawned on me: It didn’t have a DVD drive!

OK, that’s cool. I hadn’t used one of those in a year or two, either, so… no biggie.

But then, one of the first days I used the new machine at the office, I kept losing the wifi signal. One of my ADCO colleagues suggested that I plug in the Ethernet cable, which we still have in our offices.

Good idea! Except… there was no receptacle for an Ethernet cable! I kept turning the thing over, this way and that, and no — no hole that shape. Although there’s an HDMI port — why, I don’t know. (I mean, I already have a high-def monitor — it’s attached and everything. It even has a touch screen.) And while hunting, I also noticed there was no SD card slot for the card that goes to the old digital Canon I sometimes still use at work.

I was pretty practiced at rationalizing away these problems at this point. I told myself I took better pictures with my iPhone, anyway — and I do. But in part of my brain, I’m going, I paid full price for this machine! Why doesn’t it have basic, relatively cheap, low-tech stuff that every other computer I’ve bought over the past decade had?

This nagged at me, and eventually I went back to Best Buy to see if I could take this machine back and trade it for one that still had some of these homely amenities. But the other models at the store were similarly bereft. I kept picking laptops up and turning them this way and that, and while a few of them did have SD slots, they weren’t overly endowed with USB ports, and none of them had Ethernet cable apertures.

So I kept the one I had bought.

A few days later, I needed to scan something from my home printer. I have this awesome Canon printer that does everything, and even has a multipage feeder on top, which is wonderful because I scan multipage documents pretty frequently. I love it. I’ve had it for four years, and just a couple of weeks ago replaced the toner cartridge for the first time!

But I couldn’t seem to get the drivers for it to load on the new laptop. Since I bought the super-duper Geek Squad coverage, I got them on it. One of those poor geeks spent a couple of hours trying to get me set up, but he finally installed a different scanner driver, telling me it was newer and better.

It isn’t. It’s OK for PDFs, but the scan quality on photos is really poor. And I’m really, really into good photo quality. This app was made for amateurs, for the kind of people who decades ago used Instamatics — and were satisfied — when I was starting to process my own 35mm film.

But wait! In the file cabinet in my home office, I found the original software DVD that goes with my printer!

Now, if only I had a DVD drive on this computer….

Fine. I’ll order an external one from Amazon. And eventually, I’ll probably get an SC reader and an Ethernet adapter for days when the Wi-Fi is acting up. Which, if I also add a thumb drive, will totally fill up my USB hub.

But it doesn’t seem like I should have to do all this. Computers should come with more holes in them. Is that really too much to ask?

Our Founders update ‘American Pie’

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I got this in an eblast from Samuel Tenenbaum.

The lyrics are OK, but what really cracked me up was the animation of the Founders’ faces. Sometimes it’s the little things…

Video of Biden’s speech in Columbia last night

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It’s a good thing I decided against trying to post this video last night before going to bed. I’d have been up half the night.

I’ve been having trouble moving video and images from my phone to this new computer. And of course 18 minutes of HD video make for a HUGE file.

So after a process that involved a phone, two laptops, and a flash drive that I had to empty in order to use, I can finally show you the speech.

Enjoy, and be edified…

A panoramic view of the room just before Joe came out.

Wow, what a gross misrepresentation of reality!

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This blew me away.

Being a fair-minded guy, I wanted to stress that not everyone in the working media lacks perspective. You know that one headline from this morning that I cited and dissected in my previous post? I was going to confess it was a bit of an outlier, and that for every guy like that one, there’s a sensible soul such as Frank Bruni, whose column this morning made the same point I did:

Yes, Bernie Sanders won the state’s primary on Tuesday night. And that victory, coming on the heels of his functional tie with Pete Buttigieg in the dysfunctional Iowa caucuses last week, makes him the indisputable front-runner for the Democratic nomination.

But look at how closely behind him Buttigieg finished, despite furious attacks from Sanders and other rivals over recent days. Look at the sudden surge of Amy Klobuchar, whose strong third-place finish demonstrates not only how unsettled the contest is but also how many Democrats crave a moderate — or female — alternative to Sanders.

Note that while Sanders is hugely well known in New Hampshire and beat Hillary Clinton by 22 points in its Democratic primary in 2016, he squeaked by Buttigieg this time around, as many people who voted for him four years ago obviously didn’t do so on Tuesday night.

And so forth. The real story being the inability of moderates thus far to settle on ONE candidate.

But before adding that, I decided to check my email, and saw an enewsletter from that same, sensible Frank Bruni, and the headline was “What in God’s name happened to Joe Biden?”

OK, fine. Yes, it would have been better had Joe been on the top of the stack of moderates rather than the bottom in New Hampshire, but still — I’m still in a good mood from Joe’s rally at 701 Whaley last night.

And then I saw the picture that ran with the eblast, and my jaw dropped.

I was there. I saw Joe and how he conducted himself. He was as upbeat and ebullient as ever. In fact, if I can ever get the freaking thing to upload to YouTube, I’ll show you every second that he was at the podium, and challenge you to find the split-second reflected in that photo above, in which he seems to be delivering a concession speech with a crushed spirit.

Until I can get that up and running (and finally, here it is), here are some representative images:

Tonight, @JoeBiden did a great job in front of of a fired-up, enthusiastic crowd. This race starts NOW… pic.twitter.com/Fpi7bHl7IE

— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) February 12, 2020

You can almost always get a picture like that NYT one. You can play a fun game if you use the “burst” function on your phone (akin to the motordrive of old film cameras), and you’ll see all sorts of expressions flash across a person’s face, some of them quite comical and many of them highly misleading as to the person’s emotional state at the time.

But this one is a prize-winner. And I’m shocked that it was used by the NYT, even in an email…

THIS is a representative image illustrating Joe’s mood at the event.

For what little NH is worth, Bernie got CRUSHED by the moderates

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My NYT app this morning.

One can sometimes see why there are so many people in this country who can’t stand the news media.

I can get pretty peeved with them myself these days.

There are two phenomena that particularly irritating. Or maybe they’re just one:

They have the attention span of goldfish.
They have a mental block that keeps them from seeing the larger picture.

The last two weeks, it has been astounding the degree to which the media — both straight news and opinion — have been trapped in what’s happening right this second. It has always been thus, but the pace of reporting and the orientation toward social media has made the problem far, far worse.

Instead of a considered, consistent narrative over time, the picture we get of what’s happening is so immediate, it has no value beyond a few moments:

There are no results from Iowa!
There are still no results from Iowa!
Iowa is a disaster! This is the death of the Iowa caucuses!
No one should ever see results from Iowa as meaning anything again!
Wait! There are results from Iowa! Pete won!
No! Maybe Bernie won! This is hugely significant!
One thing’s for sure: Biden is toast!
Iowa didn’t settle anything, but New Hampshire will!
Oh, look, Bernie won! Bernie is triumphant! It’s settled! This is over!
No, wait! Klobuchar came in third! This is the big news!
One thing’s for sure: Since New Hampshire settles everything, Biden is toast!

Meanwhile, Biden was having a very nice rally here in Columbia before an enthusiastic crowd. And as a Biden support, I would prefer that he had done better among those uber-white people in Iowa and New Hampshire, but as far as I’m concerned, the race is just getting started.

Of course, when Joe wins here, we’ll be seeing:

A miracle! Biden’s not toast at all! He won one!
But he’s still damaged! Some black voters voted for other people!
Also, South Carolina means nothing because it’s TOO black!

And so forth.

And then, Super Tuesday will roll around, and South Carolina will be forgotten and it will be all about Bloomberg or something.

That’s the goldfish part.

The other thing is that so many people out there seem incapable of seeing what happens in this brief moments within any sort of larger context.

My favorite example of that today is a headline that trumpets, “Bernie Sanders Has Already Won,” followed by the subhead, “Whether he captures the White House or not, he has transformed the Democratic Party.”

Uh… no, he hasn’t. First, he didn’t do nearly as well as he did four years ago. I think it’s early to completely dismiss him, but if you go by that one bit of info, his time may have passed.

Second, and most importantly, if we’re going to draw conclusions based on something as thin as the New Hampshire vote, consider: The three candidates appealing to the moderates who utterly reject Bernie’s revolution got a total of 52.6 percent of the vote, compared to Bernie’s 25.7 percent.

They crushed him. They demolished him. They utterly rejected him. Even if you give him Elizabeth Warren’s 9 percent on the assumption that her voters might switch to Bernie, he got massacred.

The real story here is that the moderates just can’t make up their minds. If and when they do, we won’t be hearing any more about the triumph of Bernie.

I — and a lot of voters here in South Carolina — still believe that they would be wisest to line up behind Biden because he’s the one most likely to beat Trump. And nothing is more important than that.

They just haven’t wanted to accept that yet. I get it. I like Pete and Amy, too. But I’m going with the guy most likely to win. And I still remain hopeful that other moderates — sensible folk that they are — will reach that conclusion, too.

What did Harpootlian say that was so bad?

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I watched the Democratic debate the other night — or most of it — but wasn’t interested enough to Tweet about it or anything.

I almost did at one point, but I wanted to take time to do a little research — refresh my memory.

What I had wanted to say was, “What was it Dick Harpootlian said that was so bad that Steyer thought it could be damaging to Biden?”

So I went back and read the stories about the contretemps between Dick and Jerry Govan — neither of them any stranger to confrontation — and came away still wondering that same thing.

It all started with a Tweet from Harpo:

Mr. Money Bags a.k.a @TomSteyer has paid S.C. State Rep. Jerry Govan almost $50,000 for a month worth of work? Is he pocketing the dough or redistributing the wealth? cc: Steyer FEC report

— Dick Harpootlian (@Harpootlian4SC) February 5, 2020

That one was followed up by this:

“He told me he was with Joe Biden until Mr. Moneybags showed up,” Harpootlian said “This is what happens when billionaires get involved, whether its Donald Trump or Tom Steyer. They just buy things. They don’t have to persuade anybody, they just buy them.” https://t.co/kpyzu184o1

— Dick Harpootlian (@Harpootlian4SC) February 5, 2020

Then, this happened:

After the state House and Senate let members out of a joint session, the Legislative Black Caucus met in a closed-door meeting, and then held a press conference in the State House lobby. As members of the caucus exited their meeting, Harpootlian waved and said ‘hello’ to Govan, who stared back and waved his index finger in the air…

At the press conference, Harpootlian was accused of being racist. Harpootlian disagreed, and said “I will not be silenced by those who use race as a shield from criticism.”

By the way, only certain members of the Black Caucus backed Govan in this:

State Sen. Marlon Kimpson, a Charleston Democrat and Biden supporter, noted that he and several other members of the Black Caucus did not participate in the press conference.

“It was to his benefit to give the impression that it was a Black Caucus press conference but it simply was not,” Kimpson said.

Kimpson argued Steyer “took advantage” of an internal dispute between SC lawmakers and “distorted the the facts” to hit Biden…

For his part, after the debate, Tom Steyer couldn’t answer Dick’s question about what Govan has done for the money:

“I’m not the person running the campaign,” Steyer said. “I know he’s a senior advisor and I know he’s been working for us. Exactly what that means, I don’t know.”

So I guess I should have sent that Tweet during the debate. Because I still don’t see what Dick said that was so bad. I mean, especially by Harpootlian standards.

But Steyer isn’t trying to convince me. He’s trying to sow enough doubt among Biden’s black support in South Carolina to damage him.

Which seems to me like a pretty cheesy move. I had been sort of neutral on Steyer before this. This knocks him a notch lower than that now in my book…

Can novocaine affect your brain? I think so. But then, I’m not thinking all that clearly at the moment…

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I love the “technical, scientific” terms on this phrenology chart. I think my fave is “ALIMENTIVENESS.”

I’m ready for a nap.

I had two big cups of coffee before going to the dentist this morning to get a new crown put in. But I’m still ready for a nap. Seriously. I’ve got a third cup of coffee here in a travel mug, and I’m going to try to get it in me if I can do so without slobbering it all down my white shirt, on account of the numbness.

I had three shots of novocaine — or whatever they use these days, which is why I’m not capitalizing the name of the drug; I’m trying to suggest genericness. Genericity. The state of being generic. Whatever.

They weren’t going to give me anesthetic originally. They were just pulling off the temporary crown I’ve had a couple of weeks and popping the permanent one into its place. But every time the lady went to pry the old one off, it would hurt a bit at first, and I’d think I could take it, but when she started wiggling it the pain shot from a one to about a five in less than a second, and I’d go AAAAHHHHHHH! to make her stop before it went higher.

So the dentist gave me a couple of shots, which had no effect. I could feel the side of my face going a little numb, but not the gum area where the crown was. The technician’s subsequent efforts to remove the temporary produced more AAAAHHHHHHHs!

So he gave me a third one, and that did the trick. I’m comfortably numb on that whole side of my mouth, and I’m feeling the tingling as high as the top of my cheekbone.

And I’m sleepy. Groggy. Drowsy. I’m feeling this way even though the internet isn’t really backing me up on this being a thing. And I’m supposed to be getting work done.

Oh, well. I figure it’ll wear off by lunchtime. I generally eat lunch kind of late. Today, I’ll have to…

bradwarthen.com

All The News That Gives You Fits

Apparently, they decided against making my old elementary school into a shrine

So much for the clout of Nevada’s mighty Culinary Union

Michael Hollings on the importance of choosing Biden

It’s Not Complicated.

Et tu, Bernie? The Russian plot sickens

Worst headline of the day (but not a bad column, actually)

No that’s the BEST time to try to do that, if you must do it…

… because we’re sick of seeing these whippersnappers slouch!

Seniors Love Posture Corrector

Quickly, now: Thoughts on the debate?

Your Virtual Front Page for Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Turns out ‘Bungalow Bill’ has a good eye for natural beauty

Y’all go hear Phillip on Saturday night!

No. No. No. Rob Gordon CANNOT be a woman

Oh, drat these computers! They don’t have enough holes!

Our Founders update ‘American Pie’

Video of Biden’s speech in Columbia last night

Wow, what a gross misrepresentation of reality!

For what little NH is worth, Bernie got CRUSHED by the moderates

What did Harpootlian say that was so bad?

Can novocaine affect your brain? I think so. But then, I’m not thinking all that clearly at the moment…