it is a beautiful, beautiful watch – a magnificent piece
I have seen his watches in London – and he is the best. What a horologist. Quiet classic!
He is an English man! a the best! RIP!!
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A tale of 2 Americas, by the way of Turkey, Greece
I love America. I love the ‘Just do it’ attitude of many of my friends and well wishers. I love the Shenandoah Mountains, Country Roads, and Rafting across the Yampa River for a week with Sierra Club, I love Disney World, Hardy Boys, Universal Studios – islands of adventure, john Muir, the conservation efforts and the capitalism exploits.
One thing that I slowly got used to is what this article so lucidly states, the ignorance to – “The second is the America of coups and occupations, military dictators and CIA plots, economic meddling and contempt for foreign cultures.”
I have had a conversation with a state department diplomat who actually got offended that my Dad mentioned it to her. The reality of the second America.
What’s more – Is the seemingly lackadaisical attitude towards – “Truth”? It used to bother me that people can say anything without actually being held accountable for. They would state something as a matter of fact as if they just spoke the Bhagavad Gita.
Suzy Hansen writes “This may be particularly true of those Americans who came of age in the 1990s as the United States triumphed over the Soviets, its status as a benevolent superpower somehow confirmed. The ugliness of the Cold War was largely forgotten. I remember the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine portrayed in my ’90s-era education as great international acts of charity, of which Turkey had been among the lucky recipients. But when I moved to Istanbul, Turks taught me about the more complicated aspects of the United States’ long relationship with their country: that thousands of U.S. soldiers had occupied Turkish soil in the 1950s, and how, throughout the darkest days of the Cold War, most Turks believed that the United States was manipulating their military and their citizens. I had come expecting Turks to be foreign to me. It turned out we were profoundly, tormentedly, related.”
Well, there is no word that was just created by Suzy – tormentedly. Exactly, that proves my point I guess.
What about Greece?
“It wasn’t just Turkey. After the financial crisis in Greece, I interviewed many intellectuals and other citizens there who offered historical explanations during which they referred — casually, assuming I knew about it — to an American intervention. I’d never heard of it. But it was a pivotal moment in contemporary Greek history: Thousands of Americans arrived in Athens as part of the Truman Doctrine, propping up an authoritarian regime against Greek communists and leftists and demanding that Greeks imitate the American way of life. From the late 1940s to the 1970s, American military personnel, diplomats and spies provided ample support to the Greek government as it tortured and persecuted its citizens. This history, our history, was part of them. I haven’t met any Americans for whom it was part of their identity — most never knew about it. It wasn’t at all part of mine. “
Hurricanes and Physics
Why do hurricanes or typhoons move counter clock wise in the Northern Hemisphere, and Clockwise direction in the southern hemisphere?
the above is the current state of the two hurricanes as of 1:20 pm EST.
When i was young i never ever understood pseudo forces. It did not make sense to me at all! why would they make up ‘fictitious forces’!
Well, now I know why !! Because the rotation of the earth!
earth rotates from west to east (the sun first rises in the east!, right?) so if you imagine looking down from the north pole: We see it first rises in New Delhi and then in Washington DC. DC has to “catch up” it has to go to New Delhi. So west to east!
Because of this rotation – any wind rising up near the equator (the air is warmer and it is lighter- so it rises up) is “pulled” in the direction of rotation . that is makes like pulled pork! Pulled wind is like pulled pork. Tasty and dangerous!
If Earth did not rotate as it does, we would have high-speed winds of almost 480 km/h (about 300 mph) gusting from the poles to the Equator and back!!
this force is called the Coriolis Force
Brief History of Athens and its application to modern Washington DC Modern Jackass, Fundamentalism, Sectarianism
Richard Sennett wrote the mind threatens continually to subvert the materials with which it works. What I mean by the academic anti-intellectualism evinced in the review of my book is a parade of authorities, a refusal to confront intellectual difficulty, a fear of ambiguity, all of which attempt to ward off that power of mind.
When I had come back from Paris to Washington DC I had felt that I was “returning to the backwaters” of Washington DC. To give an analogy to my friends – I compared Paris to DC vis-à-vis New York city to Huma, Louisiana. Someone got offended! Actually indignant!
Richard Hofstadter tenth book, earned him the Pulitzer Prize in Non-Fiction in 1964. He calls it a personal book and a critical enquiry.
I have argued here, that Pragmatism is the American pastime; it is the virtue. Hofstadter contends that “mystique of practicality” as spiritually crippling”. The folksy maxim of Calvin Coolidge: “the business of America is business.” American disinterest to the past–our consistently anti-historical, pro-utilitarian disposition– the secularization of the American mind by way of the “curious cult of religious practicality”.
Reductio ad absurdum, is a form of argument which attempts either to disprove a statement by showing it inevitably leads to a ridiculous, absurd, or impractical conclusion, or to prove one by showing that if it were not true, the result would be absurd or impossible.
And I have encountered more than my share here in Washington DC.
There is a fascinating conversation here – “this American life”
Modern Jackass. Of course, there is no Modern Jackass. But ever since I heard that story, I found myself referring to Modern Jackass all the time. It’s incredibly useful, and it could be useful to you, to back out of all kinds of awkward conversational situations.
Nancy Updike
The thing about Modern Jackass is, it’s usually not something about which you know nothing. It’s something about which you know a little bit, enough to sort of get yourself into trouble.
Ira Glass
Like you read an article.
Nancy Updike
Exactly, or something on the web.
Ira Glass
Just last weekend, I was out for breakfast with some friends. And we got into this conversation about these people who do caloric restriction. Have you heard about this? Apparently, there are these people who believe that if you eat a lot less, it can make you live longer. As so we’re talking about this, and somebody’s explaining the cells of your body go through all this wear and tear when you actually digest food. And before you know it, one of my friends– somebody who knows nothing about biology, actually– starts talking about mitochondria. Mitochondria. And maybe he had a little bit of knowledge about this. But it was totally Modern Jackass. ModernJackass, the medical edition, which Nancy says that she finds herself in quite a bit.
Nancy Updike
My mother sends me information about partially hydrogenated oils. And then when somebody says, wait, why is partially hydrogenated oil bad again? I say, well, it’s an unstable compound, which it is. It’s oil to which hydrogen has been added in order to make it solid at room temperature. That I know. That’s a fact.
Ira Glass
And why would that be bad, Nancy?
Nancy Updike
Well, that’s where we get into Modern Jackass territory. It’s unstable in your body. There’s an extra hydrogen atom that can interact with things.
Ira Glass
Oxygen and form water.
Nancy Updike
Exactly.
Eric Weiner wrote
The ancient Athenians enjoyed a deeply intimate relationship with their city. Civic life was not optional, and the Athenians had a word for those who refused to participate in public affairs: idiotes. There was no such thing as an aloof, apathetic Athenian. “The man who took no interest in the affairs of state was not a man who minded his own business,” wrote the ancient historian Thucydides, “but a man who had no business being in Athens at all.” When it came to public projects, the Athenians spent lavishly. (And, if they could help it, with other people’s money—they paid for the construction of the Parthenon, among other things, with funds from the Delian League, an alliance of several Greek city-states formed to fend off the Persians.)
In retrospect, many aspects of Athenian life—including the layout and character of the city itself—were conducive to creative thinking. The ancient Greeks did everything outdoors. A house was less a home than a dormitory, a place where most people spent fewer than 30 waking minutes each day. The rest of the time was spent in the marketplace, or working out at the gymnasium or the wrestling grounds, or perhaps strolling along the rolling hills that surround the city. Unlike today, the Greeks didn’t differentiate between physical and mental activity; Plato’s famous Academy, the progenitor of the modern university, was as much an athletic facility as an intellectual one. The Greeks viewed body and mind as two inseparable parts of a whole: A fit mind not attached to a fit body rendered both incomplete.
The Athenians also hastened their demise by succumbing to what one historian calls “a creeping vanity.” Eventually, they reversed their open-door policy and shunned foreigners. Houses grew larger and more ostentatious. Streets grew wider, the city less intimate. People developed gourmet taste. The gap between rich and poor, citizen and noncitizen, grew wider, while the sophists, hawking their verbal acrobatics, grew more influential. Academics became less about pursuing truth and more about parsing it. The once vibrant urban life degenerated.
Keeping up appearances
Hyacinth Bucket (she insists that it should be pronounced as Bouquet) was the central character in the British comedy of the 1990s shown sometimes here in Washington DC on the public TV. Her main mission is to impress upon others her refinement and social “class” (though she is from a poor working lineage). Her main fear is to be discovered who she really is.
So a good tangent to the end of the week is to think about our pets, especially our dogs.
“One reason a dog can be such a comfort when you’re feeling blue is that he doesn’t try to find out why.”
“A hound will die for you, but never lie to you.” —George R. R. Martin (George Martin is the author of the books on which the game of thrones is based on)
“The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man’s.” — Mark Twain
“When a man’s best friend is his dog, the dog has a problem.” — Edward Abbey
“My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can’t decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives.” — Rita Rudner
Thurgood Marshall – the lawyer for the “little man.”
On August 30th, 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first African American to be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice.
I was speaking with Darron my colleague – He is also African american and had worked somewhere up in the echelons of the pentagon – He recollected names as if he just read them in the morning pages.
Stokely Carmichael – Trinidadian-American who became a prominent figure in the Civil Rights Movement and the global Pan-African movement.
Dorothy Irene Height – the president of the National Council of Negro Women for forty years and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004
Shirley Anita Chisholm – she became the first black woman elected to the United States Congress
Sheila Crump Johnson co-founder of BET, CEO of Salamander Hotels and Resorts, and the first African-American woman to attain a net worth of at least one billion dollars.
Barbara Charline Jordan. The first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction, the first Southern African-American woman elected to the United States House of Representatives.
Darron called them the political legal prong of the African American struggle for justice. The Black Intelligentsia
Thurgood Marshall’s parents instilled in him the appreciation for the US Constitution. Local Howard university connection also! After graduating from Lincoln University in 1930, Marshall sought admission to the University of Maryland School of Law, but was turned away because of the school’s segregation policy, which effectively forbade blacks from studying with whites. Instead, Marshall attended Howard University Law School, from which he graduated magna cum laude in 1933. (Marshall later successfully sued Maryland School of Law for their unfair admissions policy.)
Marshall won 29 of the 32 cases he argued in front of the Supreme Court, all of which challenged in some way the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine that had been established by the landmark case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). The high-water mark of Marshall’s career as a litigator came in 1954 with his victory in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. In that case, Marshall argued that the ‘separate but equal’ principle was unconstitutional, and designed to keep blacks “as near slavery as possible.”
Awesome Mr. Marshall, sir!
H Harvey
