Quote of the day (yesterday) goes to Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) at Betsy DeVos’s appearance before Congress on the 2018 Education Department budget:
Education is not mayonnaise, and, frankly, the day we start treating the education of our children like we do the marketing of a condiment is the day we have given up on our kids.
This was in response to a Republican Senator’s (R-La.) comment that choosing a school should be like going to the store to choose from six kinds of mayonnaise. Louisiana was ranked #46 out of 50 states in USNews’ 2017 report and last in an independent 2016 study.
Interesting...
- November 26
I wrote a quick piece for a car blog I frequent about the repossession business, inspired by pictures I took as a 14-year-old of the coolest cars to come through the lot. The Lotus was hard to beat, but I wish I had that shiny gold Porsche now.
November 24
This is something to keep an eye on: a $400 digitizer for 8mm film, licensed through the Kodak brand name. From what it says, it will take film and output 1080p mp4 files, but I don't see how you might focus or sharpen what's going through the machine. I spent about $15 per reel to digitize a bunch of our family film earlier this year, and if I had boxes of 8mm film I might seriously consider this—but I think I'll wait.
November 15
For me, and probably for many of Lev’s customers, being able to keep using equipment that we’ve been using for decades, that has our own little victory images psychically imprinted in them is not just an exercise in stubbornness and nostalgia (though that is surely part of it!)
One of the photo sites I browse featured an article about a Baltimore camera repair shop I've never heard of but will most certainly be bringing my Yashica to sometime soon; finding someone to repair old gear is almost impossible these days so you have to do it before they're gone.
November 9
Rodgers complained that the “cancel culture” was coming for him, but his own words cancel him as a liar and a bad thinker. If he had a principled objection to the vaccine, he could have chosen not to play, like Kyrie Irving, who at least is honest. What really sacked his whining stance was his refusal to wear a mask during interviews to protect others from sickness and death.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes an excellent, scathing opinion piece on Aaron Rodgers, who seems to keep finding new ways to shoot what little is left of his own foot off. Amazing how someone can go from National Hero to Holy Shit, What A Dick in mere seconds.
October 18
Jen and I have been talking for years about how we can't understand the white evangelical embrace of the Great Pumpkin and his predecessors. A new book goes into the history of evangelicalism and traces its roots back to the beginning of the previous century, and the racism, misogyny and intolerance at its foundation.
Instead of theological criteria, what comes to define evangelicalism is instead your stance on issues of gender and sexuality, the embrace of patriarchal authority, belief in female submission. That’s how you determine who is in and out of the fold.
There's an excellent interview with the author in the Jacobin; I highly recommend reading it for the overview.
