“(Protests) are intended to generate publicity which in turn generates either outrage or curiousity. The media often plays along with this. Gather 20 people in a downtown park holding signs and you might get a news story. Pass a petition and gather 200 signatures expressing the same view and you almost certainly won’t get a news story.”
This always has been one of the biggest failings of the sanctimonious field of journalism. The loudest voices get the coverage, not necessarily because they have anything more valuable to say than the more numerous petition signers, but merely because they created a spectacle, and especially because it’s easier for lazy journalists to cover and they are easily duped. There really is a great, silent majority out here. Unfortunately, they (we?) are also lazy.
No matter how coldly harsh such classification may sound, a gestating embryo/fetus is by definition literally something like a parasite: It is wholly dependent on its host's body and cannot survive independently of it. Except in a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine story arc, an unwilling or unwell pregnant person (for simplicity I'm going to say a woman) cannot simply transfer what she's conceived to someone else to continue gestating.
It seems to me that the only rational point on the development spectrum when a woman's choice and society's interests might be balanced is if it would become realistically possible for her to say "I don't want to be pregnant. Here, the pregnancy now is yours," and hand off the job of finishing the fetus to someone else, as now happens when a full-term baby is adopted. Before that end of fetal dependence on her body (which may change as medical science advances), abortion must be strictly the woman's business. Afterward, whatever rules now govern third-trimester deliveries could still apply, except that she would relinquish all right to the fetus/infant which would be handed over to the state to succor.
Would pro-life groups step up to adopt these perhaps pre-term children? Or would they consider paying a sum to an expectant mother who has gestated them for two trimesters, to continue through the third before relinquishing her fetus/baby over to them?
Interestingly, I never have heard anyone compare abortion to evicting an uninvited squatter from an apartment you own. No one demands that squatters be allowed to move in freely and remain wherever they show up. Are property rights more important than personal bodily autonomy?
Do better, easy-open bag tops! Your claims are fraught with lies. When I pull at the notch on the side, about a quarter of the way across, the strip tears off, leaving me with a bag that's impossible to open without getting the scissors. If we can put a man on the moon, you can make a better way to open your packaging!
Do better printers! I don't print all the time, but, when I do, there's almost always a problem. The printer says it's on the network, but it isn't. The computer can't communicate with it. To even get a response requires reinstalling something, or remembering some ancient password, or ... STOPPING EVERYTHING just to get the machine to spit out the paper with the thing on it you want. And, even when you get it working, if you have an ink jet printer, you're out of ink. I guaranty it. You just are. Where did it go? Nobody knows. If you have a laser printer, you get streaks and blips and dots and no color. I have three printers. None of them work reliably. This is the stupidest damn thing in this age of electronic wonder. It's like they're harassing me for wanting to print anything. If Elon Musk wants to improve humanity, he should forget about Twitter and Mars and all that crap and get on this.
WRT “Gomez’s wooden acting style and lack of comedic range…” - YES! Martin Short’s sublime, hilarious, pitch-perfect performance in “Only Murders in the Building” was almost ruined by having to listen to the monotone droning of Gomez. How many actors of Gomez’s age could have done a better job? Virtually all of them.
Do better movie music! (Sorry, you invited rants, so....) Maybe my favorite movie of all time is Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, a glamorous thriller with a terrific score by the great Bernard Hermann. Jurassic Park -- which I like to say is Steven Spielberg's last good movie (though I liked his West Side Story) -- was made more indelible by John Williams's lush, tune-y music. Today, movie or TV music is almost invariably boring and bland -- tedious, unobtrusive, inoffensive soundscapes.
Michael Philips recently wrote in the Tribune about the Music Box's forthcoming 70mm film festival, featuring a new print of the 1970 all-star melodrama Airport. He called the movie schlock, and so it is I guess, but one thing it has that movies today don't, that not even its 70s-era disaster movie progeny had, is a crackerjack score, in that case by Alfred Newman, a movie music grandaddy like Hermann. His son, Thomas Newman, is a prolific screen composer, most recently for Operation Mincemeat. And that score, and the tone and style of the movie generally, is so disappointing by comparison. It's as though they took something inherently exciting and deliberately decided to flatten it.
Do better, gas station managers. A much larger percentage seem to be poorly run these days. Whether laziness or purposely not refilling receipt paper so I'm forced to go inside and possibly buy something, in the era of covid & car jackings especially, not cool.
Do better, restaurant carry out. Even with a city ordinance for disposables, we're still getting utensils and condiments we don't need, even when specifically asking not to add them. And how about deli style paper for a sandwich instead of a ginormous plastic container?
Do better, Team Dandelion. I know you're gaining ground (literally) quickly, but I'm not ready to go there. I'm all for all natural, and helping bees. We don't use chemicals or water our lawn. But wildflowers, clover, etc. seem to be such better options.
Great visual Tweets and written ones this week-I voted for most-but not the one about stopping at stop signs-not stopping at them is a constant annoyance in our nearby small town and could've killed me in a few occasions.
Thanks Zorn for today's ear worm ("That's my Weakness Now")-I too love that zany song and rarely actually hear it! And of course she likes vestibules because she likes rainy daze. The foyer in our home is our mudroom. Nothing says welcome like varying stages of laundry, plants under grow lights, piles of shoes and coats, canning equipment or tables of vegetables.
We've mow probably 1/2 of our 5 acres continuously this month so far-it's raining again today-the good news some of it are "natives", that continuously bloom throughout the season and sadly reseed in our plant beds -and we have a bee hive.
Outlawing abortion is certainly a contradiction in a country that avows "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"-let alone criminalizes it for anyone associated with the medical procedure. If men gave birth-we would not be talking relentlessly about it.
"Do better auto industry"--give us an hybrid then electric car for the common people. One that is not akin to a spaceship with a 200 page manual. One with a body and doors, windows and washers, engines and seats with manual control, radio optional, for 10K or less. Vdubs were less that 1K at some point.
“(Protests) are intended to generate publicity which in turn generates either outrage or curiousity. The media often plays along with this. Gather 20 people in a downtown park holding signs and you might get a news story. Pass a petition and gather 200 signatures expressing the same view and you almost certainly won’t get a news story.”
This always has been one of the biggest failings of the sanctimonious field of journalism. The loudest voices get the coverage, not necessarily because they have anything more valuable to say than the more numerous petition signers, but merely because they created a spectacle, and especially because it’s easier for lazy journalists to cover and they are easily duped. There really is a great, silent majority out here. Unfortunately, they (we?) are also lazy.
No matter how coldly harsh such classification may sound, a gestating embryo/fetus is by definition literally something like a parasite: It is wholly dependent on its host's body and cannot survive independently of it. Except in a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine story arc, an unwilling or unwell pregnant person (for simplicity I'm going to say a woman) cannot simply transfer what she's conceived to someone else to continue gestating.
It seems to me that the only rational point on the development spectrum when a woman's choice and society's interests might be balanced is if it would become realistically possible for her to say "I don't want to be pregnant. Here, the pregnancy now is yours," and hand off the job of finishing the fetus to someone else, as now happens when a full-term baby is adopted. Before that end of fetal dependence on her body (which may change as medical science advances), abortion must be strictly the woman's business. Afterward, whatever rules now govern third-trimester deliveries could still apply, except that she would relinquish all right to the fetus/infant which would be handed over to the state to succor.
Would pro-life groups step up to adopt these perhaps pre-term children? Or would they consider paying a sum to an expectant mother who has gestated them for two trimesters, to continue through the third before relinquishing her fetus/baby over to them?
Interestingly, I never have heard anyone compare abortion to evicting an uninvited squatter from an apartment you own. No one demands that squatters be allowed to move in freely and remain wherever they show up. Are property rights more important than personal bodily autonomy?
Do better, easy-open bag tops! Your claims are fraught with lies. When I pull at the notch on the side, about a quarter of the way across, the strip tears off, leaving me with a bag that's impossible to open without getting the scissors. If we can put a man on the moon, you can make a better way to open your packaging!
Do better printers! I don't print all the time, but, when I do, there's almost always a problem. The printer says it's on the network, but it isn't. The computer can't communicate with it. To even get a response requires reinstalling something, or remembering some ancient password, or ... STOPPING EVERYTHING just to get the machine to spit out the paper with the thing on it you want. And, even when you get it working, if you have an ink jet printer, you're out of ink. I guaranty it. You just are. Where did it go? Nobody knows. If you have a laser printer, you get streaks and blips and dots and no color. I have three printers. None of them work reliably. This is the stupidest damn thing in this age of electronic wonder. It's like they're harassing me for wanting to print anything. If Elon Musk wants to improve humanity, he should forget about Twitter and Mars and all that crap and get on this.
WRT “Gomez’s wooden acting style and lack of comedic range…” - YES! Martin Short’s sublime, hilarious, pitch-perfect performance in “Only Murders in the Building” was almost ruined by having to listen to the monotone droning of Gomez. How many actors of Gomez’s age could have done a better job? Virtually all of them.
Just think - we could have had "DB" instead of "MAGA" for the past few years.
Do better movie music! (Sorry, you invited rants, so....) Maybe my favorite movie of all time is Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, a glamorous thriller with a terrific score by the great Bernard Hermann. Jurassic Park -- which I like to say is Steven Spielberg's last good movie (though I liked his West Side Story) -- was made more indelible by John Williams's lush, tune-y music. Today, movie or TV music is almost invariably boring and bland -- tedious, unobtrusive, inoffensive soundscapes.
Michael Philips recently wrote in the Tribune about the Music Box's forthcoming 70mm film festival, featuring a new print of the 1970 all-star melodrama Airport. He called the movie schlock, and so it is I guess, but one thing it has that movies today don't, that not even its 70s-era disaster movie progeny had, is a crackerjack score, in that case by Alfred Newman, a movie music grandaddy like Hermann. His son, Thomas Newman, is a prolific screen composer, most recently for Operation Mincemeat. And that score, and the tone and style of the movie generally, is so disappointing by comparison. It's as though they took something inherently exciting and deliberately decided to flatten it.
Do better, gas station managers. A much larger percentage seem to be poorly run these days. Whether laziness or purposely not refilling receipt paper so I'm forced to go inside and possibly buy something, in the era of covid & car jackings especially, not cool.
Do better, restaurant carry out. Even with a city ordinance for disposables, we're still getting utensils and condiments we don't need, even when specifically asking not to add them. And how about deli style paper for a sandwich instead of a ginormous plastic container?
Do better, Team Dandelion. I know you're gaining ground (literally) quickly, but I'm not ready to go there. I'm all for all natural, and helping bees. We don't use chemicals or water our lawn. But wildflowers, clover, etc. seem to be such better options.
Great visual Tweets and written ones this week-I voted for most-but not the one about stopping at stop signs-not stopping at them is a constant annoyance in our nearby small town and could've killed me in a few occasions.
Thanks Zorn for today's ear worm ("That's my Weakness Now")-I too love that zany song and rarely actually hear it! And of course she likes vestibules because she likes rainy daze. The foyer in our home is our mudroom. Nothing says welcome like varying stages of laundry, plants under grow lights, piles of shoes and coats, canning equipment or tables of vegetables.
We've mow probably 1/2 of our 5 acres continuously this month so far-it's raining again today-the good news some of it are "natives", that continuously bloom throughout the season and sadly reseed in our plant beds -and we have a bee hive.
Outlawing abortion is certainly a contradiction in a country that avows "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"-let alone criminalizes it for anyone associated with the medical procedure. If men gave birth-we would not be talking relentlessly about it.
"Do better auto industry"--give us an hybrid then electric car for the common people. One that is not akin to a spaceship with a 200 page manual. One with a body and doors, windows and washers, engines and seats with manual control, radio optional, for 10K or less. Vdubs were less that 1K at some point.