Wait, what? We are?

Caitlin Dewey takes to her WP blog to tell us "Why we’re actually mad at ruthless ‘Jeopardy!’ contestant Arthur Chu".

Except "we" aren't. Not if "we" includes me and a few other people I know.

Granted, though, many of "us" are, according to Ken Jennings in Slate, which is kind of sad. But I'm not - I like watching him win.

I have a couple of nits to pick with her - first of all, for claiming that

Since time immemorial — read: at least September 1984, when the Alex Trebek-hosted daily syndicated version of the show launched — “Jeopardy” has almost always followed a simple pattern: Contestants pick a category; they progress through the category from top to bottom; they earn winnings when they, through their hard-earned and admirable knowledge, get the questions right.

O rly? I can't think of a time when running the category was the norm. Many contestants do some bouncing around, working from closer to the bottom if they're confident of the category, and sticking to the top when they're not. Heck, it was way back in 1985 that one of them invented the "Forrest Bounce" strategy for hunting the Daily Doubles...

And as for

Most unforgivably to many, Chu tries to squeeze in the most questions per round by pounding the bejesus out of his buzzer and interrupting Alex Trebek. This is Alex Trebek, North American icon (he’s Canadian by birth), we’re talking about here.

well. Come on. I love it when they clear the board. And you can't ring in before he's finished reading the question; the buzzer doesn't work. Buzzer timing is what made Ken Jennings such a killer, not to mention that machine Brad Rutter, who was handicapped by playing in the "only five games" era and still is the biggest money winner. As for interrupting Alex, well, Alex does occasionally just start to make some little point, and you never know when. If Chu's into the game, he won't be expecting that.

... OMG. I just read through Jennings and Chu's talk and I'm stunned. "We" do seem to be mad. Wow.

Ass, Bitten

From one of Fred's excellent linkfests, a lesson about lying:

Here, then, is another consequence of encouraging a bit of paranoid conspiratorial delusion and fiscal magical thinking among your base for decades: The crazy letters are coming from inside the House. Various people on the inside now actually believe these formerly convenient fictions! If the emails didn’t come directly from a member, they were most likely sent from someone who got the list of internal email addresses from a member.

One story, two worlds

It's not often that the two Washington papers have the same story on the front page. Today is a good case study.

While the Post's front page had stories about nutrition, movies being made in Washington, the Texas gay-marriage-ban falling, Ukraine and Crimea, and Republicans worrying that the GOP is spending too much time and effort on the ACA, they had this on page 4:

Arizona governor vetoes bill allowing businesses to shun gays | Measure would have allowed exemption for religious rights

The Times, on the other hand is taking on the Iran, Hagel, the Pope (a picture of him with a crying child), sloppiness at DHS, and bin Laden (yes), with this headline front and center:

Brewer veto backs gay rights over Arizona business's religious rights

It's no wonder there's such a divide in the country.

OMG Epic Squeee YESYESYES

Ahem.

According to this story at Tor, they are seriously considering making an HBO series out of those fabulous George C. Chesbro Mongo novels - starring Peter Dinklage!

Oh my yes.

Please let this happen.

(ps - in case you click through, I'm not sure I want a story about D'Argo Crichton... much as I adore his parents)

A tragedy!

Just got my 2014-15 Met season brochure. My subscription doesn't have Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk! Oh noes!

Actually, of course, I'm delighted. That is, in my opinion, the ugliest opera ever written. So, though I did add one (a full-length Zauberflote), I won't be adding it.

Two good news items today

First, Jan Brewer woke up and smelled the coffee - the angry, angry economic coffee, of course - and vetoed Arizona's Jim Queer law. This doesn't by any means change the hearts of those in the legislature who voted for it, or those in the state who support it, but it does avoid enshrining hate and discrimination into the law there.

(Plus, won't someone think of those poor Christian bakers having to make cakes for adulterous second marriages? Or atheists?)

Also, a federal judge struck down marriage discrimination in Texas - that's even bigger than Utah! Sure, it's on hold pending appeal, but (as Scalia predicted, much to his I'm sure chagrin) since Windsor knocked off DOMA, not one federal or state court has upheld bans.

Two worlds in the snow

Sort of snow, anyhow, though only the Post acknowledges it. The Times is, as usual, fixated on domestic troubles and old, desperately-clung-to scandals while the Post admits the rest of the world (though only GWOT-related countries) do exist...

Washington Times:
Terrorism FBI source had '93 contact with bin Laden | Revelation missing from Sept. 11 reviews, surfaces in obscure court case
Immigration Obama eases penalties for businesses hiring illegals | 40 percent decrease in fines belies rhetoric
Internal Revenue Service GOP recalls Lerner to explain IRS targeting | House panel will compel testimony
Religion No Judgment Day: Biker church welcomes the rough and the ragged
Energy Health links are hyped to raise fear of fracking
Accountability Marrone's resume glosses over work for crooked pol

The big picture is a couple of guys hugging at the biker church

Washington Post:
Pakistan plans military push in tribal area | Offensive against Taliban, others | Recent attack, sputtering peace talks spur mov
FDA panel debates idea of three-parent babies | Procedure aims to create embryos without inherited genetic defects
New pitch would make baseball's opener a holiday
In San Jose, retirement's haves and have-nots | Generous pensions for city workers are coming at the expense of nearly everything else
With pullout near, U.S. in fix over some detainees

The big picture is "A hazy shade of winter", featuring Canada geese flying though the snow. There's a big, below-the-fold photo of the San Jose mayor looking out over his city

The Weeks in Entertainment

with the dead laptop, I missed a couple of weeks...

Live: Werther at the Met, with the incomparable Jonas Kaufmann, along with Sophie Koch as Charlotte. I wasn't crazy about the production, which took all the subtlety out of it, not letting anything come to the audience from the libretto (like the death of Charlotte's mother). Plus, the final moment is Charlotte picking up the pistol before the curtain drops. What the hell? She's not the type to kill herself, too. It's completely wrong. I choose to believe she's packing it back into its case to take it home so Werther's suicide will look like murder and he can get buried by the linden trees in the cemetery, and also so she and Albert won't get mired in the scandal. However, Kaufmann's glorious voice - those floating high notes, and delicious dark overtones - and delightful acting really made it worthwhile.

DVD: Binged through Leverage. I miss that show

TV: Murder on the Homefront, which was quite entertaining though with a very disheartening ending (though not as much of a downer as it could have beeen). The Crazy Ones, funny as usual. Psych - Gus quit his job! And got a girlfriend! And Lassie's back on the detective force! And Shawn ... is pretending to look for a job? Almost Human, which is going somewhere odd with the androids. I'll bet Karl Urban enjoyed his brief moment with his own accent, too. Agents of SHIELD had a really good episode, showcasing the abilities of May, FitzSimmons, and a cliffhanger. And of course Sherlock's final episode of the season, which is simply stunning. Love that mind palace!

Read: All eleven of Elizabeth Daly's Henry Gamadge books, very good mysteries in the 1930s-40s, not one of which I had figured out. The Third Rule of Ten, which I'd been waiting for and enjoyed very much. Also the wonderful A Burnable Book, with John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer up to their ears in treasonable plots and mysterious books, not to mention some very engagingly drawn maudlyns (prostitutes). Started Carthage by Joyce Carol Oates.

Egregiously obvious

So, I got this comment in my spam filter:

I usually do not leave a comment, however I read a lot of responses on this page "NPM: Goldengrove". I actually do have 2 questions for you if it's okay. Is it only me or do some of the responses appear as if they are coming from brain dead visitors? :-P And, if you are posting on other places, I would like to follow you. Could you make a list of all of all your social networking pages like your Facebook page, twitter feed, or linkedin profile? Feel free to surf to my blog -

This would be more convincing if (a) "Me on Facebook" and "Me on Twitter" weren't right there in the sidebar and (b) there were actually any other comments on NPM: Goldengrove. Which there aren't.

Interesting decision

Today's print Washington Post featured this current "Dilbert" strip:

Today's online Post, however, wimped out and offered this rerun (note that although it's dated 2-7-14, the copyright is 1996, unlike the one above):

How ... odd.

It does matter

In a column today about the CBO report released yesterday about Obamacare's impact on jobs, Paul Krugman asks:

So was Mr. Cantor being dishonest? Or was he just ignorant of the policy basics and unwilling to actually read the report before trumpeting his misrepresentation of what it said?

And he answers himself:

It doesn’t matter — because even if it was ignorance, it was willful ignorance.

It does matter, a little bit. Because the bottom line is, as he says, that

the campaign against health reform has, at every stage, grabbed hold of any and every argument it could find against insuring the uninsured, with truth and logic never entering into the matter.

So perhaps it doesn't matter whether Cantor waa lying or merely bullshitting. But it does matter that every word he said, or rather tweeted, was demonstrably untrue.

Those darned socialists

Via TPM, this look at the writer of the GOP's new favorite song - America the Beautiful.

Bates (1859-1929), a well-respected poet and professor of English at Wellesley College, was part of progressive reform circles in the Boston area, concerned about labor rights, urban slums and women's suffrage.

For decades Bates lived with and loved her Wellesley colleague Katharine Coman, founder of the college's economics department, who authored The History of Contract Labor in the Hawaiian Islands and The Economic History of the Far West. Coman was also a poet. She and Bates jointly wrote English History as Taught by English Poets.

Although they lived together for 25 years in what was then called a "Boston Marriage," they could not publicly acknowledge their intimate relationship. When Coman died, however, Bates published Yellow Clover: A Book of Remembrance that celebrated their love and their involvement in the radical and social reform movements of their day.

Were Bates and Coman alive today, they would probably have taken advantage of Massachusetts' law allowing same-sex couples to marry -- a law that folks like Limbaugh find appalling.

Bates' circle of reformers and radicals -- including union activists, feminists and housing crusaders -- were strong advocates for immigrants. Bates and Coman volunteered at Denison House, a Boston settlement house that worked to improve the lives of immigrants who lived in Boston's slums and worked in its sweatshops. Denison House was founded by their Wellesley colleague Vida Scudder, another radical socialist, feminist, and lesbian. It was modeled on Hull House, founded by Jane Addams in Chicago.

They point out that other iconic American songs, not to mention the Pledge of Allegiance (!!), were written by socialists.

It's great.

ps - as some have pointed out, Chik-Fil-A only serves Coke products! What's a radical rightist to do?

Er, um, oh....

Abortion on the wane, a column in today's Washington Times not only attributes this to "pro-life laws [and] abstinence" but manages not to mention birth control even once.

Not even once.

The Week in Entertainment

Oops ... scheduled this for the wrong day!

 DVD: Season one of Leverage (having run across it on Ion). Man, I loved that show. Ivan and the Mare (Іван та кобила), a Ukrainian rom-com.

TV: Sherlock - this episode was much better. A couple of teases (Red Beard? CAM?), some terrific throwaway cases, like Doyle's Watson used to do (The Hollow Client!), and Sherlock's touching and hilarious speech. Mrs Hudson's crazy past. Occasionally the camera work was distracting (the marching guards) but sometimes the style was effective (the conversation with Mycroft), and the 'mental palace' imagery was striking. Plus the whole realize-and-solve-the-crime-while-giving-the-speech was a tour-de-force. And finally, the episode showed us how Sherlock thinks about John, and it was sweet. The Crazy Ones - funny. I loved the silly "easy-open-can" - so stupid - and the way Simon reworked it was funny.

Read: Reread Taft 2012, lured there by something mentioned in The Bully Pulpit, which I've finished and highly recommend.

Oh, SNAP

Delicious irony - if it weren't for all the people suffering, that is.

Wal*Mart lost $.55 per share, and even they admit SNAP cuts are to blame. So if you own 1,000 shares, you just lost $550 dollars. If you own 10,000 - $55,000. That's a bite.

As pointed out on Daily Kos, they did it to themselves. They've been advocating for and supporting politicians who voted for cuts in SNAP. But Wal*Mart is the store of choice for SNAP recipients. After all, if you do your shopping entirely or even mostly on SNAP, Wal*Mart is the best place to do it, because they're so cheap. So Wal*Mart will suffer disproportionately when SNAP gets cut.

What matters

A week ago, we had a very cold day.  5° in the morning and it was that again in the evening when I went home. My commute isn't obnoxiously long or anything, and it gives me plenty of time for reading, but it does involve a bit of standing around waiting for the next bus or train...

And some days, there's like a perfect blizzard (haha) of circumstances. For instance, that day, which had a delayed opening but was still 5° (-15° C) and vicious windchill at 9 am. The bus was 40 minutes late. My toes ached for an hour.  That evening, the bus that came, 15 minutes late - 15 minutes of standing outside waiting - to Cromwell had a passenger door that wouldn't open and, what with one thing and other, it was another 21 minutes waiting for the next bus. My toes? Aching again.

I had these boots - the purple ones - which were attractive. Every time I wore them, somebody would tell me how good they looked. Just one problem: the boots look warmer than they are. They've got these plastic uppers and toes - fine in the 20s, not so good in the single digits. Last year was a much warmer winter than this one, with no single-digit days and only a handful below 20 (and those were lows). That day made me go online and buy the grey ones. No one has yet told me how much they like them...

The purple ones got complimented a lot. The grey ones have kept my feet warm in this single-digit winter.