Michael C. Perkins's Blog, page 4

The Man Who Stopped Clapping

The audience exploded into applause. Every person in the room jumped up and began to wildly clap, as if racing each other to see who could get to their feet the fastest. The applause was all to honor the dictator Joseph Stalin at a 1937 conference of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union.

But the big question soon became: Who would have the nerve to be the first person to stop clapping in honor of Comrade Stalin? No one had the courage, so the clapping went on…and on…and on.

You might be wondering why in the world anyone would be afraid to stop clapping for any leader. To understand this, you need to know Joseph Stalin.

Stalin was a ruthless dictator who ruled the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952. Although no one knows the precise number of political prisoners he executed, estimates usually reach well over a million.

Historian Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev estimated that Stalin had about 1 million political prisoners executed during the Great Terror of 1937-38 alone. That doesn’t even count the 6 or 7 million who died in the famine that Stalin created through his policies, or the millions who had to do long, hard sentences in the Gulag labor camps.

So when people were afraid to stop clapping for Stalin, they had good reason.
Here is how the Nobel Prize-winning writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described the surreal scene in his great book, The Gulag Archipelago:

“The applause went on—six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly…Nine minutes! Ten!…Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers.”

At last, after eleven minutes of non-stop clapping, the director of a paper factory finally decided enough was enough. He stopped clapping and sat down—a miracle!
“To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down,” Solzhenitsyn says.

That same night, the director of the paper factory was arrested and sent to prison for ten years. Authorities came up with some official reason for his sentence, but during his interrogation, he was told: “Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding!”

Grammar can be funny

A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

A question mark walks into a bar?

A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a war. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”

A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

A synonym strolls into a tavern.

At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles’ heel.

The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

A dyslexic walks into a bra.

A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television getting drunk and smoking cigars.

A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.

Holmes & Watson: an unmatched literary duo

a short appreciation by John le Carre....

"As a reader, I insist on being beguiled early or not at all, which is why a lot of the books on my shelves remain mysteriously unread after Page 20. "

"What you are looking at is a kind of narrative perfection: a perfect interplay between dialogue and description, perfect characterization and perfect timing"

http://articles.latimes.com/2004/nov/...

Dickens as precursor of Beyond the Fringe and Monty Python

mocks politics in Bleak House...

Then there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable reputation with his party, who has known what office is and who tells Sir Leicester Dedlock with much gravity, after dinner, that he really does not see to what the present age is tending. A debate is not what a debate used to be; the House is not what the House used to be; even a Cabinet is not what it formerly was. He perceives with astonishment that supposing the present government to be overthrown, the limited choice of the Crown, in the formation of a new ministry, would lie between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle— supposing it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of that affair with Hoodle.

Then, giving the Home Department and the leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you to do with Noodle? You can't offer him the Presidency of the Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can't put him in the Woods and Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces (as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock) because you can't provide for Noodle!

On the other hand, the Right Honourable William Buffy, M.P., contends across the table with some one else that the shipwreck of the country— about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of it that is in question— is attributable to Cuffy. If you had done with Cuffy what you ought to have done when he first came into Parliament, and had prevented him from going over to Duffy, you would have got him into alliance with Fuffy, you would have had with you the weight attaching as a smart debater to Guffy, you would have brought to bear upon the elections the wealth of Huffy, you would have got in for three counties Juffy, Kuffy, and Luffy, and you would have strengthened your administration by the official knowledge and the business habits of Muffy. All this, instead of being as you now are, dependent on the mere caprice of Puffy!

As to this point, and as to some minor topics, there are differences of opinion; but it is perfectly clear to the brilliant and distinguished circle, all round, that nobody is in question but Boodle and his retinue, and Buffy and HIS retinue. These are the great actors for whom the stage is reserved. A People there are, no doubt— a certain large number of supernumeraries, who are to be occasionally addressed, and relied upon for shouts and choruses, as on the theatrical stage; but Boodle and Buffy, their followers and families, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, are the born first-actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can appear upon the scene for ever and ever.





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U.S. Presidents & "alternative facts"

news excerpt from a year ago....

What is the connection between 1984 and the election of US President Donald Trump?

The public started drawing comparisons between the Inner Party's regime and Trump's presidency when his adviser used the phrase "alternative facts" in an interview.

Kellyanne Conway was being quizzed after the White House press secretary Sean Spicer apparently lied about the number of people who attended Trump's inauguration.

The presenter asked why President Trump has asked Spicer to come out to speak to the press and "utter a falsehood".

Conway responded that Spicer didn't utter a falsehood but gave "alternative facts".

People drew comparisons with "newspeak" which was aimed at wiping out original thought.

Her choice of language was also accused of representing "doublespeak" - which Orwell wrote "means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously."

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But this has hardly been limited to the Trump Administration.

If you have seen Ken Burns' brilliant new documentary on the Vietnam War (his best ever, IMO) you see that JFK, LBJ, and Nixon constantly lied to the American people about the war in Orwellian fashion. And, of course, let's not forget George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq, with a major assist with Newspeak from the NYT.

Arthur Conan Doyle becomes a story-teller

Like young Winston Churchill, Doyle hated Latin, Greek, and math, but loved to read and found he had a knack for storytelling....

"Among his comrades he became popular as a yarn-spinner, and this he turned to good account: ‘There was my début as a story-teller. On a wet half-holiday I have been elevated on to a desk, and with an audience of little boys all squatting on the floor, with their chins upon their hands, I have talked myself husky over the misfortunes of my heroes. Week in and week out those unhappy men have battled and striven and groaned for the amusement of that little circle. I was bribed with pastry to continue these efforts, and I remember that I always stipulated for tarts down and strict business, which shows that I was I was born to be a member of the Authors’ Society. Sometimes, too, I would stop dead in the very thrill of a crisis, and could only be set agoing again by apples. When I had got as far as “With his left hand in her glossy locks, he was waving the bloodstained knife above her head, when .....” or “Slowly, slowly, the door turned upon its hinges, and with eyes which were dilated with horror the wicked Marquis saw ....” I knew that I had my audience in my power."

Pearson, Hesketh, Conan Doyle: His Life and Art

Timely new book

Just began reading. This excellent review covers all the bases...

How the Gilded Age Got That Way

‘The Republic for Which It Stands’ (Oxford Press), by Richard White, a professor of American History at Stanford.

By the 1890s the nation was far richer, but also less egalitarian than it was at the end of the Civil War.

In the Gettysburg Address, in 1863, Lincoln promised “a new birth of freedom” for all Americans. As Richard White notes in “The Republic for Which It Stands,” a sweeping history of postwar 19th-century America, the Civil War did indeed give birth to a new nation, as Lincoln had promised, but in many ways it was not the one he had wished for.

Instead of a prosperous free-labor republic of independent citizens—taking their place in a “largely egalitarian society,” as Mr. White puts it—a very different America emerged, one that was radically transformed and freshly stratified. Because of new methods of production, new ways of organizing work and stunning accumulations of capital, the nation’s gross domestic product swelled to $320 billion at the end of the century from $69 billion in 1860. Along the way, Mr. White argues, a new, fabulously wealthy elite took charge of the economy and government.

In the decades after the war, investment poured into infrastructure, farming and capital goods. Many of the country’s major corporations were formed: U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, General Electric. Exports boomed. Food production soared. Railroads “spidered across the American landscape,” as Mr. White nicely puts it, opening the West to settlement, connecting the nation into a single market, and making it possible to haul crops and consumer goods almost anywhere in the United States. New mail-order companies such as Sears Roebuck offered shoppers from Maine to California everything from ready-made clothing to prefabricated houses. Federal support for homesteading opened once inaccessible reaches of the West to settlement. The America of 1900 was a far more dynamic country than it was in 1865.

At the same time, however, tides of immigration and breakneck urbanization turned large swaths of American cities into crowded, disease-ridden slums. Political corruption flourished. Tariffs, massive land grants and subsidies to railroads facilitated a flow of public resources into private hands and protected industries. Homesteading expedited the displacement of Indian tribes and led to the destruction of millions of acres that were too dry to be farmed. (Almost 50% of homesteads ended in failure within a few years.) Meanwhile, the promises of security and full citizenship made to freed slaves were largely forgotten. By the 1890s, Mr. White asserts, the U.S. was less egalitarian and less democratic than it had been at the end of the Civil War.

American character changed, too. Mr. White provocatively suggests that a tectonic shift in outlook can be inferred from the seemingly mundane sphere of life insurance. Between 1860 and 1870, the 43 life-insurance companies in the U.S. swelled to no fewer than 163. “Where once Americans had embraced providence,” he writes, “they now hedged it. Life had become property, and it belonged in an insurance company’s hands rather than God’s.”

In the course of Mr. White’s overarching political and economic narrative, he draws sharp portraits of the men and women who peopled the Gilded Age. He is especially good at bringing color to the era’s monochromatic politicians, like the perennial Republican presidential aspirant James G. Blaine. As E.L. Godkin remarked at the time, Blaine’s “audacity, good humor, horror of rebel brigadiers, and contempt for reformers made his nomination sooner or later inevitable.” Blaine finally got his chance in 1884 but gratuitously insulted critical Irish voters, hobnobbed with big-money men and went down to defeat at the hands of Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat to occupy the White House since before the Civil War. Cleveland, for his part, was “a man spectacularly unsuited by temperament and belief for his time and his place,” Mr. White writes. In the wake of the 1894 elections, which resulted in crippling losses for the Democrats, the overweight Cleveland “resembled a harpooned whale; whatever power he had was exhausted and the Republicans could haul him in and dispose of him when his term expired.”

Mr. White’s cast of characters includes titans of finance and industry such as J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, George Pullman and the ruthless railroad magnate Collis Huntington ; William Jennings Bryan, the prairie Populist; assorted labor leaders, such as Terence Powderly, the Catholic temperance man who built the Knights of Labor; reformers and women’s-rights advocates such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frances Willard ; big-city crooks and political con men such as New York’s Boss Tweed; the brave African-American journalist Ida Wells, who forced the epidemic of Southern lynchings into the consciousness of Americans; and the showman Buffalo Bill Cody, who marketed enactments of “Old West” scenes while embracing up-to-date advertising methods.

Mr. White builds the central armature of his narrative around the rise and fall of the “liberal” wing of the Republican Party, which dominated the postwar era. In contrast to our own time, the term “liberal” then referred to people who embraced aggressive capitalism and distrusted a strong federal government. Liberals were also defined by their near-religious belief in the gold standard, which, they believed, ensured economic stability and economic progress. The proponents of a silver-based currency—broadly speaking Democrats, farmers and debtors—argued, by contrast, that gold was inherently deflationary, concentrating money and credit in the Northeast and starving the West and South of agricultural credit. Gold and silver, Mr. White observes, “became icons of deep beliefs and ways to talk about civilization, morality, [and] progress.”

Liberals generally supported lenient policies toward the former Confederate South and opposed federal efforts to protect former slaves from white violence. Even as Southern blacks were being slaughtered by the Ku Klux Klan, the Nation magazine, the leading voice of liberalism, loftily asserted: “The removal of white prejudice against the negro depends almost entirely on the negro himself.”

Around the same time, filth and rampant disease were exacting their own toll. “Nineteenth-century Americans were a sickly people,” Mr. White observes, citing statistical data; most notably, they died earlier than their antebellum forebears. Waterborne diseases became increasingly lethal; cholera in particular took hold in cities that seemed carpeted with rotting garbage, fetid water and decaying animal carcasses. In 1880 alone, New York City removed nearly 15,000 dead horses from its streets.

Increasingly, however, under pressure from reformers, cities began to accept the cleaning up of foul streets and rivers as a public responsibility. Mr. White manages to make even the development of urban sewage and water systems engrossing through his deft interweaving of engineering challenges, hard-nosed city politics and shifting social values. Not only did modern water treatment improve public health; it also fostered the rise of industries whose products required clean water. The Coca-Cola Co., for instance, owed its success largely to its innovative condensation of its formula into a syrup that could be shipped by rail to franchisees, who infused it with cheap, clean soda water.

Gilded Age Americans, for the most part, were thrilled by their nation’s economic dynamism, but by the last decade of the century there was a widespread sense that political institutions had been corrupted by plutocrats. Mr. White writes, summarizing the self-serving ethics epitomized by the financier J.P. Morgan: “A man of character might be dissipated, lie, cheat, steal, and either order or condone deeds punishable by time in a penitentiary, but he did not do those things to his friends.” Many liberals, with their belief in laissez-faire, had expected, Mr. White says, “a self-regulating order.” But they got instead “near chaos,” as poverty bred labor unrest and unrest bloodshed when federal troops cracked down on strikes.

Reformers demanded clean government and the regulation of corporations. Figures with reformist instincts, like Theodore Roosevelt, were on the rise inside the Republican Party, and populist Democrats were newly energized, such as the silver-tongued Bryan and the soon-to-be socialist Eugene Debs. Antimonopolists, “the largest and broadest of the era’s reform groupings,” Mr. White writes, looked to government to regulate railroads, clamp down on corruption, develop exacting administrative procedures, and build municipal water and sewage systems. As the author William Dean Howells, whose trajectory from enthusiastic liberal to troubled reformer epitomizes the evolution of elite thinking, wrote in 1895: “Liberty and poverty are incompatible.”

History rarely delivers an unambiguous lesson. But in this monumental yet highly readable book, Mr. White has given us a panorama of an age that in many ways seems like our own. The volcanic turmoil of the late 19th century did much to shape the world that we live in today, with its creative and destructive cycles of industry, its quickening technological change, its extremes of wealth and poverty, its struggle to impose fairness in the jungle of the marketplace, its tug of war between freedom and regulation in the public interest. “The Republic for Which It Stands” is, in no small part, the story of how we came to be who we are.

The eclipse that saved Columbus

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/e...

the failure of establishment media groupthink

from Thomas Frank in the Guardian....

The truth is that the unanimous anti-Trumpness of the respectable press is just one facet of a larger homogeneity. As it happens, the surviving press in this country is unanimous about all sorts of things.

There are their views on trade. Or their views on what they call “populism”. Or their views on what they call “bipartisanship”. Or their views on just about anything having to do with the decline of manufacturing (sad but inevitable) and the rise of the “creative” white-collar professions (the smart ones, so meritorious).

This is one of the factors that explains the many monstrous journalism failures of the last few decades: the dot-com bubble, which was actively cheered on by the business press; the Iraq war, which was abetted by journalism’s greatest sages; the almost complete failure to notice the epidemic of professional misconduct that made possible the 2008 financial crisis and the rise of Donald Trump, which (despite the media’s morbid fascination with the man) caught nearly everyone flatfooted.

Everything they do, they do as a herd – even when it’s running headlong over a cliff.

They still cannot suppress their admiration for bankers. Just the other week, for example, the New York Times’s Dealbook section could be found marveling at how one of the senior officers of Goldman Sachs (“possibly the most powerful investment bank in the world”) likes to DJ in his spare time.

They are endless suckers for credentialing, especially of the foreign policy variety. Last Friday, the Washington Post ran a profile of Hillary Clinton’s former foreign policy adviser, whom they caught up with giving a talk at Yale, his alma mater.

The paper told how the adviser “ran through a list of his early mentors”, including eminent personages from Brookings, the State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations, and then turned to the inevitable matter of Clinton’s loss, a subject so bittersweet you could almost see the tears streaming down readers’ faces as they were prompted to recall, yet again, the ingratitude of a nation that had rejected her team of brilliants for the buffoon Trump.

Similar examples could be piled up by the dozens, if not the thousands. The American news media’s respect for tech CEOs and foreign-policy experts are the photographic negative of their overwhelming contempt for Dumb Donald.

These things don’t happen because the journalists that remain are liberals. It happens because so many of them are part of the same class – an exalted and privileged class. This is the key to understanding many of their biases – and also for understanding why they are so utterly oblivious to how they appear to the rest of America.

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But, hey, let's party!

http://nypost.com/2017/07/10/why-ordi...

more true than ever

Those who read the press of their group and listen to the radio of their group are constantly reinforced in their allegiance. They learn more and more that their group is right, that its actions are justified; thus their beliefs are strengthened. At the same time, such propaganda contains elements of criticism and refutation of other groups, which will never be read or heard by a member of another group...

Thus we see before our eyes how a world of closed minds establishes itself, a world in which everybody talks to himself, everybody constantly views his own certainty about himself and the wrongs done him by the Others - a world in which nobody listens to anybody else.

― Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1962)