The Invisible Counterpoint

Original Article:  Kudos to Hillary for playing the woman card: If people are going to call her a witch, she’ll tell them she’s Hermione Granger FRIDAY, JULY 29, 2016 3:23 PM  Aunt Messy   Emporium   turney333   Jayne Cullen  Just for you, Aunt Messy: The fact that Hillary and Chelsea wore different color dresses intrigues me as well. They weren't unified, part of one-another -- all white. It was a white and red "split". Maybe not a priming of good-and-bad-witch, pure-and-bad-blood split... something which will soon be displaced onto Trump, as he gets portrayed as a foreign Russian devil, with noticeable female attributes. But I wonder if they were encouraging us to see Chelsea as the blood on Hillary's hands: that with Hillary elected, the future of the young would be a sacrifice of blood.  A subconscious communication: if you're tired of pushy, uppity, disrespectful youth -- you don't need to go Trump Republican... Hillary will make sure...

Original Article:  His dark materials: After that diabolical, masterful performance, Donald Trump could easily end up president FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2016 6:09 PM  Christine B.   BrainDrain  Yeah, your point is one Steven Pinker would corroborate with his "Better Angels of Our Nature." Permalink

Original Article:  GOP war on porn: The same party that nominated a libertine for president is now calling your porn a “public health crisis” THURSDAY, JULY 14, 2016 2:30 PM  Jayne Cullen   Algernon2  The war on pornography that is going on right now though is perhaps best understood as a war against pleasure. It is the emerging prudish attitude of the 1930s condemning Jazz Age fun as civilization-destroying. It really just isn't the time to be with those who argue that porn dehumanizes. Such times might have once existed. Not now. Best to go with Marcotte's people just having a bit of me time on occasions.

Original Article:  The Internet’s bigot crisis: There’s a new push to curtail online bigotry, but the toxic sludge of hate is too enormous to erase

The thing that Travers would never, ever explain was who exactly Mary Poppins is. And Mary Poppins, as Jane and Michael Banks often lament in the stories, “never explains anything.” Rewatching the film recently, I was pleased to see that she states this herself, when confronted by Mr. Banks; the movie is truer to Travers’ vision that I’d remembered, for if Julie Andrews’ Mary Poppins smiles a lot more than the character in the books, she is almost as strict and no-nonsense. Travers’ Mary Poppins refuses to acknowledge the magical adventures that the children share with her, waxing indignant when they mention having taken tea upside down or floated through the park by the strings of balloons, exploits Mary Poppins seems to regard as undignified. “On his head? A relation of mine on his head? And turning about like a firework display?” she asks wrathfully as they return from one outing on the bus. This attitude seems to bother some contemporary readers. I’ve seen them complain that t...

Malcolm Gladwell was born in 1963, in England. He moved to Canada as a child, and still identifies as a Canadian author. His new book, “David and Goliath,” “is a very Canadian sort of book,” he says. The theme of his book is that underdogs — Davids — win over powerful opponents — Goliaths — more often than people think. “David and Goliath,” Gladwell says, is “Canadian in its suspicion of bigness and wealth and power.” . . . Christopher Chabris is a psychology professor at Union College in New York. In 2013, he studied Gladwell’s newest book in order to write a review for the Wall Street Journal. Here’s what Chabris found : In Gladwell’s previous book people like attorney David Boies were said to be successful because of their environment (his parents were teachers) and because of hours of work (he debated in college). Now, Boies’ success happens for a simpler, more uplifting reason: Because he was dyslexic. Gladwell calls dyslexia a “desirable difficulty.” But there was a p...

So what is to be done? McElwee trots out the idea of a truce – “one originally proposed by the Catholic church and promoted by the eminent Stephen J. Gould,” that “Science, the study of the natural world, and religion, the inquiry into the meaning of life (or metaphysics, more broadly) constitute non-overlapping magisteria.” One straightaway must regard as suspect a “truce” advocated by an organization guilty of repressing scientists and opposing the scientific Weltanschauung. And one would be right to be suspicious, according to McElwee’s proposition: “Neither [science nor religion] can invalidate the theories of the other, if such theories are properly within their realm.” Just what the boundaries of those realms are and who decides them have been matters of contention since time immemorial. Just ask Galileo. McElwee next concludes that “religion (either secular or theological) does not poison all of society and science should not be feared, but rather embraced.” No one is waiti...

Our old-timey addiction: Why we can’t get enough of century-old images ( Henry Grabar, Salon.com ) This nostalgia is not special to New York, though it does run strongly here. As a city marked by great migrations, the city claims millions of exiles. It’s said that  nearly half  of New York City’s population has turned over in the past decade alone. And whatever sentimentalism lay buried in the hearts of those supposedly callous and busy urbanites who currently live here has come rushing to the surface in recent months, as the end of the Bloomberg era provokes a collective flood of reminiscence. The pace of change has left many feeling like castaways marooned by time if not by place, and it’s easy to see how groups like Berkun’s “Old Images of New York” might provide a tonic, in addition to attracting aficionados of fashion, architecture and automobile design This fixation on “the way we were” has historically been considered an afflicti...