George Rebane
Thistle and Shamrock is a weekly program of Irish music on NPR hosted for years by Fiona Richie who speaks in a rich Irish brogue. On weekends at our house we hear about the first ten minutes of it before one of us turns it off or to another station. And that is because neither of us have developed an ear for rhythmic Irish tunes, the kind that are played by small combos at gatherings or in public houses. To us they all sound pretty much alike. The deficit is clearly ours, because we like many varieties of music and have always supported this cultural art form. Every time I hear another Irish tune on the radio, the long-held notion always crosses my mind that I could write and program an Irish tune-composing algo that could readily pass the Turing test – i.e. people alternately listening to such machine and human composed music would in their aggregate judgments not be able to tell which is which. Maybe some music major could do that in a graduate program.
Our language continues to languish under progressive pedagogy. So many words have lost their unique meanings as they are required to carry excess semantic baggage that makes their parsimonious use obsolete and obfuscates their meaning, especially in today's political commentary. My latest addition to this list of overburdened words is ‘hate’, ‘hatred’, ‘hateful’, et al. (It joins established residents like ‘racist’ and ‘hero’.) In days gone by, the semantic for using anything from the ‘hate genre’ was reserved for feelings and expressions of “intense dislike, or extreme aversion or hostility.” Not anymore. Today our liberal literary lightweights append the hate-word to any and every person, group, behavior, or expression that simply disagrees with any one of the limited number of shibboleths that for most progressives comprise their politics and worldview. If you happen to disagree with some Democrat or communist’s prescriptions or assessments, and write or talk about it, that is immediately labeled as ‘hateful’ or ‘hate speech’. And make no mistake, they are the final arbiters of such judgments, from which there is neither appeal nor available eleisons. The real scary thing is that they all want Big Brother to become the all-seeing and powerful censor of everything that to them is hateful.
Mighty today, missing tomorrow. ‘Remember Visicalc?’ asks Christopher Mims (here) in the 13jul19 WSJ. Visicalc was the first spreadsheet and killer app, and I remember the relief of switching to it around 1980 after spending a weekend programming a cash planning model on the HP-85 for an electronics manufacturing company I was just hired to turn around. In those days it cost about $10K and over a week to have your accountancy firm do a cashflow projection for, say, the next 8 quarters, and $5K for every subsequent update of the model. Once Visicalc arrived, I turned my people on to it and quickly became a spreadsheet ‘expert’ – suddenly the PCs had a real and unique business use. Soon Lotus 1-2-3 came along and we all jumped on that bandwagon, until Bill Gates brought us Excel, and we’ve stayed with that ‘forever’ (while always keeping an eye out for the next better thing). Anyway, the succession of spreadsheet makers illustrates the history and ongoing saga of companies making it big, and then failing by missing the newest big wave. Next into the breech is Google according to Daniel Colin James in his very readable ‘This Is How Google Will Collapse’. Many are now eagerly awaiting its demise, especially since it so obviously and salaciously abandoned ‘Do no harm.’
[14jul19 update] Even the vaunted WSJ sometimes comes off the rails, as they did recently in a column written by some worthy claiming economist credentials. He patiently explained to the reader that markets work and trades occur when buyer and seller value equally what they are willing to give each other in the trade. You don’t need to be an economic maven to understand that such an arrangement is patently not true. If both parties value equally what they already have, then there is no reason to go through the risk and bother of a trade. It is ONLY when both parties view what the other has as being more valuable to him than what he currently holds that then make functioning markets and dealing possible. When prices are set at value parity or higher, markets stagnate. (Methinks the writer has strong grounds for demanding a refund on his tuition, since he can now demonstrate that they taught him nothing.)
[15jul19 update] President Trump screwed up again tweeting the recommended return of the Democrats’ Squad members to their native countries. With another swipe at the English language, Pelosi called his tweets “xenophobic”. Representative AOC and her House rabble rouser squad have their origins in Somalia, Puerto Rico, Palestine, and Africa. To be fair, Trump did advise them to go back to fix the obvious problems in their native lands. However, IMHO he should have called attention to their outrageous policy proposals by pointing out that they are seeking to bring to America the same kind of policies and political methods that have devastated places from which they and/or their ancestors hailed.
NYC’s DeBlasio is now hands down the top Democrat big city incompetent idiot. Single-handedly he has reversed the city’s years-long declining crime rates by denying the legitimacy of its justice system. In the process “He propagates the smear that the majority-minority NYPD unjustifiably targets minorities when conducting street investigations. He knows there is nothing racially proportionate about reported violent crimes in the city, which in the busiest precincts affect only minorities. His posturing and gamesmanship provide fuel for the worst kind of conspiracy theories and hate speech against officers. Never has a mayor been more disdained by his police.” Lest you think this turkey is the current Lone Ranger in these generations long urban disasters of governance, DeBlasio is joined by like-minded incompetents from his party in a long list of cities that begins with San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles. (more here)
[16jul19 update] "We have a really hard time (“connecting with voters”),” Sen Hirono (D-HI) lamented (here), "and one of the reasons it was told to me at one of our retreats was that we Democrats know so much, that is true. And we kind of have to tell everyone how smart we are and so we have a tendency to be very left brain." Unfortunately, that is neither true nor anywhere close, as Will Rogers said, “It’s not what you know that worries me, it’s what you know that ain’t so.” However, she did nail the Dems’ attitude about their constituents; intellectually they are a challenged lot as we have pointed out for years. And Sen Hirono herself is one great example of a Deficit Diva leading her flock of gimmes. (H/T to RR commenter for digging this out.)
