January 2019 Archives
A cordial invitation to Evangel Presbytery - Warhorn Media
"This is an open invitation to pastors, elders, and interested laymen to join with us in a constitutional convention during which a number of us anticipate founding a new association of reformed churches called Evangel Presbytery.
"Our charter meeting will be held here in Bloomington beginning the evening of Tuesday, February 19, continuing through the morning of Wednesday, February 20. At the end of the meeting, we hope to have completed the adoption of constitutional documents ready to take back to our home churches for adoption by each church's elders and congregation....
"Contemporary Confessionalism: Evangel Presbytery will add to the historic Reformed confessions several confessional statements guarding Biblical doctrine under attack in our own time. As currently proposed, both the directory for worship and our statements of faith will confess the Image of God in man; the federal headship of Adam; the Creation Order of Adam first, then Eve; and lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual marriage.
"Church Unity: Evangel Presbytery will demonstrate the unity of the Body of Christ by including in her fellowship both those who hold to the baptism of believers only and those who hold to the baptism of believers and their children. This church unity has been displayed by Reformed men in our time joining together in the work of conferences, seminaries, publishing, and worship services. We believe this unity is good and should be extended to presbyteries and the local church."
Scott Aniol examines the vocabulary and assumptions of the social justice movement, regarding intersectionality, oppression, privileges, structural racism. He writes:
"The tragic result of allowing all of these categories to be defined, not by Scripture, but by secular ideology, is that it has led to a redefining of biblical justice to fit into the secular idea of 'social justice' as framed by these secular categories.
"'Justice,' for many evangelical social justice advocates, has become characterized by tearing down traditional structures deemed to be evidence of 'systemic oppression' and by marginalized intersectional groups 'standing up to power,' that is resisting and even fighting against the influence, control, and values of more powerful majority intersectional groups. Those more powerful groups, then, are expected to withdraw their influence, repenting of and making reparations for their group's collective oppression of minority groups, and give the marginalized groups a more prominent voice, which usually takes the form of "affirmative action" hirings and appointments to leadership positions based on the color of one's skin rather than competency, character, and skill.
"On the contrary, biblical justice is simply choosing to do what is right. If there is something that is wrong, justice makes it right. Justice biblically does not entail blaming the sins of individuals on 'systemic' problems, unless of course you consider original sin a systemic problem, which I suppose it is for the entire human race (Eph 2:2-3). In fact, Scripture is very clear that true justice will mean favoring neither the majority, powerful, or privileged group nor the less privileged group (Exodus 23:2-3). Justice is simply doing right without any notion of intersectionality.
"What creates injustice in the world is sin, plain and simple, and sin is a problem for every individual of every group of individuals. The only solution to injustice in the world is belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ."
Millionaire benefactor pulls support over Lady Cilento name change
"It is understood the family provided about $330,000 between 2016 and 2017 to the Starlight Children's Foundation for the room and would continue to support the national foundation, but decline future opportunities at the Queensland hospital.
"But the St Bakers have told the hospital's board they have lost any future support from them following the name change decision.
"The couple said they were horrified by the decision to scrub the name of the pioneering doctor from the hospital, despite Nine revealing a small number of government IP addresses were used to make thousands of 'yes' votes in the poll.
"'We told the board they should never contact us again,' Mrs St Baker said."
Media Miscues in the Covington Narrative | City Journal
"Reporters have always made errors, but mistakes should occur independent of ideology. What we're seeing instead is a pattern--media miscues always occur in the same direction, in favor of the liberal perspective. Over the last two years, countless "bombshell" reports have signaled grave danger for the Trump presidency, up to and including impeachment or resignation. Trump's son got an early look at the Wikileaks pages; Anthony Scaramucci was tied to a dodgy Russian hedge fund; Michael Cohen met Russians in Prague; Paul Manafort met Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London; James Comey would testify that Trump was under investigation; and so on. As outrage ebbs from each discredited story, it is relegated to the memory hole in time for the next one to emerge....
"Ever since Trump's arrival on the national stage, the media have devoted themselves to destroying him, and, by extension, the ideologies that supposedly account for his popularity--white supremacy and toxic masculinity. Major media outlets have shed any pretense to rigor or probity, even as they make ostentatious shows of 'fact-checking' the president's statements.
"Obsession with white privilege focuses maximal scrutiny on any incident that tracks with the right narrative. Over the last year, we've seen a spate of cellphone videos capturing petty disputes amplified across social media and reported in the national media--as long as the footage depicts a white person complaining to or about a black person doing something relatively minor. Whether the incidents in question have anything to do with race is unimportant. Pushing the narrative that Trump has ignited a firestorm of white racism across the country requires a continual flow of stories making that point, regardless of accuracy or context. The relentless search for Trumpian villainy has precast the meaning of every story. All that remains is to fill in the blanks."
1950s Hollywood forged a golden age of tax avoidance by movie stars | Accounting Today
The oil-depletion allowance, deferred income, collapsible corporations, all provided Hollywood stars and other wealthy Americans a way to dodge the 90% top marginal income tax rate.
"Back then, the wealthiest people in the U.S. were not corporate executives or baseball players. (The latter group made so little they usually had to work during the off-season.) Rather, they were entertainers. In 1958, for instance, the chief executive of U.S. Steel, Roger Blough, made around $300,000. Frank Sinatra made closer to $4 million. (That's $35 million in today's dollars.) Sinatra, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis Jr., Joan Crawford, Henry Fonda, Humphrey Bogart -- these were the people who were most concerned with sheltering their income....
"The collapsible corporation was the other tax loophole Hollywood stars relied on. Whenever they made a movie, they would set up a corporation and have the movie producer pay their compensation to the corporation, out of which they would take a small salary and pay all their expenses. Why? Because the corporate tax rate was around 50 percent rather than 90 percent. After the star's fee had been paid out, the corporation would go out of business.
"Once again, [Bing] Crosby was a trailblazer, setting up his first collapsible corporation in 1937. Soon enough, every star in Hollywood was following suit. [Frank] Sinatra gave his corporations British-sounding names, like Essex, Bristol, Kent and Canterbury. Some stars would sell stock in their corporation to the movie company, so they could take their fee in the form of capital gains, which had a maximum tax rate of only 25 percent. At one point, the IRS sued Groucho Marx and his producing partner, arguing that the $1 million they received from NBC, which aired their show, "You Bet Your Life," should be categorized as income, not capital gains. Luckily for Groucho, the courts disagreed.
"In the mid-1950s, Congress did pass a law aimed at putting a stop to the use of collapsible corporations. But the law itself had a loophole: If 25 percent of the corporation's income came from a different industry, then it was legit. You can guess what the stars did. They merged their oil business and their movie business into one corporation."
Student cracks theologian's baffling religious code - BBC News
Andrew Fuller founded the Baptist Missionary Society:
"A divinity student from the University of St Andrews has cracked a religious code that has baffled academics for generations.
"Jonny Woods has worked out how to read shorthand notes left by leading Baptist theologian Andrew Fuller.
"Hundreds of pages of his sermon notes are held in archives, but until now they have been a mystery to academics."
Dems Seek To Ban Christianity Using So-Called Anti-Discrimination Laws
Bills filed in the Texas legislature would require conformity with the fantasies of the Left under threat of fines and imprisonment. As we've seen in Oklahoma's major cities, you can't assume that Republican elected officials will support religious liberty.
"'Ban the Bible' doesn't have to mean confiscating physical Bibles. LGBT activists aren't that obvious with their intentions (yet). But it does mean something even worse: stripping Texans of their right to practice biblical teachings in their day to day lives.
"These bills would create new government power and protections that ban the free expression of biblically grounded beliefs, especially teaching on marriage and sexuality. Numerous bills seek to force people of faith to conform to others' personal and political activities, while setting aside their own sincerely held religious beliefs. Those who do not comply will face fines, possible jail time, or other criminal charges."
"When in Doubt, Play Insane": An Interview with Catherine O'Hara | The New Yorker
"When you're writing, you're putting thought into what you want to express, and then you come up with it--it comes to you. When you're improvising, it's the same thing. You're writing. You just say it out loud right then, instead of saying, 'You think this might work?' The best improvisers, all the people that were great in the Chris Guest movies, are all great writers.
"....Every one of them writes, because you have to have a sense of the scene. It's not just standing there doing jokes. You're working with everyone else. You have to listen. You have to be ready to move in whatever direction the strongest character's taking you. You have to have a sense of where you're going and what needs to be accomplished."
A slave owned by a Choctaw Indian wrote "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" in an Indian Territory cotton field in 1840. Michael Overall traces the origin of the song and its global spread, all the way to the cheap seats of Twickenham's rugby stadium.
A Kentucky Bishop, the Covington Kids, and the Ideology of Antichrist
John Zmirak writes about the response of Catholic bishops to the New York full-term abortion laws and the targeting of Catholic high school students at the March for Life:
"What are the worst ideas on earth? Who is spreading them? What should we think of those who wield power, or hijack our churches, to impose them and punish dissenters?
"Liberal Christianity. That's the worst ideology in the world. Not just today, but ever. Since Adam ate the apple.
"[Kentucky bishop John Stowe's] column joining the elite lynch mob targeting the Covington Catholic boys is really stunning. It reads as if lifted from the pages of The Lord of the World, a prophetic novel of the Antichrist penned in 1900. Stowe, who has praised heretical Catholic LGBT activists, launches into a vicious attack not just on teenage fellow Catholics subject to death threats. He denounces virtually the entire pro-life movement and the half of Americans who voted for a pro-life presidential candidate. He does so with little logic, but vast, overweening self-confidence and unearned moral hauteur.
"There is no scenario on earth in which abortion becomes unthinkable, any more than rape or murder or stealing citizenship will ever be unthinkable. No combination of government policies could ever achieve that. Ideologues like Bishop Stowe surely know that. They intentionally and culpably, with premeditation and full consent of the will, conjure Utopia as an idol in place of Christ.
"Yes, they know that it's ludicrous to pretend that every issue that could possibly affect human life is a 'life issue,' comparable to murdering a million kids per year for sexual convenience. They know better. They know they're helping to keep abortion legal. It's time we admit that and see such men for exactly what they are. And whom they serve."
Sad to say, the same mindset is creeping into the PCA, led by big-city pastors who are bothered that only one political party (the one that's out of step with the controllers of popular culture) is welcoming of a Biblical view of abortion, and so they tell their congregations that socialized medicine and open borders are just as important as the murder of millions of children annually.
6 Big Problems with Latest "Social Emotional Learning" Report | The National Pulse
"The Commission expects that SEL programs and curriculum will fill the cavernous social emotional void for the millions of children growing up in fatherless homes.
"The statistics are overwhelming that children -- especially boys -- from fatherless homes have more SEL problems. Examples include:
- Significantly higher juvenile crime rates
- A 279 percent increased likelihood of carrying a gun
- Externalizing behavior problems as early as one year of age
"Conversely, Dr. William Jeynes of the University of California at Santa Barbara, after reviewing data on 20,000 high school students, found that minority students coming from two-parent families with high religiosity had no achievement gap with their white peers and outscored other students in their same racial groups. This is orders of magnitude better than the results (or lack thereof) from more than 50 years and over $2 trillion dollars of federal education spending and interference."
"Yes, the research and writing of history is a labour and a pleasure at the same time. I was always fascinated by history and I read history at Cambridge. I had a eureka moment as a young boy when I read about Stalin and Beria at my English boarding school and wanted to study more, which I did. For a long time, I planned one day to write a history of Stalin in a new way, and it took a while to happen. At the same time, I visited Jerusalem as a young boy from the age of four or five, and the city was a part of my family history. I always wanted to write about that city and the Middle East too. So the eureka moments came when I was very young....
"Anyone can write incomprehensible and over-complicated history, but the art and challenge is to research it properly and handle sophisticated and complex ideas but present them with beautiful writing accessible to all readers. Of course, I try to do this, but it is not easy....
"[The historian] sits in his office for hours on end as the candles burn low, he goes on trips to exotic places, he toils for months in dingy archives, his beard becomes long and grey and his eyes bleary... It is all true and there are some days when I cannot work. Wasting time is essential for all writers, I think. So is daydreaming. And travel for stimulation and adventure. All essential."
Heads Should Roll at National Review -- Jack Cashill
Jack Cashill writes about NR's lust for respectability, as demonstrated by the pains they took to distance themselves from his investigative work on TWA Flight 800 and Bill Ayers' role in the authorship of Dreams from My Father, and most recently demonstrated in their knee-jerk response to the Covington Catholic video:
"In truth, National Review editors have been dancing to the left's tune since its founding in 1955. To justify its condemnation of the John Birch Society in the early 1960s, one of its editors gave away the game, writing, 'We can't afford to jeopardize the grudging status we've earned in the Liberal community.'
"For all of founder William Buckley's virtues, he overly worried about the 'status' the liberal community begrudged him. As Lowry once noted, 'Mr. Buckley's first great achievement was to purge the American right of its kooks.'
"Over dinner with Lowry [in 2001] and just one other person, I talked about the documentary I was working on at the time. The subject was TWA Flight 800. He gave me the look I would come to recognize from my conservative betters. It was the "kook" look. He showed zero interest in the subject.
"In September 2008, I introduced the theory, for which the evidence was overwhelming, that Bill Ayers had a major role in the writing of Obama's memoir 'Dreams from My Father.'
"At 'The Corner,' on National Review Online, Andy McCarthy called my analysis 'thorough, thoughtful, and alarming--particularly his deconstruction of the text in Obama's memoir and comparison to the themes, sophistication and signature phraseology of Bill Ayers' memoir....'
"...I am told that McCarthy caught a lot of heat internally for jeopardizing National Review's 'grudging status' among liberals. What I know for sure is that the link from Coates' article to McCarthy's goes nowhere.
"I suspect McCarthy's review was scrubbed almost as quickly as Frankovich's. I was unaware of it until I read Remnick's attack on it two years later."
Homeschooling Northern Michigan | Features | Northern Express
The Northern Michigan Partnership: Homeschoolers get elective courses, fellowship; school district gets funding and users for its surplus facilities.
"Every Wednesday throughout the school year, families involved in the Partnership convene at the old Interlochen Community School for a day of elective courses. The classes are taught by a mix of licensed teachers and homeschool parents with skills, knowledge, or specialties in specific areas. The available electives cover a wide range of subjects, from foreign languages, art, and music to robotics and computer programming.
"According to Rose Zivkovich, one of the administrators for the Partnership, the program actually pre-dated any school district involvement. A homeschool parent herself, Zivkovich launched the program that would become the Northern Michigan Partnership in fall 2016, as a way to open up new opportunities for her kids....
"The program Zivkovich created was modest: a regular meetup up of several families at the Grand Traverse Commons. A few parents would take on instructor roles and teach electives relevant to their backgrounds, and other parents would pay these instructor-parents for the service. But Zivkovich says that the program quickly became challenging to coordinate, and that it was simply too expensive for most parents to pay other parents to teach their kids.
"...TCAPS had closed Interlochen Community School the previous spring and was weighing whether to keep the building for other educational uses or sell it. When the district decided to pursue a homeschool partnership, a TCAPS representative reached out to Zivkovich and her group to see if they would be interested in working together.
"The Northern Michigan Partnership was born. Through the program, K-12 homeschool students can enroll in up to four elective courses every semester. The program enables TCAPS to collect state funding for students that opt to participate. In turn, all courses offered through the Northern Michigan Partnership are free for families. The only limitation is that the program is not legally allowed to offer core curriculum courses -- so no math, language arts, science, social studies, or the like."
The article notes that Michigan is one of the best states for homeschool freedom, and they discuss the varying motivations and homeschooling approaches taken by some of the parents involved in the partnership.
Prepare For an Onslaught of Woke Scolds | www.splicetoday.com
2019 will be the year of the Performatively Woke Scold, writes Chris Beck: "PWS types love the concept of white privilege for obvious reasons--it widens the scope of their wokesplaining. When they can't find actual misdeeds to pounce upon, they remain active by going after people with a particular DNA.... These scolds--miserable busybodies--are like your old upstairs neighbor who'd go to the landlord if you were playing music after nine p.m. They're a sign of the current era's moral panic. Their power's disproportionate to their numbers. They skew young, and like the power upbraiding others gives them. Their success is made possible by the risk-averse nature of corporate America and college presidents. Until those in power wake up, they'll continue to terrorize people."
The Plot Against the Principality of Sealand
No relation, but this is a fascinating story of a micronation and the attempt to hijack it for nefarious purposes.
"Michael Bates was caught off guard by a newspaper item he read in late July 1997. He and his parents, a retired couple residing in the seaside county of Essex in southeastern England, were being connected to the murder of Italian fashion icon Gianni Versace.
"Michael, then 44, is a stocky man with close-cropped hair and a tough demeanor. He runs a business harvesting cockles, an edible mollusk found in the North Sea near where he grew up. He squinted at the paper and continued to read.
"It turned out that a passport issued by the Principality of Sealand, a micronation his family founded on an old naval platform, and over which Michael happens to reign as prince, was found on the houseboat where Versace's murderer had committed suicide."
Historic Route 66 - What motel/hotel is right for me?
From one of the first Route 66 websites, some useful guidelines for avoiding lodging disasters on the Mother Road.
"We all have different needs and expectations when it comes to our overnight stay while on Route 66.
"Some will never want to part with the predictability of their favorite motel chain that gives them comfort in knowing exactly what they will get.
"Others will see those same places as a horror of duplicated properties they cannot differentiate and won't be able to tell where they are when they wake up in the morning. Some prefer the business model of a mom-and-pop place where the profits stay in the local economy while they see franchised locations as a drain on the local economy.
"So, with these differing preferences in mind, where do you stay and when in doubt how do you find out if a given motel is the right one for you."
Talala Gazette (Talala, Okla.), Vol. 2, No. 15, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 8, 1909 Page: 6 of 8
The controversy over teaching reading by whole-word methods vs. phonics has been around for a very long time. From an item about the State Textbook Commission, and an Oklahoma County Teachers' Association condemning their choices: "The 'word' method of reading, it is claimed, has developed an alarming number of poor spellers among the school children."
Russell Baker: 'When Writing Is Fun, It's Not Very Good' - The Atlantic
"What I find about reporting now is you don't know what you don't know, because there aren't reporters there anymore. There's nobody covering closely the things they used to. The real valuable reporter is the guy who goes to the beat every day.
"That's the only way to do it. It's the guy who goes every day and says 'Hi,' talks to the secretaries, bumps into people in the corridors, urinates beside them in the men's room, they wash their hands together. And pretty soon he knows. You want to know what's going on in City Hall? We don't have many of those guys anymore. They're the people who have taken the buyout. We have too many stars now. I was aware of that when I started doing the [New York Times] column. I had to give up reporting and I hated it. I loved reporting. I just loved bumming around the Senate and talking to those people."
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The Lost London Tube Map | Londonist
"Imagine an alternative London, where you can catch a direct tube from Biscuit Town to the Leper Hospital. Where you hop on the Circle at the West London Air Terminal and change at Hippodrome for a train to Bedlam.
"This is the tube map of Lost London, showing buildings, shops and physical features that were once well known but have now faded into history."
Sir Stephen Laws QC, Senior Research Fellow at Policy Exchange and former First Parliamentary Counsel, writes:
"So suppose the Speaker did allow an attempt to bypass the financial Standing Orders and allowed a Bill to pass that contravened them, and so to proceed to the Lords and be passed there. What would happen when the Bill then fell to be submitted for Royal Assent?
"The question would inevitably arise whether the Government could reassert its wrongly denied constitutional veto on such a Bill by advising the Monarch not to grant Royal Assent to the Bill? Would it even, perhaps, think that it actually had a duty to ensure that a Bill that had been passed in contravention of fundamental constitutional principles did not reach the statute book?
"It is a sacred duty of all UK politicians not involve the Monarch in politics, but might a Government in that situation think that this was precisely the last resort for which the Royal Assent process is retained? How should the Monarch react to such advice? The answer is not straightforward and the prospect of it needing to be considered in a real-life political crisis is a constitutional scenario of nightmares."
How much can forests fight climate change? - Nature
Gabriel Popkin writes:
"That doesn't mean that all forests cool the planet, however. Researchers have known for decades that tree leaves absorb more sunlight than do other types of land cover, such as fields or bare ground. Forests can reduce Earth's surface albedo, meaning that the planet reflects less incoming sunlight back into space, leading to warming. This effect is especially pronounced at higher latitudes and in mountainous or dry regions, where slower-growing coniferous trees with dark leaves cover light-coloured ground or snow that would otherwise reflect sunlight. Most scientists agree, however, that tropical forests are clear climate coolers: trees there grow relatively fast and transpire massive amounts of water that forms clouds, two effects that help to cool the climate....
"Williams has found that some resist considering albedo effects, including representatives of companies hoping to sell carbon credits for forest projects. 'Even other scientists sometimes have disbelief in the magnitude of the albedo effect, or even its existence,' he says.
"'I have heard scientists say that if we found forest loss cooled the planet, we wouldn't publish it.'"
Patriotism Begins With Localism | The American Conservative
Ian Marcus Corbin writes:
"It is perhaps easier to say what America isn't, and to love her for that. Recent immigrants will tell you that things are easier here: less regulation, more opportunity, more efficient bureaucracy, less snobbery. And this is all true. While class distinctions are pretty much as real here as anywhere in the 'old world'--a high school dropout would have a hard time making friends on a Beacon Hill roof deck--they are also more porous than elsewhere. All a poor Irish kid needs to do is get himself admitted to Boston College or Harvard or Boston University and learn to pronounce his R's, and he's welcome to don a pair of boat shoes and clamber up onto the roof. And that's not nothing. The hungry and ostracized have a hell of a better shot escaping their station here than they do in Venezuela, Russia, or even France. This is America at its best: wide open and hospitable, playing host to transplants from abroad. This is our particular national genius....
"I believe we should shamelessly embrace our cultural balkanization, or to put it more gently, our cultural federalism. It is nowhere written that a person ought to feel equally at home in every nook and cranny of the state she calls home. If there is a deep sense of patriotism available to us Americans, it will have to be based in local soil."
More Than a Technical Debate | National Review
David Klinghoffer writes, regarding evolution vs. intelligent design:
"Here's what is missing: serious public debate. Telling scientists to 'slug it out' in professional journals and not try to persuade others is like asking a free-market advocate to persuade his Marxist colleagues before he dares offer his case to the public. What makes Kevin [Williamson] think entrenched Darwinists are willing even to listen to scientific challenges? Kevin is saying that critics of Darwin should allow themselves to be abused -- by non-scientists like Kevin D. Williamson -- and just take it. Why is Williamson such an (entertaining) scourge of experts in other fields, yet eager to accept and amplify the prejudices of Darwinists?
"There's no 'conspiracy' here. Scientists are as subject to careerism, groupthink, and status anxiety as anyone else. The hypothesis of purpose in nature is too important to leave to the 'experts' alone. We needn't be impressed by pseudo-Menckenesque put-downs."
The Tragic Decline of Music Literacy (and Quality) | Intellectual Takeout
"The results of the study revealed that timbral variety went down over time, meaning songs are becoming more homogeneous. Translation: most pop music now sounds the same. Timbral quality peaked in the 60's and has since dropped steadily with less diversity of instruments and recording techniques. Today's pop music is largely the same with a combination of keyboard, drum machine and computer software greatly diminishing the creativity and originality. Pitch has also decreased, with the number of chords and different melodies declining. Pitch content has also decreased, with the number of chords and different melodies declining as musicians today are less adventurous in moving from one chord or note to another, opting for well-trod paths by their predecessors. Loudness was found to have increased by about one decibel every eight years. Music loudness has been manipulated by the use of compression. Compression boosts the volume of the quietest parts of the song so they match the loudest parts, reducing dynamic range. With everything now loud, it gives music a muddled sound, as everything has less punch and vibrancy due to compression.
"In an interview, Billy Joel was asked what has made him a standout. He responded his ability to read and compose music made him unique in the music industry, which as he explained, was troubling for the industry when being musically literate makes you stand out. An astonishing amount of today's popular music is written by two people: Lukasz Gottwald of the United States and Max Martin from Sweden, who are both responsible for dozens of songs in the top 100 charts.... With only two people writing much of what we hear, is it any wonder music sounds the same, using the same hooks, riffs and electric drum effects?...
"The truth: Elective class periods have been usurped by standardized test prep. Administrators focus primarily on protecting their positions and the school's status by concentrating curricula on passing the tests, rather than by helping teachers be freed up from micromanaging mandates so those same teachers can teach again in their classrooms, making test prep classes unnecessary.
"What can be done? First, musical literacy should be taught in our nation's school systems. In addition, parents should encourage their children to play an instrument because it has been proven to help in brain synapse connections, learning discipline, work ethic, and working within a team. While contact sports like football are proven brain damagers, music participation is a brain enhancer."
Crawley New Town: Economic history | British History Online
"Redifon Ltd., a subsidiary of the Rediffusion Organization and a manufacturer of flight simulators and advanced training devices, moved from Blackfriars, London, to Crawley in 1954 and occupied its present site in Gatwick Road in 1957. The main factory was extended from 90,000 sq. ft. in 1957 to 230,000 by 1985. A second works was established in 1974 and two more in 1975, with a total of 103,000 sq. ft. Employment increased from c. 450 in 1954 to c. 750 in 1959, c. 1,400 in 1963, and c. 1,800 in 1979, falling back to c. 1,300 in 1985. The firm's style changed to Rediffusion Simulation Ltd. in 1980. In 1985 besides the main works in Gatwick Road it or its associates had works in Crompton Way, Kelvin Way, Gatwick Road, and Manor Royal."
Rediffusion Simulation Ltd. briefly had a division in Broken Arrow, south of Albany Street between Aspen and 129th East Ave. RSL was sold to Hughes Aerospace in 1988, which was soon after acquired by General Motors, after which the simulation business was sold to Thomson-CSF (later Thales). In 2012, Thales sold the civilian fixed-wing simulation operations to L3; L3 and Thales both still have operations in the Manor Royal district of Crawley.
Crawley New Town: Growth of the new town | British History Online
In order to provide for increasing demand for homes in the southeast of England after World War II, without encouraging further sprawl outward from London, the British government designated semi-rural areas, close to transportation, for development as "new towns," adding greenfield neighborhoods to existing villages. One of the first was Crawley, an existing village halfway between London and Brighton.
"The master plan provided for 4,000 a. of the designated 5,920 a.; the rest was to be kept in reserve and as green belt land. (fn. 1) Much of the land was already covered by Crawley town, Ifield village, and outlying settlements. The new town would have a new centre and nine residential neighbourhoods, separated by radial roads. Industry was to be concentrated in the northeast. Four of the neighbourhoods were to be within a ring road, the western half of which already existed. Each neighbourhood would be socially balanced, with a wide range of house types, (fn. 2) and its own shopping centre, primary school, church or chapel, and social facilities, grouped near a central green. Although the recommended population of neighbourhoods in new towns was then 10,000, those planned for Crawley were much smaller. The proposed population varied from 4,300 to 7,800, but only one was to exceed 6,600 and that was to have two neighbourhood centres. Almost all houses would thus be less than ½ mile from a neighbourhood centre and within 1¼ miles of the town centre. The road pattern was designed to discourage through traffic in the neighbourhoods."
There are very good reasons why the BBC can't just load iPlayer with archive content
This would also likely explain why BBC America is loaded up with modern American content (e.g., Star Trek: The Next Generation) rather than classic comedies from the BBC archives.
"There was another reason for all these rules: both government and the various entertainment unions wanted it to be as hard as possible for the BBC to reshow and reuse old programmes. Repeats, in an era of three television channels, literally meant putting members out of work, so making showing a repeat almost as expensive as making a new programme was considered a wise move across both the industry and the political spectrum. (Later, most contracts had a clause allowing for a single repeat of the material without payment, as long as it was made within two years of the programme's original transmission. The result, predictably, was tabloid anger about the TV schedules most summers during the late 1970s.)
"How does all this work in practice? Let's take an example. Dad's Army was a BBC series, and the corporation owns the finished programmes of its 80 episodes - even, in theory, of the three that are not known to exist. Yet the programme concept belongs to its writer/creators, Jimmy Perry and David Croft, as do the scripts, even though Croft was a BBC producer: that means copyright payments are due whenever the programmes are exploited in any way by the BBC. In addition, several cast members and/or their estates will be due payments - often a percentage of their original performance fee - when the programme is shown. So will some crew who were not BBC staff.
"This is why, when older programmes are reshown on BBC television, they do not always go onto iPlayer in the way new programmes do. This is because this additional use, and any remuneration for it, was not covered by contracts made at the time of the programme's production, for the obvious reason that no one had yet invented iPlayer.
"And so, putting such programmes online, even when they've been repeated, requires new negotiations. Dad's Army itself was notably absent from iPlayer for several years, even when repeated on BBC Two: presumably someone was either refusing permission or holding out for more than the BBC could offer."
The Steel Guitar Forum :: Eldon Shamblin and the Stratocaster
"I've always hated Strats, but loved Eldon Shamblin's sound. I've never been able to figure out how he got such a fat, jazzy, un-Stratlike sound out of that guitar. Any thoughts?"
"I had the chance to play Eldon's Strat. a few times. He used heavy strings which helps fatten up the sound also. Most of the time he was on the neck pickup. Eldon liked to play through a tube amp but he didn't always have that chance. He always got a great tone to my ears no matter what he played through. He was a great musician and a funny funny man as well. What a talent!!!!!. I miss him so much...."
"In the few videos I've seen, I don't believe I've ever seen him play the same chord voicing for more than 2 beats. Great rhythm playing...."
"as far as i know, Eldon played the same strat and bandmaster combo for about 40 years until Bill Carson gave him a new strat with lace sensor pickups which he apparently loved. keep in mind, if you're listening to the Tiffany transcriptions or any Wills stuff from that era, that's way before the stratocaster when he still played a gibson...."
"The Eldon sound that really floors me is from the 'For the Last Time' era, since at that time I am sure he is playing a Strat. It's great, because it doesn't sound like a Gibson, but it's still got that fat sound that no one else has on a Strat."
The hollowing out of American political parties - AEI
"As odd as it sounds, political parties in democracies have an important anti-democratic function. Traditionally, the parties shaped the choices put to voters. Long before voters decided anything in the primary or general elections, party bosses worked to groom good candidates, weed out bad ones, organize interests, and frame issues.
"In the modern era, the story of party decline usually begins in the aftermath of the 1968 presidential election. The move toward primaries and the democratic selection of delegates took power away from the bosses.
"After Watergate, there were more reforms, curbing the ability of the parties to raise and spend money freely. This led to the rise of political-action committees, which raise cash independent of the formal party structure. As Senator Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said during the floor debate over the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance bill in 2001: 'We haven't taken a penny of money out of politics. We've only taken the parties out of politics.'...
"And yet, Americans keep talking about partisan politics as if the parties are in charge, and base voters on the left and the right keep railing against the party establishments like mobs unaware that they're kicking dead horses."
And veteran political bloggers who ought to know better fall into the same trap.
youtube-dl: Internet video command-line downloader
"youtube-dl is a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites. It requires the Python interpreter, version 2.6, 2.7, or 3.2+, and it is not platform specific. It should work on your Unix box, on Windows or on macOS. It is released to the public domain, which means you can modify it, redistribute it or use it however you like."
White River Fish Market -- The Oklahoma Reviews
Interesting history of Tulsa's favorite fish restaurant:
"White River Fish Market was established in downtown Tulsa as a counter service fish market in 1932. The market began when Oran Fallis and his father were delivering produce from Oklahoma farms to stores in Arkansas. The Fallises would return to Oklahoma with an empty truck, until they realized that they could bring back product to sell from the White River. The two would set up a stand and sell the fish on the side of the road. Later in 1932, Oran and his dad rented a building in downtown Tulsa near First Street and Boston Avenue. The fish market was the only fresh fish wholesaler in the state of Oklahoma that was supplied by regional anglers....
"Upon his return from the war, he added a lunch counter in 1942 and began serving fried foods. The market would eventually evolve and grow into the iconic restaurant that it is today. In the mid-sixties urban renewal moved the fish market out of the downtown location to the spot where it continues to serve the best seafood in town, the state, and the entire region."
Abortion: The Mark of Dystopia - Catholic World Report
"...two of the... most preeminent dystopia novels even include swipes at one of the most sacred cows of the 21st-century liberal project: abortion....
"Concerned with the homogenizing and stultifying effects of television upon culture, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 depicts an America that had degenerated into a state of utter inanity, where reading is a lost art and people spend more quality time with strangers on video screens than with their own family and neighbors....
"When they are horrified by [the protagonist's] attempt to draw them out from their shells of entertainment, consumption, and light gossip, he becomes so incensed that he finally explodes at one of them:
"'Go home and think of your first husband divorced and your second husband killed in a jet and your third husband blowing his brains out, go home and think of the dozen abortions you've had, go home and think of that and your damn Caesarian sections, too, and your children who hate your guts! Go home and think how it all happened and what did you ever do to stop it?'...
"The same mark is found in Aldous Huxley's classic Brave New World, which depicts a world where sex has been disassociated from family and procreation, religion has been reduced to a form of social therapy, and science is meticulously censored so as to preserve a political orthodoxy....
"...Without the benefit of modern technology, Linda has suffered the ultimate indignity during her exile from the cosmopolis: She has had a baby. But it isn't her fault, she explains, for 'of course there wasn't anything like an Abortion Centre here.' She goes on to reminisce somewhat nostalgically about the brightly-decorated and well-equipped abortion centers near her childhood home--a narrative detail that was no doubt shocking in the 1930s, when Huxley was mocked for his preposterous and alarmist outline of an antiseptic future.
"This outline was based upon Huxley's conviction that the 'truly revolutionary revolution' was not the Scientific Revolution, not the Industrial Revolution, nor the French Revolution, but rather the Sexual Revolution initiated by the Marquis de Sade. This was, in Huxley's words, 'the revolution in individual men, women, and children, whose bodies were henceforward to become the common sexual property of all and whose minds were to be purged of all the natural decencies, all the laboriously acquired inhibitions of traditional civilization.'"
Satellite Image Guide for Journalists and Media - Pierre Markuse
"So you would like to use a satellite image in your article and you would like to explain it to your viewers? Here is a short guide covering some of the most frequently asked questions and giving some general explanations on satellite images."
Article covers image resolution, benefits of infrared and false-color images, using the Sentinel Earth Observation Browser to find an image, using open-source tools like GIMP to enhance or annotate an image and GIS tools like QGIS to overlay boundaries and other map features.
FAA Publishes New Phonetic Alphabet - Aviation News That Matters
"The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today published the much anticipated update to the phonetic radio alphabet. With English as the official language of aviation, the updated alphabet is meant to encourage easier global communications.
"'This state-of-the-art enhancement will improve flight safety and increase efficiency with regard to radio communications,' said FAA Assistant Administrator Bailey Edwards .
"The new alphabet will go into effect on 01 JULY 2019 as follows: A - Aisle, B - Bdellium, C - Czar, D - Django...."
(Yes, it's a joke.)
Why Ex-Churchgoers Flocked to Trump | The American Conservative
Veteran political reporter Tim Carney looks at the inverse correlation between Trump primary support and levels of church attendance and religious involvement.
"The best way to describe Trump's support in the Republican primaries--when he was running against the likes of Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich--would be: white evangelicals who do not go to church....
"In March [2016], as the GOP field was narrowing down to Trump and Cruz, one Pew Research Center survey found Trump trailing by 16 points among white evangelical voters who attended church weekly, but leading by 19 points among those who do not....
"While there are no great county-level measures of church attendance, and so we need to rely on ARDA's adherence numbers, the higher the religious adherence, the lower the Trump vote. The correlation is far stronger when you focus on the more rural counties. Exclude the 10 most populous counties in Iowa, and look at the 89 least populous. Among those, differences in median weekly wages explain about 2.4 percent of the variation in the Trump vote, while religious adherence explains about 10.5 percent of the variation. If we could track attendance, the correlation would probably be much stronger....
"Absent strong job prospects, fewer adults form families. When people have fewer weddings and christenings, and fewer kids to educate on right and wrong, they go to church less. Of course then, this becomes a vicious circle: in communities less anchored in church, there's less family formation. A place with fewer families is a place less attractive to employers--thus this social and moral collapse is both a consequence and a cause of economic collapse....
"If you are enmeshed in strong institutions--if you live in a close-knit neighborhood, are rooted in a small town like Orange City, belong to a strong congregation--you may notice how much higher the trust is. Kids leave their bikes on the front lawn. You don't fret if you show up without a ride home arranged, as someone there will take care of you. You don't keep a ledger of favors you do, because reciprocity is the norm, and you're confident you'll receive back about as much as you gave out.
"Social trust is an immensely valuable asset. Increasingly, it's a luxury good that is abundant only in elite neighborhoods and strong religious institutions. Low trust is a condition of the white working class. Charles Murray, in Coming Apart, reported that white-collar Americans were twice as likely as blue-collar Americans to say "people can generally be trusted."
Translation of New Testament near completion - Mvskoke Media
"The New Testament King James Version of the Holy Bible was translated into the Mvskoke language in 1887.
"However, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Mvskoke Language Program wanted to take it a step further.
"They thought it would be ideal to have the translation of the New Testament made available in an audio recording."
Inside the 'Trend-Free' World of Wisconsin's Supper Clubs - Gastro Obscura
Reminds me of the Celebrity Club in Tulsa: "Apart from the food and decor, supper clubs also function differently from typical restaurants. Many are only open for dinner, or 'supper' in Midwestern parlance. They tend to be owned by families, who may even live on the premises. 'You're in their house, basically,' Faiola says. Employees are family members, or stick around long enough to become family. Supper clubs have unusual hours, based on the family's schedule, and tend to be passed from generation to generation. That's the case with Don Petersilka, owner of the Mill Supper Club, an establishment that Faiola says has the 'Holy Trinity' of supper club decor: taxidermy, twinkly lights, and dark wood. 'My grandparents bought the Mill in March of 1963,' Petersilka says, and he bought it from his parents in 1991."
Coney Island hot dog shop brings taste of Tulsa to Dallas-Fort Worth - CultureMap Dallas
"A legendary Tulsa restaurant that's been in existence for nearly a century is expanding to Dallas-Fort Worth. Called Coney Island Hot Weiners, it's a beloved Tulsa landmark specializing in hot dogs and will open a location in Rockwall in January.
"The restaurant is from Tony Osburn, a native of Tulsa who's excited to bring a favorite from his hometown to DFW. He'll open at 621 White Hills Dr., in a space on the east side of Lake Ray Hubbard that was most recently a massage parlor but has been home to a number of businesses."
Border walls work. Yuma sector proves it. - USA Today
Interim Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke writes:
"The bipartisan Secure Fence Act of 2006 -- supported by then-Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and others -- mandated the construction of hundreds of additional miles of secure fencing and infrastructure investments. Yuma sector was one of the first areas to receive infrastructure investments.
"We built new infrastructure along the border east and west of the San Luis Arizona Port of Entry in 2006. The existing fence was quickly lengthened, and we added second and third layers to that fencing in urban areas. Lighting, roads and increased surveillance were added to aid agents patrolling the border.
"Although there is still work to do, the border in Yuma sector today is more secure because of this investment. Even under lax enforcement standards, apprehensions in fiscal year 2016 were roughly a 10th of what they were in FY 2005 -- and are on track to be even lower this year. Crime has significantly decreased in the Yuma area, and smugglers now look for other less difficult areas of the border to cross -- often areas without fencing."
Pictures of You (#162) | www.splicetoday.com
Reflections from Russ Smith, founder of Baltimore's City Paper and the New York Press.
"I remember advice that Bob Roth, editor and part-owner of The Chicago Reader (which, by '77 had already zoomed in that city, six years after its similarly humble beginnings), gave me, saying that his editorial philosophy was to ignore major news events, even if they happened in Chicago--like the Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in '79--and focus on obscure topics that were elegantly written and researched.
"Scratching my head, I asked why, and he responded with an answer that became gospel: that people picked up the Reader for real estate classifieds, listings of events not found in the dailies and the small advertisements for independent retailers that would appeal to (the term wasn't yet in vogue) a yuppie demographic."
How To Write A Takedown Request Without Running Afoul of the Streisand Effect | Popehat
"Nobody wants a defamatory attack upon them to be read by a hundred times more eyes as a result of their own efforts. No lawyer drafting a cease and desist letter wants to become an internet meme. So how, in an internet culture that birthed the Streisand Effect and Carreon Effect, can you vindicate your rights without making things worse for yourself? How -as a victim of defamation or copyright infringement, or as the attorney for such a person -- can you send a takedown demand without finding yourself infamous?"
CNN Accidentally Proves Why Walls and Fences Work - Daily Signal
"In 1991, the government began construction of a 46-mile-long wall, now referred to as the 'primary fence.'
"This fence stands between 8 and 10 feet tall. It was tall enough to stop vehicle traffic, but could be easily breached by ladders and fence jumpers.
"In 1997, officials began building what's known as the "secondary fence," which runs 13 miles long and stands at 14 to 18 feet tall. This was meant to stop the illegal flow of foot traffic.
"Today, the San Diego sector accounts for only a small fraction of border apprehensions each year. According to the Department of Homeland Security, illegal crossings have decreased in the region by more than 90 percent since the walls and fences were built."
Trump's wall would be the 32nd active national emergency - CNNPolitics
The currently effective 31 emergencies date back to a Carter-declared emergency from 1979, imposing sanctions on Iran.
"The National Emergencies Act of 1974 empowers the President to activate special powers during a crisis. Congress can undo a state of emergency declaration, but it would likely require a veto-proof majority, which is unlikely to come from the Republican-controlled Senate.
"Not all national emergency declarations are so controversial. Trump has already issued three national emergency declarations during his tenure, most prominently a national emergency meant to punish foreign actors who interfere in American elections, though the move garnered bipartisan criticism for not going far enough. He's also invoked emergency powers to slap sanctions on human rights abusers around the globe and on members of the Nicaraguan government amid corruption and violent protests there."
After More Than Two Decades of Work, a New Hebrew Bible to Rival the King James - The New York Times
After More Than Two Decades of Work, a New Hebrew Bible to Rival the King James - The New York Times
"[Translator Robert] Alter regularly composes phrases that sound strange in English, in part because they carry hints of ancient Hebrew within them. The translation theorist Lawrence Venuti, whom Alter has cited, describes translations that 'foreignize,' or openly signal that a translated text was originally written in another language, and those that 'domesticate,' or render invisible the original language. According to Venuti, a 'foreignized' translation 'seeks to register linguistic and cultural differences.' Alter maintains that his translation of the Bible borrows from the idea of 'foreignizing,' and this approach generates unexpected and even radical urgency, particularly in passages that might seem familiar."
Hat tip to Language Hat.
Postnatural Intelligence by David Lloyd Dusenbury | First Things
"[Mary] Shelley [in the novel Frankenstein] may have been the first to see that humankind will only know that it has constructed a real 'Talker'--a linguistically expressive, intellectually creative machine (or living being)--at the precise moment it realizes that this device can no longer be trusted."
Bogans, bashing, rorts and stoushes | Daisy Dumas
"[Bogan] sits aside a group of words that I had never come across until I moved here from London two years ago. Words that here, for whatever reason, have been given place on a stage and have elsewhere faded - and of that important slither of colourful linguistic diversity, Aussies should be genuinely grateful." In addition to those listed in the link, she writes about "spruik" and "doona."
Greek to Me, by Mary Norris | The New Yorker
"On returning to New York, I registered for an elementary class in ancient Greek at Columbia University and blithely submitted the bill to the [New Yorker] magazine's new executive editor, Tony Gibbs. To my disbelief, he turned me down, saying that ancient Greek was not relevant to my job. After a year in collating, I had moved to the copy desk, and so I started a dossier of sorts, keeping a list of words from the Greek that cropped up in The New Yorker, everything from 'pi' to 'ophthalmologist,' which is often misspelled with a 'p' instead of a 'ph.' John McPhee was then in his geology period, and from his work I learned the word 'autochthonous' (autós, 'self,' plus chthón, 'earth'), which means something like 'self-generated from the earth' and contains a tricky consonant cluster in the transliteration of chi (χ) and theta (θ). To reinforce my petition, Eleanor Gould, whose cool intelligence made her something of an oracle to the editors, wrote a letter to Gibbs stating that her own knowledge of the language might not be current enough to save us from 'ignorant mistakes.' I showed the document to my friend John Bennet, an editor, who said, 'You're using a cannon to shoot a flea.' Tony Gibbs was persuaded.
Don Surber: CBS caught Trump in a lie. Hilarity ensues
"CBS reported, 'Fact check: Number of women sexually assaulted on trip to border.
"'CLAIM: The president claimed one in three women have been sexually assaulted traveling to the border.
"'FACT CHECK: Between 60 percent and 80 percent of female migrants traveling through Mexico are raped along the way, Amnesty International estimates.'...
"The network later scrubbed that from its fact-check."
The dark arts of the press are on full display - Conservative Review
"Because if the press believes it is this reasonable to consider muting the voice of a sitting president of the United States simply because they disagree with him, what do you think they are doing every other day of the week when it comes to shaping the narratives of the day?"
Music to our ears! Work choirs can ease job stress and loneliness | Daily Mail Online
"One in six were under high strain from their job. But the vast majority felt less stressed and isolated after attending a choir session. Singing has been found to improve breathing and posture, while releasing similar feel-good endorphins to exercise which could help colleagues bond more quickly."
A Very Proper English Custard Recipe - Genius Kitchen
This is the traditional accompaniment for fruit crumbles and Christmas pudding. We had it with a store-bought Walker's Christmas pudding from Cost Plus World Market. Simple recipe, very tasty -- milk, egg yolks, cream, sugar, corn starch, vanilla. It would make a good base for vanilla ice cream -- or frozen custard.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/07/how-mark-burnett-resurrected-donald-trump-as-an-icon-of-american-success?fbclid=IwAR33Q3fSZFN4An2ji4FszsN-b5CgspjXF9nfG3mXao8WzpSuUC3FalH45GA
Fascinating glimpse into reality television and the re-creation of Donald Trump
'"The Apprentice" was built around a weekly series of business challenges. At the end of each episode, Trump determined which competitor should be "fired." But, as ["The Apprentice " Seasons 1-6 editor Jonathon] Braun explained, Trump was frequently unprepared for these sessions, with little grasp of who had performed well. Sometimes a candidate distinguished herself during the contest only to get fired, on a whim, by Trump. When this happened, Braun said, the editors were often obliged to "reverse engineer" the episode, scouring hundreds of hours of footage to emphasize the few moments when the exemplary candidate might have slipped up, in an attempt to assemble an artificial version of history in which Trump's shoot-from-the-hip decision made sense. During the making of "The Apprentice," Burnett conceded that the stories were constructed in this way, saying, "We know each week who has been fired, and, therefore, you're editing in reverse." Braun noted that President Trump's staff seems to have been similarly forced to learn the art of retroactive narrative construction, adding, "I find it strangely validating to hear that they're doing the same thing in the White House."'
How to Stop Websites From Asking to Show Notifications
How to reject notification requests automatically on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari.
And this link will tell you how to block notifications on Chrome for Android.
Abandoned Rails: Abandoned Railroads of Oklahoma
Pages detailing full and partial abandonments of railroad trackage, with some photos of remaining stations and other infrastructure.
Surviving Oklahoma Railroad Stations
A list of stations, no date specified, with some details as to their current use. The site also has information on the history of rail in Oklahoma and railroad museums in Oklahoma.
