Enjoy the photos that Suzanne included in her email. And check out the link to Byron Mejia.

 (If you’re interested in hearing more about Suzanne’s adventures in Central America, send her your email address – to Suzanne @fordfineart.com – and she will put you on her list.)

Murals & Marbles
From Suzanne in Honduras 

Iván says we will take the bus to Cantarranas (Singing Frogs)… it is close. But, he forgets to say, uphill and about 2 miles. Then we wait 20 minutes, but the fare is only $1.00 each.

We visit an artist, Sergio Martinez, up in the mountains. He has a tilapia business there and a rustic studio where he and his teenage children paint. I buy 3 small paintings by the 16-year-old, Estefano. His work is sensitive and he creates such atmosphere in his detailed rainforests.

Here is Estefano with one of the paintings:

Then we all go to the old town of Cantarranas. Some of the buildings are 200 and 300 years old, and the streets are cobblestone. In the last few years, hundreds of murals have been painted on the façades by artists.

The square has a fantastic array of 30+ large sculptures, mostly stone and marble.

Then we take a jaunt down a rutted road to an ice cream and snack store that has a garden filled with small sculptures… again, mostly stone and marble.

We deliver a book to a gallerist who helped us. It is fun to recognize the artists, and the gallerist’s wife makes handmade gold (they have gold mines here) and silver jewelry. We sit and talk about the best contemporary artists. You can watch one of them, Byron Mejia, at work here.

Johann finally arrives from Nicaragua. He rode the bus and was delayed at the border. 15 hours in all… Bet he flies next time.

Bits and Pieces 

BAD: Crazy Court Decision in Australia 

A lot of weird stuff goes on in the land down under. Last week, I read that Australia’s highest court ruled that newspapers and television stations that post articles on Facebook can be sued for defamatory comments made by readers on such posts. Click here.

While you’re at it, read what I had to say about the legal ramifications of defamation here.

WORSE: We Killed… Who? 

After 13 American soldiers and dozens of civilians were killed in Kabul on August 29, the US launched a drone strike that, according to the Biden administration, targeted the terrorist responsible for their deaths. But turns out that the “terrorist” wasn’t a terrorist at all. It was Zemari Ahmadi, a worker for a US aid group. To make matters worse, the strike on Ahmadi’s car also killed 9 members of his family, including 7 children, who were in the car at the time.

Click here.

PUZZLING: 2 Stories CNN Didn’t Cover 

1. Larry Elders, the conservative talk show host and Republican gubernatorial candidate (California), was attacked by about a dozen hecklers in Venice Beach. One of them, a White woman, yelled racial slurs at Elders (who is African-American) and then lobbed an egg at him. When a security guard stood in her way, she punched him.

Let me break this down. A White woman, on camera, wearing a gorilla mask, yells racist slurs at a Black man running for office.

The incident was widely reported on Fox and other conservative media outlets, but barely mentioned elsewhere. Click here and here

2. A Google search will tell you that Ben Shapiro is, among other things, a political commentator whose views have been criticized by both the right and the left.

Shapiro vehemently denies being a White Supremacist, pointing out that he has actually received death threats from White Supremacist groups. But according to an internal document created by Google’s diversity training team for Google employees, he is part of the “White Supremacy Pyramid” responsible for fomenting racial hatred in the US.

Click here to watch Shapiro’s response.

Google denies that the document has anything to do with policy. But you have to wonder…

HOPEFUL: The Kids May Be Alright 

The state of racial divide today is worse than at any time in memory. Identity politics and Critical Race Theory, its imbecile bastard child, have set Blacks against Whites and Whites against Blacks as a matter of principle.

There are reasons that racial-based fear and animosity have seeped into our culture. But contrary to what some would have us believe, it is not natural.

This little video of two five-year-old friends reminds us that racism – towards any and every race – is a product of nurture, not nature.

 3 Bits About Korea: A Crash Course in the Difference Between Political and Economic Freedom and Central Control  

1.- In a recent issue of his blog, Bill Bonner wrote this:

Thank the long-suffering people of North Korea for their real-world/real-time test. The elite in North Korea has been telling them what to do for more than half a century… with predictable results – grinding poverty… and outright starvation.

And we are grateful. Otherwise, the theory – that the freer the society, the richer the people – would be just a theory… buttressed only by speculation, logic, and anecdotal evidence.

But the test on the Korean Peninsula was almost perfect. Same people. Same resources. Same climate. Same time (the test began in 1953). More or less the same starting position (the US had pulverized North Korea in the war; but so had it smashed up Japan and Germany).

The southerners chose freedom – moderated, as always, by government, social norms, and so forth.

The group in the North went for non-freedom… ruthlessly, sternly enforced by the Kim Il-Sung and then Kim Jong-Il communist governments.

The result? The South Korean economy is now nearly 100 times bigger than the economy of North Korea. The average South Korean has nearly 50 times more wealth.

He will live to an average age of 79, which is 11 years longer than the North Korean male (and a couple of years more than the average man in the US).

And to top it off, the free people of the South are between 1 and 3 inches taller than those in the North, thanks to getting enough to eat.

Conclusion: Freedom makes a big difference in the economic world.

2.- JS sent me this last week – an interview with Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector. Click here for this firsthand account of the North Korean lifestyle.

3.- Book Recommendation: Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor shares the remarkable story of Kim Yong, a former military official who spent six years in a gulag. Click here.

Unleash Your Inner Art Critic 

Take a look at this list of Rembrandt’s greatest hits. The critics pick their faves. Mine’s “Herman Doomer.” What’s yours?

Click here.

Well Said: 4 Worthy Thoughts 

* “Over the years, I’ve learned that the first idea you have is irrelevant. It’s just a catalyst for you to get started. Then you figure out what’s wrong with it and you go through phases of denial, panic, regret. And then you finally have a better idea and the second idea is always the important one.” – Jessica Livingston

* “Double down on your best relationship. It’s the investment with the highest return.” – James Clear

* “If my hands are fully occupied in holding on to something, I can neither give nor receive.” – Dorothee Sölle

* “The ability to forget a sorrow is childhood’s most enchanting feature.” – Phyllis McGinley

Fathers and Sons 

I looked through the little box next to my bed this morning, the one that contains the letter my mother sent to me before she died, advising me to work less and live more. The letter I’ve only been able to scan, not read slowly and contemplatively, as it deserves. The letter that whispers to me every time I set my eyes on that box.

I glanced at old photos and postcards – images of my life in Brooklyn, more than 60 years ago. Among them I found something else, a single page, typewritten and signed, simply, “Dad.”

It was a letter asking me to accept a check for $10,000 as a “house gift.” It must have been written in 2010 or 2011, when he was 81 or 82 (and I was 61 or 62), for it mentioned an operation that he’d recently had. They’d cut him open for some sort of intestinal problem, and then spotted the cancer that would – sometime later – kill him.

I didn’t remember having read it before. And yet there it was, in that keepsake box, right beside the letter from my mother.

Dear Mark,

I’ve asked D to deliver this check, your long-overdue house gift. Please don’t reject it or try to return it. Don’t think of it as money. My giving you money is like the proverbial sending coals to Newcastle or like me giving Warren Buffett a stock tip. Rather think of it as my finally fulfilling a promise I made to myself – that when each child was ready for family-making, I’d give them ten thousand to help with buying a house…

The next section of the letter was about his will. He explained that he’d revised it the day before his operation, noting that he’d complied with my wish to have the proceeds of his estate divided among my seven siblings, since I had no need.

In the last paragraph, he wrote:

What this means is not a matter of money but that you are one of my eight [children] that I love in eight different ways but with about the same amount of feeling…. Despite my growls, I am also proud of you… as a skillful businessman and a great giver…

The handwriting was elegant. (His mother was a schoolteacher and a disciplinarian.) The diction was clean. The sentiment was restrained. And the underlying message – which was barely mentioned – was about the gulf that had always existed between us, the gap that so often develops between fathers and sons during the latter’s adolescence, the gap that remains, however much they may try, later on, to bridge it.

This letter – this was all he could do. Just as all I can do is remember who he was and what he stood for.

My father graduated from high school when he was 16, in 1936, winning two citywide awards – one for math and one for English. He spent the next four years at Fordham University, studying English literature and dramaturgy, earning spending money by tutoring his fellow classmates in math.

Because of his natural gift for mathematics, he was recruited to work on the Manhattan Project. Of course, he didn’t know what sort of work he would be doing. They told him only that he’d be applying his math skills to physics, which intrigued him. But he had his heart set on becoming a writer. So after some deliberation, he turned down the Manhattan Project and went looking for a job as a writer.

He landed work as a script writer and part-time actor for an ersatz Abbot and Costello comedy special that was being launched on the radio. (No TVs back then.) But on December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He quit his job on the spot – actually in the middle of a recording session – and enlisted in the Navy.

He made his way up the ranks in the Navy quickly, but to his disappointment he never saw any action. He ended up captaining a ship in the China Sea (if I remember right) when the war ended.

After the war, he enrolled in a graduate program at Catholic University in Washington, DC. One of the courses he took was in dramaturgy. It was taught by a woman he instantly fell in love with. That is how our family began.

Soon after they were married, my parents moved to Guatemala, where he spent his daytime hours working on his writing and his evenings writing some more as a civilian security guard at the American Embassy.

That was in 1949, in the middle of an attempted coup d’etat that left 150 dead and 200 wounded. Their apartment was actually bombed. A shell came through a wall and landed, unexploded, in the bedroom. My father baptized my sister D, their first child, underneath the kitchen table.

Left with neither an apartment nor jobs, my parents came back to the States. To support his young family, my father got a job teaching English literature and drama at Fordham. Every year, a new child was born. He took on extra jobs on the side, but gave up his dream of being a writer in order to pay the bills.

He never griped about his decision. Throughout his adult life, he worked at least two, but often three, jobs. He and my mother taught their eight children that life is hard, and no one is entitled to anything. Work for what you want. Don’t complain if you don’t get it. Take responsibility. And leave the world – and every portion of the world that you inhabit – a little better than the way you found it.

My father was an academic and an intellectual. He had no interest in material things. For most of my childhood, the 10 of us lived in a small, four-bedroom house across the street from a municipal storage lot. I was embarrassed by our relative poverty.  I wanted, like my father, to be a writer and a teacher. But more than anything, I wanted to be rich.

By the time I bought my first rich-person’s house, my mother was already gone. My father visited many times, and he always made an effort to say something nice about the house or our luxury cars or something else that we had spent a grotesque amount of money on. It was clear that he wasn’t the least bit impressed by any of it. But he knew that becoming wealthy was important to me, and he was trying to breach the divide that always separates fathers and sons. Just as he was doing in that last letter to me.

(I don’t remember whether I cashed his $10,000 check or not. K tells me I didn’t. I hope I did.)

Bits and Pieces 

GOOD: After 30 years in a Georgia prison for a crime he did not commit, Ron Jacobsen is exonerated. 

From the Innocence Project…

Even though Ron Jacobsen’s conviction was overturned in 2019 after DNA evidence proved his innocence, the district attorney insisted she would take his case to a second trial and opposed his release on bail. At the same time, she offered Ron a plea deal. If he would plead guilty, he could walk out of prison immediately. He refused, and the district attorney continued to argue that he was “too dangerous” to be released on bail while she pursued a retrial. Ron was released from pre-trial detention on Nov. 4, 2020, after the court set bond over the district attorney’s objections, and he immediately returned to his home state of New York where he reunited with his sister and awaited news of a retrial.

On Aug. 27, 10 months after posting bond, the newly elected district attorney dismissed all charges, officially exonerating Ron.

On learning of his exoneration, he said, “Thirty years ago, I was called a liar for proclaiming my innocence at trial. Today, I have my freedom by the overbearing proof of my innocence of this crime which I was convicted of, sentenced to life for, and ultimately justice prevailed through the tireless work and efforts of Vanessa Potkin and the Innocence Project. I have my life back and words can’t do justice to my gratitude and appreciation to everyone at the Innocence Project. Thank you.”

Click here.

BAD: Parts shortage will keep auto prices sky-high. 

Back in the spring, a shortage of computer chips that had sent auto prices soaring appeared to be easing. Not anymore. A surge in the Delta variant of COVID-19 in several Asian countries that are the main producers of auto-grade chips is making the shortage worse.

And it’s not just computer chips. Automakers are starting to see shortages of wiring harnesses, plastics, and glass, too. The result is that vehicle buyers are facing persistent and once-unthinkable price spikes. The average price of a new vehicle sold in the United States in August hit a record of just above $41,000 – nearly $8,200 more than it was just two years ago, J.D. Power estimated.

Click here.

AWKWARD AND UNCERTAIN: Apple halts plan to scan child sex abuse images in iPhones. 

Apple has decided to delay its plan to scan iPhones or iPads for child sex abuse images to “protect children” after a backlash from customers, advocacy groups, researchers, and others.

On Aug. 5, Apple announced it would be launching an “ambitious” plan of “expanded protections for children” using breakthrough cryptography technology and artificial intelligence to find abuse material when it is stored in iCloud Photos.

Illegal images would be reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Apple said. A later memo added that “the possibility of any given account being flagged incorrectly is lower than one in one trillion.”

The announcement caused immediate and severe criticism.

“This sort of tool can be a boon for finding child pornography in people’s phones,” John Hopkins University professor and cryptographer Matthew Green, an outspoken critic of Apple, wrote on Twitter. “But imagine what it could do in the hands of an authoritarian government?”

For more, click here and here and here.

3 Bits on Banksy 

I’m a Banksy fan. He’s clever. Fun. Talented. Here are three recent stories about him…

1. In 2018, Banksy’s Love Is in the Binsold at Sotheby’s London for $1.37 million. No sooner had the gavel clapped than the framed illustration partially shredded itself.

Well, Sotheby’s will be auctioning off the work again this year, according to Art News. But this time it carries an estimate of $5 to $8 million. Click here.

2. Someone hacked into Banksy’s website and managed to use it to sell an ersatz Banksy NFT for $336,000 in crypto, according to the BBC. A security expert says he learned of the website’s vulnerability before the fraud and tried to notify the artist’s representatives, but they were unresponsive to his calls and text messages. Click here.
3. Within days of one another, two unauthorized shows about Banksy opened in Seoul and New York City. Unauthorized means the artist gets no royalties. Understandably, Banksy was not happy. Click here and here.

2 Snapshots of History 

Lewis Wickes Hine (Sept. 26, 1874 – Nov. 3, 1940) was an American photographer and sociologist. Hine used his camera as a tool for social reform, particularly regarding child labor laws.

Below are two of his better-known photos (from the U.S. National Archives). 

1. A young girl tends the spinning machine at a cotton mill in North Carolina. Children worked adult hours for pennies in mills and factories all over the United States until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

2. Hiram Pulk, age 9, worked in a canning company. He told Hine, “I ain’t very fast, only about 5 boxes a day. They pay about 5 cents a box.”

Strange but Sweet… 

The young man in this video – an apparently very nice young man – does not feel comfortable as a man. But he doesn’t feel like a woman either. He’s thought about other gender opportunities out there, but none feels right to him. He’s going to remove his genitalia completely… to realize the being he believes he was born to be.

Well Said: 4 Worthy Thoughts on Rationality 

* “Reason has built the modern world. It is a precious but also a fragile thing, which can be corroded by apparently harmless irrationality.” – Richard Dawkins

* “It is in the nature of foolish reasoning to seem good to the foolish reasoner.” –  George Eliot

* “Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.” – Robert A. Heinlein

* “Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.” – Jonathan Swift

That’s Not Funny! Why Humor Matters…

Humor is one of the wonders of the Homo sapiens world. It has the potential to bridge social gaps, heal personal wounds, expand rigid minds, and open shut hearts by showing us what is essential in life – in our common humanity – through alternative perspectives.

But just as biological creatures need oxygen to breathe, humor needs freedom to stay alive. Unfortunately, we are quickly moving into a social environment where humor is being shackled by ideological ideas of right and wrong. Late-night hosts are being sued by politicians they lampoon. And stand-up comedians are being barred from appearing on college campuses.

Even on a pedestrian level, humor is being threatened by big-tech censorship and cancel culture on social media platforms. The test of a good joke is no longer whether it makes you laugh. It must do so without breaking any rules of political/ideological correctness. And heaven forbid it offend the feelings of even the most sensitive of souls.

I had a conversation last week about this with a little salon I belong to called Whiskey Wednesdays. We were talking about comedians – the really great comedians, like Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce, George Carlin and Bill Hicks. We agreed that most of their best routines would be verboten today.  (Click here for a rant from Bill Hicks that would almost certainly be prohibited or canceled.)

That’s a shame. Great comedy – the kind that does all the things mentioned above – cannot exist in autocracies and tyrannies. (As one of its first acts upon taking over Afghanistan, the Taliban outlawed comedy. I fear that we near that point now.)

Those that favor censorship of comedy make the argument that the humor should be treated like other forms of public speech. It should be allowed so long as it doesn’t defame individuals, including public individuals, as well as groups of individuals or even, in some cases, corporate entities.

Indeed, there is protection from harmful speech that is established in our legal system. It is called defamation law. But there is a difference between satire – humor that is meant to criticize and insult – and defamation.

What is defamation? 

Defamation is the act of making written or oral remarks about someone or some legal entity (like a corporation) that are both intentionally derisive and also provably false.

 There is nothing illegal with saying something pejorative that is demonstrably true. And there is nothing illegal about making a false statement that is not negative. But most countries have laws against defamation.

According to The Business Litigators website, the tort of defamation (sometimes referred to as defamation of character) can be divided into claims involving two distinct types of statements: defamatory per se statements and defamatory per quod statements.

“Statements that are defamatory per se (sometimes referred to generically by courts as libel per se) are so obviously and naturally harmful to one’s reputation on their face that proof of injury is not required.”

For example:

* Imputing that a person committed a crime;

* Imputing that a person is infected with a loathsome communicable disease;

* Imputing that a person is unable or lacks the integrity to perform their employment duties;

* Imputing that a person lacks ability or otherwise prejudices them in their profession; and

* Imputing that a person has engaged in adultery or fornication.

“Importantly, a statement can only be considered defamatory per se if the harmful effect is apparent on the face of the statement itself. If extrinsic facts or additional information about the person being defamed is required to understand the harmful effect of the statement, then it cannot be defamatory per se. That is not to say the statement is not defamatory if extrinsic facts are required; it just cannot be defamatory per se.

“If a defamatory statement does not fall into one of the defamatory per se categories or requires extrinsic facts, then it is considered defamatory per quod.

“Unlike in cases involving defamation per se, defamation per quod claims require the plaintiff to allege and prove special damages (also called ‘special harm’ by some courts). The term ‘special damages’ or ‘special harm’ is a legal term in defamation law that means the loss of something with actual economic or pecuniary value… such as the commission from a lost sale or the salary from a lost job.”

If you have any interest in knowing more than this about the legal ramifications of defamation (which I doubt), you can find it here.

What is satire?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines satire as “a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn.”

Satire can appear in every possible medium – in books, essays, newspapers, pamphlets, and in movies, TV, on the stage, and even in drawings. And it has many, many manifestations, including irony, parody, buffoonery, burlesque, caricature, lampoon, mockery, and ridicule.

Satire is the effort to expose serious flaws or peccadilloes of well-known or powerful people or institutions. Its range can be narrow or broad. And its treatment of its subject can be gentle or harsh.

This is important: Satire doesn’t have to be fair. It doesn’t have to be balanced. As Garry Trudeau said, speaking to the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1988: “Satire is supposed to be unbalanced. It’s supposed to be unfair. Criticizing a political satirist for being unfair is like criticizing a nose guard for being physical.”

At a time when political and ideological ideas are so divided, humor – satire in particular – is not just a social balm. It’s an existential necessity.

The next time you hear someone tell you why some bit of satire is not funny – or worse, a microaggression – make use of one of these brilliant quips about satire (from Dr. Mardy’s website)…

* From G.K. Chesterton: “A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.”

* From Peter De Vries: “The difference between satire and humor is that the satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive, often to release him again for another chance.”

* From Barbara Tuchman: “Satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.”

*  From E.L. Doctorow: “Satire’s nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth.”

* From Jonathan Swift:  “Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.”

The Good, the Bad, the Uncertain

Making Sense of Recent News Stories. Big and Small 

GOOD: Good for China 

One of the advantages of having unchallenged central authority is that you can make big decisions quickly. And as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, that sort of power is something that China has that we in the US lack.

I take no position on that subject for the moment.

I believe the US is doing a great job of emulating China in many areas of control. But I don’t think the US is likely to do what China has done recently: It’s now illegal for China’s hundreds of millions of young people to spend more than a modest amount of time with online videogames.

The rules are strict: zero games during the school week, and only one hour a day on Fridays, weekends, and public holidays. Those are pretty much the rules that K applied for TV 30 years ago when our kids were little. It worked. They are all literate.

Prediction: Twenty years from now, China will not only have the world’s largest economy, it will have the world’s most literate population.

BAD: More Signs of Inflation 

The Fed’s inflation gauge, the so-called core PCE (personal consumption expenditures) price index, vaulted in the 12 months through July to levels not seen in 30 years. The Commerce Department said last week that the core PCE rose by 3.6% over the year in July, matching June’s level, which was an increase from 3.5% in May and 3.1% in April.

In a speech on Aug. 27, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell addressed inflationary pressures, acknowledging a “sharp run-up in inflation” driven by the rapid reopening of the economy, while reiterating his oft-repeated view that price pressures would moderate once supply-side shortages and bottlenecks further abate.

Click here.

UNCERTAIN: Vaccination Cards for Green Cards 

Foreign immigrants living in the US will now have to provide proof of vaccination against COVID-19 if they want a green card, the CDC announced.

According to US federal law, foreigners who apply for a green card are required to be vaccinated against other diseases, including mumps, measles, rubella, hepatitis B, polio, and pertussis. “COVID-19 vaccination now meets the criteria for required vaccinations and is a requirement for applicants eligible for the vaccine,” the CDC stated on its website.

Negative screening for COVID-19 doesn’t guarantee that “green card applicants won’t have the disease when they become permanent residents,” the CDC added.

Of course, getting a vaccine doesn’t either, as we all now know.

In any case, people can apply for exemptions, including seeking a waiver on religious or moral grounds. And the requirement doesn’t include children under 12 years old.

Click here.

GOOD: Moratorium Extension Overturned 

On Aug. 26, the US Supreme Court rejected a Biden-administration-supported, CDC-issued extension of its previous eviction moratorium. The justices sided with a group of realtors that brought the case to them, noting that without authorization from Congress, the CDC doesn’t have the authority to pass such rules in the first place.

“It would be one thing if Congress had specifically authorized the action that the CDC has taken. But that has not happened,” the court wrote. “Instead, the CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination. It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts. If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it.”

According to Census Bureau data from early August, about 3.5 million people in the country said they faced eviction in the next two months.

Click here.

BAD: Bernie Sanders Is Running Out of Billionaires 

Bernie Sanders has been holding rallies to promote his spending bill, suggesting that it would be paid for by increasing taxes on the super-rich. “We are living in a nation where the people on the top are doing phenomenally well,” he told a crowd in Iowa. “They have so much money they don’t know what to do with it.”

He does. He will tax them more to pay for his bill.

Two problems with this plan:

According to the 2021 Forbes billionaire list, there are only 724 of them in the US. Their combined net worth at the time the list was compiled was $4.4 trillion. Add the just-passed $1 trillion “infrastructure bill” to Bernie’s $3.5 trillion bill (which some estimate will cost $5.5 trillion) and what you have is arithmetic that doesn’t work – even if you raise billionaires’ taxes to 99%.

UNCERTAIN: The Escape Continues 

Americans continue to flee big cities. Many are going to the suburbs that surround them, but many, too, are going further, to the more rural, more bucolic counties beyond suburbia.

The Brooking Institute tracks 240 of the so-called “exurbs.” In 2020, according to US Postal Service permanent-change-of-address data, net migration to these areas rose 37% in 2020.

Click here.

GOOD: Police Chief Gets Suspended for Throwing a Pissyfit 

I am impatient on lines. I get upset when someone in front of me seems to be dithering away his time, unconscious of those behind him. And so, I can very much understand why this sheriff got upset. But his reaction was inexcusable. When you have a gun on your hip, and a virtual license to kill, you have to practice temperance. IMHO, he got what he deserved.

What do you think? Click here.

BAD: Twitter Suspends Alex Berenson Over Viral COVID-19 Tweets

Twitter “permanently” suspended former New York Times journalist and author Alex Berenson for “repeated violations” of its COVID-19 misinformation rules, a Twitter spokesperson told news outlets on Aug. 28.

Before his suspension, Berenson had often cited the results of an Israeli study that found that previous COVID-19 infection provides better protection against the Delta variant than any of the COVID-19 vaccines. In one such tweet, he quoted the study:

SARS-CoV-2-naive vaccines had a 13.06-fold increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021.

“Information has never been more plentiful or easier to distribute,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Yet we are sliding into a new age of censorship and suppression, encouraged by technology giants and traditional media companies. As someone who’s been falsely characterized as a coronavirus ‘denier,’ I have seen this crisis firsthand.”

UNCERTAIN: Video Channel Restored, but Not Completely 

After closing a bestselling author/journalist’s video channel on Aug. 24, YouTube restored it less than a week later.

Naomi Wolf is the author of such books as The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. She’s also a former advisor to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. But when she published evidence in DailyClout, her video channel, showing that gain-of-function research had been funded by the US government, YouTube shut her down.

In closing her channel, YouTube sent an email saying, “YouTube doesn’t allow claims about COVID-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO).”

Wolf countered that the video was not filled with contentious material. It included information already disseminated by Public Citizen, Axios, and Vanity Fair.

In an email time-stamped Aug. 26 at 7:47 p.m. Eastern Time, YouTube advised Wolf’s website that it had made a mistake and resurrected the video channel. But when it was restored, more than 300,000 views were removed from the view counter and thousands of subscribers disappeared, Wolf said.

Wolf said she is concerned that a big tech company like YouTube can silence “any small business owner, or any news outlet, or any reporter… and damage can be done to their business or their reputation at any time…. It’s not American to police speech in this way.”

Click here.

GOOD: Language Master Tests His Yoruba on Nigerian Shopkeeper 

One of the benefits of speaking a second language is that it gives you access to people you would otherwise never get to know. Even in this small exchange, you can see how this White kid’s elementary efforts in speaking Yoruba light up the Nigerians he is speaking to.

Click here.

Values and Aspirations

SS, a very successful investment analyst, once told me that certain things we cherish in our adolescence become valuable collectible assets when we hit our peak earning years. For my generation, this was true for baseball cards and Barbie dolls. For his generation, it was tru for surfboards and guitars. For every generation since the Great Generation, it’s been true for automobiles.
 
That was true for me. In fact, when I was in my 50s, I bought three vintage cars – a 1955 Thunderbird, a 1956 Belaire, a 1962 Corvette – all of which appreciated nicely.
 
I think something similar can be said about cultural fads. The books and movies that are cool in one’s early adolescence shape not just one’s early thoughts and feelings, but also have unconscious psychological imprints that influence our value systems later in life.

I was born in 1950. Thus, the 1960s was the decade that should have had that effect on me. And I think it did. In ways that are obvious and some that are not, my values and aspirations were in part formed by the books and movies that captured my interest back then.

More About the F-Word… 

Responding to the issue in which I agreed with a reader that the F-Word doesn’t suit us as we get older, AS wrote:

I don’t disagree that people our age shouldn’t use the word fuck, even though I do. I don’t feel good about it and will try to stop.

I was hoping – even excited – to read your examples of substitute words. I expected creativity. But “Fudge!” Come on! How disappointing!

Fair enough, AS. I did some research, and discovered that fuck can be used in almost unlimited ways. As a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, and (most commonly, perhaps) as an exclamation.

As someone once said: “It’s the only fucking word you can use in any fucking situation and still make sense.”

Substitutes for Fuck Used as an Exclamation, an Expression of Frustration 

Focusing on fuck as an exclamation, I found dozens of possibilities. Some of them I rejected as wimpy or puerile. (Shoot! Darn! Shucks! Sugar! Fiddlesticks!)

That left plenty more – most of which, interestingly, begin with three consonants: D, B, or F.

 * D-Words: damn, dammit, damnation, drat, dashit, dagnabit, doggonit

* B-Words: bugger, bullocks, blast, blastit, bloody hell, blinking hell, botheration

* F-Words: feck, fook, frik, fricking hell, flipping hell, frig

My favorites of the above are mostly B-Words. These I will do my best to work into future conversations:

* Bullocks!

* Blinking Hell!

* Botheration!

Substitutes for Fuck Used as a Noun, as an Epithet of Denigration

I eliminated many words that were perhaps not quite as vulgar as fuck, but vulgar enough to be inexcusable at my age, including asshole, animal, scumbag, and shithead. I also eliminated many that were less vulgar but also less forceful, such as rogue, rascal, skunk, cad, villain, brute, beast, bastard, rat, jerk, and louse.

Again, among the worthy candidates, four initial letters predominate:

* B-Words: blackguard, bugger, butthole, blighter, bleeder, boor, buzzard, bounder

* C-Words: cur, churl, chuff, creep, cretin, crud clown

* S-Words: snake, sod, scrote, scrotum, schmuck, sleveen, spalpeen

* R-Words: reprobate, ratbag, rat fink, rotter, toe rag, rapscallion

My favorites of these, in order of preference:

* blighter

* bounder

* ratbag

* rapscallion

Having pontificated, I admit that there are many instances in literature and in the movies where the F-Word has been suitably put. The test is whether it feels vulgar. (It should not.) And whether one of the above-listed substitutes would do as well. (Again, it should not.)

Acceptable Uses of the F-Word in Literature 

A few examples:

* From Trainspotting, by Irvine Welsh (1993) – “Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting on a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye’ve produced. Choose life.”

* From How Late It Was, How Late, by James Kelman (1994) – “Ach it was hopeless. That was what ye felt. These bastards. What can ye do but. Except start again so he started again. That was what he did he started again… ye just plough on, ye plough on, ye just fucking plough on… ye just fucking push ahead, ye get fucking on with it.”

* From This Be the Verse, by Philip Larkin (1971) – “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do. / They fill you up with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you.”

Interestingly, the F-Word has not only survived in literature, it has become a suitable word for book titles. A quick search of Amazon top sellers resulted in 25 matches. Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that profane titles were “flooding bookstores” and causing dilemmas for booksellers and marketers.

For example:

* Self-improvement Books – The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (A good book. I read it.)… I Used to Be a Miserable Fuck: An Everyman’s Guide to a Meaningful Life (I intend to read it.)… F*ck Feeling; Unf*ck Your Brain

* Adult Coloring Books – Calm the F*ck Down. I’m Coloring… Go F*ck Yourself, I’m Coloring

* Cookbooks – What the F*ck Should I Make for Dinner?… 50 Ways to Eat Cock

* Children’s Books – Go the F*ck to Sleep (a 2011 best seller)

* Diet Books – The F*ck It Diet

* Etiquette Guides – Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck

* Celebrity Memoirs – Kelly Osbourne’s There Is No F*cking Secret: Letters From a Badass Bitch

This trend can partly be attributed to the rise in online sales for such titles. (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck has spent 105 weeks on the NYT bestseller list for advice and how-to books. The title is represented as The Subtle Art of Not Giving a —————.)

Acceptable Uses of the F-Word in Movies and TV 

In the movie and TV industry, the F-word has been a staple for decades.

Click here to read a good essay by Paul Byrnes on the history of profanity in the movies.

And from Jeremy Cassar, writing in Junkee, here are some great examples:

* Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Sonny: Kiss me.
Det. Sgt. Eugene Moretti: What?
Sonny: Kiss me. When I’m being fucked, I like to get kissed a lot.

Watch it here.

* Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Ricky Roma: You stupid fucking cunt. You, Williamson, I’m talking to you, shithead. You just cost me $6,000. Six thousand dollars, and one Cadillac. That’s right. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it, asshole? You’re fucking shit. Where did you learn your trade, you stupid fucking cunt, you idiot? Who ever told you that you could work with men? Oh, I’m gonna have your job, shithead. 

Watch it here.

* Pulp Fiction (1994)

Jules: You sendin’ The Wolf?
Marsellus: You feel better, motherfucker?
Jules: Shit negro, that’s all you had to say!

Watch it here.

* The Usual Suspects (1995)

Fred Fenster: Hand me the keys, you cocksucker.
Cop: In English, please.
Fred Fenster: Excuse me?
Cop: In English.
Fred Fenster: Hand me the fucking keys, you cocksucker, what the fuck?

Watch it here.

Click here for a final beauty from the HBO series Deadwood (Season 2).

Remember – it was just 18 months ago – when Trump suggested that COVID-19 might have come from a lab in Wuhan?

Every major “news” outlet – including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and all 3 major broadcast channels (ABC, CBS, and NBC), not to mention CNN and MSNBC – “fact-checked” Trump’s charge and said it was baseless. A conspiracy theory!

And it wasn’t just the news media. Fauci and every other government health hack agreed.

Well, there’s been a fair amount of looking into it since then. And the new story from all of them – which they insist they’ve been saying all along – is that, yes, it is possible that the virus came from the lab. Some still believe it’s not likely. Some believe it’s highly likely. And some are in between.

The facts, at this stage are incomplete. The truth is not yet known. But what is certain is that the only conspiracy, if there was one, was the (perhaps unspoken) agreement among leftist media and politicians to attach the term “conspiracy” to what is now acknowledged to be a perfectly legitimate theory.

Russell Brand – a very smart and funny person – does a nice, energetic job of summing it all up here.

The Good, the Bad, the Uncertain

Making Sense of Recent News Stories. Big and Small 

GOOD: “Mussolini” School Board Smack-Down

The COVID pandemic and the lockdowns imposed in response to it has given politicians and regulators all over the world a taste of real power. Nowhere is this more obvious than with local school boards that have been not only dictating COVID response measures, but also introducing values-based ideology into school curricula without parents’ permission.

There are dozens of videos you can watch on YouTube that show parents fighting back. This one is a special pleasure: An unbelievably arrogant school board administrator gets what’s coming to him. Click here.

BAD: Old Style Racism in America Is Real

Critical Race Theory postulates that America is systemically racist. Systemic means “of or relating to systems, such as laws and regulations.” There is no doubt that the Ivy League colleges are systemically racist against Asian-Americans, because they have actual regulations that limit the number of Asian-Americans they will accept. And there’s no question that the provision of the recently enacted American Rescue Plan relief program that gave preference to “farmers of color” over white farmers was systemically racist. Click here.

But I’ve yet to discover an example of a US law or regulation that is prejudicial against African-Americans or other people of color.

The problem with the systemic racism argument is not only that its logic is faulty. Or even that it perpetuates the problems it inveighs against. Like equating catcalling with rape, it directs the political debate and focus away from a real issue – actual, old-fashioned anti-Black racism, which exists in plenitude across the country.

Three examples:

 * A bank called the police on a man trying to cash his paycheck. Click here.

* A man at Walmart got questioned by the police about whether his children are really his. Click here.

* And here’s a guy that got arrested for being Black while taking out his trash. Click here.

UNCERTAIN: New World’s Record

Shortly after Veronica Ivy (born Rachel McKinnon), a Canadian philosophy professor and cyclist, won a world cycling championship, a British rapper named Zuby posted a video of himself casually breaking the British women’s dead lift record during a workout at his local gym.

Along with an image of his lift, he wrote:

I keep hearing how biological men don’t have any physical advantage over women. So watch me destroy the British Women’s dead lift record without even trying!

PS: (I identified as a woman whilst lifting the weight. Don’t be a bigot!)

Fair? Unfair? Is gender just a social construct? You decide. Click here.

GOOD: 12-Year-Old Girl Astounds Experts With Her Art

This is the sort of story that usually turns out to be a fraud, but it’s so much fun you want to believe it. Click here.

BAD: The Worst of the Worst in Baltimore 

I’ve been going to Baltimore regularly for 25 years. In that time, I’ve seen it go from not-so-bad to one of America’s top 10 Shithole Cities. (Along with Chicago, San Francisco, and Atlanta.)

The streets are potholed. The infrastructure is disintegrating. Crime – especially violent crime – has skyrocketed. Real estate values are down. Way down. And wealthy taxpayers and successful businesses are fleeing.

But that’s not the worst thing that’s happening in Baltimore. The worst thing is this: 41% of Baltimore’s high school students earn below a 1.0 GPA. Click here.

SCARY: FBI Urges Americans to Report Peers and Family Members  

On July 11, the FBI posted a tweet suggesting that Americans should monitor family members and peers for sinister “signs.”

The tweet read:

Family members and peers are often best positioned to witness signs of mobilization to violence. Help prevent homegrown violent extremism.

Then it provided a website for reporting people exhibiting “such signs.”