cheese it, the cops!

Entanglements 5: Epistemology.

My hero G.E. Moore and his proof of the external world. Knowledge is merely true belief. Perception is ingestion. Extended mind thesis. Against Wittgenstein. Etc.

 

 

and here is the playlist so far.

 

suffering for art, suffering from art

in splicetoday: avoid the emily dickinson biopic 'a quiet passion' at all costs.

a remarkably good piece/video from voice of america on the immigration situation in the tiny town where i live, and in the region. they showed the vid at the community meeting on the situation in gettysburg this evening. there were a couple hundred people there. i think we had a pretty good, working intersectional culture here a moment ago; it is disintegrating. the economy will go that way too.

ten years ago, york springs was dying. this fall, you should have seen the schoolbuses unloading. dozens of kids. we need immigration around here for many reasons, and there really are no problems to speak of: no crime problem, no jobs problem, etc. so what the hell do these people think they are accomplishing?

they call the no-stoplight town of york springs 'little mexico,' and i think the figures given in the voa piece are inaccurate (they come from 2010 census): let's say 1000 people, 70% mexican. here's my local pride bumper sticker, which appeared here and there a couple of years ago.

who sucks? no doubt i do. but john ashbery definitely does.

The man with the red hat
And the polar bear, is he here too?
The window giving on shade,
Is that here too?
And all the little helps,
My initials in the sky,
The hay of an arctic summer night?

Let's invade Afghanistan again, it worked real good last time! Oh, that's right, we're still there!

New post. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. Outsiders have trying that over and over and over with Afghanistan since Alexander the Great, and it didn't work all that well any of them.

http://www.veteranstodaynews.com/2017/05/19/not-a-particularly-bright-future/

To hold the center and help the idiot in charge not to screw it up!

 

Well, I suspect we might see a US civil war at some point in  the future, probably brought on in part by this morass of utter incompetent and deranged bullshit. Definitely, Madison and Hamilton never envisioned a Donald Trump except locked in Bedlam...

One thing I will say is that H.R. McMaster has one of the most thankless and impossible jobs in Washington. Thank God Stephen Miller is writing Trump's speech for the Islamic leaders. That should be interesting, he seems like a nice person to do that.  

http://www.veteranstodaynews.com/2017/05/18/dispatches-from-wolf-country-henry-viii-or-johnny-lackland/

Talking Trump

Whatever Trump did or did not say to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador, the reaction right now is bizarre and out of all proportion. Many have said that 'if true' it has 'put American lives at risk.' I'm afraid I'm going to need to see a plausible scenario. One theory is that it will 'acclerate' isis's laptop-bomb program. That is just nonsense, and they publicly announced the threat and took security measures in March. If that didn't accelerate them..

And compromising a source in Turkey or on the battlefield is not the same as having an immediate battlefield or terror-threat-type effect. The people in the intel community and in the media who are talking this way need to calm down and report the facts, alright? They are making almost no definite assertions. They are also hinting at the completely incoherent theory that the Russians will leak back into isis, who will execute the source, let's say. As you try to look at any specific scenario, pay attention to the question of who you've got allied with whom, because the sort of thing they're saying makes no specific sense; they're just creating an amorphous cloud of emergency.

New Stuff

Bit of this, bit of that -- Politics, culture, music, blasphemy. Monday.

 

 

living that newspaper life

trying to clean out a closet and came across a cache of sartwelliana, which came to me this way and that, but a lot of which i never looked at. i guess i am particularly interested in my family's writing and newspaper history. my dad franklin jr. was a reporter on the washington star, where i was a copy boy 1980-81, and his dad franklin and his father's brother edward were straight dc newshounds from childhood. here is my father's father's obit. 

what a dandy. and were i a 19th century novelist, i'd say his eyes are alight with mischief. some highlights: born july 4, 1900. he wrote 'one of the first' (the star's obit makes it 'the first') nightclub column in the usa, 'man about town,' for the washington post, in the 1920s. i think the photo might be in the white house press room (i still have his credentials), mid 1930s.

(name's on the back)

franklin sr. started in high school as a copy boy for the ap, running errands at the capitol. eventually, chief editorial writer and political columnist at the washington times. then editor of the 'beverage bulletin' and other pr stuff. apparently, my grandmother marge (bennit) sartwell, was the post's film critic. she describes herself in a letter as the drama editor. i knew her but not that.

[that's her on the right; pretty happy-looking bunch, yet formidable. not sure if it's lady journalists or what. they're drinking arrow 77 beer straight outta baltimore and smokin l&m's.]

[the washington times merged with the herald, which was gobbled up by the post, the whole kit and caboodle known even in my toddlerhood as 'the washington post and times-herald.' meanwhile the star gobbled the daily news in my youth, then definitively croaked and left dc a one-paper town; i was on the star in its final days, starting on rock criticism.]

check this masthead, from among franklin sr.'s stuff:

in chevy chase dc, i delivered the evening star for years, and my little brother adam the daily news.

i've still got a few of these sitting around in a box.

franklin died in 1948, ten years before i was born. he was injured in 1922, covering some military event with warren harding for the post. it was always a family myth that harding visited him in the hospital, but i can definitely substantiate that the white house sent flowers. check these out.

and then there's this christmas card, signed by nicholas and alice longworth.

(meanwhile my great grandfather on the completely other side [my mother's mother's father], herman bernstein, a newspaperman in nyc, was writing a campaign bio for hoover.) i have franklin's invitation to the first fdr inaugural. insanely, i ripped the envelope messing with it.

supposedly he died from his injuries; family lore is completely clear that he died of alcoholism. there are a bunch of pretty sad letters between franklin sr and my dad frankie when sr was in the 'sanitarium.' but there is some writing advice.

"There is a great deal of pleasure in writing if you don't fight it." People in my family always found that part easy. i never saw my father more at ease or happier than pecking with his two forefingers at his old royal, a pall mall dangling from his mouth. he used the columbus method, "discover a key and land on it," as do i.

[my father frank with his father frank, griffith stadium, dc, mid-1930s. sammy baugh and walter 'big train' johnson. my father told me that his father told him that he, sr, saw the longest home run ever hit by anyone anywhere: josh gibson for the homestead greys, at griffith.]

in the late 50s/early 60s my dad did humorous features at the star, like re-taking the driver's exam, or being santa claus in a department store. eventually he was a writer/photographer at the national geographic and managing ed at science news; then editor of the defenders of wildlife magazine. 

frankie sartwell on the left; must be the newsroom at the star. i assume these are editorial assistants taking copy from reporters, circa mid-to-late-50s.

franklin's brother edward died at 46, my father at 51, my brother adam at 29; that's pretty much all my direct male relatives on my father's side; addiction, really. on the other hand, we report from the front lines.

the end of the star decided me on grad school in philosophy. (i do want to say that working in the newsroom when reagan was shot was about the most exciting thing i ever experienced. our white house person lisa myers called in, and...yikes!). but i always tried to write for newspapers as well, and i still yearn for that newsroom career i never had.

at my father's death in 1980, i was left with his father's three-volume autobiography of h.l. mencken, holy books among my people. and this piece of wisdom from franklin to franklin: "writing is the fine art of applying the seat of your pants to a chair."

truthache

No way! I'm in the Wall Street Journal, on truth. Other crispy-truth resources:

first bit of the truth chapter of Entanglements: a System of Philosophy

New York Times: Philosophy Returns to the Real World

 

 

but what is truth?