January 28, 2022

Now we know.....

how this came about.

https://thejenkinscomic.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/orion/

Greek mythology cartoon.

January 22, 2022

British scientist visiting Atlanta suburb killed by stray bullet while lying in bed

Source: Washington Post



A British astrophysicist visiting his girlfriend just outside Atlanta was killed by a stray bullet on Jan. 16 that struck him while he was lying in bed. Matthew Willson, 31, died of a single gunshot wound to the head after being transported to a hospital, local law enforcement said Thursday.

Willson, who was from Chertsey, a London suburb, was next to his girlfriend when he was shot in Brookhaven, Ga., around 2 a.m. The couple heard a heavy round of gunshots when she suggested calling the police, she told British media, which reported they had met when he worked as a researcher at Georgia State University.

“His last words were, ‘Sure, I’m sure they are just messing around,’ ” said his partner, Katherine Shepard, who saw him slumping over in the dark, only to realize he had been hit. She recalled trying to stop the bleeding from his head with a towel, urging him to “stay with me” as his eyes closed and he struggled to breathe.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/01/22/matthew-willson-shooting-brookhaven-atlanta/

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More on guns make a polite society front. Guns are going to criminals faster than ever these days.

January 20, 2022

We have a long way to go.

I've been a soccer referee for many a year. From under 10, to U-18 in AYSO, Club soccer for the USSF, high school, and college. I've done some amateur men's matches. I've seen vast developments in teh women's game.
This article is about research done in England and shows how deep negative attitudes about women athletes held by men are. It is quite frightening. I have even seen some of this myself at referee meetings in the past. Refs who won't work women's matches. Refs that won't ref with a woman in the center. One of the best referees I had the pleasure of working with was a woman. International FIFA ref who was in two women's world cups.
This research is very disappointing to me.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jan/20/misogyny-towards-womens-sport-common-among-male-football-fans-study-finds?utm_term=61e8ec53ac83a81938ee24ff2deb4078&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUK&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUK_email

January 16, 2022

Down a rabbit hole

I went down a rabbit hole looking for German news since it is where I live and came across this
little feature.
We call the game Musical chairs. I'm sure you have all played it at some point.
German's call it a trip to Jerusalem. The origin is unknown. The same game in Austria is a trip to Rome...

https://www.thelocal.de/20220115/whats-behind-the-strange-german-name-for-musical-chairs/

January 5, 2022

The media is still not doing enough

Plagued by bothsidism the media can't really step up to end this slow motion coup.
They hem and haw about how to phrase the issue in a polite manner, They need to step up and give full voice to the GOP attacks on democracy. They need to stop using weak weasel words to describe the GOP take over. They need to push back hard on the GOP media who keeps pushing the lies.
It is a crisis, Sound like it is media!

We are losing our democracy day by day.


If American democracy is going to survive, the media must make this crucial shift
Journalists stepped it up in 2021, but now we need a concerted effort

In the year since the Jan. 6 insurrection, mainstream journalists have done a lot of things right. They’ve published major investigations, pointed out politicians’ lies and, in many cases, finally learned how to clearly communicate the facts of what happened leading up to that horrendous riot at the U.S. Capitol — and what is happening now as pro-Trump Republicans steadily chip away at the very checks and balances that saved American democracy last year.

Much of this work has been impressive. And yet, something crucial is missing. For the most part, news organizations are not making democracy-under-siege a central focus of the work they present to the public.

“We are losing our democracy day by day, and journalists are individually aware of this, but media outlets are not centering this as the story it should be,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of autocracy and the author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”


https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/01/03/media-democracy-jan6-atlantic-npr/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F35a9995%2F61d3305c9d2fda3f8b7dfb69%2F5c016898ae7e8a6dbe99f09f%2F23%2F67%2F61d3305c9d2fda3f8b7dfb69

January 4, 2022

Anger turning adults into children...

Nice, sad, commentary about our country today. Wouldn't want to work in a service job these days.

A nation On hold wants to speak to a manager...

Nerves at the grocery store were already frayed, in the way of these things as the pandemic slouches toward its third year, when the customer arrived. He wanted Cambozola, a type of blue cheese. He had been cooped up for a long time. He scoured the dairy area; nothing. He flagged down an employee who also did not see the cheese. He demanded that she hunt in the back and look it up on the store computer. No luck.

And then he lost it, just another out-of-control member of the great chorus of American consumer outrage, 2021 style.

“Have you seen a man in his 60s have a full temper tantrum because we don’t have the expensive imported cheese he wants?” said the employee, Anna Luna, who described the mood at the store, in Minnesota, as “angry, confused and fearful.”

“You’re looking at someone and thinking, ‘I don’t think this is about the cheese.’”


https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/01/business/customer-service-pandemic-rage.html?campaign_id=116&emc=edit_pk_20220104&instance_id=49360&nl=paul-krugman&regi_id=33298458&segment_id=78625&te=1&user_id=1848971a4624dd6c353abb5bbb8f0d03