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News, Gnus, Guns, Gays
Aug. 2nd, 2018 03:49 pmCelebrity Death Watch: Alene Duerk was the U.S. Navy’s first female rear admiral. Ron Dellums was a Congressman from California for many years and later served as mayor of Oakland. Yaakov Elman was a Talmudic scholar. Mary Carlisle was an actress, primarily in B-movies.
Baseball News: I am inordinately happy that Ian Kinsler has been traded to the Red Sox.
Good News: For reasons involving some sort of statewide softball event, the NPL con next year is moving back to the original dates. Which means I can go. Yay!
Bad News: Metro is going to be doing major track work from August 11 through the 26th. This will screw up my commute for a week. I am hoping that the Fairfax Connector people will run bus service to the Pentagon like they did the last time that there was so little service. But I haven’t seen anything announced.
Just Gnus: Contrary to what I was taught by my 3rd Grade teacher, the "G" is not silent.
The Story of the Gun: You might note that GUN is an anagram of GNU. Which has nothing to do with this show, a monologue by Mike Daisey, currently playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. I saw it on Tuesday night.
Daisey likes to refer to himself as a storyteller, but he does use notes so some of us would question that. I don’t really care how he is characterized. He’s entertaining and thought-provoking, even when I disagree with him.
Anyway, Daisey starts out with talking about the history of guns in America and, specifically, makes the claim that guns were essential to the white European conquest of America and to the enslavement of Africans. There are a number of reasons why this is a simplistic claim, starting with the role of disease (both deliberately spread and otherwise) among indigenous populations. And the importation of slaves is intimately wrapped up with tribal warfare between various groups in West Africa. For example, the Abomey were waging war on and enslaving other African tribes long before Prince Henry the Navigator had set out from Portugal.
Suppose you do accept the historical premise. What does that have to do with debates about guns now? Daisey doesn’t really answer that question. Instead, he attacks Alexander Hamilton. One of my rules is that one should not attack what one is not familiar with, so his jibes at the current musical were annoying.
He’s better when he talks about the gun culture of northern Maine, where he grew up. That is tied in with hunting and his rant about deer, which he describes as fast cows, was actually pretty funny. I will, however, admit that I like venison, so his claim that our failure to domesticate deer is proof that their meat doesn’t taste good, is another point on which I disagree with him.
The real point came in a story about his father and the use of firearms for suicides amongst veterans. There was actual emotional resonance there. But there are still a lot more questions in what he had to say than any suggestion of answers. As I said above, Daisey is provocative, though I’ve preferred other of his monologues to this one. (To be fair, I was tired. And, while the show was advertised as 90 minutes, it was actually 2 hours.)
Airplane Kerfuffle: Alaska Air is being accused of anti-gay discrimination for allegedly moving a member of a gay couple because of a straight couple who wanted to sit together. Except, as usual, there is more to the story. For one thing, it does sometimes happen that glitches result in two people having the same seat. How that gets resolved involves a number of factors. For example, I was upgraded from business class to first class once under those circumstances. Why was I upgraded and not the other person, who showed up after I was seated? Presumably because of my frequent flyer status. I’ve also had people try to poach my seat and ask wouldn’t I mind a middle seat in the back instead of my aisle seat in a section of the plane with better seating so they could sit together? (I might be willing to move to keep a parent and child together on a short flight. But I will not budge if someone steals my seat without asking beforehand.)
In this case, there are several possibilities. For example, the two men could have had tickets that were not on the same passenger name record (PNR) making it less clear that they were traveling together. Only one of them could have been upgraded. Et cetera.
Bottom line is that there is no evidence of discrimination. And, in fact, Alaska has a particularly good reputation with respect to LGBTQ issues. They don’t, alas, have a good reputation with respect to using twitter effectively.
Baseball News: I am inordinately happy that Ian Kinsler has been traded to the Red Sox.
Good News: For reasons involving some sort of statewide softball event, the NPL con next year is moving back to the original dates. Which means I can go. Yay!
Bad News: Metro is going to be doing major track work from August 11 through the 26th. This will screw up my commute for a week. I am hoping that the Fairfax Connector people will run bus service to the Pentagon like they did the last time that there was so little service. But I haven’t seen anything announced.
Just Gnus: Contrary to what I was taught by my 3rd Grade teacher, the "G" is not silent.
The Story of the Gun: You might note that GUN is an anagram of GNU. Which has nothing to do with this show, a monologue by Mike Daisey, currently playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. I saw it on Tuesday night.
Daisey likes to refer to himself as a storyteller, but he does use notes so some of us would question that. I don’t really care how he is characterized. He’s entertaining and thought-provoking, even when I disagree with him.
Anyway, Daisey starts out with talking about the history of guns in America and, specifically, makes the claim that guns were essential to the white European conquest of America and to the enslavement of Africans. There are a number of reasons why this is a simplistic claim, starting with the role of disease (both deliberately spread and otherwise) among indigenous populations. And the importation of slaves is intimately wrapped up with tribal warfare between various groups in West Africa. For example, the Abomey were waging war on and enslaving other African tribes long before Prince Henry the Navigator had set out from Portugal.
Suppose you do accept the historical premise. What does that have to do with debates about guns now? Daisey doesn’t really answer that question. Instead, he attacks Alexander Hamilton. One of my rules is that one should not attack what one is not familiar with, so his jibes at the current musical were annoying.
He’s better when he talks about the gun culture of northern Maine, where he grew up. That is tied in with hunting and his rant about deer, which he describes as fast cows, was actually pretty funny. I will, however, admit that I like venison, so his claim that our failure to domesticate deer is proof that their meat doesn’t taste good, is another point on which I disagree with him.
The real point came in a story about his father and the use of firearms for suicides amongst veterans. There was actual emotional resonance there. But there are still a lot more questions in what he had to say than any suggestion of answers. As I said above, Daisey is provocative, though I’ve preferred other of his monologues to this one. (To be fair, I was tired. And, while the show was advertised as 90 minutes, it was actually 2 hours.)
Airplane Kerfuffle: Alaska Air is being accused of anti-gay discrimination for allegedly moving a member of a gay couple because of a straight couple who wanted to sit together. Except, as usual, there is more to the story. For one thing, it does sometimes happen that glitches result in two people having the same seat. How that gets resolved involves a number of factors. For example, I was upgraded from business class to first class once under those circumstances. Why was I upgraded and not the other person, who showed up after I was seated? Presumably because of my frequent flyer status. I’ve also had people try to poach my seat and ask wouldn’t I mind a middle seat in the back instead of my aisle seat in a section of the plane with better seating so they could sit together? (I might be willing to move to keep a parent and child together on a short flight. But I will not budge if someone steals my seat without asking beforehand.)
In this case, there are several possibilities. For example, the two men could have had tickets that were not on the same passenger name record (PNR) making it less clear that they were traveling together. Only one of them could have been upgraded. Et cetera.
Bottom line is that there is no evidence of discrimination. And, in fact, Alaska has a particularly good reputation with respect to LGBTQ issues. They don’t, alas, have a good reputation with respect to using twitter effectively.
