Monthly Archives: October 2018

Nobel Prize in Consumer Electronics

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Electrtonic mosquito racquet

Yeah, yeah, there is no such prize category.  But there should be!  And the iPhone doesn’t need a prize, as it has already won the market.  

So, here’s the first nomination.  This little gem will help you tame the turf inside your house — and it gives such satisfaction to hear it bark and see it spark, when you connect with one of those evil bloodsuckers, mid-air.  There are numerous brands and styles.  I prefer the plug-in variety, as batteries seem wasteful.  I always leave mine plugged into the wall so I know where to find it — it doesn’t hold much of a charge, fading after about a half-dozen kills.  (Of course the best control is good screening of windows and doors.)  But mosquitos get in when people enter or depart, so I sweep the area immediately.  

You can buy such racquets in larger grocery stores, from Amazon MX, and often at major intersections.  They really work.  In Spanish: raqueta de mata moscos. Good hunting!  

(NB:  swing gently – otherwise you will whack furniture, ruining the delicate device, which consists of three layers of metal mesh.)

SEE AUTHOR’S NOTE IN COMMENTS.

R G B : : Film of a Life of Justice Ginsburg

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screenshot from official trailer, via youtube

This film is uplifting, while also deeply saddening — that such an angry intemperate partisan corporatist has just been appointed to the highest court.  (During his job interview he blasted Democratic Senators — making it apparent that petitioners from the left were unlikely to get a fair hearing.) The court has now lost all credibility and impartiality. Justice is not 5:4.  Below I’ve saved some balanced insights from highly qualified authors from right and left. < < <  begin pastes > > >

“As for “conservatism” these days, the term seems to have lost all meaning. It repudiates not only free markets and immigration, international leadership, science and the rule of law, but also the habits of mind and the norms of civil behavior that a democratic republic requires. It’s not so much that the GOP has collapsed but that anything resembling an intellectually solid conservative movement has disintegrated. These people are all about power. Kavanaugh is not an umpire but an operative able to select facts, shade truth and evade troubling data to reach a conclusion that his side wants. That’s the image of the left that conservatives used to hold. They’ve become what they loathed.”   

 Jesuits withdraw Kavanaugh nomination (K had gone to a Jesuit prep school)

Dean of Yale Law says Kavanaugh unfit to serve on court ;  says “there will be hell to pay.”

Conservative Max Boot says “Before Donald Trump, the Republican Party was a majority conservative party with a white nationalist fringe. Now it’s a white nationalist party with a conservative fringe.”  Boot’s views on Kavanaugh are revealing about this trend – excerpt from interview mentioning his new book.

An excellent book describing the high crimes of the court, by a former clerk to a federal judge.  (I’ve donated this book to the collection at Merida English Library.)  NB: there are many one-star reviews. One commenter observers that ” The statistical probability that this review was written by a troll is extremely high.”  (There was a spate of short, one-star reviews within a three day period.)