Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write. . . . [L]et every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.
John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765).
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John Adams
Author: Redactor
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Union, disunion
On May 11, 1858, Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U.S. State.
Nine years later, to the day, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg’s independence and neutrality were affirmed in the Second Treaty of London.
There’s this great Jerry Seinfeld bit about how we treat our “important” friends on our smartphones: “They don’t seem very important, not the way you scroll through their names on your contact list like a gay French king.” And Mr. Seinfeld flipped his wrist in a motion of dismissal. “Who pleases me today?”
Well, Seinfeld is not pleasing the woke. Not today. Not The Washington Post’s Brian Broome.
“Wake up, Mr. Seinfeld. Mean-spirited humor isn’t cool anymore,” is Mr. Broome’s title. And his opinion is that times change, and meanie Mr. Seinfeld is a has-been for making fun of marginalized people.
You may have judged Jerry Seinfeld as one of the lighter, cleaner comics, his act almost universal. Broome says you’re wrong. “I have never found Jerry Seinfeld funny,” he explains. “Even in the ’90s when his show was all the rage, I didn’t get why people thought it was hilarious. It always seemed to me to be about immigrants being odd or unhygienic or making fun of women’s faces or body parts. The show always seemed mean-spirited to me, and that’s just not my kind of humor.”
O, shall thy pearls be clutched!
Wasn’t the self-described “show about nothing” really a comedy of manners where the main characters, George Costanza, Elaine Benes, Cosmo Kramer, and Jerry himself served as the actual butts of the jokes? These four egoists fretted over their ultra-liberal concerns about good manners but always behaved badly. And we always knew it. And somehow still liked them — because Seinfeld was not mean-spirited!
Broome characteristically ends on a vindictive note: “So, yes, if you make ham-fisted jokes about women or the LGBTQ+ community or people living with disabilities or the French, someone will come for you.” Thus, the mob beheaded the king. And the priest. All with
Would Broome think the point of the “gay French king” joke was to make fun of gays? But recall the actual
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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David Hume
Art may make a suit of clothes; but nature must produce a man.
David Hume, “The Epicurean,” in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748).
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Victoria Woodhull
On May 10, 1872, Victoria Woodhull became the first woman nominated for President of the United States.
In a landmark Supreme Court decision on May 10, 1893, the tomato was ruled a vegetable, not a fruit.
“Oops. Sorry about almost sending you away for 115 years. Case of mistaken identity and dishonest testimony.”
But Bryan Montiea Wilson did not get even a “sorry” from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) or local
Wilson, who works for a railroad equipment manufacturer, had never been arrested when ATF agents nabbed him in December 2023. Accused of gun and drug sales to local police officers said to be working with the ATF, Wilson could only repeatedly assert his innocence.
His looming punishment included up to 115 years in prison and millions in fines. Then, suddenly, he
How did Wilson wind up being falsely accused? The Truth About Guns site reports that prosecutors realized their blunder after his court-appointed lawyer investigated. But an uninformative request to dismiss the case is all ATF offered.
“Further review . . . reveals that the interests of justice would best be served by a dismissal of the pending charges as opposed to further prosecution. . . . The Government respectfully requests that the Court dismiss the pending charges against defendant Bryan Montiea Wilson.”
I guess we can thank the prosecutors for mentioning “justice.” But there should at least be an accounting in such cases; and this accounting, plus further consequences, should
“Something got messed up and they landed on me,” Wilson says. “I don’t know how this happened, but it can’t happen again. It shouldn’t
Wilson has filed a federal civil
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Ortega y Gasset
Man’s being is made of such strange stuff as to be partly akin to nature and partly not, at once natural and extranatural, a kind of ontological centaur, half immersed in nature, half transcending it.
José Ortega y Gasset, “Man Has No Nature,” in History as a System (1962).
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John & José
On May 9, 1800, abolitionist and revolutionary (and, depending upon your point of view and certain definitions, insurrectionist and terrorist) John Brown was born.
In 1883 on this date, Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset was born. He is most renowned for his book The Revolt of the Masses.
A Space.com news story indicates a big problem and a new role for government — or industry.
“The Infra-Red Calibration Balloon (S73-7) satellite started its journey into the great unknown after launching on April 10, 1974 through the United States Air Force’s Space Test Program,” writes Meredith Garofalo. “While in orbit, the original plan was for S73-7 to inflate and take on the role as a calibration target for remote sensing equipment. After this failed to be achieved during deployment, the satellite faded away into the abyss and joined the graveyard of unwanted space junk until it was rediscovered
It’s a complicated story; the satellite never really worked properly. Which raises the space junk problem.
The biggest polluter is governments. Space agencies. And the corporations contracting to put up satellites. And the military that puts stuff up we know
“[A]s more and more satellites head into space,” explains Garofalo, “the task will become even greater to know what exactly is out there and what threats that
When Trump boasted of creating the Space Force in 2019, a lot of people scoffed. I didn’t.*Somebody’s got to do the dirty work, and it does look like Space Force personnel see an important role to be filled, that of garbage men in orbital space. Since the more than 20,000 objects in orbit — and their associated random debris — were put there by governments, maybe governments should clean it up.
The future of space industry could be hampered, should the problem continue to grow — though, in the end, it may be industry that will take over the task. After all, space litter’s more dangerous than most
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Also, in no small part, because ceding outer space to China and Russia seems like a bad idea.
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David Hume
Honour is a great check upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed; since a man is sure to be approved of by his own party, for what promotes the common interest; and he soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries.
David Hume, “Of The Independency of Parliament,” in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748).