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Speaking is physically difficult for me. But my feelings are clear: I’m furious. I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done…

via A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip – NYTimes.com.

 

The Sunday Obituary No. 4

As he passed a mound of corpses, Rabbi Schacter spied a flicker of movement. Drawing closer, he saw a small boy, Prisoner 17030, hiding in terror behind the mound.“I was afraid of him,” the child would recall long afterward in an interview with The New York Times. “I knew all the uniforms of SS and Gestapo and Wehrmacht, and all of a sudden, a new kind of uniform. I thought, ‘A new kind of enemy.’ ”With tears streaming down his face, Rabbi Schacter picked the boy up. “What’s your name, my child?” he asked in Yiddish.“Lulek,” the child replied.“How old are you?” the rabbi asked.“What difference does it make?” Lulek, who was 7, said. “I’m older than you, anyway.”“Why do you think you’re older?” Rabbi Schacter asked, smiling.“Because you cry and laugh like a child,” Lulek replied. “I haven’t laughed in a long time, and I don’t even cry anymore. So which one of us is older?”Rabbi Schacter discovered nearly a thousand orphaned children in Buchenwald.

via Rabbi Herschel Schacter, Who Carried Word of Freedom to Buchenwald, Dies at 95 – NYTimes.com.

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• Rabbi who brought word of freedom to Buchenwald survivors dies at 95 (nbcnews.com)

 

Link

We’re the ones doing it wrong, if we can’t get through our inboxes or texts or whatever properly. And the norms vary farther than we may expect. A voicemail, in the real world, is not actually an “impolite way of trying to connect with someone.” It’s perhaps inefficient in many cases, but outside of our bloggy ridiculous bubble, there are actually entire industries whose work is transacted by telephone, where email is limited to “Hey, just left you a voicemail, call me when you can.”

via The “Parental Anecdote” Rule of Columnizing | The Awl.

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• A Guide to Advanced Digital Etiquette (theatlanticwire.com)

 

Devotional No. 11

Enter the Office of Naval Research. One of its new special program announcements for 2013 identifies software algorithms as a major point of concern: It wants more robust logic tools play nicely across hardware and software platforms, pre-assembling a mosaic of threats. Don’t bother writing them better search tools for sifting through their data archives: The Navy expressly rules that out. It wants the imaging equipment of pre-cut vegetables in a salad bag.

via Navy Wants You to Write Algorithms That Automatically ID Threats | Danger Room | Wired.com.

And so, while programming experts still write the step-by-step instructions of computer code, additional people are needed to make more subtle contributions as the work the computers do has become more involved. People evaluate, edit or correct an algorithm’s work. Or they assemble online databases of knowledge and check and verify them — creating, essentially, a crib sheet the computer can call on for a quick answer. Humans can interpret and tweak information in ways that are understandable to both computers and other humans.

via Computer Algorithms Rely Increasingly on Human Helpers – NYTimes.com.

Since 2009, Facebook has filtered what every user sees on the News Feed, based on the wisdom of its proprietary algorithm, called Edge Rank, which determines which posts a particular user is likely to find most interesting. …At the heart of Facebook’s business is to hold the attention of its one billion users worldwide. That means keeping them entertained and on the site as frequently as possible.It seems to be losing this battle somewhat with its youngest users.

via Facebook’s Redesign Hopes to Keep Users Engaged – NYTimes.com.

What You Missed in Today’s Times

The police did not open them to check. No, thank you. They put the bricks, undisturbed, back in the box, and they left. Officers in New York City confront all manner of hazardous material and paraphernalia every day, but this was something else. Fruitcake.  Homemade fruitcake.

via Thief Steals 2 Packages – One Contained Glasses, the Other Didn’t – NYTimes.com.

Drones have become the subject of urgent policy debates… But they are also a part of the popular culture — toys sold by Amazon; central plot points in “Homeland” and a dozen other television shows and movies; the subject of endless macabre humor, notably by The Onion; and even the subject of poetry.

via Visions of Drones in U.S. Skies Touch Bipartisan Nerve – NYTimes.com.

Divorce filings shot up here and in other big cities across China this past week after rumors spread that one way to avoid the new 20 percent tax on profits from housing sales was to separate from a spouse, at least on paper.

via Some Chinese Seek a Divorce to Avoid Real Estate Tax – NYTimes.com.

Of the 16 men who went down with the Monitor on Dec. 31, 1862, researchers have narrowed the identities of the two sailors to six possibilities. While there are no conclusive DNA matches with their descendants, forensic researchers are convinced that they will eventually find these men’s stories in their bones.

via After Over a Century at Sea, 2 Sailors Are Laid to Rest – NYTimes.com.

 

What You Missed in Today’s Times

“I couldn’t go to bed because I was so excited,” a viewer called niesa36 said on the Dagbladet newspaper Web site. “When will they add new logs? Just before I managed to tear myself away, they must have opened the flue a little, because just then the flames shot a little higher.”

via In Norway, TV Program on Firewood Elicits Passions – NYTimes.com.

But then about two years ago troubling questions began to be whispered. He acted odd. He was thinner. He walked stooped over. He was absent. Was he sick? Or dying? And then the spicy talk about suspicious men trooping in and out of the rectory.Finally, last month’s revelation. The priest was locked up, charged with dealing crystal methamphetamine.

via Msgr. Kevin Wallin’s Swift Fall, to Drug Suspect – NYTimes.com.

“It got me a smart audience of comedy nerds that you want. It kept letting me fail at a diversity of things and try again. I don’t know another theater that would do that.”

via Upright Citizens Brigade Grows by Not Paying Performers – NYTimes.com.

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• Monsignor Meth’s shocking secret life: He allegedly bought porn shop, cross-dressed and had rectory sex (pix11.com)

 

Word of the Week: A Quiz!

“The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp,” by Rembrandt.

So, avuncular (unclelike), saturnine (sluggish), sybaritic (pleasure-loving), antediluvian (primitive), concomitant (accompanying), uxorious (fawning), lucubrate (laborious studying), vulpine (foxlike), fissiparous (fractious), skeuomorph (look it up yourself), obdurate (stubborn), syllepsis (zeugma), parlous (perilous), crepuscular (twilightlike), concupiscent (lustful), cromlech (a formation of megaliths), sacerdotal (priestly), assize (law court), puissant (powerful), legerdemain (trickery) and apercu (insight) and homunculus (dwarf), termagant (nag), unctuous (smug), otiose (useless), punctillio (formality), orotundity (pretentiousness), incarnadined (reddened), [various, from last week] and how about… contumacy?

So. A quiz. I won’t give the answer all at once; it dribbles out here in bits and pieces, a little like my stamina when I am in front of the TV watching an episode of “Friday Night Lights” and have been up since 5 in the morning.

One of these words describes a serious and not-a-little revolting medical condition. Without consulting the Internet or, really, your intellect, guess which one it is. You know, by gut feeling.

A) Contumacy; B) Asperity; C) Scrofula.

Astute readers will remember that I have mentioned contumacy before. Last month, “from my father’s yellowed notes,” I came across it on my way to homunculus, which is an odd mental street-scape, to be sure.

I revisit the word today, mostly out of respect. Contumacy is a noun, and it is all business. Webster’s Fourth defines it as “stubborn refusal to submit to authority, esp. that of a law court.” The definition goes on to add “insubordination” and “disobedience, but that definition had me at “law court.”

Contumacy is a sturdy little word, worthy of a WOW of its own. It is what buttresses the middle finger that is jutted indecorously at the Man. Or his minions.

In short, it is not a medical condition, though it may make the wearer more prone to one.

But I could not help think that contumacy sounded like one; it has a sterile and clinical clank to it.

Now, I got to thinking of contumacy the other day when I read this sentence, from James T. Patterson’s not-too-bad-so-far “Restless Giant” (Oxford University Press, 2005), a criticism of the proliferation of suburbs in the United States that deftly employs the word asperity:

“With characteristically cosmopolitan asperity, Ada Louise Huxtable of The New York Times complained in 1974, ‘There is [in these suburbs] no voyage of discovery or private exploration of the world’s wonders, natural and man-made.’”

For someone of my ilk, that has a delightful ring to it.

Now, leaving aside for the moment the “voyage of discovering” a splash of vomit on a subway platform and the “private explorations” engaged in by a certain class of transient, let’s take a moment to wonder at asperity. Webster’s Fourth defines it, blandly at first, as “roughness or harshness, as of surface, sound, weather, etc. or of circumstances.” Skip ahead to the more useful “harshness or sharpness of temper.”

Which leaves us, of course, with the fact that asperity also is not a medical condition. But I was thinking that it, too, sounded like one.

I mean, seriously: See what happens if you wake your wife up in the middle of the night and tell her the doctor called and has diagnosed her with a withering case of relapsing and remitting contumacious asperity. It’s an imaginary disease, and so there is no way she can have it; except that she might actually have it.

It was a lot of work to make a joke like that, I know. Which brings me, sadly, finally, to scrofula.

It’s a noun, and Webster’s Fourth holds forth thusly: “tuberculosis of the lymphatic glands, esp. of the neck, characterized by the enlargement of the glands, suppuration, and scar formation.

This little nugget lodged in my clam shell at the end of W. L. Warren’s brilliant “Henry II,” which I bagged over the weekend. Apparently, in Mr. II’s time, it was believed the king could cure scrofula just by touching the afflicted. In theory, this was to demonstrate that the king was endorsed by God. But kings were pulling this scam long after minds broadened. Charles X of France was all handsy as late as 1825.

The best part of scrofula is that it sounds to me like a made-up medical condition. That seems like it could be irony.

Postscript

Apropos of nearly nothing I add the word fisc, which is an obscure little gem that refers to a royal treasury. You might recognize it from the more modern fiscal. Initially, I felt fisc would be a fun letter D for this post, but I was thoroughly disturbed, and discouraged, after a few Google searches. There apparently are an enormous number of people who are desperate to learn more about “anal fishers disease”; it is almost enough to make a fella want to write a WOW for fissure.

Almost.

• Ecclesiastics would have men believe they will receive condign punishment and are not worthy to be counted amongst them that shall obtain the next world for their contumacy of monogamy, as opposed to the freedom of the polygamy found in nature, which is inherently pagan. via the comments section of Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand books, Ayn Rand Fountainhead, Rand Atlas Shrugged.
• It never appalled him that his fellow country men and women, who perhaps voted for him during the presidential election, were being subjected to such terrible and man-inflicted asperity, such inhuman conditions and ill-treatments at the college. via Ikeja Police College: A reflection of national decay.
• Scrofula in adults is most often caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis. via Scrofula – PubMed Health.

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• Here’s the 1950s Quiz That Proves You Are a Terrible Wife (blogs.villagevoice.com)

What You Missed in Today’s Times

Lent toured his wife throughout Europe, where some newspapers and books described her appearance unsparingly: “gorillalike” or “revolting in the extreme.”

via Julia Pastrana, Who Died in 1860, to Be Buried in Mexico – NYTimes.com.

“Watching violence makes kids feel they can use violence to solve a problem. It brings increased feelings of hostility. It increases desensitization.”

via The ‘Die Hard’ Quandary – NYTimes.com.

And John McCain could channel his spooky fury into a fragrance for the grudge holder who has never suffered a slight that he didn’t avenge. Its name would be Payback, and it would smell of sour grapes and scorched earth.

via A Spritz of Power – NYTimes.com.

 

Last Week’s News: Restaurant Week for Rats

In the spirit of Internet immediacy, here is a review of what I was reading online last week.

1. “The subway, the sewer, a lot got disrupted,” said Mr. Wong, who said complaints about rats were about as bad as he has seen in 10 years. “There’s so much garbage out in the streets these days. Renovations because of the flood. Christmas trees. These things make it worse. For them, it’s Restaurant Week.” via New York City Rats Creep Inland After Storm – NYTimes.com.
2. You’ve probably guessed that things are going to hell in Syria. So it is not a surprise that they won’t be improving any time soon? via After Assad, Chaos? – NYTimes.com.
3. “The White House, however, was worried about the risks …in the midst of a re-election bid…” via Senate Panel Examines Benghazi Attack – NYTimes.com.
4. Here’s a question for you: “So what’s different about Chicago?” via Why Are There So Many Murders in Chicago? | Newgeography.com.
5. If you are reading along and come across this morose little sentence, “If this sounds apocalyptic, it is,” you probably should probably watch more TV. via Game Over for the Climate – NYTimes.com.
6. Should Apple be a $200 stock?. Maybe. The argument is that its current value is built on the promise of future products (so far, meh) and the idea that everyone would have an iPhone by now (which they don’t).

From my 118 subscriptions, over the last 30 days I read 6,294 items, clicked 339 items, starred 0 items, and eimailed 14 items.

What Was in the Paper?

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oh. The usual crap:

…why did my first horrible case of traveler’s diarrhea in India have to result from a mango? I love mangoes, and India’s vast array of deliciously different mango varieties has been one of the great delights of moving here. “You didn’t even wash it?” Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, asked me later. No. “Even by your standards, that was really stupid,” Dr. Offit said.

via When the Mango Bites Back – NYTimes.com

See also:

India arguably has only two seasons: monsoon season and mango season. Monsoon season replenishes India’s soil. Mango season, more than a few literary types have suggested, helps replenish India’s soul.

via Mango Season Has India in Thrall – NYTimes.com.

Kama shoots flower-tipped arrows at gods and humans alike, inspiring lust, love and the rainbow in between. One of his five arrows holds a mango blossom, said to be a particularly potent missile.

via In Myth and Literature, the Mango Remains King – NYTimes.com.

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• Mexican mangoes may be linked to salmonella – USA TODAY (drugstoresource.wordpress.com)
• Mango production down by 90 % in Surkhet (thehimalayantimes.com)