A marked increase in the number of rude, rotten, and outright dangerous drivers is a local thing that my daughter and I, and a scattering of friends have noticed over the last several months. It has been, as my daughter noted, an increased number of Third World drivers, on our local roads. A lot of near-misses, carelessness in lane-changing, ignorance of use of the turn indicators, and a fair amount of road rage… including a shooting on a stretch of the IH-35 on the South Side of the city. While the South Side is largely and traditionally Hispanic, and has neighborhoods in it which have a reputation for being violent, especially after dark, I used to drive clear across town on my daily commute, from the largely Anglo, or white north-east side of town, to the Southside, and I often noticed that the drivers on the South side were a hell of a lot more courteous about allowing merges and lane changes on the IH-35.
Media
An Extraordinary Woman
She was born to privilege and a degree of wealth, at the turn of the last century Muriel Morris, an heiress of the Swift meatpacking fortune, and by most accounts conflicted over that circumstance. Like a scattering of her peers in the debutant world, she had an interest in social justice, as it was generally understood at the time. She is reported to have read Upton Sinclair’s polemic The Jungle as a teenager and been horrified doubly so as both sides of her family had made their fortunes in the industry which Sinclair portrayed as especially brutal and gruesome. Muriel Morris was also of an unexpectedly intellectual bent and determined enough to pursue her intellectual interests first with studies at Oxford, England in the 1920s, and then in of all places, Vienna, Austria, where she hoped to study psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud. She briefly married a British artist, Julian Gardiner, by whom she had a single child, a daughter, before deciding to pursue a medical degree at the University of Vienna in 1926. She had a trust fund sufficiently generous to support herself and her small daughter.
Cone of Silence
It looks as if with the official departure of the US military from Kabul, a media cone of silence perpetuated by the National Establishment Media has descended over the whole ghastly mess, leaving a good many of us who have been following the chaotic and bloody disaster that it was with unanswered questions. Like exactly how many Americans were left behind in Afghanistan? American citizens and employees of international and US-sponsored NGOs, or dual nationals home visiting relatives in the “Old Country” over the summer vay-cay? A couple of hundred? Or thousands? Independent military reporter Michael Yon and others across the indy blogosphere reported that American citizens with their passports in hand were turned away from entering the Kabul Airport by the US Army, and it is those people who are stranded in Afghanistan now. Well, maybe. Between the proverbial fog of war and the cone of silence a great many questions remain.
The Past of the Future
Collectible trading cards, portraying the future, from 1930 Germany.
(via Ace)
Some other predictions about the future…
From France in 1910
From Germany circa 1900
From Seagram’s (!) in the mid-1940s
From Ladies’ Home Journal in 1900
Made for TV
You see the guy on the right? I call him “fasionable Afghan guy”.
Let’s talk about “fashionable Afghan guy” for a minute or two.