Yesterday, I got the trash and recyclables out, emptied the mailbox (most of which went straight into the recyclables), sent a couple of ecards, made a couple of cartoons, and called it a day. Today I am sgned up for a Zoom presentation on Walt Whitman by the “Theater of War” (which uses ancient, old, and sometimes modern literature to help people heal from various traumas. They started with Greek tragedy but have nranched out considerably.) That probably means I won’t get much more done today than yesterday.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
Mother Jones – Why It’s So Hard to Get a Defense Lawyer Confirmed to the Supreme Court
Quote – The last time the Supreme Court had a justice who’d worked as a criminal defense lawyer was 1991. That’s the year Thurgood Marshall, the legendary civil rights advocate, retired after 24 years on the court. Since then, the court has suffered from a dearth of justices with any sort of criminal defense backgrounds. Both Democratic and Republican presidents have stacked the court with former prosecutors, who are overrepresented on the court—people like Justice Samuel Alito, who had previously served as the US attorney for the District of New Jersey. Even Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s most liberal member, spent nearly five years working as an assistant district attorney for the legendary New York County DA Robert Morgenthau straight out of law school.
Click through for story. And for why it matters.
HuffPost – Man Arrested For Storming The Capitol While Out On Bail For Attempted Murder
Quote – Federal authorities have arrested Matthew Beddingfield for his role in the Capitol insurrection, which he attended with his father while out on bail for a first-degree attempted murder charge…. HuffPost revealed Beddingfield’s identity more than 10 months ago, on March 26, in a story that built off the work of a network of citizen-sleuths. They used facial recognition software to match footage of Beddingfield at the Capitol to his publicly available mug shot from a 2019 arrest for attempted murder.
Click through for background. there’s a catch phrase going around – “Tell me you’re [blank] without telling me you’re [blank].” I have mostly seen it with the blank filled in by “white.” I’d say that applies here.
Black History
Biography – Otis Boykin 1920-1982 (
JL)
Quote – Boykin, who took a special interest in working with resistors, began researching and inventing on his own. He sought and received a patent for a wire precision resistor on June 16, 1959. This resistor would later be used in radios and televisions. Two years later, he created a breakthrough device that could withstand extreme changes in temperature and pressure. The device, which was cheaper and more reliable than others on the market, came in great demand by the United States military for guided missiles and IBM for computers…. His most famous invention was a control unit for the pacemaker.
Click through – it isn’t long. It’s safe to say that there are people waling around today who would not be alive had Boykin not existed. It’s also not too farfetched to suggest that without his work on computers, we might not have thos blog today.
Food For Thought:
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