Fox News is News?

If you watch Fox News and you think you are getting news, not propaganda, you are a little confused.

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Last night we saw "Moses in Egypt" - an opera by Rossini produced by the Chicago Opera Theater

Spoiler Alert - if you don't want to know the real reason Pharaoh kept changing his mid, stop reading here.
Otherwise, I will spill the beans. The reason is
FANFARE
The Pharaoh's son was romantically entangled with a young Hebrew girl. Every time Pharaoh decided to let the Hebrews leave, the Prince intervened and made Pharaoh change his mind so he could keep his affair going.
So now you know.

The whole shady deal was discovered when Moses and the Pharaoh's wife stumbled on the loving couple in a hide-away. What is left undiscussed is the question of what Moses and the Queen of Eqypt were doing together in a hidden place!

The set was in the usual minimalist style of the COT. The set and did not work very well, and the staging was a little stilted - set pieces of the chorus, mostly. Overall, not one of Rossini's best, but the COT does a valuable job in producing less well known works.



For an informed review of the performance, see Lawrence Johnson's review

Prodigy->Gopher->Mosaic->Netscape->IE->Opera->Firefox->Safari->Chrome->Firefox

Being a masochist, I recently started switching over to Google's Chrome browser.  I switch often.
Why? I tried new browsers out of curiosity and if something grabs me, I switch for a while.

I noticed that it only had one "box" which replaces the two boxes on other browsers. Gimmick, I thought.
Turns out it is very useful. It is an all purpose search box. As I start typing, it drops down suggestions from several sources:

• A Google search for whatever you enter 
• URLs containing your string
• Common searches starting with whatever you have just entered
• Your bookmarks containing that string
• An offer to search the pages in your history containing that string

This is amazingly useful.

However,  I Have just switched back to Firefox.
Why? Firstly - my password manager does not yet work with Chrome. It's a pain.
Secondly, the ecology of add-ons for Chrome is much less well develped.
And turdly, some websites do not play nicely with Chrome.

Poor Chrome - its tough being the new kid on the block. 

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing - George Orwell - 1946

Unfortunately, nothing has changed since 1946, when Orwell thunk this thought and wrote these words.

In 2010, replace the word "writing" with "speechifying", we have:

• Palin and the lunatics of Fox radio and TV for whom writing is anathema, and literacy is a signifier of the liberal elite.
• Moslem fundamentalists who want to impose shariah law on civil society
• Christian fundamentalists who interpret the Torah literally (but only in the often inaccurate but elegant King James Version), except when they want to eat pork, or a cheeseburger, or when it is otherwise inconvenient, and want to impose their inconsistent vision on American society

This motley collection of lunatics and their Republican fellow travelers in the USA and their allies or opponents in other countries, have managed to make both "liberal" and "elite" negative terms.

Liberal:

 

• S: (adj) liberal (having political or social views favoring reform and progress)
• S: (adj) liberal (tolerant of change; not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition)

Elite:

• S: (adj) elect, elite (selected as the best)

For all of  them, "liberal elite" appears to be a bad thing - they are against reform and progress, intolerant of change, and bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, and tradition, and not do not wish to become one of the best. This is the mantra of the self-styled "Libertarian" and "Conservative" movements - American, Christian, and Muslim.

As an American by choice, I hope that the spirit of America can prevail against all of these lunacies.

To break into political writing - GMAFB.

Julia in London over Skype

From MacBook to MacBook to iPhone to Blogger.

Welcome Back, Jura

After over 5000 cups of coffee our coffee maker ground to a halt. Off it went to the manufacturer for refurbishment, and it came back today - just eight days after we UPSed it to them in NJ.

Spring at the Botanic Gardens

Abigail (on left) contemplates the move to London

Test from blogpress

Spring

Julia says goodbye to Sheba

I lost some images this morning...

... But fortunately I had backups. All is well again.

Blog and Counterblog

Lisa, Andy, Jacob, Julia and Abigail are leaving for London tonight. We expect that they will live there until the end of this year.  Lisa is an outstanding writer (she should be, after a journalism degree and a stint as a crime reporter in Rockport.) She has started a blog of her journey. This has shamed me into restarting my blog in earnest. Recently I have neglected my blog in favor of short Facebook status updates and even shorter Tweets.

Tonight we take Lisa et al to the airport.

I well remember the mix of excited anticipation and fear that we experienced when we first brought the family to the Poughkeepsie from South Africa almost forty years ago, when we moved to Chicago three years later, when we moved to Japan two years later for a year, when Hilda and I moved to Boston in 1990, and when we retired back to Chicago on 2003.

With each move, the level of excitement went down, and the level of fear went up - but the excitement always outweighed the fear.

Lisa's blog can be found at http://bokorelo.blogspot.com/

Challah for tonight - my first six-braid

Dinner at Gaylord India

Great Indian food, now on Walton St. just West of Michigan Ave. Highly recommended.

- Posted from my iPhone

I have not blogged much lately...

...because I have been posting on Facebook.


- Posted from my iPhone

Why our Health Care Ssystem needs to be fixed

We spend more more money than any other nation on healthcare and do not get what we pay for. The health care system needs major reform. The current bill does not go far enough, but it is better than nothing. Click on the chart below to see the details.

The Republican effort to block the bill is tantamount to treason in the name of political expediency.

They want to F the country in order to gain political advantage. Shame on them.

If they mange to win the Mass senate seat, and try to filibuster the bill to death, we should just let them do it. No business will occur in the Senate until they stop, which will be a good thing, anyway.
From Wikipedia:
"A filibuster can be defeated by the governing party if they leave the debated issue on the agenda indefinitely, without adding anything else. Indeed, Strom Thurmond's own attempt to filibuster the Civil Rights Act was defeated when Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield refused to refer any further business to the Senate, which required the filibuster to be kept up indefinitely. Instead, the opponents were all given a chance to speak, and the matter eventually was forced to a vote."

It is notable that that major filibusters were mostly trying to block civil rights legislation.

Motto for Republicans:
I've got mine - up yours!

Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson being called out for their BS

A snow day in the city

Thursday night we were scheduled to go to a concert the the CSO - Pierre  Boulez conducting. The weather forecast was for double digits of snow. We did not want to miss the concert, so we decided to go downtown the night before the snow started to avoid the long commute and the possibility of getting stuck or sliding off the road. Whimpy, I know.



Next morning we were greeted with some snow - but not a lot. We decided to go to the Art Institute to spend the day, and go to the concert across the road in the evening.
Click to see the AIC pictures.
The concert was marvelous - Pierre Boulez at 85 was spry and active, and conducted a strong performance of "Bluebeard's Castle" by Bartok. Michelle DeYoung, mezzo-soprano and
Falk Struckmann, bass-baritone take their bows.

We had a great day.

Julia dances at the United Center

Julia danced at the United Center, and we watched a basketball game.

Up in the Air

We just watched "Up in the Air" - a result of my New Years Resolution not to resist going to movies. Quite a well made film - I enjoyed it. An accurate depiction of the road warrior lifestyle. Made me nostalgic for my life in the '80s as a management consultant. I did not have his job of delivering the message - but I was often in the position of helping draw up the lists of who was to go. Not always fun.

The protagonist had a target of 10 million miles on American. I only made 1 million (permanent Gold status), but I spread my miles over several airlines. I have over million across the rest :-(

Disclaimer:
I never had a fling - ever - I had reports to write. He could do his job, and then be free at night. I had co-workers and clients who were with me - almost always. Poor me :-(