Thursday, April 18, 2024
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Why Law School Should Be an Undergraduate Program — Minding The Campus
Why Law School Should Be an Undergraduate Program — Minding The Campus: In most parts of the world, lawyers are formally trained in an undergraduate degree program. The Bachelor of Law (LL.B), is also an accelerated three-year curriculum. In the United States it takes over twice as long. First you need a 4-year undergraduate degree in any subject—a gratuitous requirement, as there is no such thing as […]
Thoughts?
There's something to this suggestion, particularly since law school has become essentially a trade school, as that's what the law is now, a trade.
But it shouldn't be, which might be why law school shouldn't be either.
Monday, April 17, 1944. The Uman–Botoșani Offensive Concludes, First Shots of the Greek Civil War, The Martyrdom of Fr. Max Josef Metzger, A Mystery Flight, Up Front in U.S. newspapers.
Soviet soldiers in Ukraine examining a destroyed Panther tank. By Mil.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=113828084
The Uman–Botoșani Offensive concluded in a wide-ranging Soviet victory. The Soviets had advanced 190 miles in one month, cleared southwestern Ukraine and entered Romania and Moldova. The offensive had been, moreover, carried out during spring mud season, the rasputitsa. It was one of the most successful Soviet advances of the war.
The Take-Ichi sendan (竹一船団, "Bamboo No. One" convoy) left Shanghai with two infantry divisions to reinforce the Philippines and western New Guinea. Its story was to be fateful and strategically important.
Following an attack on his unit by Greek Communists on Orthodox Easter Monday, Greek army officer and partisan, Col. Dimitrios Psarros (Δημήτριος Ψαρρός), founder of the partisan National and Social Liberation organization was executed in an early indication of how things were going to go as the Axis control of Greece loosened. Greece would be in a civil war before the end of World War Two.
Fr. Max Josef Metzger, German Catholic Priest and founder of the German Catholic Peace Association, was executed by the Nazi German state. He is regarded as a Catholic martyr.
The U-342 was sunk in the North Atlantic by a RCAF PBY.
Civilian airliner Deutsche Lufthansa D-AOCA, a Junkers Ju-52/3m was shot down on scheduled service E.17 from Vienna to Athens with stops in Belgrade, Sofia, and Thessaloniki. An Allied fighter sweep of Belgrade mistook it for a military aircraft. Five of its seven occupants were killed.
A Royal Air Force Warwick passenger plane went down over the UK, creating a mystery. As the recovery of its doomed passengers occured, large amounts of cash were found with them.
United Features Syndicate began to run Bill Mauldin's Up Front in U.S. newspapers.
Last prior edition:
Sunday, April 16, 1944. Black Sunday.
Thursday, April 17, 1924. Japanese reaction.
Political cartoonists were making fun of it, but the Japanese were both measured and enraged by the passage of the Japanese Exclusion Act. On this day, Japanese businesses in Japan began cancelling orders from the US in reaction.
Regarding the Chicago Tribune cartoon from above, one of the most remarkable things about it is that the cartoonist included five political parties. One wouldn't do that today.
Wyoming's Senator F. E. Warrren was already urging reconsideration of the act, and urging meetings to consider its impact.
The All-India Yadav Mahasabha was formed to promote equal treatment of and rights for Yadav people, the poorest people in India's caste system.
Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer Pictures were merged by Marcus Loew to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
In baseball:
April 17, 1924: Baby Doll Jacobson hits for the cycle, but Browns lose to White Sox
Last prior edition:
Wednesday, April 16, 1924. Flyer forced down.
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 64th Edition. Things authentic and important.
Why there?
On Saturday, March 30, Pro Hamas protestors interrupted the Easter Vigil Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.
Why St. Patrick's?
For the same reason, most likely, that LGBTQ+ figures had a protesting funeral there recently. People are drawn to Catholic places, as they're real, and therefore attention is paid to them.
Why her?
Courtney Love, in an interview with Standard, stated; "Taylor is not important. She might be a safe space for girls, and she's probably the Madonna of now, but she's not interesting as an artist."
This followed Billie Eilish criticizing, sort of anonymously, "wasteful artists" who put out multiple vinyl editions, an apparent softball for sustainability. She later said her comments weren't directed at Swift.
Hmmm. . .
Why are these chanteuses dissing Taylor?
I don't really know, but I will note that Love commenting on who is important and interesting in laughable. Is Love "important" or "interesting"? If she is, she might be interesting as she's the late wife of the tragic Curt Cobane, whom I don't find to have been particularly important, but certainly tragic. And for Eilish, she's sort of a teenage train wreck who probably needs to get over her weird diet and flipping between hiding her form and flaunting it.
Taylor is interesting because she's a musical success. I don't like her music, which I find to be juvenile, but I will note that appearance wise she's a throwback almost to the 1940s, and appears to have gained success while being basically normal in every fashion.
Culturally, therefore, she might be sort of important in a way.
Love, and Eilish, on the other hand, might be fairly unimportant in every sense. Musically, right now, it's hard to see what actually is important. Whoever they are, they aren't in pop music.
Indeed, much of society seems to be grasping for the authentic and important right now, without much out there in the culture offering it.
Appearances
Back in November, I posted this item:
What the Young Want.* The Visual Testimony of the Trad Girls. The Authenticity Crisis, Part One.
Since that time, this trend locally has noticeably increased. It's really remarkable.
For whatever reason, I'm a student of people, so I take notice of what they wear. I'm probably in a minority of sorts that way. What people wear at Mass is a common topic in Cyber Catholic circles, but the recent turn towards the conservative amongst young, white, female Catholic parishioners is really remarkable. It's a real rejection of the cultural norm of our era.
Indeed, very recently, even amongst those young women who were part of this group, there's suddenly a change. One young woman who is routinely at Mass with her family on Sundays, and who typically showed a lot of shoulder (no, there's no problem with that) is now covering up hugely. Something's changed. It doesn't, however, carry over to Hispanic or Native American young women, both of whom continue to dress the way they have. Hispanics have always dressed very conservatively at Mass, but not in a trad fashion. They're keeping on keeping on with that.
News, real news but in a rumor fashion, leaked out recently that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Byzantine Church is looking at putting in a mission in Casper, which would be a mission of a mission. I don't know how many Ukrainian Catholics there may be in town, but I'll bet it's a tiny number. I also bet that the mission church that's thinking of establishing a mission here, which is out of Cody, serves a mostly non-Eastern Rite community.
Something is going on there too. At a time at which some in the Latin Rite seem focused on a topic that's frankly jumped the shark, by and large, and which is really a matter of European culture, not biology, the young and rank and file in the pews seem to be moving on.
Becoming a parody of yourself
One of the risks of taking the long reach for something is that you can end up actually becoming unauthentic in your quest for authenticity.
I'm reminded of Courtney Love again.
On her Wikipedia page, there's a picture of Love wearing a kokoshnik, a stiff hat associated with Russian women. Russian women don't wear them anymore, and I'm sure they haven't for eons. She's wearing it with a miniskirt. It looked absurd, but was probably meant to make a statement. Or here's another example:
The kind of dumb stuff you say when you actually really care about "your 'basic' fashion sense".
I don't know who Japanese Breakfast is (or for that matter what an actual Japanese breakfast is) but they've showed up on this Twitter headline:
Japanese Breakfast is too busy returning to Coachella and making 'music for bottoms' to care about your 'basic' fashion senseOh, bull. That's the exact thing you say when you've tuned your fashion sense to look like you don't have a fashion sense, so you can appear to stay edgy for Coachella.
M'eh.
Exactly.
I note this as in the pews are a young couple, they're not married but perhaps engaged, whose family I somewhat know. From a very conservative background, they're trying to affect the disaffected but conservative look to the max. Unwashed hair and, for the young man, probably third or fourth hand overcoats from the 1970s with huge hounds tooth pattern. The young woman wears, of course, a chapel veil but also is affecting plain to the maximum extent possible, which is detracting a bit from her appearance. I do love her very round, plain glasses, however.
Anyhow, when going for something crosses over into sort of a parody, you've gone too far.
Lost
Anyhow, I think this trend has been going on for a while. It explains the entire Hipster look that's still with us, and was much in force several years ago.
Some days, when I leave the office, there's a young woman coming in. She's either a Native American or a Hispanic from somewhere south of the border. She's always dressed very conservatively, with dresses that remind me of what Latin American women traditionally wear. She always has a big smile when you see and acknowledge her.
She's authentic.
Last prior edition:
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 63d Edition. Strange Bedfellows.
Sunday, April 16, 1944. Black Sunday.
The RAF hit Romania for the first time. On the same day, the Soviet Air Forces hit Galatz.
The Germans began to gather Hungarian Jews, some 800,000 in number, into ghettos. Prior to this phase of the war, Hungarian Jews had been oppressed by their own nation, but not subject to deportation to the death camps.
The Red Army took Yalta. The Germans attempted to push the Red Army back over the Dnestr.
A large air raid was staged on Hollandia, Indonesia. The mission was successful with no losses, but the aircraft ran into a severe weather front on the return and 46 of the 170 aircraft in the raid went down. The day acquired the name "Black Sunday" as a result.
The attacking force was made up of B-24s, B-25s and A-20s, escorted by P-38s
862 Poles were killed by Ukrainian SS troops of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division. (1st Galician) in Chodaczków Wielki, part of pre war Poland which is now Velykyi Khodachkiv, Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine.
The Parczew partisans helped take over that town in Poland on this day.
The U-550 was sunk off of Nantucket. It was found in 2012:
Search team finds U-boat off Nantucket
African American artillerymen were in action on Bougainville.
155 Long Tom of B Btry, 49th Coastal Artillery, being loaded for firing. Bougainville, April 16, 1944. Section 1 of this unit, which had not been deployed overseas, would be disbanded the following month as the need for coast artillery faded. Section 2, depicted, here, had obviously been converted to heavy field artillery.
USO events were going on in the UK.
In the US, General Robert E. Wood, former head of the America First Committee, stated that there was no connection between the pre-Pearl Harbor organization and the current party which was then led by the Reverend Gerald Smith, its presidential candidate that year. Smith would receive 1,780, votes for the Oval Office, most of those from Texas and Michigan.
Last prior edition:
Saturday, April 15, 1944. Romania attacked from the air, Teenagers lose at Tarnopol, Politics in Minnesota, Hydro-Québec
Wednesday, April 16, 1924. Flyer forced down.
Germany accepted the Dawes Plan.
Romania announced that it had settled its debts with Italy.
Senator Warren was reported as having voted against the Japanese Exclusion Act.
And an aircraft went down in the Around the World flight.
Henry (Enrico) Mancini was born. He enlisted in the Army upon turning age 18 in 1943 and interestingly served in the 28th Air Force Band before being reassigned overseas to the 1306th Engineers Brigade in France. He was the writer of many famous movie scores.
Last prior edition:
Tuesday, April 15, 1924. Opening day.
Monday, April 15, 2024
Getting into other people's fights.
In our current era, there appear to be two ironclad rules of Republican politics. These are 1) you criticize Biden for everything, and 2) you endorse Donald Trump even though he should be in prison.
On the weekend shows, specifically Meet The Press, one GOP personage back in D.C. blamed President Biden for Iran's actions in the shadow war between Israel and Iran. The logic was that as Iran has been hitting US sites in Syria via Iranian proxies, we should have massively retaliated.
We have been retaliating. The only thing we could do that we haven't would be to strike Iran inside of Iran. That would have been over the top. Now, that's exactly what this person wants us to do. Irrespective of what Israel does, he wants us to hit Iran in Iran.
Isn't this the same party that chickened out in Afghanistan and surrendered to the Taliban (which interestingly doesn't like Iran) on the basis that we need to end "forever wars"?
So, we surrendered to one group of Islamic fundamentalist so they could establish a theocracy, and now we're going to take on another one?
Eh?
And why do we need to do this when it seems like Israel is pretty capable of defending itself. Most in D.C. right now are complaining that Israel is going too far in Gaza. That can be debated, but they certainly seem to be able to more than defend themselves, granted with U.S. material aid.
Meanwhile, a democratic county that is fighting one of the largest armies in the world can't get our help, because Donald Trump is a fanboy of the autocratic opposition.
There's no consistency in this at all. If it makes sense for us to get into a shooting war of some sort over the skies of Iran because they're a lethal annoyance that has staged a massive rocket attack on a democratic state, well then it makes just as much sense to do that in Ukraine. Probably more sense, due to the civilian death toll that's resulted in.
If it doesn't make sense for Ukraine, it doesn't make sense for Israel either.
And let's be honest. Ukraine isn't getting our aid right now because of Donald Trump. That's the only reason. Israel is getting help as it's always gotten our help, in part, but also because a certain part of the rising Evangelical populist wing of the GOP has certain millennial and religious ideas about that.
I'm not saying don't aid Israel. And frankly, I'm aghast at the people who are effectively supporting Hamas, which is a brutal terrorist organization. Nobody is looking at a long term solution, and there is one, but its Wilsonian and won't make every feel good. What I am saying is that the GOP position right now is completely hypocritical.
Oh, and does the GOP dislike or like Taiwan right now? I've lost track. Maybe somebody better ask Don during a break in his trial.
Iron Domes and Chutzpah
“Iran lobbed 200+ missiles at Israel yesterday and we’re really worried that Israel will use this as an excuse to start a war”
What that lacks in intelligence, it makes up for in consistency: no matter what they are forced to endure, it’s somehow always the fault of the Jews.
Fr. Joseph Krupp on Twitter, with the quoted text paraphrasing the meaning of two Arab officials worrying that Israel will respond.
We should note that the Iranian assault was itself a response to the Israeli targeting the consular section of the Iranian Embassy in Syria to kill a senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Attacking an embassy is classically regarded as an act of war.
Of course, Iran and Israel have been in a shadow war for years.
Israel should not have done that. But the Iranian response was inept. Since they engaged in it, there's been a lot of commentary to the effect that Israel should not respond.
Really? To an assault like that? That's asking for a lot.
Basically, where this is at is here, by analogy. If Japan, on December 7, 1941, had lost all of its aircraft carriers and none of the ships in Pearl Harbor had been sunk, or even seriously damaged, would Japan have been allowed to come back with, "well there, we certainly taught you a lesson, now let's not overreact".
I doubt it.
Lots of people are hoping Israel doesn't respond, and it might not. Iran should certainly hope that, as its airborne offensive capabilities have been proven to be worthless against Israel and there's now an open question about what its defense capabilities are like. If it can't stop a serious Israeli counterstrike, it's fresh meat for the dogs in the neighborhood. "Oh look. . . Iran is bleeding. . . "
What this also shows is what Ukraine could do if it was provided with enough air defenses to take on Russian strikes. Russia's capabilities in this area really aren't much better than Iran's, and indeed, they're using Iranian drones.
Monday, April 15, 1974. The Hibernia Bank Robbery.
The Symbionese Liberation Army committed an armed robbery on the Hibernia bank in San Francisco. "Tania", aka Patty Hearst, was, a member of the group, carrying a cut down Iver Johnson M1 Carbine "Enforcer".
A coup overthrew the government of Niger. Aissa Diori, the First Lady of Niger, was killed in the event.
Ivor Bell, leader of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, escaped from the Maze Prison in Belfast. In the facility for only seven weeks, he posed as another prisoner who was getting a furlough to attend a wedding. He was captured thirteen days later.
Bell was a hardliner was expelled from the IRA in 1984. He remains alive today, suffering from dementia.
Last prior edition:
Thursday, April 4, 1974. I wanted to note Hank Aaron. . .
Saturday, April 15, 1944. Romania attacked from the air, Teenagers lose at Tarnopol, Politics in Minnesota, Hydro-Québec
PB4Y Photo Reconnaissance Liberators on a photo mission in the South Pacific , April 15, 1944.
The US 15th Air Force sent 500 sorties to Bucharest and Ploesti. The war had reached the point where the Western Allies air attacks were now directly assisting the Soviet offensive in the east.
The Red Army took Tarnopol. German commander Gen. von Neindorff was killed in the fighting and nearly the entire German garrison was lost.
The original German commander at Tarnopal had deemed the defense hopeless and had reported it so. The garrison of the doomed city was made up of new troops, most of whom were recent German teenage conscripts. Only 55 of some 4,000 troops escaped the city.
British X class submarine, in this case the X25.
In Operation Guidance a British midget mine laying submarine, the X24 attacked the floating dock at Bergen, but the raid was not successful as the boat's charges were placed on a large German merchant vessel rather than the dock.
Aircraft from the USS Yorktown raided Chichijima and Iwo Jima.
African American troops on Bougainville, April 15, 1944.
The Minnesota Democratic Farm Labor Party was founded by the merger of the Minnesota Democratic Party and the larger, yes larger, Farmer–Labor Party.
The left wing Farm Labor Party had been hugely successful in Minnesota. Founded in 1918, it's run to 1944 is one of the most successful state third party stories in the US.
Montreal Light, Heat & Power was taken over by provincial entity Hydro-Québec.
Last prior edition:
Friday, April 14, 1944. Indian drama.
Tuesday, April 15, 1924. Opening day.
Baseball didn't make the front page on this day in 1924. The House passing the Japanese Exclusion Act did.
But it was opening day.
The silent one shook the hand of Bucky Harris.
Other athletic endeavors were going on as well.
Last prior edition:
Sunday, April 13, 1924. Greeks decline a king.
1920s, 1924, Aircraft, Alaska, First Around The World Flight, Greece, Monarchy, United States Air Force
Sunday, April 14, 2024
Blog Mirror: The Wurst Article
An item by a German expatriate living in the UK on what Germans call what most Americans call "hot dogs"
The Wurst Article
Note the presentation.
I'm surprised that in Frankfurt, Wieners are regarded as a delicacy. When I was a kid, we had them all the time, and I liked them. I particularly liked "hot lunches" at school, which we rarely got, when we were served steamed hot dogs.
I still like the recollection of how those tasted.
Now days, I only eat hot dogs if I'm at a baseball game. That's about it. Otherwise, I never do. I probably had too many fried hot dogs as a kid.
Yes, my mother fried them. But she was an awful cook.
Anyhow, my grandfather was a meat packer and this article caused me to think of what we called these sausages. We called them "hot dogs" the American standard word, but my father would call them Wieners. His father was of 100% Westphalian extraction and had grown up speaking German. My father could speak it too, but sort of kept that to himself, like many other things in his very quiet personality. Anyhow, maybe that's why my father used that term for the little mild sausages.
The packing house did make them. Apparently they made a lot of them during World War Two, as the Army ordered them. When the war ended the contract for them was suddenly canceled and it turned out to be a big problem for the packing house, as the Army wouldn't order them with the added red dye that is what actually causes them to be that color. That was an unnecessary added expense, in the Army's view.
But not for civilians. The hot dogs turned out to be hard to sell to grocery stores as they weren't the expected pink. Without it, they're white.
I love sausages, FWIW. It's probably one of the things that will get me in the end, but then I don't have the American expectation of living perfectly fit until I'm 120 years old. But I'm not keen on Wieners. Brots, yes, other sausages, you bet. But these aren't my favorite.
Maybe they would be in Frankfurt.
Roads to the Great War: "Seemed Like a Good Idea": American Subchasers in ...
Roads to the Great War: "Seemed Like a Good Idea": American Subchasers in ...: Three Submarine Chasers in Port The U.S. Navy employed a type of anti-submarine craft from which much was expected. These were the 70-ton, 1...
Interesting article. An aspect of the US role in World War One you don't hear much about.
Indeed, you don't hear much about the Navy in World War One in general, even though the U.S. Navy had a major role in it, and originally, the Administration thought our role would be principally naval.
Friday, April 14, 1944. Indian drama.
The Bombay Explosion occured at Mumbai, India) when the British SS Fort Stikine caught fire and exploded, creating mass destruction and killing around 800 to 1,300 people.
Col. Shaukat Ali Malik of the Indian National Army entered Moirang with his troops and raised the flag of the Azri Hukumat e-Azad Hind for the first time on Indian soil.
The stories above illustrate the complicated nature of India and the Indian people in World War Two. Col/ Sjailat Ali Malik was a Muslim Indian who had previously served in a British Indian police force, the latter being quite militarized. The INA was a collaborationist army in combat against the Allies, while of course the British Indian Army was an Allied Army, but subject to the British Empire and therefore not really a "free" army.
Following the war, the INA would be regarded with sympathy by many Indians. I don't know what happened to Col. Malik, but the Muslin portions of Indian broke off from it immediately with independence, forming Pakistan. Today, what had been East and West Pakistan are Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The Red Army reached the Carpathian foothills.
Gen. Nikolai F. Vatutin died of wounds received in an ambush by Ukrainian partisans on February 29, 1944.
The U-448 was sunk off of the Azores.
Last prior edition:
Thursday, April 13, 1944. Soviet advances in Crimea.
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