What do you call someone who doesn't litter? Illiterate.
Did you hear about the poor skunk? He hasn't got a scent.
My recommendation for a low-calorie food: Swiss cheese holes. Guaranteed to have no more than zero calories. And--I'm willing to sell you some real cheap.
Copyright (c) 2025.
The company now known as Colgate-Palmolive was once known as Colgate-Palmolive-Pete (or maybe it was Peet). I wonder what happened to poor Mr. Pete.
The initials of the company now called GSK stand for Glaxo Smith Klein, which was formed by a merger of the UK firm Glaxo with the American Smith, Klein and French. Again--what happened to Mr, French?
There is a company that I hear of because they are listed as a contributor or supporter of a Public Television program that's called BDO. I suspect that here, too, the name of one of the partners has been dropped. My brother-in-law, who was an accountant, once--years and years ago--told me that one of the big accounting firms was Batten, Barton, Durstein and Osborne. That would be BBDO, and if one of the b's has been dropped, as in those two other cases above, that would give us today's BDO.
The best example is the brokerage firm that at various times was Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith and Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Beane. Presumably both of these were too cumbersome, and now we've got simply Merrill Lynch.
Maybe this de-partnering is a phenomenon well known and even common in the business world. I'd welcome it if anyone can tell me more about this.
Added 12/17/24
This can work the other way, too: One or more names could be added, for euphony or just to fill out the corporate name, according to some ill-expressed criterion. The best example is the big movie studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (M-G-M). There were a Samuel Goldwyn and a Louis B. Mayer. I don't think there was ever anyone named Metro.
At one point I worked for the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. There were Challengers--in fact lots of them, big and small, running about the place--but I saw nary a Gray nor a Christmas and I don't believe there ever were any such.
A recent news story--post-election analysis--said that many young Black and Latino men voted for Trump because they see him as improving jobs and other financial/economic matters.
As to those Latino folks: After January 20 they are likely to see their friends, relatives, neighbors and co-workers being deported. Plus, no one has said a word about the cost to the US--us taxpayers--for flying these immigrants back to their countries of origin. (Not even touching on the fact that today, the news showed Trump's about-to-be "immigration czar" replying to a question about families being separated by these deportations; his reply was, to paraphrase a bit, no, we won't need to separate families, just deport (US-born) children along with their parents.
And--to another group of voters who voted for Trump because they are unhappy with the rising prices the country has been experiencing: Again, wait until after January 20. Trump has pledged to raise tariffs on imported goods. Those voters who have been buying cheap Chinese goods at Walmart are going to see those items hugely increase in their prices to US consumers after Trump's tariffs are added.
If Trump makes good on his promise (threat) to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico, U. S. car manufacturers are going to be unhappy, and car buyers are going to see car prices go up. This is because car makers are making engines and transmissions in Canada and Mexico, for the sake of--can you guess?--cheaper labor. This was facilitated--maybe encouraged--by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed by Bill Clinton in 1989 (and replaced and superseded by another agreement, of which I do not know the terms) during Trump's first term.
Update, Jan. 31, 2025
Today ABC Television News said that Trump's increased
tariffs on goods imported from Canada,
Mexico, and China
will be put into effect tomorrow, and quoted experts saying that US consumers can expect numerous prices to go up as a result.
Trump said there may be some "disruptions," and that he believes the American people will understand. Well, I don't think they will. I think many people will say, "We elected him to lower prices, and now he's doing the exact opposite."
I think that people--if they do in fact expect a candidate to keep his campaign promises once in office--don't examine issues in enough depth as to say to themselves, "Well, if he does such-and-such, will x happen--or y?"
I think that, rather than looking into the issues at depth, people allow themselves to be swayed by sound bytes and catchy slogans--maybe slogans that will fit on the front of a cap--and are quick to believe that we need a change because nearly everything the previous administration did was wrong or bad.
So...when you're buying food and you're shocked by what's happened to the price of avocadoes, be sure to say a silent Thank You to Mr. Trump.
Update, Feb. 7
As you may know by now, the threatened tariffs are off--for now.
I'm pretty sure Trump got pressure from many quarters. The Wall Street Journal --not exactly a liberal or leftist publication--called them "the dumbest trade war in history."
Trump is made to look much better by the fact that he got agreements--concessions?--from both Canada and Mexico. Were the tariffs merely a threat and a bluff to secure these concessions? Unless there's someone around who knows the answer and is willing to publicly disclose, we, the public, can't know.
If you watch TV at all, you've probably seen those commercials--the broadcasters call them PSA's, public service announcements, but they're commercials to me--for various charitable causes: wounded veterans, hungry children, rescued dogs and cats. Usually, for some reason I can't fathom, they ask you and me to commit to contributing $19 a month.
TV commercials are expensive to produce, not even counting the cost of air time to broadcast them. So you have to consider that a significant portion of the money you send them goes to fundraising expenses like that very commercial. (In many cases you can go to a site such as Charity Navigator to get a report on what percentage of a charity's revenue is spent on fundraising.)
As for me, before I con tribute, I am looking to see a little notice on the screen that says something like "All talent and other labor to produce this announcement was donated, and the air time to broadcast it was donated by this TV station."
Somehow, I don't really expect to see that.
Last month, a woman named Sonya Massey was fatally shot in her kitchen by a Sangamon County (IL) deputy sheriff.
The sheriff's defense, classically, was that he felt his life was threatened. This is the only possible defense a law-enforcement officer can offer for shooting a suspect (not that Ms. Massey was a suspect in any crime).
What had Ms. Massey done? She said, "I rebuke you in the name of Jesus Christ." Now, quite possibly that is not a truly reasonable thing to say under the circumstances. Quite possibly the officer did not understand that (I am not a Christian of the same stripe as Ms. Massey so I am not certain I fully grasp what that was supposed to mean, at that time and place).
But--what exactly was the officer--I believe his name is Grayson--being threatened with? A pot of hot water.
Now, I am not certain what the statistics, if there are in fact any, show as to what percentage of the time an attack by hot water is fatal. I suspect it seldom is.
Add into the recipe that Ms. Massey was black. Sadly--infuriatingly--the majority of cases of this sort seem to involve a victim who was black. The inescapable inference in these horrible cases is that the officer who killed the person bore some degree of racism in his heart. (Latest news on this story is that he may also bear hostility to women..)
I have given only a very sketchy outline of this story; and far more has come to light via different media Any reader should feel free to add, via a comment, anything they consider worth including.
The Tennessee water cricket is not found in Tennessee but rather in a few spots along the Calabash River in Sardinia, N.S.W.
The fitchin is a fish--at least in Japan, where everything is a fish, except rice and a few vegetables that grow around Shinto shrines.
Sorry, folks, just being silly. I have always believed the world needs more silliness.
The pharmaceutical industry uses computers to generate possible or suggested names for new drugs, and has been doing so for a long time.
The computers are programmed with algorithms so as to respect some of the laws or constraints of English--for example, permitted sequences of letters.
For a long time, it seems, the computers were not allowed to use the letter q in any proposed drug names. In English, the letter q is almost always followed by u (the exceptions are merely a couple of words which come from other languages).
Now, however, that seems to have changed, and we are seeing drug names with q in them:
It's anybody's guess why the pharmaceutical industry has started using such weird names. Maybe all the good ones have been used already.
Copyright © 2023.
I was thinking about the names of sports teams. You know,
they usually are connected in some way to the city where the team is resident,
e.g., Detroit Pistons (referring to the auto industry, with its cars which
have--or at least always had--piston engines), the Houston Oilers (there is a
lot of oil around Houston). Here
are a few new ones that I'm suggesting.
Some other thoughts related to sports:
I like to say--jokingly, of course--that (Chicago) Cubs grow up to be (Chicago) Bears.
If the (Chicago) White Sox got mixed up in the laundry with the (Boston) Red Sox, you'd get the Pink Sox.
Polo is played on horseback, right? Then I guess sea horses are used for water polo.
There was a basketball player called Meadowlark Lemon. There is a baseball player named Darryl Strawberry. So--although they were on different teams and even different sports--we've had a strawberry and a lemon. Makes me wonder what other fruits[*] there might be…….
___________
* I strongly want it understood that the use of the word "fruit," though acknowledged as a slang term for a gay person, is in no way meant here to imply any derogatory comment on LGBTQ people.
Copyright (c) 2023
SUVs keep growing in popularity in America. Also, accidents in which pedestrians are struck by vehicles have been increasing. Now, connect the dots.
What connects the dots is a study that shows that SUVs—and pickup trucks, which are also gaining in popularity—have a significant zone immediately in front of them where something in the road would not be visible to the driver. This is because their hoods are higher.
So, owning and driving an SUV puts pedestrians at greater peril; not to mention the fact that SUVs have a greater impact on the environment. They burn more fuel, on average, than cars and thus emit a greater quantity of greenhouse gases.
The American road is on track to become nearly all SUVs as the major American car makers are dropping their sedan models. There is sort of a push-pull operating here: The car makers claim that buyers demand SUVs, but SUVs are more profitable to build, so auto makers are more than happy to switch their product lines, more and more, to SUVs. You cannot any longer buy a sedan from Ford or Chevrolet, both of which built several good small sedan models.
SUVs are not as popular in Europe. I frankly don't understand why they are so appealing to drivers, but one theory I have is that, as American cars grew smaller (look at, for example, the length of '60s cars and compare that with more recent models), people reacted against that by finding large vehicles in the form of SUVs.
Here is a good article on this subject: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24139147/suvs-trucks-popularity-federal-policy-pollution
Copyright (c) 2023
I have blogged about the problem of gun violence in America, over and over, to where I am tired of writing on that subject and have resolved, more than once, to say no more about it.
Yet mass shootings, particularly school shootings, incredible and of course tragically, continue. And, they're even getting worse. Last year there were 270 school shootings, the most since 1970.
I believe the chief cause of the high rate of homicides in America is the prevalence of guns. (Yes, you can kill people with a knife, but if you intend to kill a number of people, a gun is much more efficient.) The United States has the loosest gun laws in the world. Coincidence?
You don't hear too much about the experience of Australia. The national government of Australia created an incentive for Australian citizens to turn in their guns. The result? Homicides decreased 97%. Ninety-seven percent!
Yet, time after time, it seems we absorb these experiences with little or nothing happening. Why, in heaven's name? Other countries shake their heads in disbelief and probably are even afraid to visit the United States.
The reason is because we have a powerful gun lobby—the NRA, other gun owners' organizations, gun manufacturers—and legislatures and governors—chiefly Republican—who have thwarted meaningful gun control.
True, we have the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Yet jurisprudence has held that the gun-owning right is not absolute and can have limitations imposed. At one point--for a few years--assault rifles were illegal. Then that law expired and was not renewed.
For a couple hundred years, England was ruled by Danish or Viking kings. One of them was known as Harald Bluetooth (one surmises that he had a blue tooth). Why that should be a suitable name for a communication protocol--well, you are free to guess.
Widget was a term for a hypothetical or fictitious product of a manufacturing company. For example, a business-school test might have a question like, "If the XYZ Corporation manufactures widgets and they can produce 1000 widgets an hour…."
The name Google probably was suggested by the word googol, uttered by Milton Sirotta, the nephew of the mathematician Edward Kasner and used by Kasner to denote the quantity 1 followed by 100 zeroes.
Copyright © 2022
One of the reasons I'm rather pessimistic about the prospect for our world's beating the global warming/climate change problem is that not enough is being done about it. We hear the world's politicians talk about it but any action being taken is at some point going to be seen to have been too little, too late.
Americans (for one) don't appear to be changing their habits, and I don't really hear anyone urging them to. Where are the leaders urging people to drive less? To not buy big and thirsty SUVs? (The equation is simple: more fuel consumed = more greenhouse gases being emitted.) And who has—or would have—the bravery to discourage Christmas lights in the name of saving energy? Anyone who did so would be accused of being anti-religion or even anti-God (show me where in the Bible we are commanded to string electric lights upon our houses to celebrate the birth of Christ).
Electric vehicles are expected to do much to reduce production of greenhouse gases; but so far, in most countries, the penetration of EVs into the car market has been rather insignificant--on the order of 3% to 6% of car sales. One reason is that electric cars suffer from a serious price disadvantage. And, I do not see any great numbers of charging stations in my area. On the other hand, "range anxiety"--the fear of drivers that they will be traveling and their car's charge will be running out when they are not near any place where the car could be charged--might be diminishing because electric cars' range (on a charge, that is) has been increasing.
I myself have given some thought to getting an electric car. If I got one it would probably receive all or nearly all of its charging in my garage. But, to have and use only 110 V charging is very slow; and to install a faster, 220 V charger in my garage I'd have to buy a charger and pay an electrician to wire it into my house wiring--for a total cost of nearly $1000.
I'm sure electric cars are the wave of the future, but it's going to be a while before they are truly common. Better, cheaper, lighter-weight batteries must be developed, and I don't think anyone is sure when that will happen.
Another thing, on a somewhat different note: Rainforests, as we hear often, are a very important repository of carbon, and cutting down and/or burning these trees not only reduces the amount of carbon that can be absorbed from the atmosphere, but the burning of the trees releases carbon that has been locked up perhaps for centuries. Yet in Brazil, the trees of the Amazon rainforest, one of the most important on the planet, are being cut down and burned, to make room for pasture land or farmland (e.g., plantation of palm trees for the palm oil that is showing up in so much of our food)--not to mention that this process is depriving indigenous people of their land and homes. Yet Brazil's President Bolsonaro does nothing to stop this pillaging and destruction of the rainforests of his country.
In many nations there are conferences, there are speeches. But is enough being done, aside from talk? At least a few scientists warned of the problem decades ago. True, we have some renewal energy--wind farms, etc.--but they still are providing only a small percentage of energy consumed. We need "transformative" change, and it doesn't seem to be happening.
Copyright © 2022.
You may have heard of some of the laws in the sciences, like Boyle's Law. And maybe some of the (definitely) non-science laws, like Parkinson's Law. Well, I want to jump on this bandwagon; so here are some of my "laws." I've come up with others but sadly they might just be forgotten.
1. There's always a better way to do something—faster, simpler, cheaper.
2. As soon as you buy gas, you see it cheaper at another station—usually within a few minutes and within two or three blocks.
3. You only get an itch when both hands are full so you can't scratch it.
4. You see the “easy open” tab or zipper or whatever after you've opened the package with brute force or taken a knife or scissors to it.
5. Two men with similar facial hair are likely to be perceived as looking alike
6. You get out the can opener and then realize it's one of those pop-top cans.
7. Never talk about--say negative things about--someone to a third person. It will get back to them--a lesson I learned slowly and painfully.
8. In looking for an item on the cupboard shelf (e.g.), as soon as you say "I can't find it" or "I don't see it," you do see it. At least this is true for me.
9. We love 'em (e.g. Mexicans, Irish) over there--but when they move here, as immigrants, it may be a quite different story.
10. Things very often turn out to be more difficult or more complicated--and take way longer--than we ever foresaw.
11. The order in which you do things frequently is very important.
12. Your spouse (lover, partner, whatever) is not as considerate as you would wish--at least at times. Remember, nobody's perfect.
Copyright (c) 2022
I haven't posted to this blog in a long times, so I thought it might be nice to start the new year with a blog posting.
So, here goes: What's wrong with the world (or perhaps mainly America), according to me.
1. The prevalence of guns. When everybody is carrying a gun, an argument or just one person getting very angry can result in a gun being pulled and then someone being shot. I think this is pretty obvious but the gun proponents (or anti–gun control types) doubtless would dispute it.
When I was younger, the term road rage was not in anyone's
vocabulary (nor was school shooting). Nowadays an argument we call road rage my
well result in someone being shot.
2. Social media companies fostering polarization of their users and the spread of disinformation--not to mention their near-destruction of any such thing as privacy because they exist to collect--and sell--information about you and me.
3. Growing social and economic inequality. The rich are getting richer, according to all statistics. You may say, "more power to 'em," but when wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals that has to mean that some others are getting poorer It’s a zero-sum game. And, if nothing else, it is simply cruel and unjust that many people live in poverty.
4. More and more, minority groups such as Native Americans, Blacks, Asian-Americans and others are refusing--to put it in terms we used when we were kids--to be pushed around anymore. That's fine, I for one want to see them winning their rights and a fairer shake in our society. The problem arises when there are those--and these groups are growing, at least in number--who oppose all this, who want some real or imagined past order to remain or return. Groups like white supremacist groups. When people with 180-degree opposite opinions and goals get more and more vocal, it's not going to be just words hurled by one group at the other; and of course this has already occurred and there is no way this can be a good thing.
All this is not even to mention the problems which imperil our planet in perhaps a more physical way: global warming and climate change, destruction of the environment, extinction of plant and animal species, runaway world population--it's saddening and wearying even to get into this list.
Some of these problems certainly are not unique to America but are found in many other western countries, if not in the whole world. I've been hearing a number of voices who are pontificating on the direction we (often "mankind") are going. So many of them seem optimistic, and hold out hope of some sort or to some degree. I can't feel so optimistic because it seems to me that there is inertia which keeps us locked in the status quo--not to mention greed, corruption, and many other human failings which mitigate against change, or at least not change soon enough or fast enough. My crystal ball shows me that--for example, regarding action on global warming--it's going to be "too little, too late."
Copyright © 2020
The United States clearly has a problem regarding its police. Too many people are being killed during arrests and even traffic stops.
I don't believe this phenomenon occurs to the same degree in other countries. Currently there is a proposed law before the US Congress that would legislate standards for things like use of choke holds by police, no-knock search warrants, etc. (Even though policing is not federal--except for the FBI, we have no federal police; rather, policing is done at the local, county, and state level.)
So some measures to fix this problem might be forthcoming. But has anyone tried to figure out the cause--why this problem exists?
Many people in American society feel that the problem is racism--that the police are prejudiced against minorities such as African Americans and thus more likely to use harsh measures on individuals belonging to those groups.
This may be true and I don't want in any way to deny the likelihood that this is true. But I want to ask, is there a deficiency in the training that police receive? Do police forces attract individuals who harbor serious aggressive tendencies? It seems that, if and when they shoot someone--possibly with justification--they shoot not once but four or five times, making it more likely that their shots will be fatal. And, as we know, there have been beatings, choke holds, and other possibly unnecessary or excessive assertions of physical force.
I suggested, in a letter to the editor, a long time ago, that maybe we need to administer psychological tests to prospective police officers to identify those candidates who might have more and unnecessary aggressive tendencies.
Look at this: we give police power and authority. We give them weapons: batons ("billy clubs"), tasers, and guns. What are they told about using the power, authority, and weapons that we endow them with?
Certainly in America there are too many guns such that people get shot during arguments, road rage incidents, and even accidentally. The enormous, incredible gun population makes it more likely that the police will encounter a gun, that the "offender" or "perp" or suspect will have a gun. So that is part of the problem, too. We certainly don't and can't expect the police to be totally outside of and removed from America's "wild west" gun culture (as I have called it elsewhere).
So this, I hope, will raise some questions, point out some issues that I feel need to be thought about.This a problem that we must not deny and must work on.
Copyright © 2021.
Eggs don't grow on an egg plant.
Shoes don't grow on a shoe tree.
Flowers don't sleep in a flower bed.
Taste buds never open up to be taste blossoms.
Roosters crow but crows don't rooster. I think the crows should organize to protest.
If you want to raise questions--say in academe or public affairs-- you need to have a question farm.
Trees have a bark but it must be a very quiet one because I've never heard it.
It can rain cats and dogs but you never see those animals
pooling in the gutter. (The weather man predicted cats-and-dogs rain and said it would be "soggy." Maybe he should have said "doggy.")
Fish occur in schools but I don't think they learn very much there--at least not how to avoid being caught.
To clock someone is pretty different from watching them.
A horsetail is not a grown-up version of a ponytail. It's a plant.
"Peace of mind" and "a piece of my mind" are pretty different but sound pretty similar and might confuse someone learning English.
Copyright (c) 2021.
Global warming and climate change; species extinction and loss of biodiversity; world population growth. These are all inter-related, and the experts keep warning us that unless we do the right things--and stop doing the wrong things--the world is headed for disaster.
Some people who have weighed in with their view of humanity's future have been optimistic, confident that the right things will be done, and done widely and in a timely manner.
I feel unable to share this optimism. We have seen how wealth and power--for example the fossil fuel industry--has used its power and money to try to undermine science and spread disinformation about climate change--not to mention politicians who in one way or another have an interest in the status quo, and religious institutions opposed to any efforts to control human fertility.
Copyright © 2021
It's pretty widely known that the ancient Egyptians were obsessed with immortality. They developed mummification, an elaborate series of procedures for preserving the human body after death. And with mummification, prayers, and suitable entombment they hoped to ensure that a person who had died--particularly, but not only their kings--would continue on in the afterlife with a happy existence.
The Vikings believed that a brave warrior would enter Valhalla and "live" there with much feasting and drinking of mead.
The seventeenth-century English writer Sir Thomas Browne saw fit to reflect on immortality when a Roman burial site was discovered in his county of England. He reflects that, for example, having your epitaph in half a dozen languages is no guarantee of immortality; only the Christian promise of resurrection, he concludes, is a sure way of achieving immortality.
It occurs to me that today we can have immortality. My musings--different from Browne's--began with my seeing a TV program with Jack Hanna, a famous zoo keeper and conservationist. The program might have been pretty old. Hanna, as seen on TV, doesn't get any older--so having a film or video of oneself keeps you at a certain age; you don't get any older.
And Alex Trebek died two months ago but episodes of the TV show Jeopardy!, which he hosted, are still being broadcast.
So, among all the incarnations of immortality that humans have dreamed of over the centuries and millennia, today we might actually have a means--a technological means--of preserving a person, in a manner of speaking, such that they won't age or we can see (and hear) them after they have died.
Copyright © 2021
Supposedly, there is an ancient Chinese curse that says, "May you live in interesting times." Well, certainly 2020 was an "interesting" year, what with the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused wrenching disruptions to individuals, families, schools, companies, institutions--to nearly all people and in nearly all places on Earth.
Plus, in 2020 the United States had a presidential election, defeating a man adored by some and reviled by (perhaps) many more.
And for me personally, 2020 was eventful just because early in the year I had surgery to remove a cancer.
So, probably literally billions breathed a sigh of relief when 2020 ended, believing, or at least hoping, that the new year, 2021, just had to be better than the one ending.
After just six days of this new year I don't know that we can be very sure of that. Bad news is that the virus in the United States is not abating--far from it--and now we need to be worried about variants in the virus caused by mutations.
And today, which was to have seen a rather routine and boring vote by Congress to accept the vote (for president) of the Electoral College, the U.S. Capitol, the seat of the Legislative branch of the US government, was attacked, besieged, breached, etc., by supporters of Donald Trump.
I am not a historian but I'm pretty sure this was unprecedented. The transition of power from the administration of one US president to the next, incoming one usually proceeds completely peacefully. That is how it is supposed to work. But nothing that Trump has had a hand in--and this riot--or "insurrection," as President-Elect Biden called it--was indeed inspired, preached, urged by Trump--has followed the pattern or expectations for a normal presidency.
Copyright © 2021
Note/disclaimer: I write this as the outcome of the Nov. 3,2020 election is still uncertain.
Donald Trump is a colossal liar. He unceasingly spreads misinformation and disinformation, half-truths and lies. The New York Times counted some 1300 lies from Trump in his public speeches, etc., in his first year in office--that's about three a day.
And, with incredible irony, he attacks anything that is unfavorable to him or critical of him or shows him to be wrong as "fake news"--when he is the fake news.
It seriously threatens our democracy when a president seeks to undermine our news media and the very profession of journalism. Unfortunate--and very concerning to me--is that people--at least his supporters--believe him.
People do not know, have never learned, to be critical or to tell truth from lies.
Many, many years ago, when I was teaching, I used to upbraid my own students for being uncritical. I would say to them, "I could stand up here and say 'Black is white' and it would go in your ears, through you heads and then down through your arms and onto the paper of your notebooks."
There are courses I have seen to make people better able to tell what is true.
Evidently a big factor is social media. People see deliberate misinformation on social media sites and believe it. Worse, they pass it on to others.
As I hear, some social media sites have begun to put labels--labels carrying a warning--that some posts are known to be false or misleading.
Right now, as votes from the election of two days ago are being counted, he is trying to call these votes--which are simply mail-in ballots that in many states, according to their state laws, could not be counted until the in-person voting was over, fraudulent, trying to make a case that the election is being stolen from him. This is merely our democracy working--working as it should--and he is doing all he can to discredit it.
Another remarkable event of the still-young new year is the result of the run-off US Senate election in the state of Georgia. Georgia is a Southern state and surely has shown some of the prejudices associated with the South (maybe, to be charitable, I'll add "at times"), yet it has just elected a Jew and an African-American to the Senate (two different gentlemen). I suspect some Southerners of the old sort are shrieking in horror.
© 2020.
