TAMPA'S TOTALS  OVERNIGHT, 28  FOUND DEAD  IN CITY  LIMITS... LUCKY
WINNERS PAY OFF AT 15 TO 1

POLICE BLAME RECORD HEAT WAVE



If a  public library is  doing its job, it  has something in  it to
offend every single person. (Phyllis A. Salak)

My diet of reading has picked up  quite a bit lately. It has really
been  years since  I spent  a significant  amount of  time reading,
despite continuing  to acquire  books. Reading  more is  a definite
step in the right direction, as opposed to spending hours and hours
consuming online HTTP content. I  suspect there is a big difference
between what Giggle,  Facebook, Reddit, and the like push  at us if
we're willing to give them our time and attention and what is being
offered by the resurging gopher community, but time will tell if it
can stay small and exclusive enough to  not fall into The Pit as it
were.

I've recently read Mark Lilla's  excellent short book 'The Once and
Future Liberal' and  I think it has important lessons  for both the
Democratic Party  and for  people hoping to  protect the  rights of
various groups. In short his thesis is that the Democratic Party is
failing to win elections and  wield enough power to effect positive
change  because  it has  become  overly  focused on  the  divisions
between various  people whether they be  homosexual or transgender,
members of ethnic  groups, etc. He says the focus  on 'fighting the
fight' for these various groups and the differences between various
Americans is a distraction, that you do not win elections merely by
claiming that you are right.

I  think there  is at  least one  big caveat  to Lilla's  position,
namely that the Democratic Party has truly not addressed the issues
facing  people left  behind  as  the coal,  steel,  and many  other
industries have contracted.  The Democratic Party needs  to do more
than pay lip  service to helping people of  whatever background who
are being ground down by the change to the 'new economy'.

I am now  working on Ben Sasse's (freshman  Republican senator from
Nebraska) book  'Them: Why We Hate  Each Other - and  How to Heal'.
I'm only  about 30  pages in  but it's  very encouraging  thus far.
While I have plenty of differences with him on political and social
issues it's nice  to see someone standing up for  the ideas that we
can and  should get along  better and that  there are steps  we can
take to make that happen. We'll see how he plays out the ideas he's
brought up so far.

The other book that I've recently  read is 'The Handmaid's Tale' by
Margaret Atwood  which lives  up to its  reputation as  a harrowing
cautionary  tale and  then some.  I  had already  seen the  Netflix
adaptation of it which was very  good but something about reading a
story  allows you  to get  into a  character's head  more deeply  I
think. It is a moving and disturbing story and one that more people
should be exposed to, in the vein of Fahrenheit 451. Everyone needs
to keep in mind the things we  have to lose in a democracy and this
world in  general if we don't  value them and defend  them and take
care of  one another.  There are definitely  reasons why  it's best
that there  is always  a robust  other party  with some  ability to
challenge and contest the majority.


In other developments,  I now have my very own  virtual server with
FreeBSD installed  and no sure  idea yet what  I'm going to  use it
for. The possibilities are endless.

23Nov2018











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