John Brown's Notes and Essays

After I had trouble remembering words, I decided to start memorizing verses.  By Stephen Miller , The Wall Street Journal , June 29, 2021 6:13 pm ET About 18 months ago, at age 79, I gave myself a new task: memorize 30 poems in five languages. I’m about halfway there—I’ve learned 15 poems in four languages. Did I give myself this task because I worry about my cognitive decline? Was I trying to “pave new neural roads,” as Lisa Genova writes in  “Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting”? image (not from article) from Like many Americans, I’ve seen dementia up close and personal. My wife’s stepmother went from forgetful to paranoid to zombielike. Since there is no history of dementia in my family, I don’t give it much thought, yet six months ago I had an unsettling senior moment: I couldn’t think of the word “scone.” I said to my wife: “You know those delicious not-too-sweet things we often had in London?” She replied: “Scone?” Image (not from article), under th...

image from Equality versus equity (from the Google  Internet : "People also ask") "Generally, equality is associated with treating people the same or people having equal access to resources and opportunities. Equity , on the other hand, is about ensuring that everyone receives what they need to be successful — even if that varies across racial or socioeconomic lines." Equity, as the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board suggests  (June 29) is what President Biden means by that hard-to-define word: "By equity , Mr. Biden means preferences for some racial groups over others to achieve equal outcomes." *** Other equity/equality images  ... image from image from image from image from image from

  image from The Daily Beast , which notes: "With Russia positioning itself as the anti-woke empire, it is ready to reel in more Western supporters by any means necessary." ***  image from

Louis image from Louis Armstrong (music) - What A Wonderful World see/hear also

image from image from Image from article's video , "Mass Celebrations as Fighters  From Tigray Reclaim Regional Capital" "Jubilant Tigray Capital Greets Insurgents After Ethiopian Retreat" [:] The capture of the capital, Mekelle, by Tigrayan forces was a major blow to Ethiopia’s leader, eight months into a war that has resulted in widespread famine and one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, " By Declan Walsh , The New York Times , June 29, 2021 Updated 6:03 p.m. ET; see also *** Image from article, with caption:  Hamid Karzai International Airport is crucial to the United States and allied countries maintaining a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan.Credit...Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times "As the U.S. Pulls Out of Afghanistan, Kabul’s Airport Is a Final Stand: With the main allied military air base about to close, negotiations are underway with Turkey about continuing to secure the civilian airport as the Taliban advance across the country,...

image from Krugman email "Can Isaac Asimov’s legacy be saved?" Paul Krugman email newsletter June 29, 2021 These are terrifying times. Today’s column is about how an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party has decided that its interests are best served by making Americans as ignorant as possible. One of the things the G.O.P. wants us to be ignorant about, climate change, is looking deadly real, with the Pacific Northwest — the Pacific Northwest! — experiencing the kind of temperatures we normally associate with Saudi Arabia. And I promise that I’ll be getting back to important stuff later this week. But I need a break. So today’s newsletter is going to be about … my hopes and fears for two forthcoming film adaptations of classic science fiction novels.  These days science fiction and its not entirely distinct cousin fantasy are all over the culture. But it was not always thus. When I was growing up, serious culturati sniffed at genre fiction, considering it a refuge fo...

image (not from article) from “Civil war is certainly a path that can be visualized if it continues on the trajectory it’s on,” the commander, Gen. Austin S. Miller, told reporters during the news conference.  “That should be a concern for the world.”   --From "Security in Afghanistan Is Decaying, U.S. General Says as Forces Leave [:] “Civil war is certainly a path that can be visualized ,” said Gen. Austin S. Miller, commander of the U.S.-led forces. “That should be a concern for the world,” by Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Eric Schmitt, The New York Times , June 29, 2021 Updated 5:17 p.m. ET

For the first time in history, more than half of all Americans would be on the federal dole.  By John F. Cogan and Daniel L. Heil , The Wall Street Journal , June 28, 2021 6:14 pm ET ILLUSTRATION (from article): DAVID KLEIN  The federal government’s system of entitlements is the largest money-shuffling machine in human history, and President Biden intends to make it a lot bigger. His American Families Plan—which he recently attempted to tie to a bipartisan infrastructure deal—proposes to extend the reach of federal entitlements to 21 million additional Americans, the largest expansion since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. For the first time in U.S. history—except possibly for the pandemic years 2020 and 2021, for which we don’t yet have data—more than half of working-age households would be on the entitlement rolls if the plan were enacted in its current form. Contrary to Mr. Biden’s assertion that his plan “doesn’t add a single penny to our deficits,” his plan would add m...

24.06.2021 Ernest Reid, Valdai Discussion Club   [original article contains links to articles pertaining to its subject matter.]  See also. image from Wikipedia In recent years it has become commonplace in Western academic discourse to discuss the Kremlin’s influence (or “soft power”, if we are talking about extra-academic discourse) in the Western Balkans, particularly in Serbia. However, if one is to evaluate the real situation on the ground, Russia is playing second, if not third fiddle, side-lined by the US-led NATO in the military sphere, by the EU member-states (and China, as of late) in the economic sphere and by the collective West in the cultural, or even more generally, public sphere. The last point is rather surprising, considering that Serbia happens to be a somewhat perfect country as far as the promotion of the Russian culture and cultivation of a pro-Russian society are concerned. Hence,  this report is going to evaluate the successes and shortcomings of ...

  Amb. Alan Baker ,   Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs ,  June 29, 2021   Hamas parade of rockets in Gaza, May 2021 ( screenshot, Safa News ) Institute for Contemporary Affairs Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation Vol. 21, No. 8 Despite an internationally recognized right to defend itself against terror attacks, Israel’s public diplomacy fails to convince the international and Western media and political elements, which, for many and varied reasons, demonstrate an ingrained propensity to prejudge Israel negatively. The initial few days of international sympathy and understanding for Israel’s right to defend its population inevitably and rapidly metamorphosed into a wave of condemnation and accusations. The change came with the deliberate propagation of a false and distorted equivalence between a terror organization blatantly violating humanitarian norms and a democratic state legitimately defending itself against terror. In so doing, the media choos...

Building that collapsed deemed in 'very good shape' by town official in 2018; 11 dead, 150 still missing image from article  --Ryan W. Miller, Jorge L. Ortiz, Wendy Rhodes, USA TODAY , Updated 7:24 a.m. ET June 29, 2021; see also

The longtime editor of the intellectual journal Daedalus, he introduced numerous themed issues on matters like AIDS, libraries and Minnesota. Image from article: Stephen R. Graubard in 2007. Credit...via Graubard family  By Neil Genzlinger , The New York Times , June 24, 2021 [ original article contains additional links and an additional illustration. ] Stephen R. Graubard [ jb see ], the editor of the journal Daedalus for almost 40 years and a scholar best known for books on the presidency, died on May 27 at his home in Manhattan. He was 96. His stepson William Georgiades announced his death. Dr. Graubard, who taught for many years at Harvard University and then at Brown, could be provocative in his writings about the White House, which included the 2004 book “Command of Office: How War, Secrecy and Deception Transformed the Presidency, From Theodore Roosevelt to George W. Bush.” In that book, he argued that the presidency at the end of the 20th century was not at all what the Fo...