John Brown's Notes and Essays

from The New York Times (Nov 30, 2021)

BY TARA D. SONENSHINE [ JB: SEE ], OPINION CONTRIBUTOR,  THE HILL , 11/30/21 12:30 PM EST.  THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL image (from article) from When the World Health Organization (WHO) began naming emerging variants of the coronavirus, officials turned to  the Greek alphabet  to make it easier for the public to understand the evolution: alpha, beta, gamma, delta and so on. We skipped nu, perhaps because the public wasn’t in the mood for something new. The letter after that was even more complicated: xi, a name that in its transliteration, though not its pronunciation, happens to belong to the leader of China, Xi Jinping. So, WHO skipped both and named the new variant omicron. These days we are lost in a sea of acronyms and abbreviations. We are awash in terms such as TTYL (talk to you later), IDK (I don’t know), TBH (to be honest) and LOL, which does NOT mean “lots of love” but rather “laugh out loud.”  TBF (...

‘The New York Times has the history completely backwards.’ image from article :  President Barack Obama presents the National Humanities Medal to Gordon Wood in Washington, March 2, 2011. PHOTO: CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES The Wall Street Journal , Nov. 30, 2021 6:20 pm ET Historian Gordon Wood [ jb see] speaking to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, Nov. 12: According to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the originator of the [1619] project, the American Revolution was a hypocritical example of white supremacy mouthing values that whites violated at every turn. . . . “Conveniently left out of our founding mythology,” she wrote, “is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.” (This was later clarified to “some colonists decided,” a momentous change: It could mean a half dozen or it could mean thousands.) In 1776, she says, Great Britain was on the verge...

The American-born entertainer and civil-rights activist was awarded one of France’s rarest honors  image from article: Josephine Baker, who moved to France in the 1920s, became one of the first Black female superstars. PHOTO:  GASTON PARIS/ROGER VIOLLET/GETTY IMAGES By Nick Kostov , The Wall Street Journal , Updated Nov. 30, 2021 1:18 pm ET; see also The Washington Post visual essay re Baker PARIS— Josephine Baker, the late American-born entertainer and civil rights activist, entered France’s Pantheon on Tuesday, becoming the first Black woman to be awarded one of the country’s rarest honors.  Baker, who moved to France in the 1920s and later became a French citizen, became the sixth woman to be honored in the 18th century Parisian monument that is the resting place of national heroes including writer Voltaire, philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and politician Simone Veil. Several hundred people attended the ceremony, including President Emmanuel Macron, who delivered a s...

Transactions for properties in digital realms are jumping, guided by the same principle in the physical world: location, location, location. image from article, with caption:  Tokens.com has broken digital ground on a tower in Decentraland that it hopes will generate revenue from leases and advertising. Credit...Tokens.com By Debra Kamin, The New York Times , Nov. 30, 2021, Updated 2:17 p.m. ET [original article contains additional illustrations] Justin Bieber performed at a live concert this month, but the show wasn’t in a stadium or an arena. Like recent performances from Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Travis Scott, this concert was held in the metaverse, the online world that stretches the corners of the internet into immersive, four-dimensional experiences.  Fans from all over the globe watched Mr. Bieber’s avatar sing songs from his hit album “Justice.” Investors were watching, too. Preparing for a digital land boom that appears just months away, they are snapping up conce...

[ BOOK REVIEW BY ] Elie Mystal; Elie Mystal is justice correspondent at The Nation, The Washington Post , November 26, 2021 at 8:00 a.m. EST  image (also found) from article   John McWhorter’s new book,  “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America,”  is a standard-issue tirade against “cancel culture,” a Bill Maher routine without the jokes or a Tucker Carlson segment without the bow tie and smirk. The alleged twist here is that it’s a Black man saying it this time. Even that has been done better and less hamhandedly by the past few years of Dave Chappelle’s career. Nevertheless, McWhorter, a linguistics professor at Columbia University, believes that he’s uncommonly well-positioned to make these familiar arguments. “A version of this book written by a white writer would be blithely dismissed as racist,” he writes. He offers no evidence to support this claim, nor does he offer any argument that his Black experience brings anything insightful o...