Here He Comes to Save the Da . . . Oh, My Gosh!! . . . Where Are His Pants?
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The Hits Just Keep on Coming!
By Gregory Taggart, December 6, 2012 2:00 pm
Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho, or Oscar Niemeyer as most of us know him, died today. He was 104 years old.
The great Brazilian architect apparently kept alive by keeping busy. He’s largely responsible for the design of Brasilia as well as literally hundreds of other buildings throughout the world, including the United Nations complex on Turtle Bay in New York City. You might recognize its similarity to the buildings that house Brazil’s national congress.
But for me, the treat of all of Niemeyer’s buildings is the Museum of Contemporary Art that sits in Niteroi, across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro. It sits like a space-age flower on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the Bay.
You enter the museum by walking up a gentle curving ramp that sports a bright red paint job in contrast to the otherwise white exterior.
Once inside, you can wander around–literally around–the circular interior and look at the collection of modern art. Frankly, Janet and I were disappointed in the collection until we turned from the museum’s walls and looked out its windows instead. Wow! There, framed by window after window, hung one of the most beautiful cityscapes in the world: Rio de Janeiro.
I’m not sure if we ever turned back to look at the contemporary art.
Surprise Duet in Russia
By Gregory Taggart, December 6, 2012 9:43 am
Today would have been Dave Brubeck’s 92nd birthday. Apparently spry right up to the end:
Dave Brubeck Has Died
By Gregory Taggart, December 5, 2012 11:10 am
He was 91. I saw Brubeck perform at least three times, twice in Salt Lake City and once in Chicago. Joe Morello on drums, Eugene Wright on bass, Paul Desmond on sax, and Dave Brubeck on the piano.
Hat tip: Ann Althouse.
This Guy Once Sang “Happy Birthday” to My Wife in Provo Over a Cell Phone While Standing in Front of the Jolley Taggart Cabins in the Bighorn Mountains
By Gregory Taggart, December 5, 2012 9:48 am
And he can dance too!
Me Too!
By Gregory Taggart, December 4, 2012 4:50 pm
Ross Douthat is the token conservative on The New York Times’s opinion pages.Tyler Cowen is a polymath economist who teaches at George Mason University. I’m a polyremedialmath living in Utah. We all agree that the birthrate in the USA had better recover, or we’re going to be in a world of hurt even greater than the world of hurt we’re in now.
My wife and I have done our part. How about you?
And We Wonder Why . . .
By Gregory Taggart, December 4, 2012 3:09 pm
To simply call this video by the California Teachers Union offensive is to do offense to the word offensive:
Warning: You should be standing up when the video hits the 2:55 mark; otherwise, you may injure your jaw when it hits the floor.
The First Amendment Gets in the Way Again
By Gregory Taggart, December 4, 2012 2:12 pm
According to Ruthann Robson at Constitutional Law Prof Blog, “For Judge Shubb, because ‘a mental health provider’s pursuit of SOCE [sexual orientation change efforts] is guided by the provider’s or patient’s views of homosexuality, it is difficult, if not impossible, to view the conduct of performing SOCE as anything but integrally intertwined with viewpoints, messages, and expression about homosexuality.’ Thus, Judge Shubb concluded that the statute was undoubtedly subject to strict scrutiny.”
As Ann Althouse–a con law prof at the University of Wisconsin–puts it, “Free speech, an American tradition, inconvenient, as ever, to lawmakers who think they know better than the people who insist on talking about things.”
There are Opinions, and Then There is Clarence Thomas’s Opinion
By Gregory Taggart, December 4, 2012 1:51 pm
Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit thinks Jason Whitlock should get his facts straight before he aligns the NRA with the KKK. I agree. Another important read on the subject of racism and guns would be Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010), the case that, along with D.C. v. Heller (2008), finally insured that both federal and state governments must respect an individual’s right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.
Thomas devoted a lot of his opinion to recounting the history of guns and slavery in the South, both pre- and post-Civil War. Here’s a taste of what he wrote:
After the Civil War, Southern anxiety about an uprising among the newly freed slaves peaked. As Representative Thaddeus Stevens is reported to have said, “[w]hen it was first proposed to free the slaves, and arm the blacks, did not half the nation tremble? The prim conservatives, the snobs, and the male waiting-maids in Congress, were in hysterics.” K. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877, p. 104 (1965) (hereinafter Era of Reconstruction).
As the Court explains, this fear led to “systematic efforts” in the “old Confederacy” to disarm the more than 180,000 freedmen who had served in the Union Army, as well as other free blacks. See ante, at 23. Some States formally prohibited blacks from possessing firearms. Ante, at 23–24 (quoting 1865 Miss. Laws p. 165, §1, reprinted in 1 Fleming 289). Others enacted legislation prohibiting blacks from carrying firearms without a license, a restriction not imposed on whites. See, e.g., La. Statute of 1865, reprinted in id., at 280. Additionally, “[t]hroughout the South, armed parties, often consisting of ex-Confederate soldiers serving in the state militias, forcibly took firearms from newly freed slaves.”
Neither the NRA nor gun ownership is racist. Those who would keep guns out of the hands of Otis McDonald and Dick Heller may be however. Otis McDonald is African-American after all.
There Are Flash Mobs . . .
By Gregory Taggart, December 4, 2012 10:54 am
and then there are flash mobs that sing songs from Les Misrables at your wedding dinner.
Themocracy