Is Kamala Harris adopting a ‘Ming vase’ strategy?

I wrote before about a very interesting interview that Rory Stewart had with David Remnick. Stewart was an ambitious Conservative politician in the UK who had all the traditional qualifications, coming from a privileged family, attending an elite private school (Eton) and then Oxford University. He quickly rose up the ranks and even made a bid to become party leader, losing out to Boris Johnson in 2019. He left the party just prior to Brexit.

The interview mainly dealt with what Stewart described as the soul-killing nature of political leadership but he also had interesting things to say about the general election that was due to held in the UK this year. Labour party leader Keir Starmer had been criticized for not detailing specific policies that he would implement if elected, choosing instead to speak in broad generalities. Stewart described this as the ‘Ming vase’ strategy, where you are holding a precious Ming vase and walk very carefully so as not to break it. Starmer had clearly decided that the country desperately wanted to throw the Tories out and were not that interested in specifics of Labour policies, having the general idea that they were more on the side of ordinary people than the Tories.. They had a general idea of what Labour stood for and that seemed to be enough. Starmer did not want to make specific promises that might alienate some voters and thus break that consensus. Stewart said that this can be a successful strategy for winning elections (as it was for Starmer) but can cause problems after you win office because you do not really have a mandate for anything specific.
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Murder among the upper middle class

If you are like me and enjoy watching murder mystery thrillers, and recently there have been a spate of limited-series TV shows in this genre, you can be excused for thinking that most murders occur in the homes and families of the well-to-do, either upper middle class or very wealthy. In most of them, people live in fancy homes, some even in massive quasi-castles with servants and large landscaped gardens, and drive expensive cars. Even if not that elaborate, the homes that the characters live in seem to be quite expensive and their interiors all spotless and the product of interior designers. These shows seem to be a form of real-estate porn.
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The ratio of mindless speculation to actual news goes through the roof

There is no question that the shooting at the Trump rally is big news. But it is also a good rule of thumb that in the immediate aftermath of unexpected events like a shooting, the amount of actual factual information available is very small and yet the media feel the need to spend vast amounts of time on it. The inevitable result is that you get huge amounts of mindless blathering as news media try to fill the time without having anything to say.

So you will get reactions from politicians who were nowhere near the scene, from people who were at the scene but did not really see anything, and also the inevitable discussion about what this means for the election, again accompanied by speculations from politicians, political pundits, and ordinary people, none of whom really know anything.

Much of the chatter will be about the possible motives of the shooter, whom the FBI identified as a 20-year old man Thomas Matthew Crooks. They have released his name so people have immediately scoured the internet to find out information using that name, in order to seek a motive that will bolster their preferred narrative. But this is dangerous because few names are unique, though in this case having three names narrows things down, assuming that it is correct. I have often been surprised when searching for someone on the internet to find out how many people have the same name. In addition, inferring motive from biographical data is a practice that has dubious value.

I find it helpful at these times to just tune out the news and occasionally check the headlines to see if anything new has been discovered. It is best to wait until firm information is unearthed before forming any conclusions. In the words of Sherlock Holmes, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Too busy to read books? There’s an app for that!

We are all familiar with the sinking feeling that the list of books that one would like to read but have not yet found the time to do so grows longer by the day. It is hopeless to think that we will ever catch up and most of us are resigned to that somber fact. But Anthony Lane alerts me to a new app called Blinkist that addresses that need..

Blinkist is an app. If I had to summarize what it does, I would say that it summarizes like crazy. It takes an existing book and crunches it down to a series of what are called Blinks. On average, these amount to around two thousand words.
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Once you are Blinked in, your days will follow a new pattern. Instead of being woken by an alarm, or by a bored spaniel licking your face, you will find yourself greeted by a Daily Blink. This will arrive, with a ping, on your phone, alerting you to a book that, suitably pruned, is ready to be served up for your personal edification.

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Does getting shot really throw someone back?

It is a familiar trope in any violent action scene. Some gets shot and the impact causes the person to fall back, sometimes even thrown into the air or, more spectacularly, propelled backwards through a glass window. Filmmakers seem to love such scenes but it would never happen in reality. This is because although the bullet is traveling at high velocity, it also has very small mass and so its momentum (mass times velocity( is small, not enough to knock the victim over. At best they might move back a couple of inches

Bullets cause damage by penetrating the body and hitting the various organs inside and causing loss of blood.

This article explains why.
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The courtroom sketch artists at the Trump trial

The trial of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) in New York does not allow live TV coverage of the proceedings and photographers have only been allowed to take photographs before the day’s proceedings begin. There have been complaints by the media that the public has a right to know what is going on in high-profile cases like this and that a live video feed should be allowed in the public interest.

While there would undoubtedly have been considerable interest (even though much of court proceedings are routine and boring), I am not convinced that allowing TV cameras and photographers is a good idea. A trial is not an event aimed at the general public. The only audience that matters are the jurors and the goal should be to give them the best experience of the case. When TV cameras are present, it might subtly distort that behavior of all the participants, and photographers vying for the best shot could also be distracting.
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Hard times for Trump allies

John Catsimatidis is a billionaire who is a Republican donor. He also owns a radio station WABC and Rudy Giuliani had a time slot on that show that he used to rant about his usual pet peeves. But WABC at some point warned him to stay away from topics like the 2020 election, possibly because of fears that his reckless spewing of conspiracy fantasies about the 2020 election being stolen because of rigged voting machines and software might get the station sued by Dominion and Smartmatic voting systems, the way he has been sued. He already is on the hook to pay $148 million for defaming two Georgia election workers.

But Giuliani did not heed the warnings and so the station has suspended his show.
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Film review: Scoop (2024)

Back in 2019, Prince Andrew agreed to an interview with the BBC news program Newsnight in an effort to tell his side of the story about his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who had just killed himself in prison, and the allegations that Andrew had had sex with Virginia Giuffre, one of the many underage girls who were a constant presence in Epstein’s world.

Apparently Andrew was very pleased with how the interview had gone and felt that he had performed brilliantly. But it was widely viewed as a train wreck and a few days later, Andrew had been forced to relinquish his official duties and has not regained them since. It is thought that the interview is what persuaded Giuffre to sue Andrew, a case that was settled out of court in 2022, reportedly for around $16 million.
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What exactly is the problem with TikTok?

In a rare display of bipartisanship, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to force ByteDance, the owner of the social media app TikTok, to either sell it to a US buyer or face tough restrictions on its ability to operate in the US.

The vote was a landslide, with 352 Congress members voting in favor and only 65 against. The bill, which was fast-tracked to a vote after being unanimously approved by a committee last week, gives China-based ByteDance 165 days to divest from TikTok. If it did not, app stores including the Apple App store and Google Play would be legally barred from hosting TikTok or providing web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications.
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The vote in the House represents the most concrete threat to TikTok in an ongoing political battle over allegations the China-based company could collect sensitive user data and politically censor content. TikTok has repeatedly stated it has not and would not share US user data with the Chinese government.

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Converting text into realistic video

When I was watching the documentary series Life On Our Planet, I was struck by how realistic the CGI was. The prehistoric animals wandering through nature seemed as if they were being actually filmed, with both them and background details finely portrayed. I wondered how much time and effort had gone into getting it to look like that.

Life on Our Planet takes advantage of modern CGI and photography techniques that mean film shot in natural habitats, footage of animals that are real but have been transferred to a studio and sequences conjured from scratch on a computer are nearly indistinguishable. Some of the extinct land-based animals digitally brought back to life look a little like they’re hovering across the ground as they walk, and there are a few scenes where implausible numbers of dinosaurs have gathered on the same landscape for a nice photo, but we largely move smoothly between then and now.

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