It *is* sublime, in its own way. A work of art. There's something exquisitely French about it, though. It's not fair to suggest this is a foreign import:
I made an appointment to get my knee x-rayed and spent about half an hour debating with the receptionist about whether it was my pieds or an image of my knee with pieds-face that was in question. I read exactly what the ordnance said:
But nothing in her rule book had prepared her for the phrase, "pieds-face." I couldn't common-sense her--no matter how I tried. She insisted I needed to book a separate appointment for my pieds.
However: I was able to get an appointment for Tuesday. I could have got it even sooner. And it won't break my budget.

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More from @ClaireBerlinski

21 Mar
This, on the other hand, belongs on the front page, and it's why I can't quit the @nytimes, no matter how they debase themselves with the culture-war clickbait: nytimes.com/2021/03/21/wor…
I guess the red-meat-for-the-Hamptons articles pay for the real reporting, so I should just accept it. It's a functional business model for journalism, even if it's an embarrassing one, and those are scarce these days.
Midway through the article it suddenly hit me--I'm amazed it eluded me thus far--that the reason I've not yet been able to find a coherent account of *exactly how* you make mRNA in a lab is that ... it's a secret. A trade secret.
Read 4 tweets
21 Mar
A lot of journalists going to town on *very* speculative theories of this monster's motivations, of which we in fact know almost nothing at this stage. First it's an anti-Asian hate crime, now it's Evangelical Prudishness Disorder: nytimes.com/2021/03/20/us/…
I realize that when a monstrous act of evil occurs, we search for explanations and that this is a very natural thing to do. Either of these explanations *could* be right. But we're not exactly a country where "mass shootings" are an unknown phenomenon, and most of the time:
We're in the end left stupefied and mystified by the evil (and wondering why we think any lunatic has a fundamental freedom to buy a gun but not an AstraZeneca vaccine.) Ultimately, even at trial--if the shooter survives,
Read 9 tweets
20 Mar
I haven't studied this case enough to have an opinion anyone needs to take seriously, but on the face of it, I find this disturbing for quite a few reasons. msn.com/en-us/news/pol…
Here's the judgement. ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/19480…
Can someone with more legal knowledge help me make sense of it?

1. He was tried by a jury of his peers, who found him guilty.

2. U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Trenga judge threw out the verdict:
ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/19480…
Here I become confused. As I understood it, such an appeal is to determine *whether a trial was properly conducted.* It is not to determine the defendant's guilt or innocence, a privilege that is properly reserved to the jury of one's peers. Am I right?
Read 24 tweets
19 Mar
You're missing the point. All the details of the mistakes are here: politico.eu/article/europe… But the deeper problem is Europe's "vaccine hesitancy," which is a polite way to put it.
Europe needs to get enough people vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Failing that, the pandemic goes on until Europe achieves this the hard way--spawning God knows how many mutations in the meanwhile, a problem that legitimately concerns the whole world.
Yes, uptake has been high so far *among the elderly,* who believe themselves (correctly) to be at much greater risk. But the success of the vaccination campaign can't be measured that way. When finally the vaccine is available to everyone, will enough people take it?
Read 10 tweets
19 Mar
This is a fascinating article. The roots of this phenomenon are very deep, clearly.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…
Read 4 tweets
18 Mar
No, that remark was absolutely stupid. In so many ways I can barely count. The French have fought *like lions* in battle after battle since Soissons. Charlemagne. Louis XIV.
France occupies the largest landmass in Europe. Think that's an accident? You think they surrendered their way into that position? Remember Charles Martel? Hell, remember the Battle of Hastings?

Napoléon may have been many things, but a "surrender monkey" he was not.
In fact, consult Esdaille, Napoleon's Wars, pp 252–53. It was his refusal to brook *any* concessions that did him in. Pretty much all of Europe was under France's boot at one point or another, and though the British will never admit it, they got lucky.
Read 18 tweets

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