But he did it in front of a classroom full of children, two of whom were shot. Why choose such a public, crowded place, if it wasn’t meant as more than an attack against a specific person?

A different study done a year ago shows the same thing. I’m unclear on whether the two studies are in any way related.

...the Chief Justice is supposed to intervene when this occurs.

I could see why what I wrote came across wrong. Thanks for giving me a chance to clarify.

I wasn’t trying to minimize the disproportionate attacks on people of color. My point is that white people need to step up and stop thinking that they don’t need to care about government authorities doing illegal things because they only affect “other people.” It is or will be happening to them, too. Maybe a better…

Mostly yes, but police kill white people for no reason, too, so any complacent white person who selfishly thinks “this doesn’t affect me personally, so I don’t care” is mistaken.

Someone I know who occasionally conducts job interviews said she would NEVER hire someone who did not write a thank-you note for the interview. Just some empirical evidence that you’re doing the right thing. (And then there was the big discussion about emailed vs paper notes. I asked a bunch of HR people about that,…

thanks! good idea. (I’m wimpy when it comes to this stuff.)

You’re right, but I feel like I should warn the kids: “if there’s no acknowledgment this time, that’s it,” so they know why the presents stopped, and I can’t figure out a way to do it that doesn’t bring wrath onto me for being petty. I did finally stop sending things to some grownup relatives who never said thank you,…

Speaking of radiation, here’s something about Robert Mercer, the super-rich guy who played a major role in getting Trump elected, and is now influencing him behind the scenes:

Yeah, I agree. They’ve done it for years in theater in my area. There are always people who complain, but generally it only takes a couple minutes to forget about it and get involved in the story.

In case you didn’t know, there was just an article about Sanditon in the New Yorker. Unfortunately, it’s not that great—the author spends a lot of time outlining the plot, and also maddeningly defines Austen by her unmarried state—but some of it might interest you.

IMO, some actors in the state where I live are really hampered by their local accent when they try to do Shakespeare. Most of the productions here don’t try to use English accents, but the lines just sound weak and hard to understand when done with your standard California mumble. It can be done, but requires good…

I’m from the UK and live in the US. It has nothing to do with their accent. I’m not as charmed by a UK accent like many others are.

I don’t know; that particular show was helped by being associated with a fantasy author to begin with. But there are definitely anachronistic things in every period drama that are there because the modern audience won’t accept anything else, for example, women’s makeup. Maybe “authentic” racial casting is also…

The tv version of the Sally Lockhart stories by Philip Pullman, set in Victorian times, just did a color-blind thing where various characters were played by people of different races, and no mention was made of it in the story. Some South Asian people I know loved that aspect of it, especially that the racism was…

There might actually be more theater-trained actors in the U.S., since it’s a larger country and there are more schools (NYU, Yale, Juilliard, etc.), but for some reason Hollywood doesn’t seem to cast as many people from the theater world as from the modeling world & through nepotism, like you said. But I often wonder…

There’s no mention of a discount on the restaurant’s website, and the Facebook people who mentioned it provided no links or other supporting evidence. I think it’s just something they’re speculating about, because they don’t want to believe the story. 20% also seems very high; wouldn’t it be more like 5 or 10% for a…

“Stiffing” a contractor is not uncommon because often contractors do not supply the labor/standard they promised.

Dodd-Frank is pointless. Anything that doesn’t put people in jail on Wall Street is just faux-regulation.