Snooping Around Scotland, Indiana's Top 100 Blogs; Thursday

 Feedspot has been kind enough to put me on its Top 100 Indiana Blogs. Please give them a look.

I got out of work in time to catch the #12 on 8th Street to get me back to the bus station and the #5 for home at 1:45. I was home a little after 2 pm. 

Before catching the bus I had a call from Paul S. and I called him back. He needed some information I gathered for him. I sent that after I got home. Then we talked again for a little while.

I also meant to finish the research for dad's trust. Well, that got put off. I started a post for this blog, except I had another of my losses of energy.

Checking out what is going on in Scotland was how I spent part of the afternoon (with an intermission for a nap) and some of the evening.

While I have seen the movie (a very, very long time ago – ah, Maggie Smith!), I have not read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and after reading Teaching Tyranny: The Crime of Miss Jean Brodie by Kaiyue He, I think I should.

Through creating Brodie as a cartoon character, Spark mocks political propaganda and the encouraging of teenagers to become soldiers and war heroes to satisfy the vanity of political leaders. In her lecture ‘The Desegregation of Art’ delivered in 1971, Spark expressed her view that ridicule is ‘the only honourable weapon’ against fascist ideology and violence in any form:

We have all seen on the television those documentaries of the thirties and of the Second World War, where Hitler and his goose-stepping troops advance in their course of liberating, as they called it, some city, some country or other; we have seen the strutting and posturing of Mussolini. It looks like something out of comic opera to us. If the massed populations of those times and in those countries had been moved to break up into helpless laughter at the sight, those tyrants wouldn’t have had a chance. And I say we should all be conditioned and educated to regard violence in any form as something to be ruthlessly mocked.20

In a novel published thirty years after the 1930s, Spark looks back at the popularity of fascist ideology at that time in Italy, Spain, and Germany, and criticises the inefficiency of public education in its exposure of the tyrannical leaders’ hypocrisy....

Can we reduce Trump and DeSantis and Marjorie Taylor Greene by ridicule before more Americans get killed?

I downloaded From Glasgow to Saturn #49, poetry and prose from the University of Glasgow and Glasgow School of Art. Rather provocative and interesting to see what is going with college writers over there.

I checked out Shoreline of Infinity Science Fiction Magazine, nothing free to read of its fiction, but its reviews are open to the public. They will be open to general submissions 9/21 – 9/24, and are seeking:

We are looking for engaging science fiction, stories that give reality a tweak on the nose – an idea that makes us stop and think. 

The stories we publish are both entertaining and challenging, exploring the world both as it is and as it could be. We want to push the boundaries of the genre, while maintaining a link to its rich and global history. We publish everything from high-concept, “literary” SF to pulp-style adventure, sometimes all at once! 

We are particularly interested in seeing work from authors of backgrounds underrepresented in the Western science fiction canon, and authors from outside the anglophone West.

Scotland's space program: Alba ad Astra – Scotland’s forgotten history of space exploration:

 Alba ad Astra is a collaborative thought experiment celebrating Scotland’s industrial and technological past and speculating about the potential of Scots as explorers of outer space. It began with an exhibition of photographs and artifacts in August 2009 and has since inspired several short stories and “research documents”. Tonight we launch the publication of the revised Alba ad Astra anthology, which brings all of these writings together with the original portfolio and additional photographs.

I am not sure which is worse, how I keep crashing Firefox and how I keep indulging my curiosity. Some examples:

• Empress Matilda, George R. R. Martin’s Muse
• 5 Underrated Regions Every Cheese Lover Should Visit (new word: turophiles)
•  RTE – seeing what's going on in the rest of the world.
• Community Gathering Will Celebrate the Opening of the Muncie Memory Spiral in Heekin Park (I might get myself down there just because I have no idea what is a memory spiral.)
• Sen. Young talks technology, spending and tax credits in Muncie
• Twilight of democracy?

I should do a longer post on Liberal Patriot's A Path to Institutional Pluralism, it is an idea I think worth pursuing, but I have gotten seriously sidetracked tonight.

What is desperately needed from philanthropists and citizens themselves is a serious recommitment to independent research and genuine grassroots or interest-based organizing that seeks concrete objectives across partisan and ideological lines. Rather than plop another billion dollars into fake political activism that encourages partisan standoffs and over-the-top ideological rhetoric, philanthropists should spend more of their money on groups and institutions that encourage diversity of thought, that look for compromises among competing segments of society, and that value political tolerance on a wider scale.

Existing institutions need a genuine commitment to viewpoint diversity and free expression. Ideology and politics have invaded nearly every aspect of contemporary life from the workplace to schools to religious and secular organizations. On the left, a stated commitment to “diversity” in major institutions includes every demographic group under the sun with no concomitant desire to include people with different moral or political views. On the right, stated opposition to these leftist initiatives and a supposed commitment to “free speech” has morphed into yet another set of ideological dogmas about what people can or can’t say, read, do, or think.

Neither the left nor the right—and the moneyed interests fueling each side—cares one lick about including people with different perspectives or listening to those with divergent views. Activists on both sides enforce this institutional conformity by punishing and shunning those who stray from the party lines.

And I really doubt anyone is reading me for my political views, but do go to this article and read it. Thank you.

A couple of other posts were written, nothing from my pretrial detention journal.

The Times Literary Supplement came in my email. I decided to check it out before calling it a night. 

I feel over done for the night. So I will close here.

sch