May 21st, 2025
Bravo, Delaware.

Delaware becomes the twelfth state to legalize medical aid in dying.

66% of UD’s fellow Marylanders support the humane and unremarkable idea that dying people should have control over their deaths, as they had control over their lives. But people in her state legislature who think some notion of what God wants should prevail over what Marylanders want have so far blocked the legislation.

There seems to be some confidence that the legislation will, in not too long a time, pass in Maryland.

April 14th, 2025
Mario Vargas Llosa: 1936-2025

 Let us defend the liberal democracy that, with all its limitations, continues to signify political pluralism, coexistence, tolerance, human rights, respect for criticism, legality, free elections, alternation in power, everything that has been taking us out of a savage life and bringing us closer – though we will never attain it – to the beautiful, perfect life literature devises, the one we can deserve only by inventing, writing, and reading it…

April 12th, 2025
Hungary’s Gray Revolution

I’ve had exactly nothing good to say about Hungary on this blog, but that changes today.

April 4th, 2025
Mr UD has been talking to me about Krzysztof Stanowski, a candidate for the presidency of Poland.

Not only has he pledged to reduce taxes for each individual Pole by three hundred percent; he has also promised to rename the Pacific Ocean the Polish Ocean.

March 21st, 2025
‘[O]ne night at Brookhaven, where he was working on an experiment that involved a radioactive source inside a chamber, Lee noticed that a vacuum pump wasn’t working. So he tinkered with it a while before heading home. Later that night, he gets a call from the lab. “They said, ‘Don’t go anywhere!’” recalls [a colleague]. It turns out the radiation source in the lab had exploded, and the pump filled the lab with radiation. “They were actually able to trace his radioactive footprints from the lab to his home. He kind of shrugged it off.”

 Lee Grodzins, MIT professor, lived one of the great lives. Read the whole thing.

He got his favorite student evaluation … for a course, billed as offering a “superficial overview” of nuclear physics. The comment read: “This physics course was not superficial enough for me.”

… Early on, he joined several Manhattan Project alums at MIT in their concern about the consequences of nuclear bombs. In Vietnam-era 1969, Grodzins co-founded the Union of Concerned Scientists, which calls for scientific research to be directed away from military technologies and toward solving pressing environmental and social problems. 

… In 1999, Grodzins founded the nonprofit Cornerstones in Science, a public library initiative to improve public engagement with science. Based originally at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick, Maine, Cornerstones now partners with libraries in Maine, Arizona, Texas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and California. Among their initiatives was one that has helped supply telescopes to libraries and astronomy clubs around the country.

February 28th, 2025
“Our country thanks HIM and the Ukrainian patriots who have stood up to a dictator, buried their own & stopped Putin from marching right into the rest of Europe,” she wrote. “Shame on you,” she said, referring to Vance.’

The Guardian.

photo markus schreiber

February 16th, 2025
Brave Russians Go to Navalny’s Grave…

… on the one-year anniversary of his death.

[Photo: Alexander Nemenov]

January 7th, 2025
David Lodge, hilarious chronicler of academia, dies.

UD will always admire the monologue he gave Fulvia Morgana, the way-rich, sybaritic Italian Marxist in Small World:

Of course I recognize the contradictions in our way of life, but those are the very contradictions characteristic of the last phase of bourgeois capitalism, which will eventually cause it to collapse. By renouncing our own little bit of privilege we should not accelerate by one minute the consummation of that process, which has its own inexorable rhythm and momentum, and is determined by the pressure of mass movements, not the puny actions of individuals. Since in terms of dialectical materialism it makes no difference to the ‘istorical process whether Ernesto and I, as individuals, are rich or poor, we might as well be rich, because it is a role which we know ‘ow to perform with a certain dignity.

January 3rd, 2025
My old buddy and traveling companion Peter definitely likes the good life.

But he’s not all about restaurants in Venice.

September 23rd, 2024
Homage to Nebraska State Senator Mike McConnell.

SING IT.

Sacred the cause that McConnell’s defending–
The freedom we cherish, and love of our home
Ruthless the ruin that MAGA’s extending–
Their latest depravity McConnell has blown.


On with McConnell then,
Fight the old fight again,
Son of Nebraska
All valiant and true:
Make the vile Trumpers feel
Freedom’s avenging steel!
Strike for your country! McConnell, hurroo!

August 9th, 2024
‘Come to think of it, denigrating the worth of a soldier’s service based on whether he deployed to a war zone is… kind of like denigrating the worth of a woman’s citizenship based on whether she happens to have children.’

Pete Buttigieg.

********************************

“24 yrs of service is nothing to sneeze at, and Vance is running alongside a known draft dodger who has repeatedly disparaged veterans and Gold Star families. If Vance wants to critique a man’s honor, he should start with his running mate.”

August 6th, 2024
Told ya.

This lil ol blog’s been telling you for a week it’s Walz. It’s Walz.

Wanna know how I knew?

Buttigieg is too closely associated with the Biden presidency.

Shapiro trends too urban, too intense. We’ve already got that in Harris.

Kelly’s only a so-so public speaker. And I’ve wondered throughout about the stamina of Gabby Giffords, diminished by a gun attack, in the context of a grueling national contest.

Don’t know about Beshear. Never seemed a front-runner.

I figured it had to be Walz after simply reading his Wiki page and watching a couple of his public presentations/interviews. Although I wonder about the obvious, like his knowledge of the international scene, I’m bowled over by the ECHT Americanness of the dude. I’ve called him Truman on steroids cuz the decency, straightforwardness, modesty thing is there in him like crazy. He seems to be the best of us.

I mean, barring unpleasant surprises about the dude, let me say it again: He seems to be the best of us.

July 31st, 2024
‘Buttigieg is by far the best political athlete in the Democratic Party.’

UD likes that formulation.

This also is good: A writer calls him lethally calm.

July 30th, 2024
‘We know how many athletes have been murdered.’

Listen to France’s sports minister speak to Ukrainian athletes.

July 8th, 2024
‘Johns Hopkins will use the gift to offer free medical school tuition, which normally amounts to about $65,000 per year for four years, to any family that earns less than $300,000 per year, … and students from families earning less than $175,000 annually will also have their fees and living expenses covered.’

Wowsa. Mike Bloomberg, a Hopkins grad, goes to town.

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