Goodbye to James Gandolfini.

Dead at 51, of an apparent heart attack.

This is very sad. What a great actor! "The Sopranos" was — must I add perhaps? — the greatest television show of all time, largely because of him.

ADDED: Here's the NYT obituary.

James Joseph Gandolfini Jr. was born in Westwood, N.J., on Sept. 18, 1961. His father was an Italian immigrant who held a number of jobs, including janitor, bricklayer and cement mason. His mother, Santa, was a high school lunch lady....

He had an impressive list of character-acting credits but he was largely unknown to the general public when David Chase cast him in “The Sopranos” in 1999.

“I thought it was a wonderful script,” Mr. Gandolfini told Newsweek in 2001, recalling his audition. “I thought, ‘I can do this.’ But I thought they would hire someone a little more debonair, shall we say. A little more appealing to the eye.”

AND: The show's creator, David Chase, said: "He was a genius... Anyone who saw him even in the smallest of his performances knows that. He is one of the greatest actors of this or any time. A great deal of that genius resided in those sad eyes. I remember telling him many times, 'You don’t get it. You’re like Mozart.' There would be silence at the other end of the phone."

(I just watched the first episode again. So brilliant!)

"Here come the Edward Snowden truthers."

"What’s surprising about the Snowden theories is that one might think he’d be a sympathetic figure to people deeply skeptical of government power. But instead of holding him up as hero (or even a traitor), some are intent on labeling him a co-conspirator."

Who was Misty Malarky Ying Yang?

Just a test to see how well you know your...

Profiles in Althouse Amazon portal user courage: a tiller, a baker, a picker, and a gamer.

By using the Althouse portal, you can buy things you want and – while paying nothing extra – make a contribution to this blog. We notice. We appreciate it. And unless you blow your own whistle on your own whistle-blowing self, we'll never know it's you.

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"What was written — what I supposedly said — is insensitive and hurtful."

"I by no means would say or insinuate that she was at all to blame."

Serena Williams apologizes and I'm not surprised she seems perplexed that she would need to.

"Morris has become an expression of how fed up people are with all the parties and a political system that does not represent us."

"Tired of voting for rats? Vote for a cat."

"Quinoa always keeps a spare 'urban outfit' in my purse in the event we're going to be around a lot of chain link fencing."

"One time Quinoa thought she had accidentally squashed a bug, but what she had really squashed was all the predictable style rules society has tried to place on her."

From the hilarious Pinterest "My Imaginary Well-Dressed Toddler Daughter."

Via Metafilter. Sample comment there: "OK, Quinoa is pretty much the greatest fake toddler name ever. I just know I would absolutely hate her parents. In fact, I do hate her parents, even if they're not real. GOD I HATE THOSE PEOPLE SO MUCH. I HATE THEIR STUPID FACES!"

"New York's narrowest house, which measures just 9.5 feet wide and 30 feet deep..."

"Located at 75 1/2 Bedford Street in Greenwich Village, the three-story townhouse is legendary for both its size and its famous past inhabitants, which include Cary Grant, John Barrymore, Edna St Vincent Millay and Margaret Mead." Mead live there with her sister and her sister's wife, the cartoonist William Steig.

I love this place, which I've noticed in person many times. The linked article includes the floor plans and photos of most of the the interior spaces.

ADDED: I mean husband. What is happening to my mind in this world today!

Stockings that make it look like you have really hairy legs.

"A caption below touts them as the perfect 'summertime anti-pervert' device and 'essential for young girls going out.'"

60 years ago today, the Rosenbergs were executed.

Here's the NYT article that appeared on the 50th anniversary of the execution.

The available evidence now suggests to historians that Julius Rosenberg did in fact spy for the Soviet Union. The evidence against Ethel Rosenberg, however, is considered flimsy at best. But whatever they may have done, it is far from evident that they had handed Moscow the key to its first atomic bomb, as charged at the time.

The couple remain a special case. The United States has had many spies over the last 50 years, including some believed to have done great harm to American interests. Not one was put to death.

Here's the Wikipedia page:

The Rosenbergs were the only two American civilians to be executed for espionage-related activity during the Cold War. In imposing the death penalty, [Judge Irving] Kaufman noted that he held them responsible not only for espionage but also for the deaths of the Korean War:

“I consider your crime worse than murder...

"Try eating a couple of raisins."

A tip from a list of tips. Guess what the goal to be achieved is before you click through.

ADDED: David in the comments guesses longevity, which is wrong. I don't think commenter David is David Sedaris, but in the new David Sedaris book, Sedaris describes his father's formula for longevity:

The secret, he tells me, is to eat seven gin-soaked raisins a day.

“Blond or dark?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Could I possibly cut out the gin part? Marinate them in, I don’t know, coffee or something.”

“Do you want to live or don’t you?” he asked.

When I told my father about Dan’s prophecy [that the first person who’ll reach the age of two hundred has already been born], he said, “Aw, baloney. A twenty-year-old kid in Holland, what does he know?”

“He learned it in school.”

“No, he didn’t,” my father said. “The guy was just pulling your leg.” He had a similar opinion of the plastic bags hanging in Francine’s doorway [for keeping the flies away]. “It’s just a load of BS.”

“As opposed to seven gin-soaked raisins keeping you alive until you’re eighty-nine?”

“Hey,” he said, “those raisins work!”

Madison Mayor Soglin's terrible idea — previously discussed on this blog — went down to defeat in the City Council last night.

Here's our previous discussion. (I said: "What is the point of this? To facilitate political discrimination?") Here's news from last night:

Despite an impassioned plea from Mayor Paul Soglin, the Madison City Council on Tuesday rejected [11-9]a measure that would have required those receiving city contracts worth more than $25,000 to disclose contributions to certain advocacy groups....

Soglin said there is no constitutional right to donate money in order to affect elections and remain anonymous. He said the measure was a “very, very small crumb in a layer cake of political, financial shenanigans” that have been going on for centuries.

“It doesn’t mean we can’t take one small step,” he said.

That makes it sound like his proposal was a crumb in a shenanigans cake.

In other Madison news, the council approved that street painting nonsense that we were talking about here.

"A man doing yard work in Burnett County in northwestern Wisconsin was mauled by a black bear..."

So do we need to start worrying about bears? In Wisconsin?

The incident on Monday night started when Brown's dog tangled with the bear. Brown tried to intervene and was mauled.

I can't imagine getting into a dog-bear melee. There was a similar story a month ago that also began with a bear and a dog and the dog's man getting involved. That was the one where the man's wife came to the rescue with a shotgun and hit the bear with the gun, which she didn't know how to load.

Here's a poll (where you need to assume you have a dog):

If you had no weapon, would you fight a bear to try to save your dog?
	Yes, because I'm brave and strong and I love my dog.
	Yes, because I'd rather die than live knowing I didn't give everything for my dog.
	No, because the dog got himself into trouble and there's no sense in us both going down.
	No, because I dearly love that dog but I'm terrified of getting mauled.
pollcode.com free polls

"The American Medical Association has officially recognized obesity as a disease..."

"... a move that could induce physicians to pay more attention to the condition and spur more insurers to pay for treatments."

The question whether something is a disease is really beside the point, unless you define "disease" to mean: that which is helpful to view as disease.

This reminds me of those plastic surgeons who say that small breasts are a "deformity."

ADDED: Instapundit notes a discussion about a call for more "public health" research on guns and quips "[M]y suggestion to the 'public health' community is to focus on actual diseases, rather than politically-disapproved behaviors." But all you have to do is crank the rhetoric forward one turn and guns are a disease.

AND: I googled "guns are a disease" and got over 29 million hits, including: "Doctors target gun violence as a social disease" and  "I am a physician and guns are a disease" and "Treat gun violence like disease, Medical College expert says."

Female politicians "have resorted to flexing their womb-manhood."

Writes Kathleen Parker, riffing on Sarah Palin's statement that "goes something like this: 'I’m more fertile than you are.'"

(If you scroll down you'll get to the actual quote: "I say this as someone who’s kind of fertile herself." Palin was reacting to Jeb Bush's recent awkward reference to the fertility of immigrants. Parker seems to like to rewrite quotes: What Jeb said "sounds an awful lot like, 'Hotahmighty, those people can’t tie their shoes without getting pregnant.'")

It wasn't just Sarah Palin who flexed her womb-manhood to make a political argument. Parker also points to Nancy Pelosi:

"Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday suspended negotiations with Washington..."

"... over a security agreement that would regulate the presence of U.S. troops here beyond 2014, apparently angered by the U.S.-backed initiative to start formal peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar."

The announcement came a day after Taliban envoys appeared before reporters to give a U.S.-demanded statement that they did not want to plan or launch attacks on other countries from Afghan soil, and were open to talking with other Afghans....

However, the Taliban representatives also told reporters that their group would continue fighting NATO and Afghan troops inside Afghanistan even as the U.S. and Taliban delegations explore the possibility of peace talks. In keeping with that statement, the Taliban asserted responsibility on Wednesday morning for a rocket attack on a large U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan that killed four American troops.

"The director of national intelligence, in March, did directly lie to Congress, which is against the law."

"[James Clapper] said they were not collecting any data on American citizens, and it turns out they're collecting millions of data on phone calls every day."

Rand Paul. Video at the link.

NYT acknowledges Obama's difficulties interacting with foreign leaders.

The article has headline that shifts the blame away from Obama — "Extending a Hand Abroad, Obama Often Finds a Cold Shoulder" — but read the first few paragraphs, and you'll see that the style Obama uses on us American citizens doesn't work on foreign leaders.

Paragraph 1:

Over porterhouse steak and cherry pie at a desert estate in California earlier this month, President Obama delivered a stern lecture to President Xi Jinping about China’s disputes with its neighbors. If it is going to be a rising power, he scolded, it needs to behave like one.

You've got to wonder why "deliver[ing] a stern lecture" and "scold[ing]" equals "extending a hand."

Paragraph 3 has Obama trying "to lighten the mood" with Vladimir Putin "by joking about how age was depleting their athletic skills." Putin responded with what the NYT calls "a taut smile": "The president just wants to get me to relax." Including Putin in the self-deprecation that's supposed to be friendly and humorous is — unlike lecturing and scolding — fairly characterized as "extending a hand," but the point is, the article portrays Obama as ineffectual.

Scrolling toward the end:

Mr. Obama differs from his most recent predecessors, who made personal relationships with leaders the cornerstone of their foreign policies. The first George Bush moved gracefully in foreign capitals, while Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush related to fellow leaders as politicians, trying to understand their pressures and constituencies.

“That’s not President Obama’s style,” said James B. Steinberg, Mr. Clinton’s deputy national security adviser and Mr. Obama’s deputy secretary of state.

But what is his style then? Steinberg doesn't say and one must struggle to read between the lines. I would tend to infer that Obama is relying on the way people are supposed to relate to him, which is to love or at least really like him. Others are supposed to respond to his uplifting presence.

The article ends, not with a conclusion about what Obama is doing and why it doesn't work, but with more detail on Putin:

Their first meeting was marked by a nearly hourlong lecture by Mr. Putin about all the ways the United States had offended Moscow. At their second, Mr. Putin kept Mr. Obama waiting 30 minutes.

And there's a quote informing us that "Obama doesn’t really take kindly to being harangued," which is interesting, considering that the article began with the steak-and-cherry-pie anecdote about Obama lecturing Xi.

"The 35 Most Spectacular Wildlife Photos From The National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest."

#30 made me laugh. #5 is my favorite.

But don't take my word for it. I've been up since 4 a.m., woken by birds, the usual pre-dawn twittering racket having been made unusually wacky by an intermittent bass line contributed by an owl.

"Okene likely holds the new record for most time spent trapped underwater."

"As the ship settled on the ocean floor, the water stopped rising."

For the next 60 hours, [Harrison] Okene—who was without food, water, or light—listened to the sounds of ocean creatures scavenging through the ship on his dead crewmates....

Okene’s salvation—the air bubble—was trapped because the overturned boat acted as a sort of diving bell....

Humans require 10 cubic meters of air per day. So for Okene to continue breathing for 60 hours, he needed 25 cubic meters of air.... But Okene was breathing at 100 feet, or 30 meters, below the surface of the water. For every 10 meters a person descends, one atmosphere of pressure is added....

At the Pathway Café...

... tread gently.

"World's most powerful leaders pose under a dark, ominous storm cloud."

At the G8 meeting, a perfect shot.

"Photographer sues BuzzFeed for $3.6M over viral sharing model."

"The copyright issues poses a threat to BuzzFeed and similar websites, including Upworthy and For the Win, which have an editorial model based on finding content — especially images — that readers are likely to share on social media."

Last year, BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti explained to the Atlantic that the site pays to license images from companies like Reuters and Getty, but that it also pulls from amateur sites like Tumblr and Flickr. In these cases, the provenance of the images can be unclear — in some cases, the photographer has made them available for public use while other times the author is simply unknown.

"Perhaps Regina Marcia Benjamin should suggest teaching pro-abortion-rights bloggers that masturbation is part of human sexuality."

Says Meade, here, in the discussion of the ugliness of the mockery of the "masturbating fetus," and alluding to Benjamin's predecessor in the role of Surgeon General, Jocelyn Elders, who was fired by Bill Clinton in 1994 for saying that children should be taught that masturbation "is a part of human sexuality, and it's a part of something that perhaps should be taught."

(She meant taught about, but there was much mockery, as people assumed or pretended they believed that she thought that school teachers should be showing children how to do it, as opposed to simply teaching that it's something that many people do, that isn't physically harmful, and that avoids pregnancy and disease.)

This mockery of masturbation is quite fascinating. I'm drawn to Scalia's notorious dissenting opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, in which he defended the state's power to criminalize sodomy:

State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers’ validation of laws based on moral choices.

Imagine a state today attempting to prosecute the crime of masturbation. Of course, the defense would be the right of privacy, and the courts would hear masturbation described in the loftiest terms. It would parallel what we heard — over the past few decades — about homosexuality, which was initially viewed as a lowly or ridiculous matter that didn't belong in the treasured realm of constitutional rights.

Given the importance of privacy rights to the pro-abortion-rights bloggers, I think their laughing at the masturbating fetus shows the poverty of their understanding of the very rights they'd like to pressure others to believe in.

By the way, that much-produced theater piece "The Vagina Monologues" gets reverent about masturbation:

I lay back and closed my eyes. I put the mirror down. I watched myself floating above myself. I watched as I slowly began to approach myself and re-enter. I felt like an astronaut re-entering the surface of the earth. It was very quiet this re-entry, quiet and gentle. I bounced and landed, landed and bounced. I came into my own muscles and blood and cells and then I slid into my vagina. It was suddenly easy and I fit. I was all warm and pulsing and ready and young and alive. And then, without looking, with my eyes still closed, I put my finger on what had suddenly become me. 

As the Supreme Court said: "one's own concept of existence." Or as the commenter at the fetus-mocking pro-abortion-rights blog said: "I fap, therefore I am'? Sounds like a plausible slogan for today’s GOP wankers. Jesus God." Exactly. Jesus. God. Cosmic.

I propose a new abortion regulation.

At the end of this post.

"What's so 'ugly' about the mockery?"

Asks grinder, in the comments to the post — "Texas Congressman: Masturbating Fetuses Prove Need for Abortion Ban" — about pro-abortion-rights bloggers mocking the statement of Rep. Michael Burgess, a former OB/GYN, who commented on the "purposeful" motions of 15-week-old unborns who may "stroke their face" and "have their hand between their legs."

I answered in the comments:

The Congressman described the fetus's humanity: It does something that we are invited to recognize as part of our shared human condition and therefore to appreciate its reality and to feel empathy.

The mockers are taking this delicately stated image of the fetus touching or holding its genitals and turning it into a picture of a baby masturbating — "jerking off," "spanking the monkey" — and asking us to laugh at it, even as we are expected to accept its being killed. The very thing that the Congressman used to call us to think of it as human, they would laugh at before killing it.

If you are going to take it into your hands to kill a human being, you don't diminish it and laugh at it first. For example, an execution — assuming it is permitted at all, as it is in the United States — is carried out with somber respect. Even as this human being will be killed, we must demonstrate that we understand the profundity of what we are doing.

Picture executions where the condemned person is subjected to mockery first. (That was done to Jesus, by the way.) Some would say any death penalty is wrong, just as some would say that any abortion is wrong. But few would say that ridiculing the condemned being — dehumanizing him — is acceptable.

In their eagerness to deny that the fetus is a person, abortion rights proponents — some of them — are making sport of it.

This reminds me of Kermit Gosnell joking about a large fetus, saying that it was big enough to walk to the bus stop. Think about why that was considered shocking by many people.

Let's remember that, under the law, the abortion right — in the Supreme Court's idealized image — is based on the idea of the woman's entitlement to define her own concept of "the mystery of human life." This is a "philosophic exercise" that "originate[s] within the zone of conscience and belief." This is a deeply serious matter — to the Court. But who believes it? Abortion opponents resist the idea either because they are sure the fetus is a human being or because they wouldn't trust the woman to base her decision whether to abort on sincere conscientious beliefs about the humanity of the unborn. Those who support abortion rights seem — for the most part — to have forgotten the nature of the decision that is reserved, under the law, for the woman. Laughing at the unborn is egregious evidence of this forgetting.

Here's an idea for an abortion regulation that I've never heard anyone else discuss, but which occurred to me as I've read and reread the Supreme Court cases. A woman seeking an abortion must sign a statement: I have reflected on the nature of the procedure I am about to undergo, and I attest to my sincere belief that it will not kill a human being.

Charlie Rose interviews Obama about Iran, Syria, the NSA leaks, etc.

The 45-minute video.

The Althouse Amazon portal: your gateway to revolution.

By using the Althouse portal, you can buy things you want and – while paying nothing extra – make a contribution to this blog. We notice. We appreciate it. And we'll only know who you are if you come right out and answer the timeless question: Hey, hey, good lookin', whatcha got cookin'?

Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking [Hardcover]
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"Texas Congressman: Masturbating Fetuses Prove Need for Abortion Ban."

This anti-anti-abortion snark isn't funny:

As the House of Representatives gears up for Tuesday’s debate on HR 1797, a bill that would outlaw virtually all abortions 20 weeks post fertilization, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) argued in favor of banning abortions even earlier in pregnancy because, he said, male fetuses that age were already, shall we say, spanking the monkey.

“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” said Burgess, a former OB/GYN. “They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”

This is getting a fair amount of attention from pro-abortion rights bloggers, and I'd just like to say — and note that I support abortion rights — that this mockery is very ugly.

ADDED: Pharyngula writes, obviously intending humor:

... I think the good Christians of Texas ought to regard this as an argument for abortion — the sinful little self-polluters must be punished!

Balloon Juice jokingly detects sexism and instructs readers ("Juicers") to find the hilarity:

Just when you thought you’ve heard it all, some dude bro starts talking about male fetuses jerking off, and then your brain starts to cry... I find it very interesting that the concern is only for male fetus pleasure. Because women are just brood mares who can’t feel pleasure. Where’s the love for female fetuses? Damn.

Have fun with this one, Juicers.

The first commenter says: "'I fap, therefore I am'? Sounds like a plausible slogan for today’s GOP wankers. Jesus God. Where is that meteor already?"

Speaking of "the good Christians of Texas," why don't good liberals seriously believe "I fap, therefore I am"? At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

ADDED: I respond to the question "What's so 'ugly' about the mockery."

"Headless running robot cat."

"The headless, four-legged robot is about the size of a house cat, and its legs were designed with a typical kitty in mind..."

A typical kitty without a head...

"Banff motorcyclist pursued by ‘massive’ grey wolf along stretch of B.C. highway, takes pictures."

Tim Bartlett gives an interview. Excerpt:

Banff, of course, swells with thousands of European and Asian tourists each summer who would kill for this type of mystical “close encounter” with Canadian wildlife. Were you hit with any kind of “nature high” after the experience?

I’ve still got it. I’m having a hard time getting down to the ground, actually, and it was almost a week ago. You just feel so privileged. I mean, this is why I live in Banff. This happens and you just think “this is something totally off the charts.” It’s way more than I’d even hope to imagine. Just seeing a wolf is one thing, to have it run beside you and chase you is another thing altogether.

"The vast majority of the 1,430 education programs that prepare the nation’s K-12 teachers are mediocre..."

"... according to a first-ever ranking that immediately touched off a firestorm."

This is your brain/face on drugs/morphing.

How'd they do that?

"We want the Beacon Food Forest to serve as a model for cultural equality... and food justice."

Free food, for foraging, in Seattle.

... Glenn Herlihy... hopes visitors will practice "ethical harvesting"--taking what they need, or what they can eat right away. But for those feeling greedy, there will be a "thieves garden" containing lower-grade stuff. "We also plan to have a lot of people around, so you’re not going to feel comfortable taking a lot of stuff," he adds....

Falling Fruit’s founders, Caleb Phillips and Ethan Welty, see foraging as more than just another source of food. "Foraging in the 21st century is an opportunity for urban exploration, to fight the scourge of stained sidewalks, and to reconnect with the botanical origins of food," they say, at their website.

Defending Miss Utah.

Linda Holmes at NPR says think about how the question was dumb.

These dumb questions aren't intended to actually see whether you're smart or not. Miss Utah USA might be smart and she might not be, but the last thing I'd use to guess at whether she's smart is whether she can answer this kind of question "correctly." Because "correctly" here just means smoothly, expertly, without hesitation or stammering....

She's not in the news for being dumb; she's in the news for being bad at spontaneous but convincing balderdash manufacturing....

When you're in a contest, you know the standards in that contest, and you're judged by how well you do under those standards. She was given an open ended prompt — a factoid about women's income and "What does this say about society?" — and she was supposed to speak fluidly while looking poised. Pausing and looking lost and uttering disconnected phrases is incorrect. Holmes is really only saying she doesn't like beauty pageants. Personally, I don't care one way or the other, but they are what they are. If you don't like the game, don't play. Miss Utah chose to play and ended up on the blooper reel. We get to laugh, just like we get to laugh at stuff like this:

Leave Michelle Obama alone.

She's growing out her bangs, okay? Have you never gone through the issues of growing out bangs? It's not easy.

"'Standing man' inspires Turkish protesters in Istanbul."

"Performance artist Erdem Gunduz stood silently for eight hours, facing a portrait of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern, secular Turkey."

"I'm nothing... The idea is important: why people resist the government. The government doesn't want to understand, didn't try to understand why people are on the streets. This is really silent resistance. I hope people stop and think 'what happened there?'"

"We don’t cook at home, but, yes, we have separate trash for composting stuff."

Says Mayor Bloomberg, who's proposing food-waste composting for NYC, quoted in a NY Post article titled "It’s a heap of trouble: Vermin fear over Mike's compost bid."

We don’t cook at home... that's rich.