Author Archives: Hue White

And I’m not talking World War II aircraft carriers …

Creeping up behind you

Now in its clutches!

And now back in hiding, no doubt digesting that innocent lettuce.

dicotyledonous:

The dicotyledons, also known as dicots (or more rarely dicotyls^[2]), were one of the two groups into which all the flowering plants or angiosperms were formerly divided. The name refers to one of the typical characteristics of the group, namely that the seed has two embryonic leaves or cotyledons.

Heard from my Uncle Lester today in conversation, as he recalled it from his botany class 60+ years ago.

The royal purples cling to existence…

NewScientist (16 July 2016) comes up with a summary of new British PM Theresa May:

Despite the UK being way off course on its target of an 80 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, May has generally voted against measures to fight climate change, as well as against environmental regulation for UK fracking.

Uh oh. She also sponsored a national security bill:

The bill also appears to ask online service providers to reveal encrypted messages for which they don’t have the key – a mathematical impossibility. With May as prime minister, it seems likely the bill will pass unhindered.

Well. This should be interesting. Will math trump politics, or the reverse? She seems to have a problem with reality.

Skirting the edges of respectability….

A bit of echinacea.

Lettuce please you…

And for the fun of basil sins.

Due to other commitments, I was unable to watch the fourth and final night of the RNC. Not wishing to suffer through 2-3 hours of speechifying, I chose the easy alternative of reading the Andrew Sullivan live blog, which featured Andrew freaking out after reading the speech, and then his gradual return to normalcy as he realized Trump has not yet learned how to deliver a competent speech.

I think that Andrew, as a British immigrant of a true conservative bent, despite having been here for years, doesn’t understand that sometimes we Americans tend to have emotional surges and often forget that our personal experiences simply do not translate to this huge country of ours. For example, me getting mugged in downtown St. Paul doesn’t mean we’re in a crime wave and that chaos is about to descend upon the head of every Tom, Dick, and Harry. We need to be reminded of our immense size and activity from time to time, and then we start thinking again.

And that really leads me onto the important question of the day: What would I do if I were confronted with a Trump supporter today (and was actually articulate, rather than, like my wife, an “irrepressible wallflower”)?

I’d say, “Look, if you love your country, don’t yell at me about Hillary and all her alleged crimes. Take not 1, not 2, but 3 of Donald Trump’s claims, at random, and research them, and I mean really get down with them. Check the government reports, the neutral web sites – don’t take Donald’s word for it, don’t take the GOP’s, don’t take the Democrats’ word for it, and certainly don’t take Fox News’ word for it (because of this – summary: Fox makes you stupid, according to a long-time conservative’s objective research) – but the government non-partisan agencies are required to give truthful information. So, for instance, take Donald’s claim that crime is running rampant – and go get the stats. They’re online – so go find them. (Don’t expect me to help – of course!)

Do the damn research!

Did Donald lie? On all of them? Did he manage to be for something before he was against it before he was for it? Think about that. And you’re excited by him?

Finally, you say you want to shake things up in Washington? Here, show me your car. OK, would you let a thirteen year old with no experience fixing cars work on your beauty? No? Donald has no applicable experience – and, no, being a businessman simply doesn’t cut it. Why are you supporting him? Is your government not as important as your car? He can destroy civilization if he’s the President; in your case, you could have a car accident and get hurt, maybe even hurt a few other people, but that’s it. I know Paul Ryan and a few other GOPers think experts are unnecessary, but tell that to your car. Think about it. What possible good will come of this?”

And I’m not talking about the RNC. We have purple and white phlox in the background (oh so invasive), with a steadily creeping lamb’s ear in the foreground. Hollyhocks and daisies look on….

University of Minnesota researchers have used an electron microscope to see heat propagation:

“As soon as we saw the waves, we knew it was an extremely exciting observation,” said lead researcher David Flannigan, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Minnesota. “Actually watching this process happen at the nanoscale is a dream come true.”

Flannigan said the movement of heat through the material looks like ripples on a pond after a pebble is dropped in the water. The videos show waves of energy moving at about 6 nanometers (0.000000006 meters) per picosecond (0.000000000001 second). Mapping the oscillations of energy, called phonons, at the nanoscale is critical to developing a detailed understanding of the fundamentals of thermal-energy motion.

I had no idea electron microscopes were so capable!

The straw flowers are humble.

The lilies are bright and daring!

A bit of live-blogging…

8:15 Tonight’s chant appears to be “Because America Deserves Better!” if Governor Walker of Wisconsin is following the script. Which, oddly enough, happens to coincide with a trend in advertising of the last few years of telling consumers that they deserve this product or that product, with an intimation that what they’re getting is inferior.

So … what’s this deserve word? What has this target group done to deserve this upgrade?

OK, so it’s a thought we’ve all had, and we all know it’s just an advertising ploy, right? But here’s the flip side – it’s a victimization ploy. You know, someone has withheld something you deserve and, well, doesn’t that make you a victim? Of someone?

And resentful? Because your problems are someone else’s fault, someone’s intentional action has made your situation worse and it’s not your fault!

And ready to do something out of the ordinary to get it back?

Now I know why I loathe that particular advertising ploy. It virtually begs for supinity, for the strongman to take over and make it all better. The opposite of American self-sufficiency, no?

8:35 Now Senator Ted Cruz, who reportedly is maneuvering for the 2020 Presidential nomination even now, is giving his speech. Cloying, as he uses the recent tragedies. “We the people constrain government.” Now he’s telling us that “I want to be free” are the five most important words. How about “No more religious government“? (His father wishes to institute a theocracy.) Now we’re off to the lying races … too much to type … “choose your own doctor without Obamacare” … that is, if you can afford it at all. Does he know what health care prices were doing before Obamacare? And how rates of growth have dropped, while rates of insured have risen?

Now “don’t give it away to Russia!” He does know the Donald thinks Putin is great?

“States should be able to choose policies that reflect local values” … careful, Ted, isn’t that how the Civil War started? Not that my response is nuanced 🙂 Now to tar Hillary – she wants to control speech, even, according to him? Now a transition to Brexit … is he calling for secession? I hope he knows what Lawrence Wilkerson thinks of such an action.

8:51 Now he talks about the AME murderer, and I notice the applause is muted when he says the survivors forgave their attacker. What does that mean?

8:52 A desperate plea for voters to show up in November. Down-ballot fearfulness.

8:55 The audience sure sounds upset as Cruz wraps up a speech about some little girl. Cruz is about 4 steps above most of the other speakers, but his voice makes me cringe, and his willingness to lie makes it hard to take him – a Senator – seriously. And, according to Andrew Sullivan, who must be watching (I’m only listening):

Now, open war is breaking out, as the crowd is beginning to shout Cruz down. Watching Cruz get booed at this event is quite something. He’s being heckled and jeered – as Trump appears at the side of the stage as if to distract attention. Cruz leaves to a massive wall of hostile noise.

Well, well, well. Or is that part of Cruz’s master plan? He was definitely the most intellectually impressive of the 17 GOP candidates this season. I could see him making this part of his long game. Although upon reading earlier today that he’s already planning for 2020, it occurred to me that he might not be far enough right for the 2020 GOP – if it even exists.

9:30 I return to hear Newt is employing the shameful but traditional tactics of fear-mongering. He throws his net wide, leaning on some alleged historical expertise.

Too busy tonight for the rest, and tomorrow will be busy again. Apparently the folks in the donor suite are enraged at Cruz:

From @DanaBashCNN: Some people on donor suite level so angry at @tedcruz they called him disgrace to his face; one man had to be restrained…

— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) July 21, 2016

Via Andrew, again.

Much like the GOP, the Iranian hardliners cannot believe they are not in power, as Ali Omidi makes clear in this AL Monitor article:

As the faction most opposed to the government, Iran’s hard-liners have made it their goal to make Hassan Rouhani the first Iranian president not to be re-elected for a second term. In fact, this objective was sought since their loss of the executive branch back in 2013. They simply cannot fathom being barred from the presidency for another five years until the 2021 presidential election. Thus, they’re determined to seize back control of the executive branch as soon as possible. …

At present, there are five key economic and political variables that can play an important role in determining whether Rouhani will get a second term.

First is the scapegoating of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for all current economic problems. Rouhani and his Cabinet look to the previous administration as the cause of the current economic dire straits. This is a line of reasoning that, even if valid, does not satisfy average — and particularly vulnerable — Iranians. In the Rouhani administration’s telling, even the most popular policies of the previous administration were wrong and problematic. Indeed, Minister of Roads and Urban Development Abbas Akhoundi has called the Mehr Housing Project a “disaster.”

Comments such as these are seen by the lower classes as a sign that the government does not represent them. These citizens question what Rouhani has done for them, since many of them were able to own homes and were also given a monthly income in the form of cash subsidies as a result of Ahmadinejad’s populist programs. Though the cash payments were disastrous for the economy, Rouhani has been unable to convince the poor that these kinds of policies are problematic.

The other four reasons have to do with the age and conduct of Rouhani’s Cabinet, the recession, the blocking of banking operations, and the conduct of certain domestic institutions over which he has no control, yet receives the blame. He clearly sees challenges for Rouhani. J. Matthew McInnis at AEI agrees there are headwinds, but Rouhani also has made some progress:

The new parliament may also help. There was never much hope for a moderate or reformist legislature after most of the moderate or reformist candidates were disqualified from running in the first place. But Rouhani, along with former president and ally Rafsanjani, was able to successfully target and oust many of his most difficult opponents in the February elections. With conservative Ali Larijani re-elected as speaker — with whom Rouhani has a strong working relationship — and even some reformists in deputy speaker roles, it will be a somewhat more manageable body. The key will be watching how the hardliners behave during this session. If they are able organize themselves into a coherent opposition (which has eluded them for years), that could spell trouble for Rouhani’s legislative agenda and the potential for a viable rival to emerge for the presidency.

Foreign Policy’s Special Correspondent thinks Rouhani has a good shot:

There is good reason, however, to think that Rouhani will be more adept at countering his rivals than Khatami ever was. Unlike the former reformist president, the incumbent has held some of the most senior security posts in the Islamic Republic. His recent election victory, on the heels of the nuclear deal, helps him prove that he is not a one-trick pony, but a canny operator whose deeper links within the elite can yield results. It won’t be easy to change how the Islamic Republic operates, but Rouhani is better positioned than any of his predecessors to give it a shot.

Some plump succulents for your delectation.

… I was fortunately busy with other matters and only caught part of the very end of RNC-2, where Dr. Carson seemed to think referencing “In God We Trust” on our currency has some sort of relevance to our successes – and failures – as a nation. I’m also curious why such a brilliant surgeon finds it so urgent to credit God with the successes of Man. Are the most reverent the most successful? There’s little correlation; and it’s disrespectful to those who’ve worked so hard to achieve so much. He’s basically telling them that all the time, effort, and discipline is irrelevant, since God really does it all. For those who can think clearly, and yet accept such an assertion, it must be quite the blow to one’s faith in the virtues of working hard.

And reading Andrew Sullivan’s second night of live-blogging, I must admit to feeling pity for him. He’s clearly feeling a lot of pain at watching the GOP melting into irrelevance. Read it backwards:

9:31 p.m. In the last few seconds, Paul Ryan got his mojo back in a call for unity. But the speech was painfully devoid of any praise for the nominee, and framed around supporting a “conservative governing majority,” rather than a president. Again, it’s pretty amazing for the speaker of the House not to mention in more than a cursory way the actual nominee of his own party. Beyond Awkward. I bet you Trump is pissed.

9:27 p.m. Ryan is dying up there. A reader writes:

Paul Ryan’s speech would be very good in 1988 or thereabouts. Today, it’s just pathetic and utterly detached from the Trumpers who don’t know whether to clap or not.

He’s now all but apologizing for speaking: “Last. Last point …” Jesus this is depressing.

9:26 p.m. A speaker actually mentioned “liberties”. Ryan is just offering some somewhat lame anti-progressive clichés. The crowd is talking among themselves.

9:20 p.m. Ryan is trying to make a change election argument. So far, awkward. No mention of any policies proposed by Trump.

9:19 p.m. Ryan invokes Lincoln. Graves spin.

While it may be enjoyable in a creepy sort of way, I’m dismayed that the best analogy for the RNC is to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, who made her name through, let us say, excess cleavage. Given the lies and appeals to the “fever swamps right” emotions, its really base nature and disdain for facts and truth, it’s really how it all seems to be. A vast orgasmic week for the resentful.

A number of GOP officials have avoided this year’s RNC, supposedly because of concerns about violence, although the idea of riots seems to have faded. I think that was just an excuse, and that most of them were so embarrassed at the thought of associating with Trump that they just decided to find a reason not to be present. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out now that he’s the official nominee. Will they support him? Subtly chip away at him while trying to retain their elective seats? The drama continues.

On Lawfare, John Bellinger notes the ratification of two more treaties (extradition treaties with Chile and the Dominican Republic), and notes this sets a record for a new low:

This brings to six the number of treaties approved by the Senate in the Obama Administration’s second term. (In 2014, the Senate approved four fisheries treaties.)  The Senate approved nine treaties in the Obama Administration’s first term, bringing to 15 the number of treaties approved by the Senate during the Obama Administration.  This is the fewest number of treaties approved by the Senate in a four-year period or eight-year period at least since World War II (and probably much longer — some intrepid law student will need to check).

In contrast, the Senate approved 163 treaties during the eight years of the Bush administration, including a record 90 treaties during the last two years of the Administration. Ironically, under a President who most Europeans and many international law professors are convinced did not believe in international law, the United States may have become party to more new treaty law than during any other eight-year period in U.S. history.

Perhaps I’m naive, but counting the number of ratified treaties and declaring this to be akin to a crisis because not enough law is being passed seems wildly inappropriate.

First, treaties come in wildly differing sizes. One treaty may cover an enormous subject, another a very slender subject. Would we equate an extradition treaty with,say, a treaty divvying up the Antarctica resources?

Second, as a metric it fails to account for the potential slothfulness of the Administration.

Third, it also fails to account for the potential spitefulness of the Senate. Or, to be polite, honest differences of opinion, as some would insist.

Fourth, it also fails to account for the need for new laws. I certainly have no idea how much need there is for more international law, although the Internet and software in general no doubt remain fertile areas.

To some extent, I have my doubts as to the worthiness of whipping out a tape measure how much law we currently have and need. However, since there is some worth in actually pointing fingers, probably the best measure is how many treaties are stuck in the pipeline, and even better, for how long? While companies often love backlogs as they show how popular their products have become, for the government sector it’s indicative of inefficiencies and even dangers. Numbers measuring these treaties, perhaps with risks attached or even modifying the numbers, might be far more useful than simply counting pieces of signed papers.

My Arts Editor adores a good sunflower, and while this season is not as successful as last season, she has a couple of specimens to work with. However, these are nothing like her very first batch from 9 years ago. They lined her secondary parking space at her old house as impossibly attentuated guards, warding against everything but the squirrels that ate them.

Anyway, here they are!

The Huffington Post reports the Green Restaurant Association has found tremendous food waste in the United States – enough to drop my jaw:

A single restaurant in the U.S. wastes about 100,000 pounds of food a year, according to the Green Restaurant Association, making them auspicious donors for hunger relief groups. But many restaurants are reluctant to give away their edible leftovers, citing fears of getting sued.

But they shouldn’t be so worried about backlash, experts say.

Because no such lawsuit has ever been waged.

Just a bit more of numbers…

Bon Appetit has 650 cafes nationwide and donated more than 286,000 pounds of food last year. Cummings said that’s a “low-ball” estimate though.

Restaurants are uniquely positioned to simultaneously tackle the country’s food waste and hunger issues.

In the U.S., up to 40 percent of food goes uneaten. Last year, one in six households didn’t have enough money for food.

Yet, even with the protections in place and the vast number of groups that pick up and deliver excess food, many restaurants will still rifle off a host of reasons that keep them from participating in the rescue effort.

The article goes on to explore the legalities of and obstacles to more efficient food use in the USA. I wonder if I should wander over to the fast food joint a block and a half away and ask if they know how much food they discard in a day …

Last time we discussed country actions in terms of climate change, it was the positive move of the Australians of electing Malcolm Turnbull. Now we may have what is being widely viewed as a setback, as new British PM Theresa May closes the Department for Energy and Climate Change. From CommonDreams:

May shuttered the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on Thursday and moved responsibility for the environment to a new Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. The decision comes the same week as the U.K. government’s own advisers warned in a report that the nation was not ready for the inevitable consequences of climate change, including deadly heat waves and food and water shortages.

“This is shocking news. Less than a day into the job and it appears that the new prime minister has already downgraded action to tackle climate change, one of the biggest threats we face,” said Craig Bennett, CEO of the environmental group Friends of the Earth. “This week the government’s own advisors warned of ever growing risks to our businesses, homes and food if we don’t do more to cut fossil fuel pollution.”

CommonDreams may be dedicated to the Progressive movement, but actions such as this affect everyone, conservative and liberal, communist and anarchist, from London to Shanghai to San Francisco. The question is the direction of the affect, as it’s not clear to me the purpose of this new Department within the British government – the Climate Change section may be entirely subsumed by the Energy and Business sections and become ineffective, or (on the positive end) it may influence future regulations of companies doing business in the UK. I poked around but did not find an explanation of the change.

May’s views on climate change are not entirely clear.

…. can, unsurprisingly, really hurt those who happen to be neither God nor in Power. AL Monitor‘s Mohannad Sabry reports in September of 2013 on the plight of St. Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai region of Egypt, which was ordered, with little reason and no compensation, to shut down by security officials:

“Despite having more time to pray and practice, our priests live without crowds of visitors, we are suffering a major financial crisis, and we cannot cover the monastery’s expenses and dozens of families that we constantly support,” said Paolos, who wore his farming clothes covered in mud.

St. Catherine’s Monastery employs 400 workers from the surrounding community at its olive groves, grape farms, honey bee farms and several processing facilities including an olive oil press. As of the beginning of September, the monastery reserves decreased to a level that is barely enough to cover two months of expenditure.

“We respect the Egyptian government, and we will continue to close if they require the closure,” said Paolos, “But we will have to drastically cut down salaries and other expenditures. We are saddened to lose the income we shared with the Bedouin community.”

Meanwhile, the state authorities haven’t moved to help rescue the ailing community despite generating millions of dollars in revenues from hundreds of thousands of tourists who have visited St. Catherine’s over the past two decades.

One example of the income generated by the state is the entrance tickets imposed by the Ministry of Environment in 2004. Since then, every single tourist is required to pay $5 to enter the town of St. Catherine’s.

The monastery’s administration told Al-Monitor that it operated at full capacity between 2004 and 2011, receiving 4,000 visitors — mostly foreign tourists — five days a week. And even on the monastery’s days off, the town received hundreds of tourists climbing Mount Sinai and venturing around the mountains on Bedouin safari trips.

The local Bedouins offered camel rides and other camel based services, and were selling their camels to feed their camels – which they acknowledge was a disaster and, when the closedown would be lifted, would leave them without the ability to generate their former incomes.

Credit: Wikipedia

I wonder who benefited from it – at the ruinous expense of the occupants of St. Catherine’s. I have not tried to discover if the security-ordered shutdown was ever lifted, because I find this oddly to be an object lesson of what happens when man, rather than law, is in charge. With strength can easily come corruption, and Trump’s history with “justice” is such that I don’t doubt he’d immediately be manipulating the system for his betterment.

Oh, hurry up, election. I want to stop thinking about this bad joke of a nominee. “Presumptive nominee.”

I’ll confess I couldn’t stomach watching this first night in any detail (and I wonder just how many engineers could), but Andrew Sullivan, among many others, live-blogged it here if you like your convention coverage with an informed side helping of incredulity and even mourning, and a sprinkling of snark. Here’s his summary:

11:09 p.m [EDT]. Just mulling over the events tonight, there’s one obvious stand-out. I didn’t hear any specific policy proposals to tackle clearly stated public problems. It is almost as if governing, for the Republican right, is fundamentally about an attitude, rather than about experience or practicality or reasoning. The degeneracy of conservatism – its descent into literally mindless appeals to tribalism and fear and hatred – was on full display. You might also say the same about the religious right, the members of whom have eagerly embraced a racist, a nativist, a believer in war crimes, and a lover of the tyrants that conservatism once defined itself against. Their movement long lost any claim to a serious Christian conscience. But that they would so readily embrace such an unreconstructed pagan is indeed a revelation.

Which strikes me, honestly, as the results of third- and fourth-raters at work. While Colbert ridicules them on the television, I think this is just a continuation in theme of the entire primary season, because hardly anyone in the Republican race really came off as a competent politician. Maybe Kasich. Trump simply beat everyone by claiming he’d do this and do that, louder and more effectively than the rest – without saying how. By avoiding the “how” question, he lets the primary voters avoid doing anything hard, such as analysis and discussion.

And this is how much of the convention proceeded this evening – I did see parts of speeches by several mourning mothers, who blamed either Obama or Hillary for the deaths of their loved ones, and parts of other speeches proclaiming how Trump give America backbone once again, unlike Obama, who only killed Osama bin Laden, who took the nation into the overthrow of Libya, and thus gains some of the credit for the killing of the man responsible for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, etc. It’s thought-free, emotion-laden, and often devoid of facts.

The nation should really go into mourning for the loss of the party of Lincoln. A man of careful thought, it’s impossible to connect the two without incoherent laughter.

A bit of lawn watering yields this:

The following is not as aesthetic but does show what we believe to be the spider’s tunnel.

This is the off-year for the apple tree – last year it fruited to the amount of maybe 150 lbs. These shots courtesy of my Arts Editor …

Shows off the hostas….

The Quatermass Experiment (1953, aka The Creeping Unknown) is a surprisingly effective taut drama concerning the first flight into space. Three astronauts go up, but when the spacecraft comes back down, there’s only one left – and two empty suits. We follow along as the man in charge, Quatermass, bulldozes his way through British politeness towards finding out what happened to the missing astronauts – and what’s happening to the survivor.

This is a quality production. The acting is at a professional level; the characters are written with some lovely quirkiness, the pretty lady is not preserved, but bullheadedly takes her own initiative and pays the price; the extended search for the monster is well-written, full of twists, turns, horror, and suspense. That poor little girl. But the details were often handled with great respect, such as the live-TV crew that finds the monster in the midst of its documentary and desperately tries different cameras and finally switches to another host, all the while dealing with the police. Most shows would have just had them support the police, but in reality they would have had multiple responsibilities – and the movie shows that.

The special effects range the gamut from mundane to, for the era, quite spectacular. Not in a flashy way, but simply “I believe this” – I refer to the sequence in which the film from the spacecraft is under review. My Arts Editor and I were spellbound seeing this sequence, not only as it was a good reveal that something had happened during the flight, but it was also really very much within the realm of what you’d expect to see. A quiet professional take on the matter.

And yet, for all that the above may sound like a rave, it was, in some undefined way, a trifle flat. Perhaps it’s dated, since we know enough about space to know what is depicted is unlikely, although I suppose not impossible. Perhaps the British sensibilities of the era don’t quite work for an American such as myself. In the event, I wouldn’t mind hearing other opinions of this well-regarded film, which actually initially aired as a serial on the BBC, and, according to Wikipedia, cleared the British streets as everyone had to catch it each episode.

Lloyd Alter @ TreeHugger reports on the unpaving of America:

[John Laumer, author of Trend Watch: Unpaving Rural America “Back To The Stone Age“] noted that there were some environmental benefits and concerns that should be considered:

• Asphalt is a refining byproduct. Less will be needed (either way).
• Vehicle speed is slowed as a practical matter, which means higher mileage.
• Rolling friction is increased, which means more fuel consumed
• More car washing is required, absolutely.
• More erosive sediment movement from the cartway and into streams and lakes.
• More cracked windows and chipped paint and broken headlights, which mean more materials consumed.

…

So in the end everyone pays anyway; much higher gas consumption, and probably more car maintenance, more SUVs and fewer Prii or other smaller, lighter, energy efficient cars. Wouldn’t it make more sense just to have a road tax that covered the cost of actually maintaining the roads?

I’d rather pay a higher tax than replace my vehicles at shorter intervals. I should imagine there’s more safety issues involved as well.

For those who read The [Daily] Dish but didn’t receive Andrew’s notice about upcoming activities, I’ll reproduce his mail here.

Dear Dishheads,

It’s been a while but I’m excited/psyched/terrified to be live-blogging the two party conventions for the next fortnight. From 8 pm till closing each night, I’ll be glued to the TV and channeling my thoughts instantly – as in the olden times – except this time for New York Magazine at nymag.com. Chas Danner, an old Dish colleague who now works at New York, will be helping me filter the various Internet responses to the proceedings, and I truly hope you’ll come along for the ride.

We will, of course, be open to reader emails during the night – and the email address will be posted at the top of the live-blog. Think of it as a pop-up Dish for two weeks, a chance to gather round together again as the end of the republic nears.

Hope to see you next Monday night as the events unfold!

In Dishness,

andrew

I doubt I have the stomach for watching that much convention, but his live-blogging may be interesting.