Hyperbole is a trope. It is by definition rhetorical.

"Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year’s pleasant king;
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring;
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing..." (T. Nash)

Even though there is enough to sink us many times over, walk outside or look out the window; there is some good at work.

Dolin's or Martini & Rossi?

Sedevacantist is a great vocabulary word.Thank you! I am familiar with the Tridentine Missal contingent.

Re: #2. I thought that Catholicism wouldn't do quickie conversions, and that it wouldn't be like Scientology, which caters to celebrities for its own ends. Perhaps I am wrong. I will be curious to see Vance's book at the library (G-d knows I won't buy it!) and see what his reasoning amounts to.

Vance could have argued that he is a responsible party for determining when a war is just, and it would have been a legitimate argument. But instead of this, he's bullied and blustered. "It is worse than a crime—it is a blunder." (Talleyrand). /6 (FIN)

But to me, the fact that our Vice-President couldn't have done the same Google search I did and checked out what the Catholic Church has to say about "just wars" is pretty irresponsible. It's right in the Catechism he had to study to convert. Did he not worry about this? /5

The big caveat is that judgment on a war's moral legitimacy "belongs to those responsible for the common good." Is that the political and military leadership of this country? Or is it the Pope? Who is acting responsibly? /4

3. There must be a serious prospect of success. There are crazy people who think shock-and-awe gets you everything, gift-wrapped. That isn't serious. 4. The use of force must not bring greater harm, e.g., the destruction of the global economy.

The criteria are useful. 1. Iran has not actually harmed any other nation yet, although it funds organizations that do. 2. There were ways other than war to have gotten the job done, and indeed, there's a frantic belated turn to diplomacy. /2

Web page, text only: What is the Catholic "just war" doctrine? Question: What qualifies as a war that is moral to wage? Answer: The Catechism of the Catholic Church lays out the conditions for just war in paragraph 2309: • the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; • all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; • there must be serious prospects of success; • the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition. The Catechism goes on to conclude in that same paragraph: These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war״ doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

A simple Google on "Catholic Just War Doctrine" gave me this: www.catholic.com/qa/what-is-a... /1

Then again, if students are now acclimated to texting and chatting online as their dominant means of even residual human interaction, perhaps they will be fine with the screen + keyboard method for fulfilling their emotional needs. /2

I've been a tutor, inter alia, since 2010, and having multiple students in the session is very hard for me; that's more teaching than tutoring. Missing from AI tutors, at the very least, are the social cues and feedback, which the students and I can believe and understand. /1

The robot telepresence will allow him to stay in his bunker, safe from human beings who might hold him accountable.

JD is a man who has never passed up the opportunity to take a cheap shot.

Someone needs to summon an undead Katharine Gibbs and steer her in the right direction.

Hawkman?

For that matter, we haven't read his Epstein dossier, but Melinda French did and she voted with her feet (and her lawyer). Bill Gates fawned on geniuses and shat on regular ("disposable") people. It's not hard to envision how he would relate to the victims of Epstein Island.

Now, of course AI has beaten him to the punch; no one will pay for entry-level programmers ever again. I wish Gates no ill with his philanthropy, but he has never apologized for any of the truly shitty things he did when he ran Microsoft.  He really should.

I was thinking about that, and you are right. In the end, though Apple had hardware sales whereas Gates's virtual monopoly was in software: "Wintel." For schools, his investment was in youth coding; he wanted to drive down the cost of programmers by making coding a universal skill.

In those times, it was Jobs rather than Gates who had the lock on the education market -- and did for decades. My graduate school's computer store was practically Apple-only.

All it did was direct our money to technology companies, which didn't need it as much as we did -- and still don't. The LAUSD iPad fiasco speaks for itself.

DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN!

“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it." A few quagmires ago.

Has anyone assisting in the negotiations actually passed the FSOT? (Keep in mind that it is an entry-level aptitude test!)

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"When you gotta lotta nada, listen to a Bach cantata." —Solomon Reynolds, KUSC

I know someone at the Sasse (Hamilton) center at U Florida. They are happy both to have a job and to write and teach without a theoretical apparatus. I don't think they realize - or perhaps choose not to realize - the larger project the school was intended to further.

This line of critique by the U.S. government is morally incontinent. Bare "might makes right" is not an appropriate way to act in the world, and never has been.