Five Years Ago Today: Fish for Friday

By Moristotle

[Originally published on July 27, 2012, not one word different. The “Fish for Friday” column had been launched three weeks earlier, on July 6.]

This column serves up fish caught by casting our hook into the waters of recent correspondence, thus abstaining from our usual practice of blogging on anything whatsoever.
    Only fish will be served that we think will be good for you, either for information or for provocation to think about something new, or about something old but from a different perspective.

Mitt Romney says that he differs with his grandfather about marriage. Mitt believes it should be between one man and one woman. His grandfather believed it should be between one man and several women.

Wall Street Journal, July 16:

Next year, when Yale University welcomes students to its joint venture with the National University of Singapore, campus political life will likely bear little resemblance to that of its Ivy League model....
    [The] Singapore campus won't allow political protests, nor will it permit students to form partisan political societies....

    A Yale Classmate comments:

Has [Yale University President] Levin forgotten that he’s the keeper of an academy, not a business? Is the corporation totally driven by the "globalization" profit motive?
    Or does someone have a justification for an academy without freedom of speech and freedom of assembly?

    And another, commenting on the comment:

While I agree with the fundamental premise that Yale’s mission does not involve founding colleges throughout the world, we should remember that when Yale was founded it was not exactly a bastion of free speech or free assembly. My puritan ancestors (including John Maynard, who arrived in the Bay Colony in 1638) were for freedom of religion only as applied to themselves. Jews, Quakers, and even Anglicans were not welcome. Accordingly, the fact that a new college in Singapore is going to have to make accommodations with a less than perfect democracy hardly surprises me. The important thing is that those who are there fight for the freedoms that we have but that weren't given to us but won through generations of struggle.

Babbling brook:

    Tired of eating in restaurants, my wife and I shared beans and rice near this spot Wednesday evening. The brook runs through Woodstock, Vermont as its water falls toward the Ottauquechee River, now less than a quarter of a mile away.
    To create the video, I hand-held the Nikon Coolpix P300 that I use for digiscoping.

Copyright © 2017 by Moristotle