[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]
Harvey Weinstein’s being thrown out of the Motion Picture Academy is like they’re overdoing it because nothing was done about Donald Trump. At least Weinstein was good at his job. “Right and Left React to Harvey Weinstein Reports” [Anna Dubenko, NY Times, October 13]. Excerpt:
Ms. Filipovic writes about how far feminists have come to topple toxic workplace harassment, and outlines how much further they have to go. She also addresses critiques from the right that politicians on the left (namely Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama) were too slow to condemn Mr. Weinstein. When Kellyanne Conway complained that it took Mrs. Clinton five days to issue a statement on the accusations, Ms. Filipovic noted that it had been “more than 365 days” since the Access Hollywood tape came out and that Ms. Conway had yet to condemn her boss’s comments. [read more]
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| The Northern Lights, Alaska |
Dear Dear Leader:
I hope you’ll treat this letter as personal and confidential, from one large-handed leader to another. I got the idea to write it from my generals, who were telling me all about this big showdown over Cuban missiles back in the 1960s, which apparently really happened.
I figured, hey, if John Kennedy can negotiate over missiles directly with a dictator — and he was a very low-quality person, let me tell you — then so can Trump.
You can’t leave diplomacy to a loser like Tillerson, believe me. But I’m trying not to think about him right now....
First off, let me just point out that our great peoples have a long history together, and all of Korea is frankly very special to us — very, very special. I mean, you gave us the TV show “M*A*S*H,” which had a tremendous run.
Also, without the Korean people, we wouldn’t have all those unbelievable grocery stores in Manhattan.... [read more]
Gutting a deal that Americans conceived, brokered, and secured would undercut decades of U.S. leadership on non-proliferation. Thomas Graham, Jr., a retired ambassador who worked in a senior capacity on every major American arms-control and disarmament negotiation over a period of twenty-five years, said of Trump’s comments about the Iran deal, “I’ve never seen anything remotely like this. There isn’t any reason in my opinion to decertify it, except for narrow political advantage, or if you really want to have a war. Historically, there was certainly opposition to some arms-control agreement, but this just seems like we’re reading Kafka.” [read more]
The collision of a pair of neutron stars, marked by ripples through the fabric of space-time and a flash brighter than a billion suns, has been witnessed for the first time in the most intensely observed astronomical event to date.
The extraordinary sequence, in which the two ultra-dense stars spiralled inwards, violently collided and, in all likelihood, immediately collapsed into a black hole, was first picked up by the US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo).
As its twin detectors, in Louisiana and Washington state, picked up tremors in space-time that had spilled out from the merger 1.3m light years away, an alert went out to astronomers across the globe. Within hours, 70 space- and ground-based telescopes swivelled to observe the red-tinged afterglow, making it the first cosmic event to be “seen” in both gravitational waves and light....
Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves a century ago, but the first experimental proof that space itself can be stretched and squeezed took until 2015, when Ligo scientists detected a collision of black holes. But this dark merger, and the three detected since, were invisible to conventional telescopes. As the stars collided, they emitted an intense beam of gamma rays and the sky was showered with heavy elements, resolving a decades-old debate about where gold and platinum come from....
Previously, scientists had speculated that the sheer force of neutron star collisions would be enough to force extra neutrons into the nuclei of atoms, forging heavy elements like gold and platinum, but until now this idea was purely theoretical....
“This is the first real confirmation that heavy elements such as gold, platinum and uranium are either solely or predominantly produced in binary neutron star collisions,” said Reitze. “The wedding band on your finger or the gold watch you’re wearing was most likely produced a billion years ago by two neutron stars colliding....” [read more]
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| Rosa Moss Bridges, Ireland |
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
I want to believe that the intense wave of disgust at [Weinstein’s] sort of behavior will lead to real change. I have to think that many people in high places will be a little more careful. But I hope that when this moment of noisy sisterhood dissipates, it doesn’t end with a woman in a courtroom, being made to look crazy, as these stories so often do.
I hope that the ways in which women are degraded, both obvious and subtle, begin to seem like a thing of the past.
For that to happen, I think we need to look at what scares us the most. We need to look at ourselves. What have we been willing to accept, out of fear, helplessness, a sense that things can’t be changed? What else are we turning a blind eye to, in all aspects of our lives? What else have we accepted that, somewhere within us, we know is deeply unacceptable? And what, now, will we do about it? [read more]
| Grateful for correspondence, Moristotle |
From the correspondence: “We need to look at ourselves. What have we been willing to accept...turning a blind eye to, in all aspects of our lives...that, somewhere within us, we know is deeply unacceptable? And what, now, will we do about it?” Movingly said, Ms. Polley!
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