Lionel Mandrake
Lionel Mandrake's JournalMirage (1965)
Twenty years after "Spellbound", Gregory Peck starred in another movie in which his character has amnesia. I have this one on DVD. I think it's pretty good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage_(1965_film)
Spellbound
Hitchcock's 1945 B&W classic starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman is now playing on Turner Classic Movies. I discovered this in desperation after trying twice to buy a DVD of the movie through Amazon.com.
Attempt number 1: The disk turned out to have only a dubbed Spanish audio track.
Attempt number 2: My Blu-Ray player refused to play the disk. Besides that, it was labeled "Full Screen". I'm not sure what that means, since the original aspect ratio was about 4/3.
There are also colorized versions out there. Here's an idea, why not colorize the woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer? Wouldn't that be an improvement? 
The version playing now on TCM is a 2024 restoration. I'm so glad I got to watch it.
color names
I always thought "purple" meant a mixture of red and violet, hence not a color of the rainbow. Now I find that many Americans, perhaps most, use "purple" as I would "violet", i.e., as a color of the rainbow. People who do that tend not to use the word "violet" except to designate a type of flower, the color of which they would describe as "purple". Am I right?
Some of our best scientists are leaving for greener pastures,
What's happening now in the USA is reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
The best German scientists, facing intolerable conditions after 1933, moved to other countries, especially the USA. The list of Nobel prize winners had been dominated by Germans before 1933. From 1933 onward their share of prizes plummeted, while ours soared.
Right now many of the best American scientists are facing intolerable conditions and planning to emigrate. The universities and laboratories they leave behind are likely to become increasingly mediocre, as Germany's did under the Nazis. Is this what we want for the USA?
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/29/nx-s1-5343966/countries-boost-recruitment-of-american-scientists-amid-cuts-to-scientific-funding
Eek - my Netflix account has been suspended!
Or so the email message says. But, oddly enough, I can still watch stuff on Netflix. 
I'm pretty sure it's a phishing expedition.
Who could this possibly be?
He came to power in 1933 and stayed in power for the rest of his life. Like most politicians he made a great many speeches. Unlike most present-day politicians, he was a powerful orator. He died in 1945.
X declared war on the USA, but the USA never declared war on X.
Can you name Country X?
What if there are no facts, only opinions?
Trump's mental aberrations have been discussed in great detail on DU and elsewhere. We know he lacks empathy, moral values, or a conscience. He is a narcissistic sociopath. Many of us would simply say that Trump is evil. All of this is old news.
One of Trump's deficiencies is the curious notion that facts don't exist, or rather, that they are merely opinions in disguise. I have not seen much discussion here or elsewhere of the various predictable ways that this notion distorts Trump's thinking, so I offer my own views, as follows:
If there are no facts, then there is no distinction between an expert witness and any other witness. Nor does science exist. The claim that scientific evidence is more reliable than arbitrary opinion is not to be taken seriously. Those who call themselves scientists are merely a special interest group seeking support they don't deserve. Furthermore, most of them are professors in universities. Since universities are overwhelmingly liberal, they are the enemy. Universities should be destroyed. The most efficient way to destroy them is to cut off their funding. That is one of Trump's near-term goals.
There is historical precedent for the destruction of universities by a Fascist government. This occurred in Germany in the 1930s. The consequences of this destruction included emigration of many of the best and brightest scholars, including scientists who made decisive contributions to the Allied war effort, which led to the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in May, 1945.
may/might
My impression is that semantics changes more often than syntax does.
Syntactically "may" is present and "might" past tense. The first verb in a verb phrase is the only finite one and must be either present or past tense. If the phrase contains a modal (like may/might), that modal comes first (in English anyway). These syntactical rules are very strict (although Southerners sometimes use two modals in a row, like "might could" ).
Semantic rules, if any, are much looser and depend on the listener. You may or may not agree with my interpretation of "may" and "might" in the following examples.
1. "The flu shot may have saved the old man's life" implies that he got a flu shot and survived, but might have died without the flu shot.
2. "A flu shot might have saved the old man's life" implies that he didn't get a flu shot and died, but might have survived if he had gotten a flu shot.
Democracy is dying in the USA
The dean of the UC Berkeley Law School Erwin Chemerinsky has this to say in today's LA Times:
Where are we on the path [to authoritarian rule]?
Checks and balances are being destroyed. The quintessential legislative power is control over the purse. But President Trump and those around him have asserted that he can control that by refusing to spend money appropriated by federal statute. The newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, at his confirmation hearings, was explicit that the president could refuse to spend funds notwithstanding a federal law — the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 — that prohibits this. And the president already has done this on a large scale, by signing an executive order freezing a massive amount of federal expenditures (enjoined by two federal courts), and by all but eliminating the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was created and funded by federal statutes. At the same time, he has asserted the power to spend money without congressional authorization as in the offer of a buyout to federal workers.
Laws are being brazenly ignored. Every dictator claims to be above the law, especially by ignoring the ones already in effect. It is stunning how many laws have been violated since noon on Jan. 20. Revoking birthright citizenship violates the 14th Amendment and Supreme Court precedents. Firing a commissioner of the National Labor Relations Board and members of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission violates federal laws that are clearly constitutional under Supreme Court precedents. Threatening to deport those on visas because of the views they express violates the 1st Amendment. And this barely scratches the surface.
A purge of government is underway. ... Court rulings are under attack ... A constitutional democracy is not lost all at once. The Trump administration is obviously testing boundaries that have long existed. I fear the authoritarians in the White House have been emboldened by how much they have been able to accomplish with relatively little pushback.
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHometown: The Left Coast
Home country: USA
Current location: electrical wires
Member since: Sun Jul 1, 2007, 05:47 PM
Number of posts: 4,191