Another terrible act of violence, this time at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Today’s shooter did not kill himself, however. He’s now in police custody:

The shooting suspect was identified as Nikolaus Cruz, a U.S. official told The Associated Press…

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said the suspect was taken into custody “without incident” and was “not a current student” at the school…

High school junior Noah Parness, 17, told The Associated Press that the fire alarm went off for the second time of the day about 2:30 p.m. He said he and others calmly went outside for a fire drill when he suddenly heard several pops.

I’m not finding many details yet. As usual, there is a certain fog that descends, and misinformation is often rampant.

The shooter appears to have been a student there at some point in the past:

According to other students, Cruz was the subject of jokes from other kids. A student told WFOR-TV that other students “knew it was going to be him.”

“A lot of people were saying it was going to be him. A lot of kids threw jokes around saying that he was going to be the one to shoot up the school,” the student said. “It turns out that everyone predicted it. That’s crazy.”

Seventeen-year-old junior Matthew Walker spoke to ABC News, saying Cruz was known to show off knives and guns on his social media accounts.

“He was going class to class just shooting at random kids,” he said. “Everything he posts [on social media] is about weapons. It’s sick.”

If that was true, who among the teachers and administration were aware of all of this? What interventions were tried with this young man? Is there anything that might have been done differently and more effectively? Each time there’s an incident such as this, I’ve written about those issues in the aftermath, and although each situation is different the remedies are rarely clear—although politicians try to make use of the tragedy to advance their own simplistic agendas.

RIP to all the students who came to school this morning expecting a normal day, and instead became victims of a violent killer.

Of course, I’m not sure it’s appropriate to call it “love,” but on Valentine’s Day what else can I call it?

Nature is absolutely extraordinary:

Dr. Woolley’s lab has been looking into the acoustic systems of zebra, bengalese and long-tailed finches to see how their brains take in and process sounds — learning, performing and analyzing different parts of them to make sense of songs.

A male’s system is designed to recognize the songs of other males and copy his father’s. If he doesn’t learn, perfect and memorize his father’s song within the first 90 days of life, when his brain is especially malleable, he never will. He still sings, but “he sings a disaster,” said Dr. Woolley. “And the females want nothing to do with him.”

When a female’s brain is young and malleable, she tunes into her father’s song, memorizes it and then stores it as a template for evaluating a mate’s song later. This example reminds her that she didn’t die, and her father helped ensure that. Perhaps something similar will work for her offspring.

Females tend to prefer elaborate songs with more syllables.

I prefer a good sense of humor. But maybe that’s another type of “elaborate song.”

Dr. Woolley adds, in what I think is a bit of a leap and quite an oversimpllification: “The way that people fall in love, is talking to each other.” There’s no doubt that’s a good part of it. But there’s a reason that “love at first sight” is called love at first sight. And a man and a woman (or to be PC about it, any sort of potentially-romantic couple) can be really really really good friends and talk up a storm without being in love.

I’ve had the experience of love at first sight and I’ve had the experience of clicking with a potential good friend right away, and they’re very very different. For me, though, the initial impression of love (through the visual and a gazillion other signs and signals we’re constantly picking up on) has to be followed up by a lot of verbal rapport, too. And I find that, at least in my life, love is a rare and precious commodity.

Four sterling singers.

Ben Shapiro writes about news coverage these days:

You’ve heard the phrase over and over again: “This isn’t normal.” We’ve heard it about President Trump’s rhetoric, and his Twitter usage. We’ve heard it about his attacks on the media, and we’ve heard it about his legislative ignorance. We’ve heard it about his running commentary on the Mueller investigation, and we’ve heard it about his bizarre stream-of-consciousness interviews…

All of this “non-normality,” however, has resulted in … a relatively normal situation. The economy’s booming. We’re on more solid foreign-policy ground than we were when President Obama was in office — by a long shot. The Constitution hasn’t been torn asunder. The structures of government are still in place. Trump may be toxic rhetorically, but his presidency hasn’t annihilated the norms that govern our society.

The same can’t be said, however, of the media institutions that seem so consumed with saving the republic from the specter of Trump. Like self-appointed superheroes so intent on stopping an alien monster that they end up destroying the entire city, our media are so focused on stopping Trump that they end up undermining both their credibility and faith in American institutions.

Agreed. And although that “credibility” of the media was in the cellar anyway even prior to the Trump phenomenon, it has sunk even further.

About two years ago I stopped being able to stomach the news as presented on TV. That wasn’t such a loss for me because I wasn’t especially fond of it to begin with and it was not my main source: print journalism and the internet (a few blogs) were. But at a certain point (and I’m not sure exactly when it hit me) I simply found TV news to be a worthless hive of repetitive and inaccurate garbage mixed with obvious bias, and I stopped watching it at all.

Now something similar has happened for me with print journalism. There’s long been a tendency in that direction but somehow a tipping point was reached, and it happened during the Trump administration. Nearly everything is opinion with an agenda, and that agenda is as York writes in that quote, and/or a social justice warrior type of identity politics and trashing of many principles I hold dear (“Anglo-American legal system,” anyone?). Mob rule, vigilante revenge, slur and rumor—and even the prevalence of those things in the MSM or public life were blamed on Trump (he’s hardly innocent but certainly not the cause).

I still read the news because I have to follow what’s happening, and it’s still possible to discern some of that through the fog. But I read less of it than I used to and I skip the most biased sources or fisk them. I’ve come to rely on a few relatively trusted individuals to give me more insight into the news if that’s what I’m looking for. And I try to focus on the more pleasant things in life.

Andrew C. McCarthy on “The Curious Michael Flynn Guilty Plea”.

Well worth reading, as usual.

Also please see this from Byron York on the same subject.

CNN reports:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday brought up sheriffs’ “Anglo-American heritage” during remarks to law enforcement officials in Washington.

“I want to thank every sheriff in America. Since our founding, the independently elected sheriff has been the people’s protector, who keeps law enforcement close to and accountable to people through the elected process,” Sessions said in remarks at the National Sheriffs Association winter meeting, adding, “The office of sheriff is a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcemen.”

Big yawn, right? Of course not:

Sen. Brian Schatz (D. Haw.) led the charge. He tweeted:

“Do you know anyone who says ‘Anglo-American heritage’ in a sentence? What could possibly be the purpose of saying that other than to pit Americans against each other? For the chief law enforcement officer to use a dog whistle like that is appalling. Best NO vote I ever cast.”

Schatz was educated at Punahoe (Obama’s private school alma mater) and then went to Pomona College and majored in philosophy. He’s been in politics since the age of 25.

And yet somehow, despite his academic credentials, an education has managed to elude him (I’m being kind here, because the jury’s out on the fool/knave question). Just about everyone who knows anything about our legal system either uses or is aware of the suitability of the phrase “Anglo-American heritage.” But Schatz would apparently rather accuse others of divisiveness (while being divisive himself, a neat trick but a common one) than to learn anything about that system.

One person he could have learned something from is the pre-presidential Obama of old, who is quoted as having said the following in 2006:

The world is watching what we do today in America. They will know what we do here today, and they will treat all of us accordingly in the future—our soldiers, our diplomats, our journalists, anybody who travels beyond these borders. I hope we remember this as we go forward. I sincerely hope we can protect what has been called the “great writ”—a writ that has been in place in the Anglo-American legal system for over 700 years.

It’s no accident that Schatz is either ignorant of the Anglo-American foundation of our legal system or ignores it. One of the pillars of that system is that people are treated as individuals rather than groups by the legal system. Schatz’s politics would pit group against group, and use the legal system to do it, and to stir up anger by talking about “dog whistles” that aren’t even there.

Our Anglo-American heritage is a shared one open to all who come here. Is it flawed? Of course. But I believe it’s the best legal system possible and the most protective of the individual.

[NOTE: Also please see this from Bill Murray. Yes, that Bill Murray.]

…on the effect of single motherhood.

Statistics are tremendously manipulable, depending on what you want to say.

Commenter “Steve57” asks:

I was goofing around on the intertubes. I came across this nugget [of ballet dancer Diana Vishneva as “Carmen”] and I was captivated…

She wasn’t one of the “Dueling Carmens” you wrote about in June 2013 (Svetlana Zakharova and Maya Plisetskaya) . I was wondering what you thought of her as a performer.

Happy to oblige.

First, here’s the Vishneva video Steve wanted me to watch:

There’s no question she has tremendous appeal. She’s lovely, has a beautiful body, and certainly puts a lot more sexy fire into it than most other modern-day Carmens. That’s good, and important for the role.

But for me, there’s no comparison to Plisetskaya, whose sexuality was smoldering and serious and almost dangerous as Carmen. Why is Vishneva smiling? She’s charming but it comes across as light to me.

Here Plisetskaya is again, in a performance recorded 51 years ago (a different variation, however; it’s the one I had in my original post and I think it shows off her gifts particularly well. And if you’re getting bored and/or are pressed for time, please scoot down to the last four clips at the bottom of the post, with much shorter excerpts of both dancers):

Both dancers are exemplars of the Russian tradition of dramatic dance. But I prefer Plisetskaya; your mileage may indeed differ on this.

Here is one of Plisetskaya in the same variation as in the Vishneva clip, and it’s not as socko IMHO. Yet I still prefer it to Vishneva because of Plisetskaya’s interpretation of the role:

There’s no question that Vishneva has the more astounding technique. But Plisetskaya’s technique is sufficient for her art. Unlike Vishneva, Plisetskaya’s extensions were never gymnastic and exaggerated. She was trying to seem like she was doing something a real Carmen would or at least might do—an actual woman, not an acrobat, although a woman who’s a trained ballet dancer. Gymnastic extensions in ballet bother me in general (see this); I’m not picking on Vishneva in particular at all. To me they spoil the line by drawing attention to themselves and away from the flow of the dance.

There’s a reason extensions like that used to be discouraged and actively frowned on by the people who train ballet dancers. Nowadays, however, they seem to be required. But every time Vishneva kicks that leg up to about a 180 angle I think of the circus or acrobatics, not dance. There’s a place for the circus and for acrobats, of course, but for me that place is not in ballet.

One more thing that’s a bit of a technical observation. There are ordinarily two types of dancers, although that’s a generalization. There are the rubbery and naturally elastic ones who have no trouble with getting legs into positions that seem humanly impossible. Then there are those whose tighter and more resistant muscles and other soft tissue (although they can’t be really tight or really resistant; they have to yield to stretching) tend to go along with having more strength. It’s not that flexible people aren’t strong, too, but they tend not to have a very good jump (most men are less flexible than women and they can ordinarily jump higher). Plisetskaya was known in particular not just for her acting ability but also for her soaring, powerful jump. It’s no accident.

Here are some small but in my opinion telling details of their performances for special comparison. In this clip of one sequence of movement, Plisetskaya gives it a completely different focus and meaning than Vishneva does:

Plisetskaya always seems to be stalking prey in this role; she’s a predator. Vishneva not so much (at least, that’s the way I see it). Plisetskaya’s front kicks, for example, have a knifelike quality of attack. Vishneva’s are impressive, but to me they say “Look ma, I’m dancing!”

Here’s another little vignette for comparison. Note how Plisetskaya emphasizes the Spanish style more than Vishneva does:

[NOTE: Here’s the original “Dueling Carmens” post.]

The is the sixth day since I sprained my ankle, and I’m limping along.

Limping is tiring. It’s also not so great because it leads to other aches and pains. I realized today that when I walk I’ve got more pain in the calf above my hurt ankle than in the ankle itself, and I’m favoring that, which means my back is a bit out of whack and achy and so on and so forth.

You get the drill; no doubt it’s happened to you a few times. It’s not the worst injury in the world. In the scheme of things it’s pretty minor. But since my forms of exercise are limited by other old injuries, I walk fast for exercise, and I get very antsy when I can’t let out some energy that way. Blogging doesn’t quite do it.

Today as I was hobbling around I realized that one of the weird things about limping is that it disrupts a nearly-automatic and seamless mind-body connection. We learn to walk at such an early age that we very soon make it an unconscious coordination of timing and muscle and balance and manage to just stride along.

But just start limping and you may begin to question just how it is that people walk. Do I usually stand up straight? How do I usually bend my ankle and push off, and why can’t I do it now in that same way? After all, I’m not in excruciating pain. But my body is automatically protecting me (or is it my mind, or both?) from further pain and sends me gimping along in this herky-jerky way instead of the usual smooth flow I tend to take for granted.

Well, I’m not taking it for granted now.

I used to enjoy watching the Oscars. Long long ago I actually cared about the movies themselves. But after that ended, I enjoyed the fashions.

Now the sanctimonious political posturings of most of Hollywood have become relentless rather than episodic, making it less likely I’ll watch the Oscars at all, although I may still report on the fashions through after-Oscars photos.

But—speaking of fashions and movies—I recently saw a favored “Best Picture” nominee with a fashion theme: “Phantom Thread.” And what a puzzling movie it is, with strange shifts of tone in a film whose tone was already strange to begin with.

I didn’t like it much at all, although I admired some things about it. This puts me in a distinct minority for this highly-praised film. I’m not a film buff, but even I could see the beauty of the movie, especially the sets and period costumes (I’d place the period at around 1954 by the fashions) as well as the music (one of my favorite Brahms waltzes, for example). The script was complex and didn’t pander to the audience, and the acting was great.

Or was it? But more about that later. On the surface, the acting seemed great.

On the surface is the operative phrase for this movie. Of course; it’s about people who deal in the glossy surface of high fashion. But in a movie, we need to care about those people. And I didn’t.

Daniel Day-Lewis’ character “Reynolds Woodcock” is supposed to be a tormented genius. The clothes he designs are very nice, but they’re not incredible for the fashions of those times, although we’re supposed to accept the premise that they are. His art isn’t the sort of thing that would justify the fact that he treats people like shit, although we’re apparently supposed to forgive him because he’s a tormented genius—or to sort-of forgive him, or at least to believe that his paramour loves him in the deepest of ways and he loves her that way too even though it takes him a while [SPOILERS!] to be able to show it.

But when he does finally show it he’s still cold, cold, cold as ice. And she—well, she starts out kind of likeable but at a certain point she becomes so distinctly unlikable you might begin to think that even he doesn’t deserve that sort of punishment.

Why should I care about these two people who some critic called “monsters”? (And that was a critic who liked them—unfortunately, however, I can’t find the link at the moment.) I’m in agreement. And they’re not entertaining, fun monsters. They’re repellent.

In fact, there was no major character in “Phantom Thread” who was likeable, and no minor character either. And although I already said that Daniel Day-Lewis’ acting was very good, towards the end of the movie I began to wonder whether that was true. Even when this guy supposedly melts he seems cold as ice, and so I didn’t believe for a single moment what was supposed to be an important plot point.

It’s not that I need a movie to be sweetness and light. But who wants to see a movie that has no one to root for by its end? And who wants to invest so much time and energy and talent and skill and care (all of which were abundantly evident) in making such a movie?

The investigations go on:

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes next plans to investigate the role former CIA Director John Brennan and other Obama intelligence officials played in promoting the salacious and unverified Steele dossier on Donald Trump — including whether Brennan perjured himself in public testimony about it.

In his May 2017 testimony before the intelligence panel, Brennan emphatically denied the dossier factored into the intelligence community’s publicly released conclusion last year that Russia meddled in the 2016 election “to help Trump’s chances of victory.”

Brennan also swore that he did not know who commissioned the anti-Trump research document (excerpt here), even though senior national security and counterintelligence officials at the Justice Department and FBI knew the previous year that the dossier was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Nunes has apparently also written a document that details the involvement of the State Department “in creating and disseminating the dossier.” Phase I was about the FBI; that will be Phase II. Phase III involves the role of the intelligence community, including not just Brennan but also Leon Panetta and James Clapper.

Several Capitol Hill sources say Brennan, a fiercely loyal Obama appointee, talked up the dossier to Democratic leaders, as well as the press, during the campaign. They say he also fed allegations about Trump-Russia contacts directly to the FBI, while pressuring the bureau to conduct an investigation of several Trump campaign figures starting in the summer of 2016…

In early January, just weeks before Trump was inaugurated, investigators say Brennan saw to it that the contents from the dossier were attached to an official daily intelligence briefing for Obama. The special classified briefing was then leaked to the major Washington media, allowing them to use the presidential briefing to justify the publication of claims they had up to that point not been able to substantiate and had been reluctant to run.

Please read the whole thing.

The Democrats claim that this is all an unwarranted attack on important and trustworthy institutions that are the bulwark of our government. And it certainly does sound like a wild conspiracy-theory movie. Nonetheless, at least so far it appears to be true.

If true, this sort of widespread misuse of the government apparatus and the press to disseminate sketchy information to hurt a candidate and then incoming president is far worse than anything Richard Nixon did. Two things that stopped Nixon were that the government agencies involved wouldn’t go along with his desires and the press wasn’t on his side. For the Obama administration, those obstacles did not exist.

Lincoln is one of the smallish number of presidents who can truly be called “great.” For me, his greatness isn’t confined to what he accomplished as president, or to his formal speeches, which were as brilliant as Churchill’s although in a different tone. He also was an incredible human being, a self-made man who spoke with wit, humor, poetry, and wisdom.

I recommend two pieces at Powerline by Scott Johnson that pay tribute to Lincoln: here and here.