Daily Archives: September 19, 2012

Mitt Romney’s father received state aid

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Well, well. This from the Boston Globe.

Mitt Romney had harsh words for welfare recipients in a hidden-camera videotape from a May fundraiser that was leaked this week.

But his own father was once among public aid recipients.

As the Globe has previously reported, George Romney’s family fled from Mexico in 1912 to escape a revolution there, and benefited from a $100,000 fund established by Congress to help refugees who had lost their homes and most of their belongings.

That fund may have been what Lenore Romney, George Romney’s wife and Mitt Romney’s mother, was referring to in a video that was posted online earlier this month but has received renewed attention in the wake of Mitt Romney’s comments.

“[George Romney] was on welfare relief for the first years of his life. But this great country gave him opportunities,” Lenore Romney said in the video, which apparently dates back to George Romney’s 1962 run for governor of Michigan.

Truth and the Net

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Aristotle taught us that rhetoric has three components: what is said; who is saying it; and where it is being said. I thought of this while watching Charlie Nesson’s talk at a recent Berkman Center symposium on ‘truthiness’. As a teacher, Nesson has an almost legendary status, and you can see why from the way he does this talk. And as for location, well, the Berkman Center was essentially his idea. He also has the serene confidence that comes from being right at the top of his game: what other academic, for example, would seriously contemplate the notion of poker as a “mindsport” like chess?

Quote of the Day

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“It takes about the same amount of computing to answer one Google Search query as all the
computing done — in flight and on the ground — for the entire Apollo program.”

Comment attributed to Peter Norvig and Udi Mepher of Google on hearing of the death of Neil Armstrong.

From Seb Schmoller’s fascinating reflections on his time at ALT-C.