I know it's all been bad lately. But these bits prefigure a general catastrophe:
First bit of bad news: ISIS may be getting the better of the Kurdish militias in northwestern Iraq. The Peshmerga stiffed the jihadists' original offensive, but if these jihadists roll up the Kurdish militias, then Iraq is done for. I hope we are supplying the Kurds with weapons, over the objections of Turkey if need be. Your go to site for Kurdish news is Rudaw, although their battlefield dispatches seem rather rosy to me. Meanwhile, persecution of Iraq's Christians is turning to outright massacre. Death Toll on Shingal Mountain Rising by the Minute. That's in Erbil, in Kurdistan.
Meanwhile, ISIS is moving into Lebanon, by some reports having captured a city and nabbed some soldiers of the Lebanese national army. Hezbollah, that viper pit, is standing off for now, but says that they will fight if ISIS muscles in too far. So, we may find ourselves supporting Hezbollah in extremis--did I mention what a viper pit they are?
Terrible times....
Thursday, August 07, 2014
Saturday, August 02, 2014
Two more celebrities raise their voice against Israel
One is legendary music producer Brian Eno. No surprise there; anti-Zionism is rife among British entertainers, judging by what appears in the press.
The other is more unexpected: the Lebanese mathematician, investor, flaneur and Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
I can't presume to know what he's thinking, as he is so fearsomely learned that I could never hope to hold up my end of a serious conversation with him. I've never heard him say a bad thing about Jews. Elsewhere he's written about growing up in Lebanon during that unfortunate nation's civil war, which was caused in part by the Palestinian Liberation Organization setting up shop there after they were kicked out of Jordan. He is certainly aware of Hamas' charter to eliminate the Jews. He is also surely aware of the tried and true human shield ploy, the credulity of Western news media in areas they don't understand, and the cynicism endemic in Arab ruling circles. So what is he thinking? I don't know. My guess is just that this is his gut feeling, no analysis involved. I hope he realizes that he's being played, along with the rest of Western celebrity-hood.
The other is more unexpected: the Lebanese mathematician, investor, flaneur and Black Swan author Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
You can assess kindness & mental clarity at one's compassion for Palestinians; vicious ignorance, heartlesness at his demonizing/casuistry.
— Nassim N. Taleb (@nntaleb) July 31, 2014Tonight, a thought for Palestinians who, since 1948, have been dispossed, beaten, uprooted, demonized, & humiliated. #Gaza
— Nassim N. Taleb (@nntaleb) July 30, 2014I can't presume to know what he's thinking, as he is so fearsomely learned that I could never hope to hold up my end of a serious conversation with him. I've never heard him say a bad thing about Jews. Elsewhere he's written about growing up in Lebanon during that unfortunate nation's civil war, which was caused in part by the Palestinian Liberation Organization setting up shop there after they were kicked out of Jordan. He is certainly aware of Hamas' charter to eliminate the Jews. He is also surely aware of the tried and true human shield ploy, the credulity of Western news media in areas they don't understand, and the cynicism endemic in Arab ruling circles. So what is he thinking? I don't know. My guess is just that this is his gut feeling, no analysis involved. I hope he realizes that he's being played, along with the rest of Western celebrity-hood.
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Why Israel needs to exist
Lift the "blockade", let Iran ship in some serious surface-to-surface missiles, have Hamas range all of Israel with them, and wreak some serious death and destruction. Would that change the minds of BDS types a little? Do you doubt that's what would happen if Israel didn't fight back against Hamas' death mission towards the Jews?
Much of humanity longs to massacre Jews, and much of the rest of humanity is content to sit and watch it happen, be it with a shrug, a smirk or a fistpump. So of course the Jews need a state in which and with which to defend themselves. When we talk as if their present state is a mistake—a rectifiable mistake—then that is just shark chum in the water for would-be pogromists.
Or you can listen to Pat Condell explain it, much more tartly than I could:
Much of humanity longs to massacre Jews, and much of the rest of humanity is content to sit and watch it happen, be it with a shrug, a smirk or a fistpump. So of course the Jews need a state in which and with which to defend themselves. When we talk as if their present state is a mistake—a rectifiable mistake—then that is just shark chum in the water for would-be pogromists.
Or you can listen to Pat Condell explain it, much more tartly than I could:
Friday, July 25, 2014
Mary Poppins Quits: The Rebuttal (w/ Remy)
If only the minimum wage had been a "living wage" when I was a kid, I could have bought my house and raised my family without all that stressful education and career building. That's sarcasm, if you can't tell.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
On Driving By Dead Churches
It's rather melancholy, driving through some formerly middle class areas and seeing how the church "landscape" has changed. Many of the old red brick suburban churches are shuttered now, their still-tended cemeteries the only signs of their former congregations. Or else the buildings have been gifted or sold to immigrant churches. In their place are storefront churches, as transient as their congregants, nestled among the liquor stores and check cashing establishments. "Permanence is the illusion of every age", as Mark Steyn once said. It may be that the fading of the mainline Protestant denominations will be no more than the falling of an oak after its acorns have sown a forest--much of middle America's thrift, generosity, resilience, optimism and perhaps most importantly sense of stability comes from that tradition. But once there are no more formal institutions actively transmitting it to the next generations, who knows what will happen?
Thursday, July 03, 2014
Georgia hot car death deliberate?
The local police think so. I thought the father of the late Cooper Harris in Cobb County Georgia might be just another weapons-grade idiot, like so many parents in these incidents are. But this is a whole other order of ugliness, if the charges are true.
Meanwhile, there's a support group for parents who lost their children's lives in hot cars:
"I always tell them, you're not a bad parent," Balfour said. "No one is going to judge you more than you do yourself. I know that I did not leave my son in the car intentionally when I left that day. People tell me I need to forgive myself -- I don't feel like I have anything to forgive. I made a mistake and it cost me my son's life. But I certainly didn't leave him in the car to go bowling or to get my nails done."
So, what constitutes being a bad or good parent in these cases? Should we judge by past history, by intentions, or by outcomes? Does one fatal mistake make you as bad a parent as someone who is habitually negligent but whose child nevertheless beats the odds? People have to make their own peace with themselves, and I hope I never have to face myself in the mirror after a tragedy like this. But if I did, and I asked myself if I was a good or bad parent, I would have to answer:
You are
What you do
When it counts
-- John Steakley
Meanwhile, there's a support group for parents who lost their children's lives in hot cars:
"I always tell them, you're not a bad parent," Balfour said. "No one is going to judge you more than you do yourself. I know that I did not leave my son in the car intentionally when I left that day. People tell me I need to forgive myself -- I don't feel like I have anything to forgive. I made a mistake and it cost me my son's life. But I certainly didn't leave him in the car to go bowling or to get my nails done."
So, what constitutes being a bad or good parent in these cases? Should we judge by past history, by intentions, or by outcomes? Does one fatal mistake make you as bad a parent as someone who is habitually negligent but whose child nevertheless beats the odds? People have to make their own peace with themselves, and I hope I never have to face myself in the mirror after a tragedy like this. But if I did, and I asked myself if I was a good or bad parent, I would have to answer:
You are
What you do
When it counts
-- John Steakley
Deport the surge of Central American illegals, children or not
I once again decline to regard the illegals as victims. The appeals to family are specious, as there are always more cousins of cousins of cousins of cousins to be "reunited" with illegals already in the country.
As I've said before, here is the problem in miniature: There is in my town a football complex, next to which are apartment buildings full of illegals. The local leagues pay registration fees to use the fields, and of course only use them when the fields are open. Not so the illegals! They hop the fences at night or out of season, tear up the fields having their own tournaments, todo gratis, por supuesto. Now expand that attitude of su casa es mi casa to include schools, hospitals, all other social services, and scale it up into the millions. This trend needs to be reversed, not sentimentalized.
I wonder if my kids will be able to have summer jobs, as the illegals have taken the low-skill entry jobs (hard times have put retirees into that labor market too, to be fair). If you are not in competition with cheap illegal labor for your livelihood, if you are not having social services you depend on eroded because of illegals' free overuse of them, if you are unlikely to fall victim to crimes that some of them commit, then your "compassion" is very cheap indeed.
As I've said before, here is the problem in miniature: There is in my town a football complex, next to which are apartment buildings full of illegals. The local leagues pay registration fees to use the fields, and of course only use them when the fields are open. Not so the illegals! They hop the fences at night or out of season, tear up the fields having their own tournaments, todo gratis, por supuesto. Now expand that attitude of su casa es mi casa to include schools, hospitals, all other social services, and scale it up into the millions. This trend needs to be reversed, not sentimentalized.
I wonder if my kids will be able to have summer jobs, as the illegals have taken the low-skill entry jobs (hard times have put retirees into that labor market too, to be fair). If you are not in competition with cheap illegal labor for your livelihood, if you are not having social services you depend on eroded because of illegals' free overuse of them, if you are unlikely to fall victim to crimes that some of them commit, then your "compassion" is very cheap indeed.
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
Shadow boxing in Pakistan
Pakistan Vows to Eliminate Terrorist Sanctuaries. snort! Watching Pakistan fight terrorists is like watching someone leg wrestle with their own other leg.
via The Jawa Report
via The Jawa Report
Saturday, May 17, 2014
What will Ta-Nehisi Coates say that white America owes to black America?
A teaser for his forthcoming cover story in The Atlantic is here.
I have never understood the reasoning behind reparations for slavery but not for Jim Crow. There are no living victims or perpetrators of antebellum slavery, but there are plenty of living victims of Jim Crow. Maybe TNC's scheme will attempt to account for these.
When you get your living and indeed your very identity from presenting yourself as a grappler with some issue or other, the last thing you want to do is solve the issue. Let's say that reparations would involve a massive transfer of wealth to blacks from non-blacks, racial set-asides in government representation, public and private jobs, and university admissions, maybe some sort of get out of jail free card for black criminals, and just about any other goodie that the racial avengers could think up & bully the rest of us into going along with. What do you think would happen after that? Would that be the end of the Civil Rights Movement? Would we all come together at a summit and say "There," air checkmark..."all done!" Of course not! New grievances would be wailed over; new adjectives with which to prefix "racism" would be trotted out ("invisible racism", "unconscious racism", and now "elegant racism"), the Left would continue its present trajectory of screaming louder and louder about less and less. And dissidents, of all colors, would be studiously ignored or vigorously attacked.
And there is nothing uniquely black or white about this. Revolutionaries, which pampered academic leftists so frequently imagine themselves to be, usually act as if the ground ahead of them is virgin soil. Edmund Burke said as much more than two centuries ago:
With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme
because it is old. As to the new one, they are in no sort of fear with
regard to the duration of a new building run up in haste; because
duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been
done before their time.
-- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
It's as if the Great Society trillions of dollars never happened, nor all the civil rights legislation, nor the more than half a million Civil War dead. In part it's due to the climate of the times; the Left has successfully mauled the universities and thereby much of our nation's intellectual discourse into its own rigid template. If all human interaction throughout history consists of an oppressor and a victim, then of course the moral high ground lies with the victim, and thus we have the current campus imperative to prove oneself a victim, in order to maintain a passing grade, tenure track or employment. And of course all racism is in the sole eye and judgment of its self-proclaimed victims. So there will be a very long line indeed for these reparations. There was a very long line to join Native American tribes decades ago, once there began to be federal money connected with belonging to those ethnicities. How much of the reparations movement is driven by a quest for justice, and how much by the scent of cash money? It's probably forbidden to even ask that question on campus nowadays.
A typical Ta-Nehisi Coates race column nowadays is rather samey at times. A current event deemed to be deplorable is duly deplored, the animating cause of which is laid to the racism deemed to be constant, like the speed of light, and pervasive, like nitrogen. This is followed by relating a historical atrocity or five, seemingly selected by free association, juxtaposing it to the current event, and then wrapping up as if anything, anything at all, had been illuminated or proved. I'll be disappointed if this forthcoming feature doesn't have more meat on its bones than that.
I have never understood the reasoning behind reparations for slavery but not for Jim Crow. There are no living victims or perpetrators of antebellum slavery, but there are plenty of living victims of Jim Crow. Maybe TNC's scheme will attempt to account for these.
When you get your living and indeed your very identity from presenting yourself as a grappler with some issue or other, the last thing you want to do is solve the issue. Let's say that reparations would involve a massive transfer of wealth to blacks from non-blacks, racial set-asides in government representation, public and private jobs, and university admissions, maybe some sort of get out of jail free card for black criminals, and just about any other goodie that the racial avengers could think up & bully the rest of us into going along with. What do you think would happen after that? Would that be the end of the Civil Rights Movement? Would we all come together at a summit and say "There," air checkmark..."all done!" Of course not! New grievances would be wailed over; new adjectives with which to prefix "racism" would be trotted out ("invisible racism", "unconscious racism", and now "elegant racism"), the Left would continue its present trajectory of screaming louder and louder about less and less. And dissidents, of all colors, would be studiously ignored or vigorously attacked.
And there is nothing uniquely black or white about this. Revolutionaries, which pampered academic leftists so frequently imagine themselves to be, usually act as if the ground ahead of them is virgin soil. Edmund Burke said as much more than two centuries ago:
With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme
because it is old. As to the new one, they are in no sort of fear with
regard to the duration of a new building run up in haste; because
duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been
done before their time.
-- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
It's as if the Great Society trillions of dollars never happened, nor all the civil rights legislation, nor the more than half a million Civil War dead. In part it's due to the climate of the times; the Left has successfully mauled the universities and thereby much of our nation's intellectual discourse into its own rigid template. If all human interaction throughout history consists of an oppressor and a victim, then of course the moral high ground lies with the victim, and thus we have the current campus imperative to prove oneself a victim, in order to maintain a passing grade, tenure track or employment. And of course all racism is in the sole eye and judgment of its self-proclaimed victims. So there will be a very long line indeed for these reparations. There was a very long line to join Native American tribes decades ago, once there began to be federal money connected with belonging to those ethnicities. How much of the reparations movement is driven by a quest for justice, and how much by the scent of cash money? It's probably forbidden to even ask that question on campus nowadays.
A typical Ta-Nehisi Coates race column nowadays is rather samey at times. A current event deemed to be deplorable is duly deplored, the animating cause of which is laid to the racism deemed to be constant, like the speed of light, and pervasive, like nitrogen. This is followed by relating a historical atrocity or five, seemingly selected by free association, juxtaposing it to the current event, and then wrapping up as if anything, anything at all, had been illuminated or proved. I'll be disappointed if this forthcoming feature doesn't have more meat on its bones than that.
Five decades? Six? Seven? How long should it take to understand that the life of a community cannot be reduced to politics or wholly encompassed by government?
The time in which we live has unfathomable depths beneath it. Our age is a mere film on the surface of time.
--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, November 1916
Friday, April 04, 2014
Should Jonathan Pollard be released?
He's back in the news, as the rumors swirl about a deal to release him. Yes, he should be released--and then banished from the U.S., sent to Israel if Israel will take him. If he goes, then his supporters better watch out. If the U.S. is treated to video footage of him receiving a hero's welcome at Tel Aviv airport, then that will confirm for some people some very ugly assumptions about American Jews. I don't approve of dual citizenship--why try to sit on two stools if you only have one ass?--but anything that revives the old stereotype of divided loyalties is bad for the Jews. This is not concern trolling--just keep an eye on certain far rightwing websites, if his release happens.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
If the Civil War had been reported by today's editors for The Atlantic...
...the article headlines might look like this:
What Everyone Gets Wrong About The New York Draft Riots
No, The Blockade Runners Will Not Save The South
The Myth Of Heroic Southern Womanhood
The Fredericksburg Disaster, In Three Simple Graphs
How Lincoln's Exchange With Horace Greeley Emboldens Foreign Intervention
When Habeas Corpus Is Just A Memory
Why The Substitute Soldier Is The Future Of War
This list is inspired by this article from The Atlantic last autumn.
What Everyone Gets Wrong About The New York Draft Riots
No, The Blockade Runners Will Not Save The South
The Myth Of Heroic Southern Womanhood
The Fredericksburg Disaster, In Three Simple Graphs
How Lincoln's Exchange With Horace Greeley Emboldens Foreign Intervention
When Habeas Corpus Is Just A Memory
Why The Substitute Soldier Is The Future Of War
This list is inspired by this article from The Atlantic last autumn.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Will Ta-Nehisi Coates shut down comments at The Atlantic?
I've been commenting at The Atlantic on posts by Ta-Nehisi Coates for the past year or so. His comments threads have always been heavily moderated, and justly so. I remember what happened to the unmoderated African-American usenet groups back in the 90s, 'nuff said. He has to have two maybe three editors to keep the vileness out. In addition to that though, he seems to dislike much in the way of disagreement. After having received a rap on the knuckles from him a time or two, I've tried to tone up my remarks, with some success. I will confess that I was surprised when I first discovered him, that it was harder than I expected to hold up my end of a conversation with him and his fans. I now take it as a challenge to frame my opinions in a way that is acceptable to that online community, while still making my points. Only n00bs whine about the moderators, is my online motto.
But I've been struck how many comments will be deleted and commenters banned, for stating obvious facts. I myself was threatened with banning, for mentioning the fact that Africa's post-colonial human rights record is an appalling horror show, and its leaders have until recently been mostly larcenous and murderous despots. His truth narrative doesn't seem to like having its toes stepped on by other truth narratives, apparently. I mean, what would the reaction be if the Nigerian academic George Ayittey logged in and said the same things? Things are a bit more relaxed when he deals with topics in which race is not always front and center, such as his experiences in Paris or his readings in Eastern European history. (Speaking of which, I wonder if he's going to take up Iron Curtain anytime soon, as promised some time back? Maybe he's lost interest.) Then the crowdsourced knowledge of the commenters is giving freer rein, and the threads make for quite educational and enjoyable reading, for those interested in those subjects.
Lately he's been posting articles and leaving the comments off for days, if not permanently. I hope he doesn't leave the magazine because of commenters, the way Steven den Beste gave up political blogging because he was tired of getting crapped at by his commenters. If the comments are too wearisome to police anymore, my suggestion would be for him to do away with them, a la James Fallows, and just post open threads once a week. That ought to simplify things from The Atlantic's end.
But I've been struck how many comments will be deleted and commenters banned, for stating obvious facts. I myself was threatened with banning, for mentioning the fact that Africa's post-colonial human rights record is an appalling horror show, and its leaders have until recently been mostly larcenous and murderous despots. His truth narrative doesn't seem to like having its toes stepped on by other truth narratives, apparently. I mean, what would the reaction be if the Nigerian academic George Ayittey logged in and said the same things? Things are a bit more relaxed when he deals with topics in which race is not always front and center, such as his experiences in Paris or his readings in Eastern European history. (Speaking of which, I wonder if he's going to take up Iron Curtain anytime soon, as promised some time back? Maybe he's lost interest.) Then the crowdsourced knowledge of the commenters is giving freer rein, and the threads make for quite educational and enjoyable reading, for those interested in those subjects.
Lately he's been posting articles and leaving the comments off for days, if not permanently. I hope he doesn't leave the magazine because of commenters, the way Steven den Beste gave up political blogging because he was tired of getting crapped at by his commenters. If the comments are too wearisome to police anymore, my suggestion would be for him to do away with them, a la James Fallows, and just post open threads once a week. That ought to simplify things from The Atlantic's end.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Simferopol scene
This picture is currently making the rounds on Twitter. Looks like riot police checking women's handbags.
@ukrpravda_news Шмон від окупантів. Сімферополь, 17.03 via AP pic.twitter.com/lsY9Pv5PvQ
— Mikekomar (@mikekomar) March 17, 2014Monday, March 17, 2014
Crimea, Ukraine and Russia
Attentive readers of the news boiling out of Crimea and Ukraine may have noticed this historical tidbit, that Crimea was transferred to Ukraine from Russia in 1954. See here and here for backgrounders.
Back when the Soviet Union was still around, I used to enjoy "eavesdropping" on the Kremlin by browsing the publication The Current Digest Of The Soviet Press. Snippets of old issues are available in Google Books, and while spelunking therein I found this announcement from 1954:
It's just a snippet, but you can grasp the high-handed optimism so typical of communist propaganda. Little did they realize that their "reforging" of humanity would fail, and the consequences of their social engineering would ripple out for decades.
Back when the Soviet Union was still around, I used to enjoy "eavesdropping" on the Kremlin by browsing the publication The Current Digest Of The Soviet Press. Snippets of old issues are available in Google Books, and while spelunking therein I found this announcement from 1954:
It's just a snippet, but you can grasp the high-handed optimism so typical of communist propaganda. Little did they realize that their "reforging" of humanity would fail, and the consequences of their social engineering would ripple out for decades.
Tuesday, March 04, 2014
Digital rights lockdown on...coffee?
Oh, brother...didn't they learn anything from the music biz? H/T Instapundit.
Keurig Will Use DRM In New Coffee Maker To Lock Out Refill Market (via Techdirt)
Keurig Will Use DRM In New Coffee Maker To Lock Out Refill Market (via Techdirt)The single coffee cup craze has been rolling now for several years in both the United States and Canada, with Keurig, Tassimo, and Nespresso all battling it out to lock down the market. In order to protect their dominant market share, Keurig makers…
Saturday, March 01, 2014
Sunday, February 23, 2014
An eventful night, as gleaned from a single Twitter account
A Turkish professor, Balkan Devlen, has been gathering some important developments from a number of hotspots overnight:
And, the most striking image of the day, someone repainted the Soviet Army memorial in Sofia, Bulgaria with the national colors of Ukraine:
ISIS just killed Abu Khaled al-Suri, Zawahiri's personal envoy to IF rebels. Now either AQ takes Baghdadi's head or they fade into obscurity
— Zedd Rebel (@ZeddRebel) February 23, 2014Venezuela just shut down the Internet. I will give a cookie to the first emoprog who has the balls to call it a just step to deter "fascism"
— Zedd Rebel (@ZeddRebel) February 23, 2014Why have so many #Azerbaijanis joined rebel groups in #Syria? Shahin Abbasov explains @EurasiaNet http://t.co/hzMCxCqikQ
— ISN Zurich (@ISN_Zurich) February 23, 2014And, the most striking image of the day, someone repainted the Soviet Army memorial in Sofia, Bulgaria with the national colors of Ukraine:
Red Army monument in Sofia this morning. #Евромайдан #Euromaidan pic.twitter.com/BhC1Mtyenu
— Dimitar Bechev (@dimobe) February 23, 2014Saturday, February 22, 2014
FCC backs off attempted oversight of news coverage
Good. It was probably the result of a load of idle staffers, soft sciences majors, trying to come up with a pointless novelty to justify their employment. But just imagine the eruption in the MSM if George W. Bush's FCC had attempted to pull something like this during the mid-Aughties. shudder... There are any number of two-syllable responses a news editor should give to some FCC munchkin trying to police news coverage. The most printable of them is probably No Thanks.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
The Bible and the future
Over at Aeon Magazine, there's a piece of deepthink which startlingly misrepresents the Bible's conception(s) of time.
Finally, we can always blame the Bible. Whether you think of it as casting a long shadow across the history of Western culture or as fathering a great light within it, there is no denying the Bible’s powerful influence on the way that we think today. And you might have noticed that there’s not much about a billion-year future in it. The Bible does not tell us ‘The beginning is near!’ but rather ‘The end is near!’
I don't think that American fundamentalist end-times theology is a wide enough lens through which to view the Bible nor its influence on our attitudes through the millennia. Sure, the Bible makes no mention of billions of years--but its authors were very pre-occupied with eternity, which for humans amounts to the same thing. Psalm 103:17 says that "But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord's love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children's children." The old king who narrates Ecclesiastes muses at length on the passage of time and the successions of generations stretching into the future. Remember that the Christian Bible was written by dozens of authors over the course of about 600 years. They weren't all just huddling around the altar all that time, waiting for the world-ending thunderbolt to strike.
Indeed, a case could be made that the thinkers of antiquity, both Judeo/Christian and Greco/Roman, had a firmer grasp of the immensity of time and their own minuscule place within it. Since the beginning of the Mechanical Age, events have rushed past in such a blur, that the present has perforce absorbed most of our attention. In addition, we spend the yet-to-be-created wealth confiscated from yet-to-be-born posterity for our own present gratification. "Just keep the checks coming til I'm dead, and then the world can go hang!" Attitudes like that are not found in people who plant acorns, the shade of which trees they will never sit under. Attitudes like that are denounced in the Bible, in fact.
An attempt to excogitate from scratch a new way of regarding the future will most likely sound strangely familiar, in some parts. It's already part of our heritage, if you know where & how to look.
Finally, we can always blame the Bible. Whether you think of it as casting a long shadow across the history of Western culture or as fathering a great light within it, there is no denying the Bible’s powerful influence on the way that we think today. And you might have noticed that there’s not much about a billion-year future in it. The Bible does not tell us ‘The beginning is near!’ but rather ‘The end is near!’
I don't think that American fundamentalist end-times theology is a wide enough lens through which to view the Bible nor its influence on our attitudes through the millennia. Sure, the Bible makes no mention of billions of years--but its authors were very pre-occupied with eternity, which for humans amounts to the same thing. Psalm 103:17 says that "But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord's love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children's children." The old king who narrates Ecclesiastes muses at length on the passage of time and the successions of generations stretching into the future. Remember that the Christian Bible was written by dozens of authors over the course of about 600 years. They weren't all just huddling around the altar all that time, waiting for the world-ending thunderbolt to strike.
Indeed, a case could be made that the thinkers of antiquity, both Judeo/Christian and Greco/Roman, had a firmer grasp of the immensity of time and their own minuscule place within it. Since the beginning of the Mechanical Age, events have rushed past in such a blur, that the present has perforce absorbed most of our attention. In addition, we spend the yet-to-be-created wealth confiscated from yet-to-be-born posterity for our own present gratification. "Just keep the checks coming til I'm dead, and then the world can go hang!" Attitudes like that are not found in people who plant acorns, the shade of which trees they will never sit under. Attitudes like that are denounced in the Bible, in fact.
An attempt to excogitate from scratch a new way of regarding the future will most likely sound strangely familiar, in some parts. It's already part of our heritage, if you know where & how to look.
Tuesday, February 04, 2014
Bill Nye Ken Hamm Creation Debate at Answers in Genesis museum in Kentucky
As longtime readers know, I loathe creationism. I though Nye did a great job, presenting a thumbnail sketch of how we know science is the best guide to the natural world, and confining Hamm to circular appeals to authority and just plain Bible thumping. If our answer to the questions of the natural world is "God did it", then that's the end of any inquiry, since God can do anything He wants, and His ways are unsearchable. But an open-ended universe following discoverable natural laws offers vistas of potential discovery.
And that's all I've got. Have some good tweets from the #creationdebate tag. Boy, was it a fast thread!
And that's all I've got. Have some good tweets from the #creationdebate tag. Boy, was it a fast thread!
This sums up the #creationdebate pretty well. pic.twitter.com/RLe1BoJTpc
— Carolyn McDowell (@Arumi_kai) February 5, 2014Bill Nye vs Ken Ham #CreationDebate pic.twitter.com/kPftq7lxhL
— Lisa R (@txvoodoo) February 5, 2014Here's a great photo summary of the #creationdebate @TheScienceGuy pic.twitter.com/fCJPMyC2D5
— iVote (@Kris_SacreBleu) February 5, 2014Ken Hams argument in a nutshell #creationdebate pic.twitter.com/6f94Ap7ZlG
— Ungodly News (@ungodlynews) February 5, 2014We hit bingo far too long ago. I hope no one kills themselves by making this into a drinking game #CreationDebate. pic.twitter.com/0wiuT9JASn
— Zack Kopplin (@ZackKopplin) February 5, 2014Sunday, January 26, 2014
The gift the Protestant missionaries bequeathed the world
There's a great article in the current issue of Christianity Today, about the influence of Protestant missionaries in the Third World over the past century and a quarter. Far from being mere enablers and apologists of imperialism, they succeeded in creating broad, lasting uplift for the indigenous people, even in ultimate opposition to colonialism itself. In brief, the Protestant missionaries felt it imperative to spread the Gospel among all people. This meant teaching the Bible, which required teaching people to read. So missionary schools were founded, and thus literacy spread among the people in the areas where the Protestant missionaries operated. (The Bible did not have such primacy among Catholic missionaries.) There was of course more to it, as Western civilization made its way through the colonized lands. Medicine, law, technology, coupled with the Christian imperative to share those blessings with "the least of these" helped give credence to the missionaries' message. The liberating aspects of the Gospels themselves had their effects, as well. The end result is that areas that were ministered by Protestant missionaries were more well-disposed to democracy. The CT article details one researcher's quest to nail down these findings in statistical form, and to overcome the revulsion of deracinated secular academics at such a thing.
Enough examples like that added up to this:
To wit:
It's sad to think of such an important bit of the Western heritage being downplayed or denied in modern academia. In at least one country I know of, South Korea, they remember and honor the missionaries that came in the late 19th Century, the Bells, the Junkins, and many others. It's too bad Christopher Hitchens isn't around anymore; I'd like to see how he would have reacted to this. The same effects took hold in their native anglophone nations too, of course; and still do to this day. It's too bad we are as ignorant of them as fish are ignorant of water.
Edit: Dr. Horace Jeffrey Hodges, the Gypsy Scholar, has excerpts of the original academic paper and further thoughts here.
In search of answers, Woodberry traveled to West Africa in 2001. Setting out one morning on a dusty road in Lomé, the capital of Togo, Woodberry headed for the University of Togo's campus library. He found it sequestered in a 1960s-era building. The shelves held about half as many books as his personal collection. The most recent encyclopedia dated from 1977. Down the road, the campus bookstore sold primarily pens and paper, not books.
"Where do you buy your books?" Woodberry stopped to ask a student.
"Oh, we don't buy books," he replied. "The professors read the texts out loud to us, and we transcribe."
Across the border, at the University of Ghana's bookstore, Woodberry had seen floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with hundreds of books, including locally printed texts by local scholars. Why the stark contrast?
The reason was clear: During the colonial era, British missionaries in Ghana had established a whole system of schools and printing presses. But France, the colonial power in Togo, severely restricted missionaries. The French authorities took interest in educating only a small intellectual elite. More than 100 years later, education was still limited in Togo. In Ghana, it was flourishing.
Enough examples like that added up to this:
Woodberry already had historical proof that missionaries had educated women and the poor, promoted widespread printing, led nationalist movements that empowered ordinary citizens, and fueled other key elements of democracy. Now the statistics were backing it up: Missionaries weren't just part of the picture. They were central to it.
To wit:
Areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in nongovernmental associations.
It's sad to think of such an important bit of the Western heritage being downplayed or denied in modern academia. In at least one country I know of, South Korea, they remember and honor the missionaries that came in the late 19th Century, the Bells, the Junkins, and many others. It's too bad Christopher Hitchens isn't around anymore; I'd like to see how he would have reacted to this. The same effects took hold in their native anglophone nations too, of course; and still do to this day. It's too bad we are as ignorant of them as fish are ignorant of water.
Edit: Dr. Horace Jeffrey Hodges, the Gypsy Scholar, has excerpts of the original academic paper and further thoughts here.
Sunday afternoon ADHD linklets & quotes
Lost letters, photographs and diaries by Heinrich Himmler have been discovered in Israel.
Nobody disputes the fact that, in order to make efficient use of the means at its disposal, the government must exercise a great deal of discretion. But, to repeat, under the rule of law the private citizen and his property are not an object of administration by the government, not a means to be used for its purposes.
-- The Constitution of Liberty, by F.A. Hayek
Previously unknown Egyptian pharaoh discovered.
America does not know the difference between money and sex. It treats sex like money because it treats sex as a medium of exchange, and it treats money like sex because it expects its money to get pregnant and reproduce.
- Peter Kreeft
Liberal, 2.0 A view of the wreckage by James Bowman at The New Criterion.
Islamic Extremists in Nigeria Attack Christians at Sunday Worship Every Week in January
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.
-- Gustav Mahler
Nobody disputes the fact that, in order to make efficient use of the means at its disposal, the government must exercise a great deal of discretion. But, to repeat, under the rule of law the private citizen and his property are not an object of administration by the government, not a means to be used for its purposes.
-- The Constitution of Liberty, by F.A. Hayek
Previously unknown Egyptian pharaoh discovered.
America does not know the difference between money and sex. It treats sex like money because it treats sex as a medium of exchange, and it treats money like sex because it expects its money to get pregnant and reproduce.
- Peter Kreeft
Liberal, 2.0 A view of the wreckage by James Bowman at The New Criterion.
Islamic Extremists in Nigeria Attack Christians at Sunday Worship Every Week in January
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.
-- Gustav Mahler
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Costco and the minimum wage
Speaking strictly from personal experience here...Re: Costco and their workers high wages. Great for them! It's a good store! I just have to search longer to find a worker to help me than I do at Sam's Club, because there are fewer of them. Also unlike Sam's Club, the workers giving out samples at Costco work for a different company & don't know where anything in the store is. Wonder what their pay is like?
Monday, January 20, 2014
Happy blogoversary to The Jawa Report!
Rusty and the gang have been giving it to the e-Jihad hot and strong for ten years now!
Sunday, January 12, 2014
RIP Ariel Sharon
He didn't care what the outside world thought; his only concern was protecting his people. And he was right to do so. As P. J. O'Rourke said:
RIP.
This is [a] wonderful thing about Zionism: it was right. Every other "ism" of the modern world has been wrong about the nature of civilized man—Marxism, mesmerism, surrealism, pacifism, existentialism, nudism. But civilized man did want to kill Jews, and was going to do more of it.
RIP.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Friday morning ADHD linklets...and some musings too
Did Nigerian soldiers join Boko Haram's massacre of Christians?
From the Pentagon to homelessness.
"For nearly 30 years I have asked myself this question: Why Richard?"
What American malls need: Husband storing facilities.
Okay, so Melissa Harris-Perry is smart. Maybe after this she'll also be somewhat wiser. Is MSNBC's bubble so thick that she, her co-hosts, writers, producers and everyone else involved in show prep all thought that this segment was a good idea? "We were jeering at the family photo to highlight how racist Republicans are. Because white Romneys." Too clever by half. She should have known better.
Goodbye to Amiri Baraka. It was rather hypocritical for New Jersey's poet laureate people to get all offended after his despicable reaction to 9/11. He had never misrepresented himself. What did they think they were getting when they awarded the post to him? But as with so many other Sixties radicals who went on to receive establishment recognition, he was well summed up in V. S. Naipaul's observation about the U.S.:
From the Pentagon to homelessness.
"For nearly 30 years I have asked myself this question: Why Richard?"
My goal in life is to be really opinionated about the work of creatives while remaining completely uncreative and just work at a carwash
— Different Fur (@differentfur) January 4, 2014Everyone's racist, except me #LiberalismIn4Words
— Matt (@Matthops82) December 31, 2013What American malls need: Husband storing facilities.
Okay, so Melissa Harris-Perry is smart. Maybe after this she'll also be somewhat wiser. Is MSNBC's bubble so thick that she, her co-hosts, writers, producers and everyone else involved in show prep all thought that this segment was a good idea? "We were jeering at the family photo to highlight how racist Republicans are. Because white Romneys." Too clever by half. She should have known better.
Goodbye to Amiri Baraka. It was rather hypocritical for New Jersey's poet laureate people to get all offended after his despicable reaction to 9/11. He had never misrepresented himself. What did they think they were getting when they awarded the post to him? But as with so many other Sixties radicals who went on to receive establishment recognition, he was well summed up in V. S. Naipaul's observation about the U.S.:
Always out there, the United States, an unacknowledged part of the
world picture of every kind of modern revolutionary: the country of law
and rest, with which at the end of the day a man who had proclaimed
himself to be on the other side–in politics, culture, or religion–could
make peace and on whose goodwill he could throw himself. –V.S. Naipaul,
Beyond Belief, 1998
Saturday, January 04, 2014
al Qaeda retakes Fallujah
This is very double plus ungood. One of the biggest urban battles the U.S. was involved in during the Iraq war was in Fallujah, driving al-Qaeda out. Army tank commander Lt. Neil Prakash kept a blog of the battle, and even in its redacted state makes for thrilling reading. The Americans were welcomed by the citizens, who were being brutalized by the terrorists:
Now we are gone, and the terrorists have returned, according to these reports. So sorry for those citizens, having to go through this ordeal again! We can only hope that the Iraqi national government can come together long enough to drive them out--I doubt they can be bought off.
A scene from the war:
I am also a professor at a military-related institution, and
my little brother is an enlisted Marine (a sniper with 1-3) in
Fallujah. This weekend he called for the first time since the battle
began. He informed us that a large number of the residents of
Fallujah, before fleeing the battle, left blankets and bedding for the
Marines and Soldiers along with notes thanking the Americans for
liberating their city from the terrorists, as well as invitations to
the Marines and Soldiers to sleep in their houses. I've yet to see a
report in the media of this. Imagine that.
Now we are gone, and the terrorists have returned, according to these reports. So sorry for those citizens, having to go through this ordeal again! We can only hope that the Iraqi national government can come together long enough to drive them out--I doubt they can be bought off.
A scene from the war:
Monday, December 30, 2013
Monday Morning ADHD Linklets
A simple, reliable, safe and time-tested product will shortly be made illegal, in favor of an expensive, toxic, unreliable and unpopular product. Green science saves us from ourselves again!
2013 was a zombie of a year.
Hits and misses from First Things. This blog, you may recall, used to be a running commentary on that magazine, until it sank in that I didn't have the intellectual horsepower to keep up on a regular basis. But I still read it from time to time.
Yes, man-made climate change is really happening.
Iceland highway project delayed by elves.
I thought Prince Charles was an arabophile. But here he is drawing attention to the slow pulverization of the ancient Christian church in the Middle East. Good for him!
2013 was a zombie of a year.
Hits and misses from First Things. This blog, you may recall, used to be a running commentary on that magazine, until it sank in that I didn't have the intellectual horsepower to keep up on a regular basis. But I still read it from time to time.
Yes, man-made climate change is really happening.
Iceland highway project delayed by elves.
I thought Prince Charles was an arabophile. But here he is drawing attention to the slow pulverization of the ancient Christian church in the Middle East. Good for him!
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
No, Martin Bashir's firing is not comparable to A&E dumping Phil Robertson
The Left-o-sphere has been marshaling a surge of whatabouttery in response to the outrage over A&E Network suspending Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson. Martin Bashir was fired for what he said, they assert, and so why aren't you hypocrites mad about that? Here's why:
Martin Bashir emitted his vileness while on the air on MSNBC, acting in his capacity as an employee and representative of MSNBC. A reasonable viewer could conclude, at least at first, that he was not saying anything that MSNBC did not approve of. Else why let him say such things on the show?
Phil Robertson, OTOH, gave his private opinion, off the show, when asked for his private opinion. See the difference? He was speaking for himself. Now, the Lavender Mafia in the entertainment industry is not to be crossed lightly, so of course A&E sprinted for the tall grass when GLAAD went on the offensive. But the premise of the Two Minute Hate against Duck Dynasty is that one can no longer have a non-liberal private opinion. Presumptuous arrogance like that is as vile as Bashir's comments, and are no part of an America I care to live in.
Martin Bashir emitted his vileness while on the air on MSNBC, acting in his capacity as an employee and representative of MSNBC. A reasonable viewer could conclude, at least at first, that he was not saying anything that MSNBC did not approve of. Else why let him say such things on the show?
Phil Robertson, OTOH, gave his private opinion, off the show, when asked for his private opinion. See the difference? He was speaking for himself. Now, the Lavender Mafia in the entertainment industry is not to be crossed lightly, so of course A&E sprinted for the tall grass when GLAAD went on the offensive. But the premise of the Two Minute Hate against Duck Dynasty is that one can no longer have a non-liberal private opinion. Presumptuous arrogance like that is as vile as Bashir's comments, and are no part of an America I care to live in.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Merry Christmas...and have some holiday gooniness picked from Twitter
I would like to thank all the Jews out there for putting up with our awkward half-assed attempts to make you feel included this time of year
— David, Nog Scientist (@Vodstok) December 25, 2013Come from the land of ice and snow,
Where my elves make toys,
And I say "Ho Ho Ho!"
-Santa Zeppelin Claus
— WhirledRecord (@WhirledRecord) December 24, 2013I had this great idea about mittens for feet, but then I realized that’s just socks.
— Yule Plait (@BadAstronomer) December 25, 2013You've Incurred the Wrath of Cthulhu, Charlie Brown.
— JRehling (@JRehling) December 25, 2013Tonight we commemorate the miraculous victory of the Maccabees over the forces of General Tso.
— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) December 25, 2013If you're an atheist, this agnostic says merry Christmas and shut the fuck up, please, if you want to say anything but "you too"
— David, Nog Scientist (@Vodstok) December 25, 2013It's pronounced Christmas jift, actually.
— Luke O'Neil (@lukeoneil47) December 24, 2013If Christmas caroling is OK, there should be a night when Black Sabbath fans can go door-to-door singing Iron Man and Crazy Train.
— WhirledRecord (@WhirledRecord) December 25, 2013"Hey, myrrh isn't cheap! I'd just expect a little more appreciation from people living in a stable."
— Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) December 25, 2013Friday, December 20, 2013
Dennis Rodman in North Korea
All I've got to say is what I said the first time back in March:
In the 30s, serious intellectuals traveled to the Soviet Union to hail it as the future of humanity. In the 60s and 70s, writers, actors & other assorted glitterati went to Cuba to be schmoozed by El Jefe. And now North Korea has hauled in...a retired basketball player with a penchant for shock publicity. The quality of useful idiots is on a definite downward trajectory.
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Is Pope Francis advocating Marxism?
Most probably not. Marxism, you see, is a counterfeit of the true Christian spirit, action and love. On paper, it will seem very much like Christianity, to the uninformed. (Scroll to the bottom for some quotes illustrative of this truth.)
As for Francis, I wonder if his outlook is colored by his Latin American heritage. Unlike anglo-protestant North America, Central and South America were founded by a thin scum of sleazed-out nobility, lording it over a vast sweated underclass, with not much in between. With a more populous, more enterprising and more resourceful middle class, the North out-prospered the South, even though the southern continent was superior in natural resources. The desperate circumstances of Latin America's poor through so much of their history has impressed itself on anyone with a living conscience. Perhaps it's only natural for the Argentinian Francis to project their plight onto the world at large.
It might be remembered that pontiffs expressing care for the poor and laboring classes is not new. Even Pope John Paul The Great in June of 1989 came in for a rough ride from National Review--surely a Catholic-friendly venue--for seeming to equate the rougher edges of capitalism with socialism. It apparently wasn't noticed that his talk of respecting the rights and welfare of workers were even tougher on the communist societies from which he came.
So don't worry. Western progressives surely wish to forget about communism as quickly as possible and, through their control of the educational institutions, prevent coming generations from learning about its horrors at all. (Ever wonder why public middle schoolers are rightly taught about the Holocaust, but hardly anything unambiguously bad about communism is mentioned until graduate school, if even then?) But the popes were aware of communism's spiritual dangers very early on:
"Communism...is absolutely contrary to the natural law itself, and, if once adopted, would utterly destroy the rights, property, and possessions of all men, and even society itself." --Pope Pius IX, Qui Pluribus, 1846
Poland is free. The Baltic states are free. Ukraine is free, with an asterisk. Cuba will one day be free. So will China and Vietnam one day be free. With so many Catholics in the world enduring or having survived the assault of communism within living memory, no Pope is in danger of becoming a Marxist.
Let us be perfectly honest. The historical record is indisputable. Marxism means the persecution of Christians, the execution of right wing dissidents, massive slave labor camps, and grinding poverty for countless millions of terrified, muzzled human beings. -- J.R. Nyquist
The socialist state requires greater and greater degrees of force to make it function. If resources and wealth are allocated on the basis of need rather than production, people will compete to be more needy rather than more productive.
-- Linda Bowles
In every village there will arise some miscreant, to establish the most grinding tyranny by calling himself the people.
--Sir Robert Peel
We have yet to answer our right-wing critics’ claims, which are regrettably well documented, that throughout history from ancient times to the peasant wars of the sixteenth century to the Reign of Terror and beyond, social movements that have espoused radical egalitarianism and participatory democracy have begun with mass murder and ended in despotism.
--Eugene Genovese
A permanent possibility of selfishness arises from the mere fact of having a self, and not from any accidents of education or ill-treatment. And the weakness of all Utopias is this, that they take
the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motor-car or balloon.
-- G. K. Chesterton
From its earliest inception, the Left cried that the world was not good enough. It held that any attempts to find happiness in the present were not only doomed, but immoral. Religion, Marx said, "is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness." He claimed that capitalism could never feed the poor. Lenin said Marxism could, and defined Communism as "socialism plus electricity".
What they forgot to add was that the world would never be good enough. That not a single Marxist state ever managed to provide either the food or electricity in adequate quantities remained beside the point. Shortages were always in the present and the present was unimportant anyway.
-- Richard Fernandez
As for Francis, I wonder if his outlook is colored by his Latin American heritage. Unlike anglo-protestant North America, Central and South America were founded by a thin scum of sleazed-out nobility, lording it over a vast sweated underclass, with not much in between. With a more populous, more enterprising and more resourceful middle class, the North out-prospered the South, even though the southern continent was superior in natural resources. The desperate circumstances of Latin America's poor through so much of their history has impressed itself on anyone with a living conscience. Perhaps it's only natural for the Argentinian Francis to project their plight onto the world at large.
It might be remembered that pontiffs expressing care for the poor and laboring classes is not new. Even Pope John Paul The Great in June of 1989 came in for a rough ride from National Review--surely a Catholic-friendly venue--for seeming to equate the rougher edges of capitalism with socialism. It apparently wasn't noticed that his talk of respecting the rights and welfare of workers were even tougher on the communist societies from which he came.
So don't worry. Western progressives surely wish to forget about communism as quickly as possible and, through their control of the educational institutions, prevent coming generations from learning about its horrors at all. (Ever wonder why public middle schoolers are rightly taught about the Holocaust, but hardly anything unambiguously bad about communism is mentioned until graduate school, if even then?) But the popes were aware of communism's spiritual dangers very early on:
"Communism...is absolutely contrary to the natural law itself, and, if once adopted, would utterly destroy the rights, property, and possessions of all men, and even society itself." --Pope Pius IX, Qui Pluribus, 1846
Poland is free. The Baltic states are free. Ukraine is free, with an asterisk. Cuba will one day be free. So will China and Vietnam one day be free. With so many Catholics in the world enduring or having survived the assault of communism within living memory, no Pope is in danger of becoming a Marxist.
Let us be perfectly honest. The historical record is indisputable. Marxism means the persecution of Christians, the execution of right wing dissidents, massive slave labor camps, and grinding poverty for countless millions of terrified, muzzled human beings. -- J.R. Nyquist
The socialist state requires greater and greater degrees of force to make it function. If resources and wealth are allocated on the basis of need rather than production, people will compete to be more needy rather than more productive.
-- Linda Bowles
In every village there will arise some miscreant, to establish the most grinding tyranny by calling himself the people.
--Sir Robert Peel
We have yet to answer our right-wing critics’ claims, which are regrettably well documented, that throughout history from ancient times to the peasant wars of the sixteenth century to the Reign of Terror and beyond, social movements that have espoused radical egalitarianism and participatory democracy have begun with mass murder and ended in despotism.
--Eugene Genovese
A permanent possibility of selfishness arises from the mere fact of having a self, and not from any accidents of education or ill-treatment. And the weakness of all Utopias is this, that they take
the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motor-car or balloon.
-- G. K. Chesterton
From its earliest inception, the Left cried that the world was not good enough. It held that any attempts to find happiness in the present were not only doomed, but immoral. Religion, Marx said, "is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness." He claimed that capitalism could never feed the poor. Lenin said Marxism could, and defined Communism as "socialism plus electricity".
What they forgot to add was that the world would never be good enough. That not a single Marxist state ever managed to provide either the food or electricity in adequate quantities remained beside the point. Shortages were always in the present and the present was unimportant anyway.
-- Richard Fernandez
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Another automated pricing war on Amazon.
I read this review of the book Raising a Jihadi Generation, and clicked over to Amazon to check it out. Once there, I found that two used copies were going for nearly a thousand dollars each.
I read an article somewhere this past year about how this sort of thing happens, but I don't have the link to hand. I'm sure no humans were involved, though.
I read an article somewhere this past year about how this sort of thing happens, but I don't have the link to hand. I'm sure no humans were involved, though.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Obama, Castro, the handshake, and the persistence of Leftist faith in Communist Cuba
I've been viewing with disgust the left-leaning commentariat around the blogs, taking the opportunity of Mandela's funeral to agitate for normalization of relations with Cuba. I have no respect for proggs who help inflict utopias on hapless Third World countries, to which they fly (with return air tickets) to slobber over the Maximum Leader.
The U. S. should soften its stance towards Cuba? When will Cuba "soften" its stance towards Cuba? There should be an immediate release of all political prisoners in Cuba, restoration of basic human rights, including property rights, and post-Soviet style councils, like in Eastern Europe in the 90s, to account for the victims of Cuban communism, and bring the oppressors to book. Norteamericano proggs would be howling for this, if Castro had not couched his tyranny in anti-American leftist phraseology. Instead, he is still the darling of the doddering Sixties flotsam setting the tone for the American Left.
Castro killed more Cubans in his first three years than Hitler killed Germans in his first six. First World proggs just can't bear to part with their youthful infatuation with the old Red, is all, and they will ignore the boot stomping the faces of the Cuban people forever, if that's what it takes to preserve their collectivist illusions.
The U. S. should soften its stance towards Cuba? When will Cuba "soften" its stance towards Cuba? There should be an immediate release of all political prisoners in Cuba, restoration of basic human rights, including property rights, and post-Soviet style councils, like in Eastern Europe in the 90s, to account for the victims of Cuban communism, and bring the oppressors to book. Norteamericano proggs would be howling for this, if Castro had not couched his tyranny in anti-American leftist phraseology. Instead, he is still the darling of the doddering Sixties flotsam setting the tone for the American Left.
Castro killed more Cubans in his first three years than Hitler killed Germans in his first six. First World proggs just can't bear to part with their youthful infatuation with the old Red, is all, and they will ignore the boot stomping the faces of the Cuban people forever, if that's what it takes to preserve their collectivist illusions.
Friday, December 06, 2013
Sunday, December 01, 2013
Campus Hate Crime Hoaxes
There seem to be a statistical cluster of them happening about now. My view is that yes, it's despicable, slandering students for political purposes. However, the campus proggs are simply following H. L. Mencken's dictum:
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
The tenured radicals running the universities keep the students in high anxiety about all the ravening racists & sexists & classists & nativists & speciesists & whatnot lurking around them. Some students, with a natural adolescent urge to be the center of attention, decide to take a shortcut and make the long-threatened "oppression" hurry up and happen. Needless to say, proggs do not take these hoaxes as disconfirming evidence, nor do many of them seem to feel enough of a simple human kinship with those so slandered as to apologize.
I carried on much more crankily about this phenomenon some years back, here, in the aftermath of the Duke lacrosse team case.
Update: Welcome to readers of Blazing Cat Fur, to whom thanks for the link.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
The tenured radicals running the universities keep the students in high anxiety about all the ravening racists & sexists & classists & nativists & speciesists & whatnot lurking around them. Some students, with a natural adolescent urge to be the center of attention, decide to take a shortcut and make the long-threatened "oppression" hurry up and happen. Needless to say, proggs do not take these hoaxes as disconfirming evidence, nor do many of them seem to feel enough of a simple human kinship with those so slandered as to apologize.
I carried on much more crankily about this phenomenon some years back, here, in the aftermath of the Duke lacrosse team case.
Update: Welcome to readers of Blazing Cat Fur, to whom thanks for the link.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
NYT writer blames Kennedy assassination on....
This NYT contributor blames Dallas right-wing extremists for murder of JFK by a pro-Castro communist http://t.co/vvj50KRjfu
— davidfrum (@davidfrum) November 17, 2013
They just simply transfer responsibility from those they wish to protect, and attach it to those they wish to attack. And David Frum in a later tweet asks the very good question: What collective responsibility does Los Angeles have for the murder of Robert F. Kennedy?
Saturday, November 16, 2013
What kind of disaster is Obamacare?
This kind:
@HealthDotGov The Hindenburg airlifting the Titanic onto Chernobyl
— Michael Stephenson (@mcsadapted) November 17, 2013
Monday, November 11, 2013
Happy Veterans Day to all veterans
I don't know of a better tribute than this video, which I've posted here in years past.
And getta loada: Google put up an honest-to-goodness patriotic doodle for the day!
And getta loada: Google put up an honest-to-goodness patriotic doodle for the day!
Wednesday, November 06, 2013
The 5% who are losing their health insurance due to Obamacare
Perhaps the luckless 5% are just an opening wedge in a broader takeover of healthcare further down the road. I'm not implying a conspiracy, so much as I'm observing that water will erode terrain that has been previously softened. For the "disruption" that attends every extension of government into the insurance and healthcare industries, the remaining patches of the free market will be blamed, and "solutions" will need to be "implemented." Drip, drip, drip...
The uproar is all the greater since the affected people included so many free-lance journalists, I'll bet.
The uproar is all the greater since the affected people included so many free-lance journalists, I'll bet.
Saturday, November 02, 2013
Jesse Jackson speaks at Furman University
It barely merits comment at this late date in his career: Jesse Jackson gives a speech full of calumnies and rhymes to a self-flaggelating white liberal audience who lap it up, to prove to themselves their state of political grace. Nothing new, right? Right. Nothing to see, move along...except for this: Somebody at Weasel Zippers came up with a zinger of a lede for their blog post on the event.
But that is the opposite of true. As anyone could find out in fewer than two clicks, Furman University is 90% white and mostly upper-class. Jackson was still in friendly territory, since the students were very young and therefore mostly very liberal. But there's no excuse for posting such a howler expecting no one to notice.
But that is the opposite of true. As anyone could find out in fewer than two clicks, Furman University is 90% white and mostly upper-class. Jackson was still in friendly territory, since the students were very young and therefore mostly very liberal. But there's no excuse for posting such a howler expecting no one to notice.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Obamacare disillusionment as selected from Twitter
@andersoncooper Rube.
— Bruce Thompson (@BruceThompson51) October 30, 2013
FACT: unintended consequences are unintended. MT @vj44 FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans.
— Grave-id Boo-rge (@iowahawkblog) October 29, 2013
So far, the site has cost about $100,000 per line of code. That's pretty normal, right?
— HealthCareDotGov (@HealthDotGov) November 1, 2013
Please help us. If we don't get this site running, we'll get the worst punishment a government employee can get: Time off with pay.
— HealthCareDotGov (@HealthDotGov) October 31, 2013
If you like your candy, you can keep your candy. I'm sorry, your current bag plan has too many Snickers. *snatch* #Candycare
— Grave-id Boo-rge (@iowahawkblog) October 31, 2013
If you like your cable package, you can keep it. PERIOD. Ooh, I see you don't have mandatory Oprah. That'll be $8k/month. #Obamacable
— Grave-id Boo-rge (@iowahawkblog) October 29, 2013
Monday, October 28, 2013
Friday, October 18, 2013
Overstatement does not help one's cause--quite the opposite!
Badgers in Britain are being culled because of fears that they are spreading disease to cattle. Animal activists disagree and have been mounting an online campaign against the cull. All fine and well. But overselling the cause by a too-strong analogy...well, that's worse than 9/11!
My campaign to save the badgers? It's like the fight to end slavery @DrBrianMay http://t.co/LzvTuISIph
— BrianMayCom (@brianmaycom) October 18, 2013
Saturday, October 05, 2013
Report: SEALS hit Al-Shabab in Somalia, kill leader
An American Navy Seal team carried out a raid on a southern Somalian coastal town on Saturday, targeting a senior leader of the militant al-Shabaab group, which was behind last month's Kenyan mall shootings.
The New York Times quoted a US security official as saying that the target was believed to have been killed, although that had not yet been confirmed.
The raid hit a two-storey house close to the beach in the town of Barawe, an al-Shabaab stronghold, in the lower Shabelle region, some 150 miles south of Mogadishu. It is the same town where US navy commandos killed a senior al-Qaida member four years ago.
Good! We need a win against these vipers. It's especially fitting that it occurs on the 20th anniversary of the Black Hawk Down battle, when the people we came to rescue from famine dragged our dead soldiers through the streets. Forty-eight hour rule and everything, but if we've managed to hit the slithering jihadist Islamist filth hard and accurately, that's huge. And I hope the Kenyans are paying attention, as they were embarrassed to have their soldiers exposed as mere looting bullyboys.
I approve getting back pay for the SEAL team, once the shutdown is over!
The New York Times quoted a US security official as saying that the target was believed to have been killed, although that had not yet been confirmed.
The raid hit a two-storey house close to the beach in the town of Barawe, an al-Shabaab stronghold, in the lower Shabelle region, some 150 miles south of Mogadishu. It is the same town where US navy commandos killed a senior al-Qaida member four years ago.
Good! We need a win against these vipers. It's especially fitting that it occurs on the 20th anniversary of the Black Hawk Down battle, when the people we came to rescue from famine dragged our dead soldiers through the streets. Forty-eight hour rule and everything, but if we've managed to hit the slithering jihadist Islamist filth hard and accurately, that's huge. And I hope the Kenyans are paying attention, as they were embarrassed to have their soldiers exposed as mere looting bullyboys.
I approve getting back pay for the SEAL team, once the shutdown is over!
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Some Muslims celebrating WestgateNairobi attack in Arabic on Twitter
Follow this hashtag, and use google.translate.com to translate: #عملية_نيروبي If you use Chrome, it will try to translate automatically, but may not succeed. God bless Kenya!
More notable Tweets regarding the Westgate Mall jihadist attack
A woman posts the last pic of her & her friend before the jihadists struck.
Possibly a death in real time over social media? No, another twitterer said that she was safe at home, several hours later.
The spirit of Kenya.
The President of Kenya suffered loss.
Took this just few mins before she was brutally taken away along with her unborn baby... Our Ruhila's gone. pic.twitter.com/9rjuwVhgFk
— ƸӜƷ Kamal Kaur ƸӜƷ (@kamz26) September 22, 2013
Possibly a death in real time over social media? No, another twitterer said that she was safe at home, several hours later.
She posted these tweets from within #Westgate...she hasnt tweeted since that last tweet pic.twitter.com/Ij7yFap6xK
— Henry Okelue (@4eyedmonk) September 22, 2013
The spirit of Kenya.
"The blood banks in #Kenya are full." Via @Aljazeera_TV Now that's something to cheer about in this sordid sad story. #westgate
— Chukwuemeka (@Emeka1968) September 22, 2013
The President of Kenya suffered loss.
#PresidentKenyatta: I lost my nephew and his fiancée. We have lost people dear to us. I share in the pain with the rest of Kenya #Westgate"
— Gisubizo Kirenga (@KirengaRichard) September 22, 2013
The Westgate Mall terrorist attack on twitter
Some random tweets I pulled, which caught my eye.
A hero died protecting children.
Kenya's Muslims denounce the attack.
A blow to the world of African arts.
Terror follows a Somali to Nairobi.
NYT photographer was on the job when attack happened.
Israelis reportedly joining in. Hope they include Falashas, who will deal retributive justice to the jihadists.
And African politics intrude even in this nightmare.
A hero died protecting children.
Vimal Shah lost his brother who was shielding kids at #WestGate Another hero without a doubt
— Dennis Itumbi (@OleItumbi) September 22, 2013
Kenya's Muslims denounce the attack.
#Kenya The Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims issue statement condemning #Westgate attack. pic.twitter.com/e7ZwqsyduY
— digitaldjeli (@digitaldjeli) September 22, 2013
A blow to the world of African arts.
Kofi Awoonor, one of Africa's greatest poets, killed in Nairobi terror attack: http://t.co/g7f0qiCFQ1
— sanjeevsanyal (@sanjeevsanyal) September 22, 2013
Terror follows a Somali to Nairobi.
On @nprweekend Gregory Warner reports that a Somali Muslim killed in #westgate had come to Kenya fleeing Shabab at home.
— Larry Kaplow (@larrykaplow) September 22, 2013
NYT photographer was on the job when attack happened.
When a terrorist attack started at a Nairobi mall today, NYT's @TylerHicksPhoto was next door: http://t.co/LdgPMCE6Mq
— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 21, 2013
Israelis reportedly joining in. Hope they include Falashas, who will deal retributive justice to the jihadists.
Israeli special forces have joined Kenyan troops fighting inside the #Westgate mall, security source tells @AFP
— AFP Africa (@AFPAfrica) September 22, 2013
And African politics intrude even in this nightmare.
Reuters reports Kenya's Deputy President William Ruto has requested his #ICC trial be adjourned for him to deal with the #Westgate attack
— Africa Review (@africareview) September 22, 2013
Saturday, September 21, 2013
"Islam is a religion of peace! These terrorists are not real Muslims!"
These sentiments are already making the rounds in response to the al-Shabaab attack on Westgate mall in Nairobi, Kenya. My stock answer is this: "No one is in charge of Islam. Whatever Muslims do in the name of Islam, that's what Islam is. The tree is known by its fruit."
Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi Kenya
I visited Kenya years ago, in college, and my heart dies a little whenever jihadists attack that wonderful country. I was in the embassy some years before it was blown up, I was on the same beach as the lodge that was blown up. Savages...If you have a twitter feed go to #westgate and follow journalist Daniel Howden. Watch streaming Kenyan TV here: http://www.ntv.co.ke/live/
Saturday, September 07, 2013
In which I callously refrain from being moved to tears by the awfulness in Syria
NB: This is a word-for-word recycling of a post about Congo, from a couple of years back. It applies nicely here.
Yes, it's terrible. But I saw this show 20 years ago, with all the heart-rending images of Somalia. They launched a series of events culminating with our dead soldiers being dragged through the streets by the people they came to save. But proggs don't care. Why should the Left's Third World darlings du jour die, when American military can die instead? Proggs only support foreign intervention if there is no material American interest at stake. Their attitude towards the soldiers is "with my brains and your brawn, what a wonderful world we can make!" There are any number of two-syllable retorts to arrogance like that, of which the most printable is "No, thanks".
Yes, it's terrible. But I saw this show 20 years ago, with all the heart-rending images of Somalia. They launched a series of events culminating with our dead soldiers being dragged through the streets by the people they came to save. But proggs don't care. Why should the Left's Third World darlings du jour die, when American military can die instead? Proggs only support foreign intervention if there is no material American interest at stake. Their attitude towards the soldiers is "with my brains and your brawn, what a wonderful world we can make!" There are any number of two-syllable retorts to arrogance like that, of which the most printable is "No, thanks".
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
The Blasphemy Police
The Blasphemy Police
"There are no jokes in Islam," pronounced the Ayatollah Khomeini, and so, in a bawdy Hogarthian society endlessly hooting at everyone from the Queen down, Islam uniquely is no laughing matter.
"There are no jokes in Islam," pronounced the Ayatollah Khomeini, and so, in a bawdy Hogarthian society endlessly hooting at everyone from the Queen down, Islam uniquely is no laughing matter.
Sunday, September 01, 2013
Labor Day Weekend ADHD linklets -- Mostly Syrian edition
Congressman blasts Obama for involving Congress in Syria mess.
“How is it supposed to work? How are we meant to furnish machine guns and anti-tank weapons to one set of opposition forces, without them ending up in the hands of men like the al Qaida-affiliated thugs who executed a child for telling a joke?"
Despite a 'graph that's too forgiving of Iran, this is a good explication of what's what in Syria.
Remember Kevin Sites, the embed journalist who ten years ago reported a soldier for shooting an enemy that Sites did not feel was a threat? He's a professor in Hong Kong now, and still doing foreign reportage from Afghanistan.
I bleed for this?
“How is it supposed to work? How are we meant to furnish machine guns and anti-tank weapons to one set of opposition forces, without them ending up in the hands of men like the al Qaida-affiliated thugs who executed a child for telling a joke?"
Despite a 'graph that's too forgiving of Iran, this is a good explication of what's what in Syria.
Remember Kevin Sites, the embed journalist who ten years ago reported a soldier for shooting an enemy that Sites did not feel was a threat? He's a professor in Hong Kong now, and still doing foreign reportage from Afghanistan.
I bleed for this?
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Two For Tuesday
Three black teens in Oklahoma gunned down a white jogger to relieve their boredom. The jogger, a baseball player & exchange student, is Australian, so instead of being a two day story in The Oklahoman it's worldwide news. Meanwhile, in Georgia, there was a would-be school shooter, probably yet another white nutjob in tac gear, who fortunately did not hurt anyone before the police nabbed him. So, we have Two-For-Tuesday: a crime in Oklahoma that snugly fits one prevalent pattern and stereotype, and a crime in Georgia that fits another. The internet might disappear up its own rectum by the end of the week!
Friday, August 09, 2013
Monday, August 05, 2013
Detroit--what happened?
Detroit's recent bankruptcy and Charlie LeDuff's book Detroit: An American Autopsy got me thinking. There is no one culprit for Detroit's immolation. The automobile encouraged people to spread out of the cities--including out of Detroit. Competition from Japan and Europe cut into Big Three market share, who fled to southern states to evade unionized labor costs. Detroit was never going to operate forever at a fever pitch as it was in 1950. As a one-industry town, it was as vulnerable as those silver mining ghost towns out West. The solution would have been to bring the local economy in for a soft landing, trying to diversify and deflect the coming blow. This pessimistic approach would have been a political impossibility in the boom years of the Sixties, even if city politicians had been visionary enough to perceive it. Segregation festered for decades and the '65 riots decided the issue: whites fled, and blacks turned the city government into a banana republic, with politicians money-favoring cronies, pastors getting rich on grants for their phony-baloney "block projects", and funding for infrastructure and services going into the playahs' pockets. One possible thing to do now, beyond gaping at the ruins, is to sell off the blighted neighborhoods to the urban farmers. Let the locavore hipsters buy their produce, and if they're successful let it expand into regional agri-business. Or just bulldoze the entirety and let the prairie come back.
Sunday, August 04, 2013
Against the misuse of "porn"
The word, that is. Although I know it is useless to protest against trends in language, I still want to raise my feeble voice against the mainstreaming of the word porn in everyday usage, as a synonym for anything that is enjoyable to view. This perfectly harmless and rather enjoyable photo spread of creative bookshelves is entitled Bookshelf Porn. Why? To attract internet traffic, of course. But such usage represents a degradation of language, a smashing of detail, nuance and accuracy, in the name of maximum (and thereafter decreasing) impact. Language shapes and is shaped by culture, certainly--Normal is just a setting on the washing machine, and Sinful is just a word on the dessert menu nowadays. But what is being lost seems to be worthy of preservation. The Presbyterian writer Frederick Buechner said that "Lust is the craving for salt of a man who is dying of thirst." This dessication of spirit is reflected in the language, when porn--joyless, loveless, stage-lit, rubber-sheathed, mercenary porn--is used as a synonym for honestly rewarding delight.
Friday, August 02, 2013
Friday Night ADHD Linklets
Bruce Sterling: "If Snowden had gotten things his own way, he’d be writing earnest op-ed editorials in Hong Kong now, in English, while dining on Kung Pao Chicken. It’s some darkly modern act of crooked fate that has directed Edward Snowden to Moscow, arriving there as the NSA’s Solzhenitsyn, the up-tempo, digital version of a conscience-driven dissident defector."
Victor Davis Hanson assumed that an invitation to racial dialog was sincere--aftermath summarized here, along with related reactions. If the ground rules of a conversation constrain one side to pretend that they do not see, hear and know what they in fact do see, hear and know, the ensuing conversation may be quite balletic, but it won't be honest. As Voltaire famously said, the great consolation in life is to say precisely what one thinks.
Will Detroit's splendid art collection become a bankruptcy casualty?
You can learn about loss just as effectively from a laser gun as you can from an unsuccessful affair in Paris.
“Your help is hurting.” More to the point: Helping people is good. Making pets of them is bad.
Victor Davis Hanson assumed that an invitation to racial dialog was sincere--aftermath summarized here, along with related reactions. If the ground rules of a conversation constrain one side to pretend that they do not see, hear and know what they in fact do see, hear and know, the ensuing conversation may be quite balletic, but it won't be honest. As Voltaire famously said, the great consolation in life is to say precisely what one thinks.
Will Detroit's splendid art collection become a bankruptcy casualty?
You can learn about loss just as effectively from a laser gun as you can from an unsuccessful affair in Paris.
“Your help is hurting.” More to the point: Helping people is good. Making pets of them is bad.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Trayvon Martin demonstrations
Why are these demonstrations happening? Why don't the demonstrators accept the verdict of the jury? This is why, IMO:
Yes, young black men use the N-word among themselves ad nauseam--but you can't.
Yes, young black men kill each other up all day every day all over the country--but you can't.
Why? Because to many of these people you, if you are white, are the enemy, into whom the many undoubted ills of Black America are projected. This slaying is a bitter reminder of times past, when it was white people regularly killing young black men without a second thought and little fear of consequences. Nevermind that it is now other young black men who hold black life cheaply. The demonstrators don't look past the symbolism, the imagery--which admittedly is potent indeed. The disconnect between the jury's verdict and the demonstrators' anger tracks the disconnect between justice and so-called racial justice.
My congratulations to the court and jury for arriving at IMO the correct verdict without fear or favor.
Yes, young black men use the N-word among themselves ad nauseam--but you can't.
Yes, young black men kill each other up all day every day all over the country--but you can't.
Why? Because to many of these people you, if you are white, are the enemy, into whom the many undoubted ills of Black America are projected. This slaying is a bitter reminder of times past, when it was white people regularly killing young black men without a second thought and little fear of consequences. Nevermind that it is now other young black men who hold black life cheaply. The demonstrators don't look past the symbolism, the imagery--which admittedly is potent indeed. The disconnect between the jury's verdict and the demonstrators' anger tracks the disconnect between justice and so-called racial justice.
My congratulations to the court and jury for arriving at IMO the correct verdict without fear or favor.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Against the creeping galloping theorization of human relations
Five decades? Six? Seven? How long should it take to understand that the life of a community cannot be reduced to politics or wholly encompassed by government? The time in which we live has unfathomable depths beneath it. Our age is a mere film on the surface of time.
--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, November 1916
Sunday, July 14, 2013
George Zimmerman verdict: my reaction
For months I've spared you, but here are my thoughts on the case. If they are not the most vacuous such you read today, then it won't be a total waste, I suppose.
I believe the verdict was just. Trayvon Martin was committing no crime and had a right to be in the neighborhood. But if I or any of my family gets assaulted by a hotheaded young man who is in a fury for being "dissed", then yeah: self-defense is a basic human right, open and shut. I like to think that I would feel the same way no matter the races of the parties involved.
At the same time, I do suspect that things would have developed differently had Zimmerman ended up dead, and Martin left to explain himself to the police. (Assuming he didn't run away & his family & friends shield him with omerta) Trayvon would have been arrested immediately & charged with murder, later knocked down to manslaughter or some such. A conviction would have been almost certain. And the whole thing would have been a two-day story in the Orlando Sentinel.
Thomas Sowell once posited a distinction between justice and "cosmic justice". This trial could not have righted the historic wrongs suffered by American blacks, nor could have any other trial. It was a mistake to have expected such a thing, to have freighted the case with so much baggage--so much irrelevant baggage. But popular passions have a way of washing away such nice sharp distinctions of the law. That's why we have a rule of law, and jury trials.
Tough case! I can see all sides. I can see the resentment of the young man being profiled. I can see the resentment of the citizen fed up with crime plaguing his neighborhood. I can see the fear of the parents, worried that one slip by their teen children will result in jail or worse. And I can see the fear of people imagining themselves attacked by feral street thugs--especially after last summer's highly publicized rash of black flash mob violence ("White Girl Bleed A Lot"). If I'm held to it, though, I would have to find for the defendant and the principle of self defense.
Most every commentator I've seen has been citing other cases, to make points of cheap parallelism or inconsistency. I'm no better so here's mine: This is a case from the end of the 19th Century. A church-going, law-abiding black farmer was escorting his elderly parents home from church on Christmas Eve. He was beset by three drunk young white men, possibly dressed up as KKK. They had been making trouble in town, until sent away by the police. They followed him home, shot off fireworks in front of his house, and threatened to shoot his dog. He came out of his house into the road and knifed two of them, killing one. Verdict: guilty of murder, mostly based on the testimony of the surviving stabbing victim, sustained on appeal. Make of it what you will...
Sidebar: the expectations of riots was an insult to the black community--no matter who was predicting them.
I believe the verdict was just. Trayvon Martin was committing no crime and had a right to be in the neighborhood. But if I or any of my family gets assaulted by a hotheaded young man who is in a fury for being "dissed", then yeah: self-defense is a basic human right, open and shut. I like to think that I would feel the same way no matter the races of the parties involved.
At the same time, I do suspect that things would have developed differently had Zimmerman ended up dead, and Martin left to explain himself to the police. (Assuming he didn't run away & his family & friends shield him with omerta) Trayvon would have been arrested immediately & charged with murder, later knocked down to manslaughter or some such. A conviction would have been almost certain. And the whole thing would have been a two-day story in the Orlando Sentinel.
Thomas Sowell once posited a distinction between justice and "cosmic justice". This trial could not have righted the historic wrongs suffered by American blacks, nor could have any other trial. It was a mistake to have expected such a thing, to have freighted the case with so much baggage--so much irrelevant baggage. But popular passions have a way of washing away such nice sharp distinctions of the law. That's why we have a rule of law, and jury trials.
Tough case! I can see all sides. I can see the resentment of the young man being profiled. I can see the resentment of the citizen fed up with crime plaguing his neighborhood. I can see the fear of the parents, worried that one slip by their teen children will result in jail or worse. And I can see the fear of people imagining themselves attacked by feral street thugs--especially after last summer's highly publicized rash of black flash mob violence ("White Girl Bleed A Lot"). If I'm held to it, though, I would have to find for the defendant and the principle of self defense.
Most every commentator I've seen has been citing other cases, to make points of cheap parallelism or inconsistency. I'm no better so here's mine: This is a case from the end of the 19th Century. A church-going, law-abiding black farmer was escorting his elderly parents home from church on Christmas Eve. He was beset by three drunk young white men, possibly dressed up as KKK. They had been making trouble in town, until sent away by the police. They followed him home, shot off fireworks in front of his house, and threatened to shoot his dog. He came out of his house into the road and knifed two of them, killing one. Verdict: guilty of murder, mostly based on the testimony of the surviving stabbing victim, sustained on appeal. Make of it what you will...
Sidebar: the expectations of riots was an insult to the black community--no matter who was predicting them.
Thursday, July 04, 2013
Happy Fourth of July!
Somewhere out there, a leftist columnist has penned an anti-American screed, happens every Fourth. Let this quote by David Mamet be my answer:
But examine our local haters of democracy, and of capitalism, the American left and their foreign comrades come a-visiting to tell us our faults. They are here not because we are the Great Satan, but because here they are free to speak. And you will note that when they write they copyright their books, and buy goods with the proceeds.
But examine our local haters of democracy, and of capitalism, the American left and their foreign comrades come a-visiting to tell us our faults. They are here not because we are the Great Satan, but because here they are free to speak. And you will note that when they write they copyright their books, and buy goods with the proceeds.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
"Gay marriage advocates won the legal war because they first won the culture war."
That's about the size of it. As I said earlier this year:
We'll see. We've heard the wheels of history creak today, no doubt. Now we'll await the ramifications, which will probably play out long after we're gone.
Well, we're well on our way into unknown waters now. If mere shreds of legislation and judicial hair-splitting are all that's keeping legal same-sex marriage from becoming a reality, then society is surely ready for it.
But as I said, the waters are unknown. As the writer Donald Kingsbury said, Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back. Sometimes the problem has mutated or disappeared. Often it is still there as strong as it ever was. Society's insistence on monogamous, lifelong, opposite sex marriage was a solution to a problem which apparently we no longer remember. Will it now come back, in some guise or other?
We'll see. We've heard the wheels of history creak today, no doubt. Now we'll await the ramifications, which will probably play out long after we're gone.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Happy Birthday Antoni Gaudi
Google's doodle today is for the birthday of Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. For the occasion, I offer an Amazon review I did years ago of Gaudi Of Barcelona:
Antoni Gaudi stayed out of pigeonholes in a big way. His work defies analogy, let alone description. Let's see: Ice cream castles? No. Victorian/Edwardian psychedelia? Maybe, kinda sorta. A Beaux-Arts H. R. Giger? His work does have that certain sinuosity to it, though it contains nothing of the macabre. It's like he was plunked down in 19th century Barcelona from some future era. One can only imagine what he could have done with modern building materials.
This book is a photodocumentary of his most notable work in Barcelona, although one building out in the countryside is included. The pictures are well composed and shot, and the text, an adaptation of a Spanish text, is interesting and clear.
Architectural surprises and oxymorons abound in these pictures. A classical caryatid is made out of small gray stones. The frame of a stained glass window turns out to be made out of knitting needles. The double doors of a courtyard open into a room, the entrance to which is obstructed by twin pink and yellow columns. Chimneys and ventilators are turned into colorful cones that wouldn't be out of place in the Hall of the Elves in Rock City, Tennessee. And the gateway to a park looks like nothing so much as a taffy-puller in action. And to think that all this expressiveness was built just one generation before the plague of Glass Boxes spread from northern Europe.
The appearance of Gaudi's buildings and decorative designs is striking enough for the casual viewer. But the details of how he came up with some of these designs is just as amazing. For one crypt, he dispensed with mathematical calculation altogether, instead working out the stress loads with a primitive, time-consuming system of ropes and sacks of buckshot. He was in fact so ferociously individualistic that it is amazing that he found enough patronage to keep him in work. Thanks to his open-minded patrons, most importantly Eusebi Guell, he was free to let his talents and imagination rip. Thanks also to his nationality--the English would have pegged him as an eccentric and consigned him to country houses. The French would have gone into ecstasies of theorizing, but would have been mindful of how little his work promoted "La Gloire". And as for Germany, who could imagine Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm living in ice cream palaces? But the Barcelona authorities were tractable enough to let him get away with flouting not only criticism but the very building codes. Perhaps they sensed that Gaudi was a manifestation of the revival the city was then enjoying.
This is an attractive book about a lone genius who put his stamp on his city; who followed his own drummer, sometimes right over the cliff, but always without hesitation.
Friday, June 14, 2013
Victims of Communism
Sixth Annual dedication of the Victims Of Communism memorial. Go ahead and watch all forty minutes--it's not like you're going to learn this stuff in school.
Forget MOOCs--Let's Use MOOA
Forget MOOCs--Let's Use MOOA A smart fellow has figured out how to thin out university bureaucrats. Maybe college will be affordable again, once mine become that age!
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Tuesday morning ADHD linklets
Nazi official's diary is found in Buffalo New York.
Up til now there have been undiscovered wildfires in the Amazon rainforest. Wonder how many of them are slash-and-burn farm clearances.
Searching for love and friendship in a hook-up culture.
Tiny galaxy found orbiting Milky Way.
Can lack of trees kill you faster?
Is a family nowadays merely any group of people who for the moment share sweet feelings and a refrigerator? It says here that yes it is.
Campus diversity, yes!--but not if you are Asian or Jewish. But university diversicrats get to think wonderful things about themselves, as they commute from their gated neighborhoods in affluent super-zips.
Up til now there have been undiscovered wildfires in the Amazon rainforest. Wonder how many of them are slash-and-burn farm clearances.
Searching for love and friendship in a hook-up culture.
Tiny galaxy found orbiting Milky Way.
Can lack of trees kill you faster?
Is a family nowadays merely any group of people who for the moment share sweet feelings and a refrigerator? It says here that yes it is.
Campus diversity, yes!--but not if you are Asian or Jewish. But university diversicrats get to think wonderful things about themselves, as they commute from their gated neighborhoods in affluent super-zips.
Monday, June 10, 2013
When my abuser is welcome at the table, I am not.
"Tolerance does not...do anything, embrace anyone, champion any issue. It wipes the notes off the score of life and replaces them with one long bar of rest. It does not attack error, it does not champion truth, it does not hate evil, it does not love good." -- Walter Farrell, "The Looking Glass"
When my abuser is welcome at the table, I am not. Here's an article over at Patheos religion blog, about the limits or at least the difficulties of forgiveness. The progressive Christianity she describes is more "beyondist" than Christian, IYAM. Beyondism is the tactic some leftists have of proclaiming themselves to be "beyond" the categories of Right and Left. The people she describes seem not to be great-hearted so much as they simply don't care, can't be bothered to make any value judgments.
But forgiveness and justice are not the same thing. Pope John Paul the Great forgave his would-be assassin, but he didn't ask for him to be let out of prison. Of course the primary benefit of forgiveness, if one doesn't wish to maintain or resume a relationship with the offender, is to end the gnawing away of one's own wellbeing. But that choice must come of one's own free will--not just because that's what all the cool kids are doing.
When my abuser is welcome at the table, I am not. Here's an article over at Patheos religion blog, about the limits or at least the difficulties of forgiveness. The progressive Christianity she describes is more "beyondist" than Christian, IYAM. Beyondism is the tactic some leftists have of proclaiming themselves to be "beyond" the categories of Right and Left. The people she describes seem not to be great-hearted so much as they simply don't care, can't be bothered to make any value judgments.
But forgiveness and justice are not the same thing. Pope John Paul the Great forgave his would-be assassin, but he didn't ask for him to be let out of prison. Of course the primary benefit of forgiveness, if one doesn't wish to maintain or resume a relationship with the offender, is to end the gnawing away of one's own wellbeing. But that choice must come of one's own free will--not just because that's what all the cool kids are doing.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Democrats Keep Calling Moore, Oklahoma 'Monroe'
But conservatives are still idiots for not knowing the capital of Beki-beki-beki-bekistan. Via The Jawa Report
Monday, May 27, 2013
Breaking: 89 Year-Old British Veteran Vows to Not Move From War Memorial Until Islam Graffiti Is Removed
Old hero shouldn't have to put up with this. Neither should anyone else.
Breaking: 89 Year-Old British Veteran Vows to Not Move From War Memorial Until Islam Graffiti Is Removed
Breaking: 89 Year-Old British Veteran Vows to Not Move From War Memorial Until Islam Graffiti Is Removed
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Stockholm rioting continues for fifth night
Now what did Sweden, the ultimate First World welfare state, possibly do or fail to do, to "enrage" these "immigrant" "youths"? Other than be slow in submitting to their dominance in those sections of the capital city?
It's hard to fight to save civilization, when deracinated relativists forbid everyone from even naming the enemy. The go-to guy for more on this is likely to be the multi-lingual expatriate writer Bruce Bawer. His website is very 1995-ish, but watch his Front Page column, it'll likely be where he'll publish next.
It's hard to fight to save civilization, when deracinated relativists forbid everyone from even naming the enemy. The go-to guy for more on this is likely to be the multi-lingual expatriate writer Bruce Bawer. His website is very 1995-ish, but watch his Front Page column, it'll likely be where he'll publish next.
Monday, May 20, 2013
RIP Ray Manzarek
The piano break in L.A. Woman is my favorite bit in all of The Doors' music. RIP, farewell, & rock on...
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
IRS delayed approval of Tea Party groups for months
This is the same IRS that used to actively partner with ACORN, remember.
Benghazi
The hearings to me are a big nothing-burger, highlighting some egregious muddle and CYA shenanigans certainly, but nothing more than that. The primary purpose seems to be to ding up Hillary Clinton in advance of '16, with a side view to making gains in '14. And before you get perturbed, I'll just say that I thought the very same thing about the 9/11 Commission hearings, as they were directed against the Republicans at the time.
Tuesday, May 07, 2013
Sunday, May 05, 2013
CDC Reports Suicide Rate Rising Among Middle-Aged Americans
Sad to hear of people taking such a permanent solution to what were surely temporary problems. "The world breaks everyone", no need to feel singled out!
Myself, I take strength from my centuries of farming ancestors. I've never lived on a farm, having grown up in small town middle-class comfort. But I'm still close enough to the land to still feel it in my bones, how my forebears had to tough out tough times, be thankful for small blessings, keep a simple faith, and be optimistic because there was no point in being anything else. I can't drawn anyone a map, but I can tell them that other people have gotten over these mountains before them.
Myself, I take strength from my centuries of farming ancestors. I've never lived on a farm, having grown up in small town middle-class comfort. But I'm still close enough to the land to still feel it in my bones, how my forebears had to tough out tough times, be thankful for small blessings, keep a simple faith, and be optimistic because there was no point in being anything else. I can't drawn anyone a map, but I can tell them that other people have gotten over these mountains before them.
Niall Ferguson attributes Keynes' economics to his homosexuality, childlessness
Pretty insensitive comment, sure. But it's true that Keynes' policies have in practice led us to party away the inheritance built up by our predecessors, and bill the deficits to posterity and the Chinese. Our grandchildren will have little to thank us for, when they inherit the husk of an economy we are leaving them...
Israel strikes targets inside Syria again
I can already imagine the Left's reactions without even reading their comments. Poison gas possibly used in civil war between murderous dictator and terrorist insurgents? The U.S. has a moral obligation to go in and Do Something. Jews defend themselves from poison gas before it can be used on them? U.S. must punish them; they're the biggest villains in the world!
The anti-semitic Left is lost inside a vast morality inversion.
The anti-semitic Left is lost inside a vast morality inversion.
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
Setback for science education in Louisiana
Young Zack Kopplin failed to convinced the state legislature to repeal the law that allows tax money to fund private schools that teach creationism. Too bad, as creationism seems to be surging at the moment. The check that the Kitzmiller decision inflicted on its progress has worn off. But hats off to Mr. Kopplin, the college sophomore who's taking the fight for science education further than many of his elders have the courage to do. Here's an interview clip of him with Bill Moyers:
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