Author: VD

Next week’s reading is Chapter Five. The quiz for it will be posted on Saturday, July 18th.

Men, don’t call yourselves feminists. You’ll regret the consequences.

True, lots of women won’t use the “f-word” because of the negative associations and, arguably, eradicating the “I’m not a feminist, but…” plague among womenfolk is more important than getting the menfolk on board. But for me, personally, if a guy I dated insisted he was not a feminist and refused to identify at all with that label? Well, I’d probably dump him.

This is a hypothetical that really isn’t worth worrying about. First, no man with above-average intelligence who isn’t a gamma male would ever date a feminist in the first place. Second, and probably more important, no man who is attracted to pretty women is even likely to notice a feminist in the first place. One very seldom finds a feminist who rates so much as a 5/10 on the pretty meter. Needless to say, the writer above is no exception. I’m sure all you non-feminist men are shedding tears and committing emotional seppuku at the thought of being forever off this future cat-collector’s list.

If feminists weren’t so disturbingly unattractive to men, they wouldn’t fall so readily for the equalitarian idiocy in the first place. At least, they would require the usual 12-16 years of propaganda that normal women do to obtain even a modicum of mindless equalitarianism. Think about it. What beautiful woman, who has spent her formative years bearing the brunt of instant hatred from most of the girls and women she encounters, is going to give any credibility whatsoever to the basic concept of equality? Equality doesn’t exist in any material, legal, or philosophical sense, and only those who resent the short hand they were dealt see any benefit in propagating the myth.

It’s been said that every twenty years, civilization is invaded by a new set of barbarians that require taming. Ironically, a day after posting about the attack of the mad teacher – he was provoked, as some commenters imagined, although hardly in a manner that could justify bashing someone’s skull in with a weight – I had my own run-in with a pack of six or seven little bastards at a water slide.

These boys were 13 or so and they were showing no respect for the civilized convention known as “waiting in line”. They kept pushing past all the smaller kids and the one or two women in line; when anyone protested one would plaintively claim that they were merely going ahead in order to join his mama. Ha very ha. They did this repeatedly, going up the stone steps and down the slide, until finally they attempted to pass me.

When I told them that there was a line and they could wait like everyone else, the two leaders just smirked and pushed past on either side of me. So, I reached out, grabbed each of them by the back of the neck,and physically placed them behind me on the step below, then turned around and repeated what I’d just said. One of them whined that I should calm down, although I hadn’t raised my voice at all, but he ceased his whining when I calmly explained to him that I was perfectly calm and that if, in fact, I was not calm, I would have already thrown him over the nearby fence to the ground a few meters below.

Based on the widened eyes of the two boys, this appeared to have the desired effect. I was just irritated enough with the little bastards that it’s possible they may have mistakenly perceived I was looking for an excuse to drop the hammer on them, which was not the case. Interestingly enough, the little pack elected to make that their final trip down the slide and they went off to pursue other activities at the park instead. A small victory for the forces of civilization, perhaps, but a victory nonetheless.

Reason #135: When they’re not trying to boff the students, the teachers are trying to kill them:

A science teacher was being questioned by police on suspicion of attempted murder today after a 14-year-old boy was left with serious head injuries after an alleged attack at his school. Peter Harvey, 49, is also being questioned about alleged assaults on two other pupils, believed to be a boy and a girl, also 14.

This also tends to belie the oft-heard, never-proven claim that teaching children science will somehow cause them to magicallyscientifically behave in a more rational manner.

Ambrose Pritchard-Evans is feeling a wee bit less sanguine these days:

Port statistics are revealing. They were a leading indicator before the production collapse in the Japan, Europe, and the US over the winter, and they may be telling us something again. Amrita Sen at Barclays Capital says the number of Baltic Dry ships waiting to berth — mostly in China and Australia — has begun to fall after peaking at 154 in mid-June. The Capesize Iron Ore Port Congestion Index (a new one for me, I must confess) is replicating the pattern seen a year ago just before the commodity boom tipped over.

At 3,100, the Baltic Dry Index is down more than 25 percent from 4,290 on June 3rd. This strikes me as being potentially more significant than all the happy talk and upwardly revised GDP numbers, especially since there’s little ability for speculators to bias the index with their expectations.

It strikes me that something just isn’t computing. The precipitous falls in shipping and steel production appear to be much greater than a mere 4 percent decline in GDP can possibly balance. I am beginning to get the impression that even if California is reduced to Mexican cannibals dwelling in hemp-built huts, the Bureau of Economic Analysis would report it as a modest decline in GDP with a recovery expected later in the year.

Hey, it happens….

Forget the poor guy who just lost his job. The real problem is the terrible pressure to provide for the family this now puts on his working wife!

When she first heard the news, “there was a sinking in the pit of my stomach — and tears,” she says. “It was just devastating. It’s completely outside your power, and now you’re responsible for the entire family,” says Janosek, who like many wives who work, brought in roughly one-third of the family’s income but is now the principal breadwinner. “You worry about losing everything. It’s just overwhelmingly scary — and there are no resources for spouses.” Janosek was able to increase her work hours, and her husband now has some contract work, which has helped — but it hardly solves the problem. “I am still angry about it,” she says.

Stories like this demonstrate what a complete crock the whole equality charade is. Why in the name of Betty Friedan should anyone feel any sympathy whatsoever for a married woman suddenly being handed the same responsibility borne by most married men throughout the entire history of civilization?

It’s rather like the classic joke about The New York Times headline about the world ending: Women and Minorities To Suffer Most.

From the World Economic Outlook: Preliminary Edition

OECD activity now looks to be approaching its nadir, following the deepest decline in post-war history. The ensuing recovery is likely to be both weak and fragile for some time. And the negative economic and social consequences of the crisis will be long-lasting. Yet, it could have been worse. Thanks to a strong economic policy effort an even darker scenario seems to have been avoided.

The next six months will make for a nice test of neo-Keynesian contra-cyclical doctrine. According to the same mainstream economists who didn’t see it coming in the first place, the various stimulus packages concocted by the US, EU, Japanese, and Chinese governments are just about to take effect and return the global economy to delicate, but definite growth. Needless to say, I don’t buy it, but we after the next few weeks of correction we should see another wave of positive emotion during the summer doldrums that will take us to the fall. That’s when it promises to get interesting.

It’s also worth noting something that everyone seems to have conveniently forgotten. Obama’s was the second stimulus package. The one presently under whispered discussion would be the third.

After lamenting the lack of recently deceased freak show coverage on this blog, Witrack wonders if I have any interest in the living versions:

Are you going to comment on Al Franken now being a United States Senator?

I don’t really have much to say about it, except that I recently received an email from Chad the Elder of the Fraters Libertas, who reminded me that I was sufficiently familiar with the fragile Minnesota psyche back in May 2004 to know that the ex-comedian’s candidacy was no laughing matter:

I’d like to luxuriate in the joys of what Jonah Goldberg calls Frankenfreude as Air America loses executives and misses payrolls. But that’s not possible now that Alice is bruiting about the idea of running for the Senate. In any other state, that might be laughable, but not in Minnesota. It’s the one state where he could actually win. Do the words “Gov. Jesse Ventura” ring a bell?

First, Minnesota is one of the most reliably leftist states in the country. Second, the Star & Sickle, otherwise known as the Star Tribune, already loves Alice to distraction. Third, never underestimate the desperate Minneapolitan appetite for celebrity. You can’t appreciate the meaning of trying too hard until you’ve read a local columnist hyperventilating over Minneapolis being compared to Des Moines instead of Paris. Fourth, Paul Wellstone. It could happen. And frankly, socionomics appears to predict it. I can’t think of anyone, short of the Lizard Queen herself, better suited to help that grand supercycle wave get rolling.

That last sentence is rather fortuitous, seeing as how it’s turned out to be Franken who gives the Senate Democrats a filibuster-proof majority, enabling Obama to torch the economy at will with an increasingly expansionary fiscal policy.