Author: VD

Zek asked for a list of my top ten non-fiction favorites. This is difficult, as I don’t read non-fiction in the same way that I read fiction, so it tends to sort of blur together in my mind. Plus, one has to fight the tendency to list the classics as a reflexive response.

But there are certain works that I turn to time and time again, sometimes because I am in search of insight and sometimes because I simply enjoy reading them. It’s a rather eclectic list; Spacebunny is encouraging me to try to put together a more organized one according to subject, but for now I’ll just eye a few well-worn favorites from my bookshelves. So, in no particular order:

Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

The Second World War, Winston Churchill

The History of Economic Analysis, Joseph Schumpeter.

Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia

The World of the Shining Prince, Ivan Morris

State and Revolution, Vladimir Lenin

The Cambridge Medieval History Series

Daily Life in Ancient Rome, Jerome Carcopino

Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley

A History of Warfare, John Keegan

Hmmm, there should be something covering medieval Italy here, and one covering medieval England as well, but there’s no single volume that stands out. I also laughed when I saw a book on the Spanish Armada, which blew my mind more than any book I’ve ever read.

Not because of the content, but because it was given to me on a birthday that was marked by a particularly Dionysian celebration. Things had wound down by 4 AM but I was still wide awake, so I decided to peruse one of my new books as I waited for the room to stop spinning. When the very first word on the first page that greeted me was my name, I snapped the book shut and wondered if my mind was significantly more impaired than had previously been my impression.

As it turned out, there was a gentleman involved in the historical proceedings from whom I am apparently descended. But at the time, well, let’s just say that an accidental tumble into an alternate universe was the most rational of my suppositions.

The Original Cyberpunk misses the obvious analogy whilst contemplating Twain and the bygone lecture tour:

It’s an interesting synergism. The lectures drove sales of the books; the books in turn expanded the audience for the lectures. Sadly, the lecture tour was a 19th century phenomenon and I doubt we will ever see its likes again. As far as I can tell a Twain lecture was a combination of one-man stage show (if you haven’t seen Hal Holbrook in Mark Twain Tonight!, you really should find a copy and watch it), two-hour standup comedy routine, and socio/political monologue.

I keep casting about for a contemporary analogue, and the closest I can come is talk radio. But even Twain didn’t have to come up with a different two-hour show five days a week! And somehow, I find it hard to believe that 60 years from now, some well-respected actor is going to be touring with “Rush Limbaugh Tonight!”

I would say that the contemporary analogue is the modern preacher/televangelist/self-actualization guru. Sure, the preachers accept “love offerings” instead of ticket sales and the more successful ones broadcast instead of travelling from city to city, but the basic feedback loop remains the same.

I don’t see how this will translate very well for the average fiction writer, but it helps explain the otherwise mysterious success of the Left Behind books, especially in light of the failure of other Christian fiction – including my own – to hit the bestseller lists. It’s interesting to note that an unusually high percentage of bestselling Christian books are penned by pastors to whom this feedback loop is applicable, while the pure writers like Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker seldom crack the top ten.

The answer, quite obviously, is for the OC to form a new cybertronic religion and begin selling books at his travelling “Release Your Inner Robot” symposium. Hey, it worked for Tony Robbins and L. Ron Hubbard.

So much for that much-ballyhooed removal of mercury from children’s vaccines:

At the end of last year, President Bush signed the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREPA), granting blanket immunity to pharmaceutical companies for vaccine-induced injuries. The measure is a carte blanche for industry, allowing it even to reintroduce mercury in vaccines that are currently clean, and under the behest of the World Health Organization, to continue shipping tainted vaccine to the “developing world.”….

It removes the right to due process and judicial review for persons injured by vaccines, thus granting a virtual license to kill. Under the new law, companies making vaccines can be grossly negligent and act with wanton recklessness and still escape liability as long as they can show that their misconduct wasn’t “willful.”

It is impossible to conceive of a lower standard for the drug companies or a higher burden of proof for injured parties.

The refusal of the drug companies to take responsibility for the products they produce, and the complicity of the highest levels of government in their refusal, will diminish public confidence in the entire US vaccination program…. The PREPA also preempts the laws of states like California that have passed legislation outlawing mercury in childhood vaccinations. Meanwhile, the CDC continues to send its henchmen into state legislatures around the country in attempts to abort measures banning mercury.

If vaccines were actually safe for children, then why is it necessary to excuse manufacturers from the the same liability for which manufacturers of every other consumer product are responsible? If vaccines were safe, why would it be necessary to forbid those who have demonstrably been injured by them from exercising what is supposed to be their unalienable right to due process of law?

The grassroots of the progressive left are hopelessly wrong about their prescriptions, advocating as they do more of the disease as its prospective cure. It is ironic that they nevertheless manage to correctly identify high-ranking Republicans here as fascist villians who are using claims of the collective good as an excuse to channel vast sums to their friends in the pharmaceutical industry. But if they think that Democrats would handle the situation any differently if they were in power, they are sadly mistaken.

Angelbeast expresses a degree of annoyance:

Forgive me for venting my frustration on you, but I’m finding you very long on pointing out the problems, but short on issuing forth viable solutions. If there are no viable solutions, why waste the time to vent? Why not just broker deals for nice houses in Beliz to those who see the coming sunami of doom ?

Or is there another reason you continue to point out the latest fallen brick from our nation’s spiritual wall? Are you trying to pull the last few out as firebrands from a fire? Do you even know why you post what you post?

While I am very sympathetic to Angelbeast’s point here, I take some issue with the notion that it is of no value to diagnose problems, regardless of whether or not one has a solution to offer. Considering how very few people currently agree with me with regards to the mere existence of the problems, still less their nature and extent, I don’t think that a continued focus on the problems is inappropriate.

While I have given a few solutions to various specific problems over the past few years, I find that I very much dislike the natural tendency of people to argue about solutions they find distasteful, especially when the solutions are largely theoretical anyhow. In any event, I believe that the larger problems we currently face are usually caused by the public and government reaction to perceived and pre-packaged crises, therefore the correct solution to most of these problems is to do nothing.

For example, the best short-term solution to the Iraqi problem is to knock off the heads of the various parties struggling for power and then pull out. The internecine strife will keep the Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and Iranians busy for at least three years and quite possibly more. The best long-term solution to the terrorism problem is to admit that there is no solution for it, nor will there ever be as long as the existence of the terrorists gives our government an excuse to do what it seeks most, expand. (Umberto Eco wrote an essay about the symbiotic nature of terrorists and supranational interests called Striking at the Heart of the State back in 1983, describing it as a natural biological consequence of multinational rule.) The only aspect of it that can reasonably expected to reduce the terrorist “risk” is addressing the immigration issue (intermediate-term) and the demographic issue (long-term). Just to give two examples, anyhow.

Do I know why I post what I post? Not always. I don’t even know why I write the columns I write most of the time. Next week could be anything from an overdue interview with Tucker Max – except I still haven’t sent him the questions – to a critique of Ricardo’s defense of free trade based on comparative advantage.

I don’t have any particular goals here except to perhaps persuade a few people to open their eyes to what is happening around them. If history moves on waves of mass human emotion as the evidence suggests is the case, then there is very little that any individual can do except to pay enough attention to avoid sitting where the next big wave is going to land. Libertarians are supposed to be idealists, but I feel more akin to Juvenal than Jefferson, not so much dreaming of a better world as providing mordant commentary on the last gasps of a murdered Republic.

Divorce is easier the second time around:

The modern “family issues” are actually about a century old. The first openly “pro-family” president was a Republican, Theodore Roosevelt. Between 1900 and about 1912, he wrote and spoke often, and eloquently, about the dangers of a rising divorce rate and a falling birth rate. He celebrated motherhood and fatherhood as the most important human tasks, and described the true marriage as “a partnership of the soul, the spirit and the mind, no less than of the body.” He blasted as “foes of our household” the birth control movement, equity feminism, eugenics, and liberal Christianity.

However, the Rough Rider was the only prominent Republican of his time to think and talk this way. The dominant wing of the GOP tilted in favor of the banks, the great industries, and–perhaps more surprisingly–the feminist movement. Indeed, as early as 1904, the National Association of Manufacturers had formed an alliance with the feminists, for they shared an interest in moving women out of their homes and into the paid labor market. When the feminists reorganized as the National Woman’s party in 1917, the manufacturers’ association apparently provided secret financial support. More openly, Republican leaders embraced the feminists’ proposed Equal Rights Amendment, first advanced in Congress in 1923. The GOP was also the first major party to endorse the ERA in its platform.

Social conservatives have been getting suckered by the Republican Party as long as I can remember, but this is what comes of putting your faith in government rather than the hearts of men. As Teddy Roosevelt was ultimately led to leave the Republican Party and openly oppose it, Christian conservatives will either find themselves following his example or finding themselves opposed to national sovereignty, individual freedom and the family.

It was interesting to note how the author brings up the same wage stagnation created by middle class women entering the work force en masse I have mentioned in the past. He approaches the matter from a different angle, but the result is the same. For a single 75k median wage earned by the husband, we have substituted two wages combining for that same amount, less the annual cost of child care and an additional commute. A fool’s trade-off, to be sure, but there is copious evidence that representative democracy is a system designed to take advantage of the short-sighted and the unwise.

Illinois decides that 13 years of indoctrination is insufficient:

By the time they start kindergarten, many children are already 18 months behind. That – along with studies showing that money invested when kids are 3 or 4 years old helps them graduate or keeps them out of jail – is one reason states are starting to take a much harder look at funding education before they get to kindergarten.

Last month, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) proposed an initiative that would make the state the first in the US to offer universal preschool to 3-year-olds.

They’ll barely be able to read or do math, and they’ll be useless for anything but mindless office servitude, but at least they’ll graduate from high school! The next step, obviously, will be universal college, in order to keep children safely ensconsced in their propaganda cocoons from three to twenty-three.

After this long pupation they will emerge at last into the light of the worker’s paradise as a pretty, pretty, red butterfly, and with about the same attention span and ability to think as the insect variety.

In case this is too subtle, let me spell it out for you. If you sentence your children to public school, regardless of how “excellent” your local one is supposed to be or how “wonderful” the teachers and the facilities are, you are an idiot. And not having an easy alternative because you’re a single parent or whatever doesn’t make you any less of an idiot, it just means your idiocy is dictated by circumstance instead of choice. Those circumstances may or may not be your fault, but it’s not as if a literal idiot asked to be born that way either.

I am growing increasingly unsympathetic towards my fellow Americans, Democrats and Republicans alike. This ploy by Illinois is only one of the many, many examples of how Americans so richly deserve what they are getting now and what they will be experiencing in the near future. Run to the man on the white horse; he will trample you with hooves shod with blood and iron and you will call it salvation.

At long last, my Treo has been returned to me… actually, they gave me a new one but she looks exactly the same, so there you go. After such a long and arduous absence, we’d like to be alone for a while, if you don’t mind.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Bliss Palm does not work on the 600. So much for the dream of carrying an Intellivision in your pocket to go with the porta-library. Looks like I’ll have to wait until I move up to the 700p this autumn. Does anyone happen to know what the Bible says about polytechny?

From the Washington Times:

More than a dozen D.C. public school system central office administrators are taking home base salaries of at least $150,000 per year, compared with just one official earning that much two years ago, according to an analysis of payroll records. The salary information, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, shows 14 central administration officials receiving a base pay of at least $150,000 in fiscal 2006, including five officials making $170,000 or more.

Naturally the DC school districts need to pay top dollar, or they wouldn’t be able to entice the excellent executives who have turned the Washington DC schools into some of the finest, highest-performing educational institutions in the country, to say nothing of the world.

I only wonder what monstrous salaries they’d command if DC schoolchildren were actually able to read after twelve years in the system?

So what do yinz think I should do? (That was my attempt at a Pittsburgh accent, appropos of nothing.) I’ve stated my disinclination to do TV and radio here in the past, and most of the invitations I’ve declined have been greeted with complete indifference, but the producer of a show for a gentleman who has hosted me before took me by surprise by agreeing with my critique of the ear fodder game.

They’d like to discuss the Sheepskin Scam and promise that we can go into whatever depth seems suitable to the discussion. I’m still not inclined to return to the airwaves, but I’m beginning to feel like some sort of prima donna who doesn’t deign to dirty her voice with the ears of the masses – just to completely mangle a metaphor – and that’s not my motivation at all.

I don’t care, so I suppose what it really comes down to is what you all would like. Does anyone actually want to hear me yammering on about this, assuming it is broadcast on the Internet? Or should we, as a self-sufficient, heterodox community continue to blithely ignore the archaic mainstream and their outmoded methods of communication while we carry on with half-baked theology, German sperm samples and Biblical numeromancy?

In short, am I being a prima donna or am I simply standing by my principles here? I don’t actually know, so feel free to chime in. The Bell has M in 25, you take the under?

MC sends the following info regarding the Israelites and their marriages:

Numbers 3:40-43 provides us with a census of the firstborn in Israel. The number given is 22,273 firstborn sons. We may safely conclude there were at least 22,273 families in Israel, since a family cannot have more than one firstborn son. There were, no doubt, families which had no sons.

That has no bearing upon this remarkable fact:

22,273 families are responsible for a total count of over 600,000 fighting men (Numbers 1:46). If you take 600,000 and divide it by 22,000, you get 27. The average Israelite household with sons had 28 of them!

The patriarch Jacob required four wives to get twelve sons. Is it too much to suppose that the typical Israelite needed twice as many wives to get 28 Sons? What about the daughters? If there was a daughter for every son, then there was 56 children per Israelite household, on the average scale. There is no way to know how many wives the average Israelite may have had, but it is impossible that the average woman could have had 56 children. Israelite society was a polygamous society.

So, a birth rate of more than twenty times the replacement rate versus one that is sub-replacement level. Here’s a question for the Christians: what supernatural entity wishes for the human race to multiply? And, on the other hand, what supernatural power actively works to see it extinguish itself?

Still confident that monogamy is God’s plan for Man?

The numbers aren’t quite right, though. The number of fighting men presumably included the fathers, so the correct formulation would be (600k – 22k)/22k, although this also assumes that the grandfathers are too old to fight which is unlikely considering that nomadic warriors usually don’t retire to Florida. Nevertheless, the basic point remains.