Category: Uncategorized

Jonah Goldberg posts an amusing, albeit arguably fictitious query from Craigslist:

Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy. I’m not from New York. I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200 – 250. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won’t get me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she’s not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level?

The response of one investment banker is beautifully informative and brutally appropriate. Fake or not, it’s a funny dialogue and I’m always amused by women who describe themselves as “classy”. I don’t know why, but I tend to picture them saying it in a nasal voice with a New Joisey accent. But at least she knows what she wants – Central Park West.

(What a most peculiar objective, he mused, sitting in his villa and watching the Mediterranean waves roll gently onto the beach.)

I don’t have an inherent problem with shallow women pursuing shallow goals, anymore than I do with shallow men doing the same. Freedom is all about the right to be foolish and reap the consequences of one’s foolishness. I do, however, wonder at the obtuse lens through which these self-obsessed individuals view the world.

From NRO:

Ron Paul has $5.3 million for the quarter. That is five times what Huckabee raised. Wassup with that?

What’s up is that the conservative and libertarian grass roots have lost all patience with the idea of supporting another kinda sorta conservative politician who will come up with a million excuses to go along with the big government program.

Forget Giuliani. Forget Thompson. Forget Hucksterbee. None of them are going to be substantially different than Hillary, (who will betray her Democratic base and keep the wars going), so either support an individual who genuinely supports freedom, human liberty and the U.S. Constitution, or stay out of it.

If the nation wants to go to Hell with Hillary and company, so be it. It’s their right to make that choice. But we don’t have to acquiesce to the program.

UPDATE – Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic adds:

Ron Paul cannot be dismissed as a gadfly; the chance for him to outperform expectations rises exponentially with additional million dollars he raises. 5.08m is real money. There must be, within the Republican Party, a vein of anti-war libertarian sentiment. It is longer and deeper than many of us had suspected. The Paul movement is probably one part Buchanan bridage and one part fiscal hawk. It is clearly active in ways that most of us haven’t adequately understood? Paul may be in a position to be a giant killer now.

Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate who can beat Hillary. The only one. Giuliania can’t, Thompson can’t. McCain can’t. Romney can’t. If the Republican establishment won’t get behind Paul, it will demonstrate to all and sundry that the nominally two-party system is nothing but a facade for a single bi-factional ruling party.

NBIII lodges an accusation of lying:

After five years of U.S. military occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq, 60 percent of the American people favor ending the occupation and withdrawing our troops from Iraq.

Why lie? The only way you get those numbers is by phrasing the question very carefully, and not attaching any relevant codicils (“Would you favor removing the troops from Iraq immediately if it means that what will shortly follow is a civil war in which millions will die and millions more will become refugees?”). You’re too damned smart to not know this.

Further, the only reason you can get those numbers at all is as a result of endless negative crap and nothing else being passed off as “news” by the media. Inform the people responsibly — give them a balanced view of the events, situations, and reality of what is happening in Iraq and what “cut and run” means — not just to America but to the Iraqis — in short, letting them make an informed decision about the actual situation, well, THAT just can’t be allowed, can it?

Your statement is a bullshit claim, and you know it. Being a libertarian is one thing — even a pacifist one. Being a defacto liar in the support of it is another. Stop getting your news solely from CNN, al-Reuters, and Lew Rockwell.

The only bullshit here is NBIII’s claim that I get my news “solely from CNN, al-Reuters, and Lew Rockwell”. In fact, I never watch CNN, pay very little attention to Reuters and don’t read Lew Rockwell all that often. I don’t even get one percent of my news from those sources, but it’s typical that an individual who swallows the neocon line would simply assume that everyone else is lying.

Here’s that “carefully phrased question” of which he complains:

If you had to choose, which do you think is better for the U.S.? Keep troops in Iraq until situation gets better? Set time-table for removing troops from Iraq? No opinion?

Moreover, I don’t recall him complaining about the following question back in March 2003 when the response was 23 percent Yes and 75 percent No. But now that it is 58 percent Yes and 41 percent No, he’s complaining about nefarious manipulations on the part of the pollsters.

In view of the developments since we first sent our troops to Iraq, do you think the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq, or not?

How fiendishly twisted! How could any poor American patriot possibly be expected to avoid the hidden word-traps concealed therein?

I’m all for bringing relevant codicils into the polling process, I think it would be very informative to include specifics such as “would you have supported the Iraqi invasion if you knew that it would bring a Shiite government to power, jack up oil prices and lead to an invasion of Iran?”

Mike doesn’t do his homework:

Look at what the illiterate believe. By far most of them believe the bible is the word of God. Most of the barely literate believe likewise. As you move up the scale of literacy, you find belief in the Bible drops off.

Actually, the nation which has the highest percentage of atheists in the Western world, France, only ranks 27th in literacy; it’s 99 percent rating is equal to that of the notoriously religious United States. Vatican City, meanwhile, has a 100 percent literacy rate; ultra-Catholic Poland ranks 9th, compared to secular Sweden’s ranking of 28th.

Furthermore, precisely none of the countries ranking in the bottom 30 are historically Christian nations with citizenries who believe that “the bible is the Word of God”. And it is the Christians in their midst who make up the majority of the literate minority in those countries.

Now, I am dubious of these literacy rankings, as if 99 percent of the adult American population is “literate”, then the bar is set so low as to be almost meaningless. Furthermore, given the failing performance by recent college graduates on a test of their history, law, economics and civics knowledge, it is clear that the attainment of post-graduate degrees cannot be considered evidence of a higher level of literacy. One would also be forced to reach this conclusion by surveying the papers published by PhDs across a wide variety of academic and scientific disciplines.

It never ceases to amaze me how much the typical atheist approach to debate resembles that of the medieval religious philosopher. No facts, no evidence, just a logical structure constructed upon a baseless assumption.

Exchanging email with Easterbrook:

Noting that this is the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the Edsel, “West Side Story” and Boris Pasternak’s “Dr. Zhivago,” TMQ supposed that half a century ago, technology was buckets of bolts while art was magnificent; now tech is magnificent and art is in poor repair. Why? Vox Day of Milan, Italy, author of “The Irrational Atheist,” supposes, “Technical stuff depends on science, art depends on religion. The former is now ascendant, ergo our art leaves something to be desired. That’s Camille Paglia’s theory, anyhow, which is interesting in light of her atheism. Paglia has written, ‘Great art can be made out of love for religion as well as rebellion against it. But a totally secularized society with contempt for religion sinks into materialism and self-absorption and gradually goes slack, without leaving an artistic legacy.’ Richard Dawkins, a prominent atheist, argues in ‘Unweaving the Rainbow’ that science is capable of inspiring greater art than religion, though this hasn’t happened yet.”

You’ll have to wait until TIA comes out, but it contains an interesting comparison of two poems on a related subject, one inspired by religion, the other inspired by science, that demonstrates this concept rather dramatically. The latter really has to be read to be believed.

77 Cranberry Bogs
58 East Mesa WhiteTrash

74 Mounds View Meerkats
50 W.C. Silver Spooners

59 Winston Reverends
29 Village Valkyries

52 Greenfield Grizzlies
48 Black Mouth Curs

52 Masonville Marauders
27 Burns ICU

Week 4 saw the mighty Meerkats finally get a win while Nate changed his team name to a much more appropriate moniker. Rumor has it that he cried at the press conference announcing it.

My favorite absurdist defense of Hollywood’s infatuation with violence is the idea that they are just portraying the gritty realism of violence in society:

With new clues, a Philadelphia homicide unit reopens the 1998 murder of Carrie Swett, who had joined the abstinence club, Hearts Wait, just before her death.

Carrie eventually learns the club members aren’t who they claim to be. Tina, the outspoken president, apparently is carrying on a sexual relationship with the youth pastor, Nathan, who oversees the club.

In a flashback scene, Carrie confronts Tina and encourages her to stop meeting alone with the youth pastor.

Tina replies, “You’re just some slut with a whore for a mother.”

Carrie also tells a young man who fears he’s homosexual and two teens who are sleeping together that there is nothing wrong with their feelings or actions.

The members of the club respond to Carrie by calling her “dirty,” “whore,” “slut” and “b****” before stoning her to death.

Last year, the FBI reported that six of the 16,692 murders in 2005 were hate crimes, which includes all crimes attributable to biases based on race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/ national origin, and disability. None of these six – or 16,292 – murders involved Christians stoning insufficiently abstinent girls, or anyone else, for that matter. Of course, it’s much safer to pretend that Christians stone women to death than make any reference to the particular group that does actually does stone women to death on a regular basis.

Freud has been discredited for decades. It is amazing that his unscientific theories are still being relied upon to attack those who don’t believe that unmititigated promiscuity is a benefit to society.

I refuse to watch any television show that is based on protagonists with any responsibility for investigating crime or involvement with the legal system. They’re uniformly shallow, boring, eminently predictable and inherently authoritarian.

Single career women theorize as to why men aren’t lining up to date them:

The only men who ever approach me for dates are in their fifties. Maybe it is because they have more confidence and security in themselves and so don’t feel threatened by a woman who has made a success of herself. Men my age never talk to me once they’ve found out what I do. Sometimes, they physically take a step back. I think they assume I am focused purely on my career….

I sometimes wonder if I would be happier if I had chosen a simpler path, but the only thing I have wanted to do is practise law. It can be quite tough, though. I am different in the office to how I am at home. At work, I am the only woman on my team, so I have to be hard-nosed and quite harsh. At weekends, I over-compensate by being really girly, because I don’t want any friends – or potential boyfriends – to think I’m an iron-knickered harridan.

In other words, you’re a bitch, but you pretend not to be when it suits you. Obviously, no man could possibly be intelligent enough to figure out that sooner or later, you’re going to be directing that hard-nosed harshness at him if he’s dumb enough to date you.

Professional women are so clueless when it comes to men that one wonders how they manage to remember to breathe long enough to finish those all-important Powerpoint shows. A few basic pointers:

1. No man has ever been impressed by a woman’s occupation, unless it is stripper, model or professional cheerleader for his favorite team. Honorable mention for aerobics/yoga instructor or nanny.

2. Few men are impressed by women’s salaries. They know perfectly well that most women will quit paid employment the moment they feel they can. A woman’s salary only matters to a man who doesn’t want to support a non-employed wife or have kids.

3. Men with their own careers generally don’t want wives with careers if they want a family. They’re looking for a wife and mother to their children, not a co-husband. Men who don’t have careers are much more open to the possibility, but then, no matter how much money a woman makes, she has no interest in men who makes less than she does. As Spacebunny points out, most women consider her own income to be “her money” while that earned by the man is “our money”. There are exceptions, of course, but this is the general rule.

4. The mere fact of having a career means you are too focused on it in the eyes of most professional men. They know perfectly well what it means since they work with women like you every day, furthermore, they also know that few professional women have any sense of proportion or perspective. You made a choice, now deal with it. Buy a cat… or five, and stock up on Duracell.

5. Men aren’t intimidated by you, your intelligence, your education or your pay packet. They are, however, intimidated by the divorce courts. They are extremely disinclined to dally with the sort of women who show any inclination towards depending upon them.

“If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.”
– Ann Coulter

Oh, it will happen. It is absolutely inevitable. Unfortunately, because we live in an irrational world where people cannot modify their behavior even when it is logically predictable that the consequences of that behavior will be disastrous for all and sundry, it won’t happen until after the collapse into imperialism, dictatorship and social chaos.

Democracy’s day is nearly done in the West. The American political parties aren’t even pretending to represent their bases anymore; once the anti-war crowd realizes in 2009 that they’ve been sold out as badly as the pro-life, small government and anti-interventionist blocs were sold out by the current leadership, both bases will understand that there is no representation for them.

In Europe, on the other hand, you can vote for whatever party you want, so long as it is Eurofascist.

I have no idea how long it will take, but it will happen.

I found this to be very interesting, especially in light of what I wrote in TIA about the Aztec practice of human sacrifice:

Before being chosen as sacrificial victims, the boy and girl had followed a typical peasant diet. This raises the possibility that they were chosen from among the Incas’ conquered subjects and killed not only to pacify the mountain gods, but also to instil terror and respect for an imperial power. “It looks to us as though the children were led up to the summit shrine in the culmination of a year-long rite, drugged and then left to succumb to exposure,” said Timothy Taylor of the University of Bradford, one of the lead researchers.

“Although some may wish to view these grim deaths within the context of indigenous belief systems, we should not forget that the Inca were imperialists too and the treatment of such peasant children may have served to instil fear and facilitate social control over remote mountain areas.”

Now, I certainly don’t deny the religious aspects of historical human sacrifice, it would be intellectually irresponsible to even try to do that, to say nothing of how it would contradict my own spiritual worldview. But I’ve noticed that although Mesoamerican human sacrifice took an overtly religious form, mass human sacrifice tends to correspond much more strongly with imperialism than it does with religion. I won’t be surprised if scholars eventually conclude that at least for the Aztecs and the Incas, human sacrifice was less a form of worship than it was a means of political terrorism designed to keep their more numerous subject peoples in line.