Vox Popoli

Pretty Lady brings up Madeleine L’Engle:

…but then you believe that “A Swiftly Tilting Planet” surpasses “Wrinkle.” Usually your assessments are well-reasoned, if a bit hyperbolic, but this one stymies me. “Planet” was interestingly conceived, but utterly fell to pieces in the execution, much like Mr. Lewis’ latter sci-fi works.

I disagree, although not as vociferously as I might had I read the books in the last twenty years. I just thought the entropy-loving Ecthroi and the tension of the possible world ending, (depending upon the eye color of the child, if I recall correctly), were far more gripping than the rescue of Daddy and Charles Wallace from IT. I remember feeling genuine fear while reading “Planet”; it was a perfect book for the eighties, when the media was pushing fear of a nuclear war that most people considered eminently possible, and it struck an unusual ray of hope at a time when the adult world wasn’t offering children much in the way of optimism.

Although L’Engle did about as well as it could be done, I also found the whole “win by love” climax to be more than a little weak. It reminds me a little of how Freddy could be beaten by simply turning your back on him in Nightmare on Elm Street… about the only think I can remember about that movie was turning to my friend who’d told me that I absolutely, positively had to see the movie and saying “you have to be f—— kidding me!”

And since Rowena did the cover for “Planet”, it’s also got that going for it in my book, so to speak. But to debate which novel is better is almost beside the point, as I consider both to be undeniably and inarguably excellent.

As much as I love CS Lewis, I can’t argue with you about the Space Trilogy. It has it’s moments, but I’ve always considered it to be disappointing. I may have to re-read “That Hideous Strength” one of these days, though, as my perspective on bureaucracy and the banality of evil is very different than it was when I was ten.

Don’t freak out when there’s no column tomorrow. I didn’t write one, having been sicker than the proverbial dog on Friday and spending most of Saturday asleep recovering, which is when I usually crank it out.

“Sally” seems to really enjoy the concept, having used the phrase thrice now:

Vox its nice to see you joined the sausage party! Oh..I thought you meant look up because you posted Jeremy’s email and responded. Can’t play with the big boy’s can you? The small guys usually get hurt.

It seems “she” doesn’t know how to hit reload on “her” browser. I’d originally been under the impression that “Sally” was a woman, but I stand corrected as it appears these two “big boy’s” must have been married in Massachusetts.

Jeremy not only attempts to defend what would otherwise appear to be indefensible, but he actually thinks I’m afraid to respond to him:

It surprises me that such a comment would be brought up to support women’s rights. I am not sure that I follow how past leaders decisions be them male or female have anything to with the reasons why women’s rights are important. I further more am surprised that a fellow that appears to be smart would take the time to publicly challenge the argument. Many people could point out good or bad decisions made by past leaders, I am not sure this would get either of you two anywhere.

It surprised me too. Of course, if I hadn’t responded to it, people like Jeremy would have claimed that I didn’t respond to it because I was afraid to do so.

“On June 5, 1944, after many months of heated debate, Harvard Corporation finally voted to admit women into its medical college. A committee had earlier recommended that the available “mediocre men” be replaced with a group of “very superior women.” Young female applicants with degrees from four-year undergraduate schools scored considerably higher on aptitude tests than male applicants. Harvard realized that, if only as a matter of self-preservation, its almost-two-hundred-year policy of excluding women had to be reversed.” (About.com) I am not sure your statement isn’t based on skewed historical statistics. After all, if we went on the statistics of the pre 1950’s white people are superior athletes to blacks. How about you write a column about that. Was all medical advancement made by men? Are women so helpless, or are people like you trying to make them that way once more?

And yet those “very superior women” went on to achieve nothing that the “mediocre men” weren’t doing over the last sixty years, although the push for HMOs as a precursor to nationalizing health care – very popular among women – has managed to degrade the appeal of a medical career. I’d be interested in seeing those statistics of pre-1950s whites you cite without source, considering that Jesse Owens was winning four gold medals in 1936 and Joe Louis won the world boxing championship in 1937. And yes, at least 99 percent of all medical advancement has been made by men since the days of Galen.

#1 women are now able to fend off sexist idiots such as yourself. You seem to be very unamerican, I am appauled that you call yourself a libetarian. What liberty is there in taking rights away and imposing your beliefs on to others?

According to the feminists, more women are being raped, beaten and abused than ever before, especially on Super Bowl Sunday, so even that justification would appear to be a non-starter. The only “right” I advocate taking away from women is the “right” to vote, which is not a right at all. Since women’s suffrage has resulted in the loss of individual rights from owning firearms and private property to smoking and drinking, it should be obvious how liberty can be increased by removing the voting franchise from a group with a strong prediliction for hating individual freedom. I have never imposed my beliefs on anyone, unlike the feminists, I do not believe my ideology is so rationally weak as to require legal force to survive.

While in college I found few women unable to provide for themselves. You are actually furthering this by disallowing them from their rights. You ought to check your history also. Women were not given suffrage in the US until 1920, prohibition movement was started in 1869 and ratified in 1919, began in 1920. How were women able to put this in to place?

You mean those women whose tuitions were being paid by Mommy and Daddy, not to mention the government? As for Prohibition, women first received the right to vote in 1893 in Colorado and their strong support for Prohibition was one reason that many men opposed women’s suffrage: “Opponents of the women’s suffrage movement were convinced that if women received the right to vote, prohibition would become the law of the land. In fact, women were among the most ardent supporters of prohibition, and anti-prohibition organizations, such as the National Brewers’ Association, were among the most vocal anti-suffragists.”

If they do not contribute anything how do you propose your children are taken care of in your decree? I am sure that you will be able to achieve success and take care of your children at the same time. You are quite obviously stuck in the past. While I was in college the number of successful females was starting to greatly out number the men. While in the work force and in a global company I see women in very powerful and monetarily endowed positions in increasing numbers. They are also successful in these positions (hence the increasing numbers.) You are obviously quite OLD. Your last sentence appears to me, speaking from experience, that you have been rejected by women many times. Is this the reason for your sour attitude? I surely hope not.

Jeremy clearly has the typical reading comprehension problem, as I did not say women contribute nothing to society, I said that they collectively contribute nothing to building wealth and advancing technology in a society. This should be obvious, since there are no shortage of historical or modern examples of impoverished societies where women successfully bear and raise children. I have no doubt that women are inordinately successful in college today, the problem is that success in college no longer means that one is even capable of balancing a checkbook or understanding a short text. As for the rejection issue, we’ve been over that before… suffice it to say that it has not been an issue.

That is awfully convient to say when men have ruled for over 5000 years, plenty of time to make proof for themselves. You are only going to give women, what, about 25 years?

Given how women have managed to collectively embarrass themselves by what they’ve done with their so-called freedom, I don’t believe any more time is needed to prove my point. And considering what they’ve done to the country, I don’t believe the republic will survive another 85 years of women’s suffrage. There is a reason, after all, that the same men who wrote the Constitution went out of their way to fight the “despotism of the petticoat”, as John Adams put it, and took the vote away from women in New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire prior to the Constitutional Convention.

You are a real science buff too I see. A million years for evolution? Better check again. You might be surprised to find out that it can be in the thousands, or even shorter. Again math is tough, so maybe you don’t have appreciation for numbers say after the 10,000 mark. Roaches are immune to many of the pesticides they weren’t 50 years ago.

This is interesting in that it’s always the evolutionists here who insist that evolution takes a very long time whenever an evolutionary skeptic like myself points out that evolution has not been proven by the scientific method. I’ll leave this one for them to deal with.

ALL MEN (With the exception of Mae West, the only of which did not kill excessive numbers of people). If you would like to see the continuation of the western world maybe you should look into other causes. Land conservation, natural resource preservation, a more inhabitable environment. I seriously doubt that a reduction in population is going to put an end to it.

Jeremy conveniently skips over the fact that American women alone have ended more lives than Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot combined. As for the decline of the West, conservation cannot possibly be an issue as both Europe and the United States currently have more forested, less polluted la
nd than they have enjoyed in over a century. The problem is not a reduction in population alone, it is a reduction in natural population combined with an influx of non-Western immigration within and growing enemy populations without. The West’s current supremacy is not a Divine mandate and will only continue so long as there is enough of a West to remain supreme. The long term choice is not between the feminist Equalitarian society and traditional Western society, it is between traditional Western society and either Middle Eastern or Chinese society.

Following a health trend that appears to be brewing up all over the nation, Mayor Judith Rawson has signed a proclamation for the City of Shaker Heights that addresses the issues regarding caffeine intoxication and dependency.

In the proclamation the Mayor is “calling upon all Shaker Heights citizens, public and private institutions, business and schools to increase awareness and understanding of the consequences of caffeine consumption.”

The proclamation also spells out many dangers of caffeine abuse such as heart disease, pancreas and bladder cancer, hypoglycemia, and central nervous system disorders. By getting the word out about the serious dangers of caffeine, Mayor Rawson hopes to prevent a substance that can “pose a significant hazard to health and longevity.”

City of Shaker Heights is one of several cities across the country recognizing this annual event. This will be the third year for this event which is sponsored by the Caffeine Awareness Alliance, a non-profit organization. Marina Kushner, founder, states, “Each year more and more people are waking up to the real truth about the dangers of this ubiquitous drug. We are delighted that the mayor has recognized that this is not a laughing matter.”

If you thought Prohibition was a relic of the past, just wait until there are a few more women in political office. Women with political power make the Puritans look like libertine hedonists. Given half the chance, they’ll ban everything from alchohol and coffee to red meat and NFL football.

The Sports Guy has his Levels of Losing. Last night, I found myself with the time, motive and opportunity to spend hours pondering if there is a similar metric to be applied to vomiting. I came up with the following, from least unpleasant to most:

1. The Old College Try
Inspired by the rapid consumption of too much beer in too little time, TOCT hardly qualifies as being unpleasant, especially when there is a powerbooting competition involving distance to be resolved. At my alma mater – never won a football game, never lost a party – TOCT wouldn’t even slow the girls down. When the dog bites you, bite right back.

2. The Roman Banquet
My brother was infamous for overeating whenever Mom served spaghetti, which until he was twelve or so inevitably led to a extended trip to the bathroom. Nevertheless, this didn’t slow him down the next time. I’m not much given to overeating myself, but there were a few times in high school when Big Chilly and I would make a giant batch of chocolate chip cookie dough and eat half of it between us. This did not always end well; personally I suspect it was more the gallons of milk that we’d drink that proved to be too much. TRB actually comes as more of a relief than anything, but it’s so appallingly gluttonous that the mere gauchery makes it worse than TOCT.

3. The Whip Master
We always knew it was going to be a brutal speed workout when we’d show up at the indoor track during the winter and see four trash barrels with plastic bags strategically placed at 50-meter intervals. I was usually the first to lose it, generally on the 6th 200, but by the time we got to 15, even old Ironguts was hunched over a barrel, doing his best to forcibly expel his liver. The day we did 17 sub-30 200s was the only time I thought I might actually cry and beg for mercy during a workout. Still, the vicious assault on your innards is only one part of the overall body agony, which ranges from burning lungs to cramping legs and spasming buttocks.

4. Fangs of the Worm
For many, it’s tequila. For me, it’s straight vodka. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to smell it and the mere thought of it is enough to make me gag. Sake, too, is on my personal list of Very Bad Things. I don’t know why hard alchohol tends to leaves a permanent mark in a way that beer does not, but regardless, anyone who has truly experienced FOTW will flee in terror before risking a repeat experience.

5. The Tummy Bug
These can be nasty, since they’ll often hit the victim at both ends. The only redeeming factors are that TTBs tend to pass quickly and except when they force one to serve their purposes, one doesn’t feel all that bad… until the next round hits.

6. A Chef Called Wormwood
I’d only experienced food poisoning once before last January. I remember thinking that the chicken tasted a bit dodgy that night, but foolishly put it down to an English chef’s inept fish sauce. On the bright side, spending the evening establishing a close and personal relationship with my hotel room toilet did get me out of a dinner that promised to be mind-numbingly dull. And it didn’t leave me too incapacitated to play Total War: Medieval, so that worked out all right even if it left me looking like a leftover zombie from the Day of the Dead cast.

7. The Snake In The Belly
This is TTB on steroids. I didn’t even feel nauseous last night, merely an uncomfortable roiling which made me wonder if there was a snake sliding around my insides. It turned out that it was a boa constrictor and an ill-tempered one at that. It literally felt like being picked up off the floor and wrung out at the waist; I’ve never found myself sweating from the mere physical exertion of it before. On the plus side, my abs look smashing this morning and I really believe it could be marketed to the bulimic elements in the fitness crowd as a two-in-one product. Just simply brutal.

But not the worst I’ve ever experienced, which was a combination 4+6. A very badly timed sequence of events left me in the customary position, which was soon exacerbated by the Taunt of All Time, to which I was subjected by my housemate. We had been assigned to live together in faculty housing for some reason or another; he was a good-looking guy and complete social zero who did fine with the girls until he opened his mouth. He also hated me with a deep and abiding passion that I have not seen since. Apparently he had managed to keep his mouth shut long enough to attract a curly-haired Tri-Delt, and he escorted her to his bedroom before popping his head in the bathroom to express his heartfelt sympathies for my dire plight.

“I just want you to know that while you’re busy doing that in here, I’ll be having sex with her in there.”

Even in the depths of my momentary Hell-on-Earth, I had to appreciate his ruthlessness in twisting the knife so savagely. In all the years that have passed, I’ve yet to encounter a more perfectly vicious cut.

Morgan is still finding it hard to accept the truth:

Oh, as an aside, Vox, another reason I have a hard time buying your argument that you don’t *really* want to be published in the mainstream is because of your reaction to the failed syndication of your column. You’ll probably say now that you don’t really care that the syndication fell through, but the fact that you even tried to get syndicated is proof that you do really wish you had a forum beyond this blog.

What Morgan and almost everyone who reads my political column don’t realize is that the most recent and failed syndication by Universal Press Syndicate was the THIRD time I was nationally syndicated. Fourth, actually, if you want to stretch the definition.

The first time was with Chronicle Features, which syndicated my game review column back in 1992. They only managed to place it in 13 newspapers, ranging from the Boston Globe and Atlanta Journal/Constitution to my personal favorite, the North Bay Nugget. The reason most editors wouldn’t pick it up was because they knew that no one wanted to read about video games….

The second time was when Universal Press Syndicate bought Chronicle Features, dropped a number of their columnists and kept my video game column. Despite their supposedly greater sales power, they didn’t manage to sell it to a single additional newspaper. When they finally gave up on that syndication, the Atlanta Journal/Constitution contacted me and asked me to continue contributing to them, which I did. Some of their sister papers asked them if they could get me to agree to release the column to the Cox News Wire; I did and this is the not-really-syndication to which I referred. It’s also what saw the column appearing not infrequently in the same Star Tribune that had turned it down as a non-starter before it got started in the Pioneer Press.

So, I was extremely dubious when UPS contacted me and wanted to syndicate my WND column, seeing me as an eventual replacement for William F. Buckley. UPS only syndicates 10 columnists, including Ann Coulter, and they chose me over Eric Alterman, Jonah Goldberg and others they were considering. Since it cost me nothing to let them have another whack at it and since my column was running a strong second to Ann Coulter’s at the time, it seemed like a good idea, theoretically.

However, since I happened to slightly know two editorial page editors at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, I was pretty sure that there was almost no chance that a genuine libertarian would be allowed to crack the mainstream op/ed pages. The Dallas Morning News actually bought the column, but before the first column had even run there, they cancelled their order. UPS said that the most common reason given for rejecting the column was that the language was over the heads of their readers, so they asked me to dumb it down. As I mentioned before, I experimented with rewriting my WND column for three or four weeks, then told them that I wasn’t interested in doing so.

They finally gave up on the column about six months later when the syndicate’s editor called me and admitted that my original skepticism had been proven entirely correct, and we parted on friendly terms. He’s a good guy – a Bears fan – and I’m only sorry that they wasted a fair bit of effort on something with such a low probability of success.

As for the theorized jealousy factor, Jonah Goldberg is having 10 times the success of Malkin and Shapiro combined, and when have you ever heard me harsh on him? While I certainly disagree with him on a number of issues, he’s not a charlatan like the other two and generally deserves the reading that Ms Research-free and Captain Obvious don’t.

I write my column and this blog because I enjoy writing them; when I cease to do so, I will stop without thinking twice about it. The other thing Morgan fails to understand is that by and large, I believe the die is already cast and that Americans basically deserve what they’re going to be getting in the near future. I know very well that most people have no desire to hear what I’m saying, and I accepted that long before I wrote my first op/ed.

If I wanted a successful syndication, I’d simply write Republican talking points and slap Spacebunny’s picture at the top. I’d be getting offers to appear on Fox News within three months. But if I’m going to sell my soul, I’d much rather produce Strip Club Tycoon, hang out with loads of strippers and make 500x the money.

MSN Money on Bag Lady Syndrome:

ag-lady syndrome plagues, puzzles and, in more extreme cases, paralyzes women who want to get a better grip on their financial lives, according to Olivia Mellan, the author of “The Advisor’s Guide to Money Psychology” and a Washington, D.C., therapist who specializes in money psychology. Lily Tomlin, Gloria Steinem, Shirley MacLaine and Katie Couric all admit to having a bag lady in their anxiety closet.

“It cuts across women of all social groups; it’s not like wealthy women don’t have it,” says Mellan. “Heiresses, women who have inherited wealth, have big bag-lady nightmares because they really feel like the money came to them magically and can leave them just as magically.”

Fears of Insecurity. Women tend to be unprepared and overwhelmed when widowhood or divorce suddenly plops their financial security in their hands. If they’ve long feared they will wind up a bag lady, these transitions can feel like the nightmare is about to play out in real life. As a result, they tend to avoid money, horde money or invest too conservatively to make the money they’ll need later in life.

EH sent me this, seeing as how it underlined a point I made previously… one problem is that since few wealthy women earned their money, having usually inherited or married it, very few of them know the first thing about making more of it. Money might as well be magic or technology, as far as they’re concerned. This inherent fear of risk-taking is why women will never be economically competitive with men despite the advantage of longer lifespans, as the most common element among men of wealth is the spectacular failures, even bankruptcies, from which they have learned and come back even stronger.

But it’s quite understandable. What makes absolutely no sense is how they tend to look to the government to provide the security they crave. That would be the blithering idiocy….

Morgan demonstrates an overactive imagination

I especially love the “Christians” here who argue that Jesus really never commanded us to care for the poor.

She’s truly managed to outdo herself. This statement is nothing but a stinking pile of digested oats and hay. Morgan, do give us a SINGLE example here, just ONE! And make sure you provide the name, the date and the quote in context. I cannot recall a single example of anyone, Christian or otherwise, suggesting anything even remotely in this vein. Can anyone else?

I rather suspect she won’t be able to back it up. As usual.

The Dinosaur Media tucks its tail and runs:

The Washington Post shut one of its blogs yesterday, saying it had drawn too many personal attacks, profanity and hate mail directed at the paper’s ombudsman. The closing was the second by a major newspaper in recent months. An experiment in allowing the public to edit editorials in The Los Angeles Times lasted just two days in June before it was shut because pornographic material was being posted on the site.

The Post’s blog, open to the public since Nov. 21, was shut indefinitely yesterday afternoon with a notice from Jim Brady, executive editor of www.washingtonpost.com.Mr. Brady wrote that he had expected criticism of The Post on the site, but that the public had violated rules against personal attacks and profanity.

Since it’s demonstrably easy to weed out the unprintable, the truth is likely that the precious, sensitive journalists at the Post simply couldn’t handle knowing exactly what parts of the public actually thinks of them. Being acquainted with more than my fair share of journalists, I can tell you that a more spineless set of people are hard to imagine… they will roll over for anyone and will kiss anyone’s posterior without even being asked.

This photo of Christine Amanpour wearing a headscarf and laughing at Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s press conference tells you all you need to know about the backbone of journalists as well as the intermediate-term future of feminism.