Vox Popoli

An Englishman speaks his mind:

I will add but one remark on the truest heroine that the world has ever seen. If any person can be found in the present age who would join in the scoffs of Voltaire against the Maid of Orleans and the Heavenly Voices by which she believed herself inspired, let him read the life of the wisest and best man that the heathen nations ever produced. Let him read of the Heavenly Voice, by which Socrates believed himself to be constantly attended; which cautioned him on his way from the field of battle at Delium, and which from his boyhood to the time of his death visited him with unearthly warnings. Let the modern reader reflect on this; and then, unless he is prepared to term Socrates either fool or imposter, let him not dare to deride or vilify Joan of Arc.

Jeanne d’Arc is certainly worthy of admiration. She was more than a mere figurehead, and although she never struck an enemy down, her physical bravery matched her unshakeable faith. Even her capture never caused her to doubt, and as Creasy points out, her decision to obey the wishes of the French lords and generals in continuing with the campaign after the anointing of Charles VII as the King of France demonstrates her courage, since she believed her mission had been accomplished and she no longer enjoyed divine protection.

That being said, if one considers the long-term fruits of both Socrates and Joan of Arc, one tends to find a certain sympathy for the point of view of those appalling Englishmen who tortured and killed her. Not that their actions were justified, but considering what a France free of the English common law heritage has given the world – the French revolution, Napoleon, the treaty of Versailles and now the European Union – one has some doubts about whether those voices were of heavenly or hellish inspiration.

Jay Nordlinger loves another man and he’s proud:

We conservatives do our fair share of griping about George W. Bush. In truth, I think we do more than our fair share. But there will soon come a day when we deeply lament the absence of a president who would do such things as send John Bolton to the United Nations.

Miraculous, or nearly so.

No, miraculous would be a president with the stones to throw the UN out of the US and turn in our membership card. And conservatives don’t do nearly enough griping about a president who is not and never was one of them.

From the Independent:

Research into the attitudes of 1,500 women with an average age of 29 found that 61 per cent believe “domestic goddess” role models who juggle top jobs with motherhood and jet-set social lives are “unhelpful” and “irritating”. More than two-thirds agree that the man should be the main provider in a family, while 70 per cent do not want to work as hard as their mother’s generation. On average, the women questioned want to “settle down” with their partner by 30 and have their first child a year later.

Vicki Shotbolt, deputy chief executive of the National Family and Parenting Institute, said: “This is the generation of young women who have seen the ‘have it all’ ethos up close and personal, and they have realised that it doesn’t work.

What’s particularly bizarre about the concept of “having it all” is that as it would be better described as “doing it all”, the obvious shortcomings would seem to be as obvious as the problems of working two full-time jobs. A woman can’t expect to make a home, be a mother and work a full-time job successfully. I mean, if none of the great, Super Bowl-winning coaches have been able to simultaneously wear two very similar hats as coach and general manager in the NFL, why would a woman expect to be able to pull off wearing two very different ones with any reasonable degree of success?

While I have macro and demographic concerns about women in the workforce, (at this point, women are more responsible for lower real wages in the US than globalization, and without insufficiently-Americanized immigrants, the US birthrate would be sub-replacement rate), I have no personal problem with it. I have far more respect for the competence of the woman who comes to me and says: “look, I have children and I need to leave every day at two, can we work something out?” than the one who tries to hold down the full-time job, is constantly trying to duck out of the office to deal with one emergency or another and is always frazzled. I’d much rather pay more to have two of the former working overlapping schedules than deal with one of the latter.

Feminists have not done women or society at large any favors by denigrating the desires of women who wish to put their families first. For all its pretenses, feminism has never been about choice, as Simone de Beauvoir made very clear when she explained how feminists must remove homemaking as a potential choice for young women, because too many women would choose it.

Fleck isn’t sanguine on real estate either:

8.5% of mortgages taken out last year nationally were taken out by people who did not plan to live in these houses. That’s up from 5.8% in 2000. Knowing how rough these data are, my guess is it’s probably even higher. And it’s contrary to what our esteemed bubble-blowing Fed chairman says about real estate not lending itself to a bubble because it’s not fungible and people have to live somewhere.

So, at least 8.5% of the market is buying simply because prices are going up — the very definition of a bubble mentality. In addition, the fact that prices are going up and people are chasing them distorts the very market that underlies the speculative boom — another classic symptom of a mania. (For a general background on bubbles, read a speech I gave on the topic.

I’d like to say great minds think alike, but Bill Fleckenstein is leagues beyond me when it comes to investing. Still, people can’t say they weren’t warned.

Cornerback Fred Smoot, the top coverage defender still remaining in the unrestricted free agent pool, has reached a contract agreement in principle with the Minnesota Vikings, a move that will further bolster a defense that statistically ranked 28th in the league overall during the 2004 season.

The four-year veteran cornerback, who had played his entire career with the Washington Redskins, is the second high-profile free agent acquired by the Vikings in the past week. Minnesota signed former Buffalo Bills defensive tackle Pat Williams last week

Trying to build through free agency makes me nervous, but the Vikes are making some very sound moves this offseason. They’re not overpaying for big veteran names, but are signing good young guys that have the potential to provide a sound defensive core. Even without Randy Moss, the Vikings should be able to be very competitive with an average defense, and if Smoot – who was arguably better than Champ Bailey in Washington two years ago – can overperform like Antoine Winfield did last year, the Vikes shouldn’t have too much trouble beating out Green Bay for the NFC North.

Have they improved enough to knock off Philadelphia? Not yet. But if someone teaches Mike Tice to run the ball instead of getting cute when playing running-challenged defenses, (or if Tice is brought down by his little ticket scalping operation), the potential is arguably there. I would have preferred to see them sign Derek Mason, but Rod Gardner would make for an excellent addition. Plaxico Burress is interesting, but too expensive considering his past underperformance. Then again, having a quarterback who can actually throw the ball might make a real difference for him.

I think Burress would be insane to go to the Giants, (having my doubts about the whinier of the two Mannings), and if he chooses a bigger payday over a playoff contender, then he’s probably not the sort of competitor you’d want in the first place. All in all, things aren’t looking too bad for the Purple and Gold.

‘But although people keep on talking about Thierry Henry, it won’t be Thierry Henry against Bayern Munich, it will be Arsenal against Bayern Munich.

“It’s a team game, not a one-man show.” [said Henry] “If Lauren had not given me that amazing cross against Portsmouth last Saturday, I would not have scored our first goal. I always say that without my team, I am nothing. The only player I have seen winning games on his own was Diego Maradona, even scoring with his hands! I do not remember anyone else taking a team from the beginning to the end and making them win, like at the 1986 World Cup, where he played on his own.”

While Dennis Bergkamp has always been my favorite Gunner, it’s hard not to like the attitude of Arsenal’s biggest star. Unlike the thugs of Manchester United – fans, players and manager alike – Arsenal plays like a team, with beautiful, selfless passing that is effective as it is attractive to watch. While the European soccer leagues have a tremendous amount to learn from the NFL in terms of how to run a league profitably with maximum competitiveness, there’s a lot of US athletes who would do well to learn from Henry’s example that in a team sport, you cannot have true success without putting the team first.

With regards to tonight, two goals at Highbury against Bryan Munich is tough, but by no means impossible. Not with Henry, Bergkamp and Pires all getting back into action.

Note – Any socialists seeking to make a larger point of this might do well to note that a national economy is not a sports team, and life is not a game.

That reminds me, Vox, 200 pounds on my first set of bench now: 10 reps, no spot. 210 with a spot towards the end. I’ve regained a fair bit of my old strength and size. So you’re doing, what, 225 first set?

Actually, I’ve been going pretty light for the last two months after injuring my hand. I need to get some neoprene gloves with better padding before I go back to lifting anything in the 300 range. Space Bunny has me doing supersets in order to cut up a bit, so on the bench I’m doing four sets of 10-12 at 195 followed immediately by 10-15 flies at 40.

Since I switched to the Perfect Aryan Male’s program, I’ve actually only done two sets of six at 225 for starters. (Following a warmup at 135, of course.) What you’re probably remembering is the two sets of 10 at 225 at the end to rep out.

But since soccer starts soon, I’ll probably stick to Space Bunny’s program for the nonce. It’s impossible to keep your strength up with all that running around.

Fred, too, has his doubts:

The question of the origin of life interested me. The evolutionary explanations that I encountered in textbooks of biology ran to, “In primeval seas, evaporation concentrated dissolved compounds in a pore in a rock, a skim formed a membrane, and life began its immense journey.” I saw no reason to doubt this. If it hadn’t been true, scientists would not have said that it was.

Remember, I was fifteen.

In those days I read Scientific American and New Scientist, the latter then still being thoughtfully written in good English. I noticed that not infrequently they offered differing speculation as to the origin of life. The belief in the instrumentality of chemical accident was constant, but the nature of the primeval soup changed to fit varying attempts at explanation.

For a while, life was thought to have come about on clay in shallow water in seas of a particular composition, later in tidal pools with another chemical solution, then in the open ocean in another solution. This continues. Recently, geothermal vents have been offered as the home of the first life. Today (Feb 24, 2005) on the BBC website, I learn that life evolved below the oceanic floor. (“There is evidence that life evolved in the deep sediments,” co-author John Parkes, of Cardiff University, UK, told the BBC News website.”)

The frequent shifting of ground bothered me. If we knew how life began, why did we have so many prospective mechanisms, none of which really worked? Evolution began to look like a theory in search of a soup. Forty-five years later, it still does.

I’ll be interested to see how many people attempt to make the case that he’s an anti-evolutionist know-nothing like Joe Carter and I simply because he’s a Christian. This is one of the more complete demolitions of the essential silliness that is neo-Darwinian evolution that I’ve seen; it will be interesting to see what the True Believers at the Panda’s Thumb make of it.

It will be particularly interesting to see if they actually provide a direct answer to a single one of his questions.

Ihatedashrub considers a new confession of faith:

Craig, you deal in generalities more than anyone who posts on this blog or did you forget the time you told me to repent for the mere fact I’m a registered Democrat.

Well, did you, Shrub? In case you forgot, this is ground zero for the Cthulhu 2008 campaign. Slogan: “Why Vote For The Lesser Evil?”

We’re still in negotiations with Azathoth with regards to the vice-presidency. Shub-Niggurath was eager to dip her many cloven toes into the pool, but the Mighty Tentacled One didn’t feel the nation is ready yet for two evil Elder gods wearing female form running for national office, considering the likelihood that “Hillary Clinton” will do so in 2008.

There is still some debate continuing over whether our slogan might be counterproductive, as both Susan Estrich and Ralph Reed agreed that there are many Americans who might view Mighty Cthulhu as the lesser evil when viewed in comparison with “Hillary Clinton”.

From Drudge:

“Siding with the GOP when you live in the bluest state around is almost like wearing a Boston Red Sox jersey at a New York Yankees’ home game,” says [Playgirl Editor-in-Chief Michele] Zipp in the April issue of PLAYGIRL. ”I cannot tell you how many times a person assumed I voted for John Kerry in 2004. Most of the time, I don’t have the heart to tell them, or the energy to discuss my reasons for going red this election year. But this is Playgirl magazine so it’s about time I was the one who bared what’s underneath.”

How could a member of the media who produces adult entertainment for women possibly side with conservatives from the red states? Zipp spells it out. “Those on the right are presumed to be all about power and greed – two really sexy traits in the bedroom. They want it, they want it now, and they’ll do anything to get it. And I’m not talking about some pansy-assed victory, I’m talking about full on jackpot, satisfaction for all.”

“The Democrats of the Sixties were all about making love and not war while a war-loving Republican is a man who would fight, bleed, sacrifice, and die for his country. Could you imagine what that very same man would do for his wife in the bedroom?” asks Zipp.

Okay….