Cathedral of May / Into the Wild

Welcome to the Cathedral of May, that fine time of year with no equal except October, and with the summer instead of the winter in front of us.

I am departing at once for the Wild. I will be gone for a week or thereabouts. Partly I will be on the Appalachian Trail, and partly in less well-traveled places.



Some appropriate music for the Maytide.

Increases Past 100%?

Extensive research shows that using harsh verbal discipline and physical hostility is counterproductive to good parenting. It increases the risk of delinquency, fighting, misbehavior and belligerence in teens.

First of all, fighting and belligerence aren't always bad things. Sometimes they are exactly the proper and just response, in which case the son you have raised with a capacity for them will be the person with the capacity to act virtuously in those circumstances. The one you've raised to shrink from conflict and physicality will be unable to defend the right when push comes to shove.

But, second, this particular teen was already physically present for the purpose of joining a riot. I don't think you need to worry about 'increasing the risk' of misbehavior on this occasion. Mom was just trying to keep her son from getting himself killed, as was not improbable under the circumstances. Not only is the author a pansy who should mind his own business, then, he's also got his head entirely in the wrong game.

Stone Tools

Archaeologists claim to have discovered tools that pre-date the genus homo.

Popping bubbles

"Safe places" are all the rage, as young people struggle to find a refuge from disturbing ideas on campus and enforce orthodoxy on the whole student body and faculty. Robert Tracinski argues that this strategy is a good way to lose the war of ideas:

The most powerful historical precedent for this is the totalitarian creed of the Soviet Union—a dogma imposed, not just by campus censors or a Twitter mob, but by gulags and secret police. Yet one of the lessons of the Soviet collapse is that the ideological uniformity of a dictatorship seems totally solid and impenetrable—right up to the moment it cracks apart. The imposition of dogma succeeds in getting everyone to mouth the right slogans, even as fewer and fewer of them understand or believe the ideology behind it.

Treaty Obligations

As long as the grass grows and the river runs...

I Hate Airports

So, is this flight delayed? Guess so, but they won't call it or let you know for how long. Will I make my connection? Who knows! It's part of how we keep travel exciting.