Misunderstanding Evolution

Where do people get the idea that "evolution" is a kind of uplifting arrow?

A star was born this week in Stockton, California: Jeremy Meeks, a 30-year-old convicted felon whose hunky mugshot — featuring dreamy slate-blue eyes and chiseled cheekbones — has turned him into a viral heartthrob....

“This is a really great example of an evolutionary lag — how women still find things attractive that don’t necessarily translate well into the modern world,” Vinita Mehta, a Washington, D.C.–based psychotherapist, tells Yahoo Shine. Because while being muscular and tough enough to thrive in dangerous situations might have been necessary for human survival back in caveman times, “these are not the things that help us survive and reproduce today,” notes Mehta, who is writing a book titled “Paleo Love” about how Stone Age genes can complicate modern relationships.

What on earth are you talking about? Strong sexual attraction to a man with low ethics and little impulse control is a great way for a woman to reproduce. Thus she brings about the survival of the species, who will be physically strong and with that helpful lack of impulse control (unless we get a mutation...).

That's what evolution is about. It doesn't have a moral trajectory.

Oh, well. Here's your bumper sticker.

Virtutis Gloria Merces

A friend writes from the road:

I am in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma. A guy who just reminded me a lot of you just helped me reattach my bumper in a gas station parking lot. Thank you, because I know you would've done the same thing for some poor crying girl.

That's just how it should be.

"Colonel" Sinclair to Retire

Apparently the end of the saga of once-Brigade General Sinclair, who fought a more successful PR campaign against his prosecution by the Army than he did an actual campaign as deputy commander of the 82nd Airborne. In spite of confessing to numerous violations of the UCMJ which could have led to a sentence of 20 years in Leavenworth, he will be allowed to serve no time whatsoever and retire with his pension.

However, he will lose two grades, and retire as a lieutenant colonel -- still a field grade officer, but no longer a general officer.

His retirement pay will come in somewhere between $3,000 and $4,200 a month as I understand it. The per capita income in the county where I live is $16,700, so a man could live quite well on what he'll be pulling in.

But if he was a lover of honor, the price at least is high: once a man who was respected for his service and career, he retires in disgrace, a confessed oathbreaker.

Ah, the Patriarchy

A "Feminist Father" wears a T-shirt with the following "Rules for Dating My Daughter":

1. I don’t make the rules
2. You don’t make the rules
3. She makes the rules
4. Her body, her rules

This is, of course, just as accurately a statement of the law. It's exactly what the law says, it's exactly how any American court will rule should a relevant case appear before it.

So, if he's a "Feminist Father" for declaring these rules, do we have a "Feminist System of Law" as well? I thought we were living in some sort of patriarchy -- even a rape culture. How surprising to learn that, instead, the positive laws perfectly adhere to Feminist principles on the subject of greatest interest to them.

Charts!

A newsletter linked me to these WaPo charts, describing any number of U.S. trends by state and by county.  Most of them make Texas look pretty middle-of-the-road.

Cleansing

Starting with "The Washington Racecards," the National Review Online is soliciting our help in coming up with a new and more appropriate name for the sports franchise that dare not speak its name. "The Redtapes" is good, I think.

Songbirds

Dr. Althouse posts a short piece about people reacting very angrily to a woman who posted a picture of a rabbit she was skinning for dinner. "Rabbit ate my parsley," the lady wrote. "I am eating the rabbit."

Well, of course you are. That makes total sense to me. Apparently not to everyone!

The second item in the piece by Althouse has to do with a dog-eating festival in Yulin, China. One of the comments to the post says, "I love to have some dog- and cat-eating Chinese and Koreans as neighbors so as to help reduce the annual 1 billion songbird slaughter."

I assume he means by the dogs and (especially) the cats. But what it brought to my mind was a memory from China, when my wife and I were hiking on Precious Stone Hill near Hangzhou. We heard a beautiful songbird, and I suddenly realized that I couldn't remember having heard one the entire time I'd been in China. Walking forward excitedly, we came around a bend in the trail and found... several men, who had brought birds in cages up to the top of the mountain and were getting them to sing to each other.

I learned after that there is a cultural pride taken in being the top of the food chain, such that animals in general are considered edible. I began to notice that the stalls in the market had a huge variety of eggs for sale, not just chicken or duck but of all sorts of little birds.

To this day I don't know if the men up there were using their caged birds to try to lure more birds for them to catch as food, or if they were just a small society of men who longed to hear a songbird in a wild place.

Whatevering

Matt Walsh has lost patience with single dudes who no longer have the vocabulary to describe whatever it is they are or aren't doing with female dudes. "We're 'talking.'  We're 'hanging out.'  We're 'whatever.'"

Here’s some brutal honesty for you:  if you ‘aren’t ready for something serious,’ then you need to go get yourself ready and leave these ladies alone until you do.  You can’t go out and have sex (I mean, ‘hook up,’ as the middle schoolers at the lunch table might call it) and then claim that you ‘aren’t ready for something serious.’  It’s too late, friend.  Sex is something serious.

Barber Shops

I used to go to barber shops. My favorite one was run out of one end of a tire shop. They'd use a pressurized air line to blow off the back of your neck that was hooked to the same pump that they were airing tires with on the other side of the wall. They'd shave your neck with a straight razor.

These days my hair is too thin to bother a barber about. I just shave it off once every week or so. Testosterone poisoning, you know. Huge beard, no hair.

But I remember them fondly, those barber shops.

Technical Difficulties

Speaking of computer crashes, I've had one recently. I paid a substantial fee to get my hard disk reformatted and my data restored, but now it seems to be crashing again less than a week later. This is one of a half a dozen major mechanical or technical malfunctions that have come up all at once, and the second one to recur after I thought I had it fixed.

It may be that my connectivity will be limited for a while, as some of these things are of more immediate need than my having a working computer.

Hate speech

In order to protect children from hate speech, a Connecticut high school blocks internet access to the National Rifle Association, the Connecticut GOP, and right-to-life groups, the Vatican, and Christianity.com, but allows access to Moms Demand Action, Newtown Action Alliance, Planned Parenthood, Pro-Choice America, the state Democratic party, and Islam-guide.com.

Taking lessons from the IRS, no doubt.

Today's News, Yesterday

June 17, 2014, 1:21 PM, Allahpundit:

I’ll spare you a click and Voxsplain this one right here: Clearly the answer is to increase the IRS’s budget, so that they can afford more reliable PCs.

June 18, 2014, 12:10 PM, Vox:

Headline: The IRS scandal shows the IRS needs a bigger budget

Wow. Good call, AP.

Two ways to water

California's, and Dean Kamen's.

IRS Emails

So, that IRS email story is pretty unbelievable, huh?

What would it take to cause the executive branch to tell such an obvious lie to Congress?

Two theories:

1) Not much, because the Justice Department is so corrupt that, even if a special prosecutor were appointed, they know the appointment will be so in the tank that there's no danger in outright lies.

2) Something huge, because the price -- even without a special prosecutor -- is convincing the American people that the civil service, and not merely the elected executive branch, is wholly corrupt and in need of replacement.

Opinions?

GySgt Johns

Gunnery Sergeant Johns, a veteran of several Iraq campaigns and a former drill instructor, was killed as a contractor. I'm not sure how well linking to a Facebook post works, but I think we should pay particular attention to these American contractors who are doing the fighting in Iraq. They are America's face on the ground, and likely the only Americans who are going to be contesting ISIS's advance in direct combat.

Post by Dakota Meyer.

Rest in peace.

A Tomb Fit For A King

What does one look like? Here's the design chosen for the tomb of the recently-recovered body of Richard III:



Here's the tomb of another, not quite a king but a truly great figure in English royalty: Edward "The Black Prince" of Wales.

A Man Could Get Killed Doing That

Secretary of State John Kerry “should be on a plane right now for Baghdad,” former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said Tuesday.

“The focus has been on the conflict, that is indeed serious, but, you know, diplomacy is what is crucial right now,” Crocker said on “CBS This Morning.” “We need to work with the Iraqis at the highest level,” which, he said, entails having Kerry urge Iraq’s leaders to pursue a national unity government.

Further down the report, Hot Air draws the wrong conclusion from a report that 44 detainees were killed in a gunfight near Baqubah. They say that ISIS killed them; the report says that they died in a jail being defended by Shi'ite militia. More likely the Shi'ite militia killed the detainees to prevent them being rescued and released by the ISIS. They were, after all, enemies of the government, and the militia couldn't be sure they could hold the jail. If the militia thought they would pick up arms for ISIS if released, it very likely summarily executed them.

This is no place for John Kerry. We should send someone serious, if we have anyone left.

Fireflies

June is the best month for fireflies. Once, long ago, I walked down by the Rappahannock river in a field of trees cut down by beavers, whitened spears in the early dark, with hundreds of fireflies flashing against the trees.

Tonight there were fewer, but still many, past dusk but not quite full dark. The thunderheads of early evening had moved off west, still flickering with lightning from cloud to cloud. We caught one, put it in a jar with holes in the lid for a while, then let it go. The horses came down to see what we were about. The air smelled of rain.

We call them "lightning bugs" here in Georgia, more often than "fireflies." They're among my favorite things.

Battle of the Presidents

An interesting contrast!

Uh-oh

Russia just carried out its threat to cut off gas supplies to the Ukraine.  Europe had better get fracking.