The stories little girls need to continue to hear are already exemplified in the fairy tales that teach us about goodness and truth. It has always been the witches plotting to confuse the princesses, attempting to lure them away from their noble pursuits ... Cinderella, battling through unplanned circumstances as an orphan in the fire before being transformed into a sparkly princess and future queen, is a story that brings hope and teaches us about true empowerment. It’s a story of making something beautiful out of the life surprises that threaten to burn us.I think you're forbidden to suggest that there are "evil women" in the world, or that they bear responsibility for the harms caused by their words. But it is a prominent feature of the old stories, for what are doubtlessly wicked and patriarchal reasons.
Cinderella’s crown represents victory over the lies of evil women that told us we were dirty girls destined to sit in the cinders rather than future monarchs destined to rule. Princess fairy tales have lasted ages and teach women about goodness, mercy, kindness, power, perseverance, and strength in a world trying to whistle songs of death past little ears.
Disney Princesses & Abortion
A very sad piece by a woman who worked for Disney as a "princess," who did in fact have an abortion. I forward it because she ends up endorsing a thought that Chesterton also endorses, and that I reflect on myself from time to time: that the old fairy tales are reliable.
Jacksonian Foreign Policy
An interview with one David Reaboi, a former member of the "New York city avant garde" jazz scene, until he was present at 9/11. Present at the creation, as it were. His insights on foreign policy thought on the right are worth hearing.
Update on British Self-Defense Case
From no less than Kim du Toit, we learn that the police have decided not to prosecute the elderly man who successfully defended himself from home invasion. However, the police are also not doing much to protect him against apparent revenge attempts by the career criminal relatives of the dead invader.
So in defending himself from two murderous intruders, he now has to live his life cowering behind boarded-up windows, in fear of reprisal from the dead asshole’s relatives; because while the Britcops are very efficient in arresting the law-abiding, they’re completely incompetent when it comes to protecting them. And of course, there is no way in hell Our Hero is ever going to be allowed to own a shotgun to protect himself....
So when our local would-be gun controllers confiscators talk about “reasonable U.K.-style gun laws”, please note that this would be one of the outcomes for us law-abiding folks.
Viking Sunstones
A detailed article on the subject of the legendary stones.
The team simulated 3600 voyages taken during the spring equinox, the presumed start of the open seas travel season, and the summer solstice, the longest day of the northern year....
When navigators took readings every 4 hours, their ships reached Greenland between 32% and 59% of the time. Readings every 5 or 6 hours meant the ship had a dramatically poorer chance of making landfall. But for voyages on which the seafarers took sunstone readings at intervals of 3 hours or less, ships made landfall between 92% and 100% of the time, the researchers report today in Royal Society Open Science. In addition to the frequency of readings, key to a successful journey was using the sunstone for an equal number of morning and afternoon readings, the researchers say. (That’s because morning readings can cause a ship to veer too far northward and afternoon readings can cause it to veer too far southward, sometimes missing Greenland altogether.)
Privilege
An idea isn't necessarily bad just because the person who came up with it is rich or privileged in certain ways. However, there is a valid criticism when -- as here -- the idea's plausibility depends on the very access to wealth or privilege that isn't always present for others.
There is another issue around the analogy between police and maids. I imagine the police wouldn't appreciate being analogized to maids for the rich, but they do sometimes speak of 'cleaning up the streets.' They don't mean this literally, in terms of sweeping the sidewalk. They mean they are arresting and throwing people into prison, so that those people -- in the analogy, the trash -- are not on the streets anymore. Who are those people who are analogically 'trash'? Not the rich!
So the issue isn't just that the suggestion is 'have the maid do it' when not everyone can afford a maid. Another issue is that not everyone can rely on the maid to think of them as one of her clients.
Of course, one could counter-argue that no one would benefit from a good maid as much as those who currently find themselves surrounded by trash. Surely that's true, as long as the maid is reliable in discerning the trash from the clients who need help with the cleaning.
Fact-checking the fact-checking
Well, this is very meta, but seems a useful tool. Real Clear Politics analyzes the methods of a number of fact-checking organizations such as Politifact and Snopes.
A New Model for Sportswriting
There's some promise here.
When I worked at NHL.com, we had to write these “Why the [TEAM NAME] will win the Stanley Cup” pieces before every postseason that were just nightmares, especially when you didn’t believe what you were writing... We were guaranteed to get 15 of 16 of these stories wrong every spring yet we did them anyway.I don't know much about the current state of hockey, but the model he's hit upon is clearly valid.
Six years later, I’ve found the perfect antidote to that insufferable optimism—telling you why your team isn’t going to win the Cup. I’m guaranteed to get 15 of 16 correct! You can’t beat those odds!
A voice and a heart
From a Gutenberg project I'm working on, this excerpt from Browning's An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, an Arab Physician, "the startled utterance of
the Syrian contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth":
"... think, Abib; dost thou think?
So, the All-great were the All-loving too!
So through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying: "O heart I made, a heart beats here!"
The NRA and Race
It's a point we've featured here before, but it's worth hearing it again.
The NRA, from its very beginnings, took seriously the issue of black Americans' right to defend themselves with firearms. The worst that can be said about them is that they could do more, for example in cases like Philando Castile's; but that wish for more happens in a context in which very few are doing anything to protect their rights at all. Many, in fact, are doing the best they can to strip their rights away.
The NRA, from its very beginnings, took seriously the issue of black Americans' right to defend themselves with firearms. The worst that can be said about them is that they could do more, for example in cases like Philando Castile's; but that wish for more happens in a context in which very few are doing anything to protect their rights at all. Many, in fact, are doing the best they can to strip their rights away.
Nonsense, Mr. Khan
"There is never a reason to carry a knife"? The knife is one of the most universal tools in human history. There are hundreds of reasons to carry a knife, which is why everyone everywhere has typically done so.
Self-defense is a valid reason, for that matter. The collapse of order in your city, Mr. Khan, is a more than adequate reason by itself. But for goodness sake, don't try to sell me on "never." I carry a knife everywhere, and I find it endlessly useful. Other people who have neglected to carry a knife very regularly ask to borrow mine.
Why don't you try establishing a civilization in which you don't have to ban ordinary useful tools in order to have peace and good order? The British used to know how to do that.
Middle-Earth Announces Heavy Tariffs On Narnian Imports
MINAS TIRITH, GONDOR—Kicking off a major trade war between the two
kingdoms, the Middle-Earth Trade Federation has announced heavy tariffs
on the import of Narnian steel, sending the stock market into a freefall
Thursday...
Happy Dance
Speaking of MercyMe ...
I had a teacher once who told me, "I can't sing worth anything, but I can sure make a joyful noise."
I had a teacher once who told me, "I can't sing worth anything, but I can sure make a joyful noise."
The Left's Enemies Must Be Crushed
The head of Twitter endorsed this article on eliminating the political opposition, so you might want to read it.
It's not well-argued, and there's almost nothing of value in its extremely loose historical analogies. The endorsement thus isn't based on the notion that this is a tightly argued piece that maps out a plausible way forward. The endorsement is of the overarching vision of a nation where only Democrats exercise political power, where Republicans and conservatives are as powerless as in California, and where 'the wrong side' is crushed and subordinated.
California accomplished this, the author says, so the nation as a whole can as well. There are in fact substantial road blocks to doing that in the rest of the country, but you might usefully ask how California became so reliably Democratic. The answer is straightforward: Democrats endorsed mass immigration, Republicans opposed it, and the massive number of immigrants voted for Democrats as a result. It's actually completely unlike the historical analogues chosen by the author, i.e., the Civil War and the FDR era that arose in the Great Depression. Those political outcomes were the result of calamities that persuaded people to accept a new order. In California, they just imported enough new voters to tip the scales.
California also exported a lot of Republican voters, of course, as they fled the state for Texas or other friendlier climes. In the envisioned scenario, there would be nowhere to go.
It's not well-argued, and there's almost nothing of value in its extremely loose historical analogies. The endorsement thus isn't based on the notion that this is a tightly argued piece that maps out a plausible way forward. The endorsement is of the overarching vision of a nation where only Democrats exercise political power, where Republicans and conservatives are as powerless as in California, and where 'the wrong side' is crushed and subordinated.
California accomplished this, the author says, so the nation as a whole can as well. There are in fact substantial road blocks to doing that in the rest of the country, but you might usefully ask how California became so reliably Democratic. The answer is straightforward: Democrats endorsed mass immigration, Republicans opposed it, and the massive number of immigrants voted for Democrats as a result. It's actually completely unlike the historical analogues chosen by the author, i.e., the Civil War and the FDR era that arose in the Great Depression. Those political outcomes were the result of calamities that persuaded people to accept a new order. In California, they just imported enough new voters to tip the scales.
California also exported a lot of Republican voters, of course, as they fled the state for Texas or other friendlier climes. In the envisioned scenario, there would be nowhere to go.
The Great Leveler
On Jordan Peterson's recommendation, I'm about to start "The Great Leveler," an attempt to analyze how much income inequality has occurred from 9,000 B.C. through the present. The general consensus is that the author is descriptivist not prescriptivist and has no political agenda to push. His overall conclusion is that income inequality is persistent, interrupted only by cataclysms like war and pestilence, which foster an equality by general immiseration.
It's interesting to read the most positive and negative reviews, as I usually do before taking a chance on a book: about the same number of negative reviewers object that his political bias is obvious. Some, however, object that he is betraying a bias to the left by arguing that inequality must be bad, without explaining why or noting that what's important is how tolerable life is for those on the bottom. Others object that he is betraying a bias to the right by arguing that equality can be achieved only by violent disaster, whereas all sensible and compassionate people know that inequality occurs only when bad men use violence. The positive reviews tend to find him apolitical, whether the reviewer betrays a disposition towards the left or the right. The author himself apparently offers no suggestions other than to be careful what we wish for.
It's interesting to read the most positive and negative reviews, as I usually do before taking a chance on a book: about the same number of negative reviewers object that his political bias is obvious. Some, however, object that he is betraying a bias to the left by arguing that inequality must be bad, without explaining why or noting that what's important is how tolerable life is for those on the bottom. Others object that he is betraying a bias to the right by arguing that equality can be achieved only by violent disaster, whereas all sensible and compassionate people know that inequality occurs only when bad men use violence. The positive reviews tend to find him apolitical, whether the reviewer betrays a disposition towards the left or the right. The author himself apparently offers no suggestions other than to be careful what we wish for.
"I'm the Majority" - the Law Abiding Citizen
Four minutes that perfectly explain the gun issue. Thank you Mr. Mark Robinson of Greensboro, North Carolina. I'll say no more and just get out of his way...
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