Jones married the actor Celia Hart in 1982, the same year he starred opposite budding action star Arnold Schwarzenegger as an evil sorcerer in “Conan the Barbarian.”
Thank you for everything.
UPDATE:
Waynesville Police Chief David Adams had all of his law enforcement instructor certifications suspended by the North Carolina Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Commission.... Adams was an instructor at Blue Ridge Community College’s Basic Law Enforcement program in Henderson County, where he’s originally from and where he cut his teeth as a young police officer. That program came under fire earlier this year when an investigation that began last year determined that “physical and verbal abuse” was inflicted on trainees by instructors, and some trainees even suffered injuries.
A video obtained by the television news station WLOS depicts a session where trainees are learning how to apprehend a combative suspect using a variety of blocks and strikes, including with a simulation baton. The video shows instructors who are role playing as belligerent suspects striking trainees. When one trainee’s helmet is knocked off, an instructor hits the trainee as he turns around with what is described in the corresponding article as “basically a sucker punch.”
Fortunately, even the most roguish of our local citizens would certainly never take advantage of a police officer whose personal protection equipment became disabled in such a manner. Even during a spirited exchange of ideas, their robust commitment to fair play is well known by all. No wonder this sort of training seemed unacceptable to the commissioners!
I can't guarantee that the same spirit of sportsmanship will hold for the cartels who have moved into some of the local areas with the mass immigration of late, however. There's just a chance that, if your helmet were to be knocked off in a clash, you might benefit from being trained to watch out for a 'sucker punch.'
Surely as the great American melting pot takes hold of these newcomers, they too will come to understand that a friendly neighborhood brawl is no place for such things! In the meantime, however, would-be policemen might benefit from the instruction.
Modern entertainment is creatively bankrupted, uninspired, or even just plain morally skewed. What that says about the minds behind these shows, movies, and books, I’ll leave for you to decide. What I want to speak on is a simple topic: orcs.Yes, you read that right, I want to talk about orcs. Specifically, orcs who are just trying to provide for their families. Recently, The Rings of Power has once again been making headlines, this time for testing the waters with sympathetic orcs. To any hardcore and/or longtime Tolkien fans, this notion sounds ludicrous, but it is about what we can expect from modern Hollywood.
“Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game — orcs and drow (dark elves) being two of the prime examples — have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated,” Wizards said in a statement. “That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in.”The company says the current version of the RPG, known as 5th Edition, was designed to include a wide range of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations and beliefs.
Oh, it does do that. Rather than looking like the Fellowship of the Ring, already diverse with a maia, humans, an elf, a dwarf, and several hobbits, a modern D&D party is going to be a collection of sea monsters, vampires, half-devils, half-dragons, half-gods, genies, hobgoblins, minotaurs, and yes, orcs. And many more!
None of them are evil, though. Not by nature. Not even the ones born of devils in Hell itself, nor the vampires that subsist on blood alone.
Defenders would doubtless say that this is a more morally sophisticated universe, and perhaps note that even Darth Vader proved redeemable. So many shades of grey, so few Gandalfs.
Ohio State political scientist Thomas Wood tried in 2017 to measure the relationship between Americans' presidential votes and how they scored on the "symbolic racism" or "racial resentment" scale, which Wood described as a way to uncover "racial attitudes among respondents who know that it's socially unacceptable to say things perceived as racially prejudiced."This scale is controversial, because some of the statements it asks people to evaluate—such as "Over the past few years blacks have gotten less than they deserve"—could elicit the "wrong" answer for reasons unrelated to prejudice or resentment. The underlying problem was highlighted when surveys found substantial numbers of African Americans endorsing the purportedly racist positions, leading some social scientists to call for giving the measurement a less loaded label. At best, the scale measures whether people attribute racial disparities to structural barriers or individual failings.But whether or not the people who score higher on the scale are racists, it seems fair to say that the people who score lower on the scale are racial liberals. So what did Wood find?For Wood, the big takeaway was that "we've never seen such a clear correspondence between vote choice and racial perceptions" in three decades of these surveys: The higher you landed in the scale, the more likely you were to vote Republican. But as Musa al-Gharbi pointed out in a critique of Wood's work for The American Sociologist, this ignored the direction those Republicans were moving in. According to Wood's own data, al-Gharbi noted, whites who backed Trump over Hillary Clinton were "less racist than those who voted for [Mitt] Romney. The same holds among whites who voted for Clinton as compared to those who voted for [Barack] Obama." Again, voters in both parties were getting more racially liberal; it's just that Democrats went further.
Trump voters were also more tolerant than earlier Republican voters of gays, lesbians, and pretty much all the social liberal things. America has just been moving in that direction, they suggest. Reason writers and editors are libertarian, of course, so for them that's an almost unmitigated good thing. "Time and again, once-vivid fights have receded, as with same-sex unions, or disappeared almost entirely, as with interracial marriage."
Interesting debate question: ‘Are you less racist than you were four years ago?’
“She’s been a community staple for years,” the source said. “She would pull up to different nightclubs to serve food. She’s given food to the homeless countless times. If you’re someone in her area that patronizes her business, she’s the first one to jump and go overboard.”When the business was finally able to open a storefront off of Dolley Madison Road after the pandemic, the community was excited to welcome another Black restaurant to the scene.“There’s not that many Black businesses around here,” said Mutsa Mukahanana, who visited the restaurant last year after it went viral. “There’s not a lot of options for soul food.”
It sounds like she got her start carrying plates of food to sell in nightclubs, eventually earning enough to open the brick-and-mortar store. Many of her base customers are likely 'exotic dancers,' and while she wants them to come around she also wants the community as a whole to feel like it's a decent place where they can bring their family. The motto of the restaurant, "God did it," is also suggestive of motive, as are the worshipful videos she posts on FB.
Apparently she originally became famous because of a TikTok account called Ride with Yusuf, who loved the place.
"When I had her food last year it was amazing," the TikTok star who goes by the name Ride with Yusuf, and has 140,000 followers, said on Labor Day. "The love and soul she put in that food was amazing."
It's her right and her business, he said before adding that he didn't know anything about her business policies. He said he had nothing but good interactions with her[.]
So if any of you like soul food, and happen to be in Greensboro, I hear it's pretty good.
The father of Colt Gray, the teen suspect in the Apalachee High School shooting, was arrested, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced Thursday.Colin Gray, 54, is being charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children, the GBI said. The 14-year-old shooting suspect has been charged with four counts of felony murder.GBI Director Chris Hosey said at a news conference Thursday night that the charges against Colin Gray stem from "knowingly allowing his son to possess a weapon." During a brief court hearing Friday morning, Judge Currie Mingledorff II told Colin Gray he faced up to 180 years in prison if he was convicted on all counts. The judge also advised him of his rights, and the father said, "Yes, sir," in response to some questions from the judge.
To my knowledge, this is only the second time this approach has been employed; to be effective, it will need to become a regular and expected thing.
It's novel to charge people with murder when they never killed anyone nor tried to kill anyone. It may be pernicious to do so even if courts and juries agree to the approach.
However, it strikes me that it is a far more likely approach to achieve success at reducing the incidence of these shootings than the sort of global gun-control efforts that tend to be suggested.
Statistically, AR-15s and similar rifles are used in almost no crime; the fact that the exceptions are spectacularly tragic doesn't change the fact that almost all such rifles are "in common use for lawful purposes." There are estimated to be around 20 million of them, but in 2022 rifles of all kinds accounted for only 541 of the ~8,000 firearm homicides. If we assumed for the sake of argument (without evidence, and as is in fact unlikely) that 500 of those were with ARs, and that each death used a separate AR, that would give you a rate of 0.0025%; that means that in a given year, 99.9975% of ARs are not used to murder anyone. Any attempt to solve the problem with global solutions is thus already way up against the point of diminishing returns. The effort required to reduce below 99.9975% is going to be huge and expensive.
Raising the cost for parents who ought to know that their own particular kid is a risk, however, localizes the effort in places where there is a heightened risk. It addresses that 'known wolf' issue: the FBI and the local police knew this kid was a risk, and had in fact interviewed him and his father about it. The tool of holding the parent or guardian responsible gives them a tool they can use to encourage safer gun storage around dangerous youth, or even a decision by the parent to forgo having guns for a few years until the teenager moves on out to other things.
I still have concerns about the morality of charging people for crimes they never even contemplated, let alone committed. Speaking merely about the effectiveness of the tactic, though, it seems like a better bet than other approaches people like to suggest.
In the aftermath of a recent attack in which a Syrian Islamic extremist wielding a knife murdered three innocent festival goers and wounded eight others, authorities in Germany are pushing forward with a plan to ban knives.According to a report at nbcnews.com, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack by Issa Al H in the western German city of Solingen, a city of about 160,000 residents where a celebration of the city’s anniversary was taking place.
It would be a tremendous irony for Solingen, "The City of Blades," whose steel and sword-making was legendary for centuries, to be the proximate cause of such a ban. Ironic, but they are a fallen people.
UPDATE: Meanwhile in Massachusetts, a ban on blades is struck down on 2nd Amendment grounds.
Festivities commenced with singing the national anthem, complete with a colorful prop-plane flyover by local pilots who only charged for gas. About 1,000 attendees turned out on Labor Day weekend to see a lineup that included John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting, Rome Ramirez of Sublime, Aaron Lewis, Cowboy Troy, and Lee Greenwood.
Journalists and other anti-freedom scolds pounced and seized on the specter of Flagstock, demanding answers to questions only they would ask: Should parties be fun? Should country music exist? Should celebrities be allowed to criticize Democrats in public? The New York Times, for example, reported on the handful of angsty UNC fraternity brothers who wished that "a significant portion" of the party funds would be donated to "relief efforts in Gaza." Some of the funds raised will eventually be dispersed to charities such as Back the Blue N.C., the Wounded Warrior Project, and organizations that combat anti-Semitism. The Free Beacon is still awaiting a response about how much money will be donated to Palestinian trans rights organizations.
Yeah, let us know as soon as you hear about that.
[O]f all the things which I have mentioned that which most contributes to the permanence of constitutions is the adaptation of education to the form of government, and yet in our own day this principle is universally neglected. The best laws, though sanctioned by every citizen of the state, will be of no avail unless the young are trained by habit and education in the spirit of the constitution, if the laws are democratical, democratically or oligarchically, if the laws are oligarchical....
Now, to have been educated in the spirit of the constitution is not to perform the actions in which oligarchs or democrats delight, but those by which the existence of an oligarchy or of a democracy is made possible. Whereas among ourselves the sons of the ruling class in an oligarchy live in luxury, but the sons of the poor are hardened by exercise and toil, and hence they are both more inclined and better able to make a revolution. And in democracies of the more extreme type there has arisen a false idea of freedom which is contradictory to the true interests of the state. For two principles are characteristic of democracy, the government of the majority and freedom. Men think that what is just is equal; and that equality is the supremacy of the popular will; and that freedom means the doing what a man likes. In such democracies every one lives as he pleases, or in the words of Euripides, 'according to his fancy.' But this is all wrong; men should not think it slavery to live according to the rule of the constitution; for it is their salvation.
-Aristotle, Politics V.9
In the comments to a post below, I remarked that Tex once said that they want to turn America into the security zone of an airport, but that public schools are run much the same way.
Our public school system is terribly designed for educating a free people. All the rights of citizens are suspended while you are on school grounds. You have no freedom of speech, but may be punished for speaking without permission on any topic. You may certainly not publish and post flyers critical of the government authorities. You have no freedom of movement: you have assigned seats in assigned classes, and to skip school is punishable by law as well as administratively. You certainly have no right to keep and bear arms, nor even to self defense -- our local high school has the policy of having all parties to a fight arrested by the school resource officers, and charged with assault, even if the were clearly defending themselves from a bully with a record of harassing them. There is no freedom from unreasonable search and seizure -- just like at the airport, all bags are subject to search and seizure at any time.
There is no right to a fair trial, or any trial; punishments are meted out by administrative fiat. There is no guarantee the punishment will not be cruel or unusual. Every right an American has by birth and the grace of God is suspended by the schools, and the children are educated that way for a dozen years and more.
A free people needs a different education. Our system is unfit for our purposes. Aristotle said the same thing about his own, and it was in the next generation that democracy was swept away for almost two millennia. One of his students, indeed, was the author of that: someone who'd gotten the education Aristotle thought worthy of a prince rather than a democrat.
It is a powerful thing, education. We allow its corruption at our peril.
1. A $25,000 subsidy for first-time homebuyersThis is a bad idea. It is unfair to people who, even with the subsidy, cannot afford to buy a home and those who prefer to rent. Because it is a demand subsidy without any corresponding price controls, some of the money will also just get captured as higher home prices, negating the affordability goals of the policy....2. A tax credit for building starter homesThis is a bad idea. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the proximate barrier to building more housing is that it is not sufficiently profitable and that we need to therefore sweeten the pot with public subsidies. This is just a waste of money. Moreover, conditioning the receipt of the tax credit on whether the person who buys the home turns out to be a first-time homebuyer, as this proposal does, makes no sense. Home builders do not typically know in advance who they are going to sell it to....3. A ban on price gouging for groceries and foodIt is unclear what this even means.
As noted, these haven't been getting good reviews anywhere. If even Jacobin is against them, it's hard to know who the audience is supposed to be.
