Quotulatiousness

August 25, 2018

Vikings 21, Seattle Seahawks 20 in third preseason game

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:41

The third preseason game is traditionally the “dress rehearsal” — teams play their starters for an extended period of time (sometimes going into the third quarter) before subbing in their reserves. As the columnists at the Daily Norseman tend to write, it’s the “All-Important Third Preseason Game™”. Friday night’s game in Minneapolis saw the Seattle Seahawks come to town to test Russell Wilson against the Vikings’ league-leading defence from last year. Unlike last game, where the Vikings couldn’t seem to buy a first down, yesterday the first-stringers under Kirk Cousins were able to keep the chains moving (amassing 120 yards in the air through the first quarter) but not to get points on the board. Newly installed placekicker Daniel Carlson didn’t cover himself in glory, missing both of his field goal attempts to the left from 42 yards and encouraging the team to try a two-point conversion after their first touchdown. On the latest Purple Podcast, Judd Zulgad said explicitly that coach Mike Zimmer deliberately ordered the two-point attempt because he didn’t trust Carlson to make the extra point.

Second-string quarterback Trevor Siemian had a bad game (4 of 8 for three yards) and looked very frustrated by the time he was done. However, Siemian did have one particular pass that made the highlight reel:

Third-stringer Kyle Sloter, on the other hand, put on a very good show and led the team to the winning touchdown (and a two-point conversion):

It will be interesting to see if the coaching staff still has confidence in Siemian as the backup after the first three preseason outings, where he didn’t set the world on fire. Sloter is certainly showing that he’s got the chops, if not the experience, for that role at some point in the future. Early in the fourth quarter, I texted to a fellow fan “Sloter >> Siemian” (and that was before Sloter got the first TD. I’m clearly not alone, as at least one Daily Norseman writer feels the same way:

As a former starter with many games of experience in the regular season, you’d expect a guy like Trevor Siemian to show more command. More ability. He should be a little above the second stringers he’s playing against. But he didn’t. He didn’t look like a starter. He didn’t look like a guy you want starting at QB for your team either. And that’s the point.

He was inaccurate. He looked poor under pressure. He did not lead second stringers, he let them down. There was a lack of energy. Quite simply, his game was not up to the task.

By fairly obvious contrast, as soon as Kyle Sloter took the field in each of the first three Vikings preseason games, there was energy and leadership. There was the will to win. There was a QB looking to make plays, not just play out his time.

And Sloter showed presence. Poise. Better scrambling ability. Better acccuracy. And he made plays. Every game. What plays did Siemian make? Zero. Nada. Bupkis.

Sloter led drives. He came through in the clutch. He delivered when he needed to. Yes, he went down twice late on back side blitzes, but he managed to escape from several others and made plays too. Siemian never did.

And, as every NFL head coach knows, if you want to win, you need a quarterback that can make plays. You can’t coach that. You can’t learn that in practice. Experience can help, but not that of Trevor Sirmian’s kind. He was not a playmaker in Denver, and he was released as a result. I’m not sure how that type of experience is a plus. It sounds good to say, “now here’s a QB that’s started a lot of games in the NFL, who can come in a take over if Cousins goes down.” But you could say that about Christian Ponder too.

I don’t think the team should go with only two quarterbacks — not after our experiences over the last several years with quarterback injuries — but I do think that Sloter should be given the primary backup responsibilities.

Newly signed safety George Iloka played a key role with the second team, tipping a pass that was intercepted by Anthony Harris.

Swedish Antiaircraft Artillery: Bofors 40mm Automatic Gun M1

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Technology, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published on 24 Aug 2018

Note: In the video I mistakenly describe this as a two-stamp NFA gun. It is actually deactivated, and thus does not require a tax stamp. Sorry for the mistake!

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

The Swedish Bofors company developed their 40mm antiaircraft gun in the 1930s, and it would go on to be one of the most successful weapon designs in modern history. Used by both sides in WWII and in all theaters, improved versions of the 40mm Bofors gun continue to serve in military front lines to this very day. In the US, they comprise part of the armament on the AC-130 Spectre gunships, for example.

This particular gun is a WW2 vintage piece, made in Sweden. Most of the examples used by the United States were made under license by Chrysler, the car company. Something like 60,000 were produced during the war, mostly for naval use. These guns would be a mainstay of American vessels’ air defense against Japanese Kamikaze attacks.

If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow

Mediterranean trade in the Iron Age

Filed under: Economics, Europe, History, Middle East — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Jan Bakker, Stephan Maurer, Jörn-Steffen Pischke, and Ferdinand Rauch look at the relationships between trade and economic growth around the Mediterranean during the Iron Age:

Economists often point out the benefits of trade, yet empirical evidence for these benefits has been hard to come by and tends to be recent. This column goes back to the first millennium BC to analyse the growth effects of one of the first major trade expansions in human history: the systematic crossing of the open sea in the Mediterranean by the Phoenicians. A strong positive relationship between connectedness and archaeological sites suggests a large role for geography and trade in development even at such an early juncture in history.

The effects of free trade inspire a lot of public debate these days, and policies to restrict trade are gaining in prominence. Economists since Adam Smith and David Ricardo have typically pointed out the benefits of trade. Yet empirical evidence for these benefits has been much harder to come by and is much more recent. In particular, empirical economists have tried to demonstrate that more open economies or more integrated markets see faster growth. The relationship between these two variables is not much disputed; the more difficult question is whether this is due to trade causing growth or richer economies being more open.

[…]

To analyse whether this increased trade also caused growth, we exploit the fact that open sea sailing creates different levels of connectedness for different points on the coast. The shape of the coast and the location of islands determineshow easy it is to reach other points, which might be potential trading partners, within a certain distance. We create such a measure of connectedness for travel via sea. Figure 1 shows the values of this measure on a map and demonstrates how some regions, for example the Aegean but also southern Italy and Sicily, are much better connected than others.

We use this measure of connectedness as a proxy for trading opportunities.

Figure 1 Log connectedness at 500km distance

Note: Darker blue indicates better connected locations.

Measuring growth for an early period of human history is more difficult as we have no standard measure of income, GDP, or even population. We quantify growth by the presence of archaeologic sites for settlements or urbanisations. While this is clearly not a perfect measure, more sites should imply more human presence and activity. We then relate the number of active archaeological sites in a particular period to our measure of connectedness.

We find a large positive relationship between connectedness and archaeological sites. The effect of connections on growth in the Iron Age Mediterranean are up to twice as large as the effects Donaldson and Hornbeck (2016) found for US railroads. Although these results are unlikely to be directly comparable, the magnitudes suggest a large role for geography and trade in development even at such an early juncture in history.

Why was Italy so Ineffective in WWII? | Animated History

Filed under: Economics, Europe, History, Italy, Military, Technology, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Armchair Historian
Published on 27 Jul 2018

Potential History’s Video: https://youtu.be/QB2GINNs3Aw

Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/armchairhistory

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Sources:
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer
Fascist Italy’s Military Struggles from Africa and Western Europe to the Mediterranean and Soviet Union 1935-45, Frank Joseph
Hitler’s Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940-1943, MacGregor Knox

QotD: India’s caste system

Filed under: Africa, History, India, Law, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… Gandhi, born the son of the Prime Minister of a tiny Indian principality and received as an attorney at the bar of the Middle Temple in London, [began] his climb to greatness as a member of the small Indian community in, precisely, South Africa. Natal, then a separate colony, wanted to limit Indian immigration and, as part of the government program, ordered Indians to carry identity papers (an action not without similarities to measures under consideration in the U.S. today to control illegal immigration). The film’s lengthy opening sequences are devoted to Gandhi’s leadership in the fight against Indians carrying their identity papers (burning their registration cards), with for good measure Gandhi being expelled from the first-class section of a railway train, and Gandhi being asked by whites to step off the sidewalk. This inspired young Indian leader calls, in the film, for interracial harmony, for people to “live together.”

Now the time is 1893, and Gandhi is a “caste” Hindu, and from one of the higher castes. Although, later, he was to call for improving the lot of India’s Untouchables [Dalits], he was not to have any serious misgivings about the fundamentals of the caste system for about another thirty years, and even then his doubts, to my way of thinking, were rather minor. In the India in which Gandhi grew up, and had only recently left, some castes could enter the courtyards of certain Hindu temples, while others could not. Some castes were forbidden to use the village well. Others were compelled to live outside the village, still others to leave the road at the approach of a person of higher caste and perpetually to call out, giving warning, so that no one would be polluted by their proximity. The endless intricacies of Hindu caste by-laws varied somewhat region by region, but in Madras, where most South African Indians were from, while a Nayar could pollute a man of higher caste only by touching him, Kammalans polluted at a distance of 24 feet, toddy drawers at 36 feet, Pulayans and Cherumans at 48 feet, and beef-eating Paraiyans at 64 feet. All castes and the thousands of sub-castes were forbidden, needless to say, to marry, eat, or engage in social activity with any but members of their own group. In Gandhi’s native Gujarat a caste Hindu who had been polluted by touch had to perform extensive ritual ablutions or purify himself by drinking a holy beverage composed of milk, whey, and (what else?) cow dung.

Low-caste Hindus, in short, suffered humiliations in their native India compared to which the carrying of identity cards in South Africa was almost trivial. In fact, Gandhi, to his credit, was to campaign strenuously in his later life for the reduction of caste barriers in India — a campaign almost invisible in the movie, of course, conveyed in only two glancing references, leaving the audience with the officially sponsored if historically astonishing notion that racism was introduced into India by the British. To present the Gandhi of 1893, a conventional caste Hindu, fresh from caste-ridden India where a Paraiyan could pollute at 64 feet, as the champion of interracial equalitariansim is one of the most brazen hypocrisies I have ever encountered in a serious movie.

Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows”, Commentary, 1983-03-01.

August 24, 2018

Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria

Filed under: Health, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I hadn’t heard of ROGD syndrome before, but a recent Barbara Kay column explains the concerns about it:

I have met and spoken with such parents (of daughters with ROGD). They love them deeply. They are not transphobic in the least. But since none of these girls ever expressed any sign of discomfort with their natal sex before adolescence, the parents were resistant to uncritical affirmation. Gender crossover is a momentous life change, minimally involving permanent, sterilizing, off-label hormonal treatment. These parents quite properly expected a thorough exploration of possible underlying root causes that, attended to, might well mitigate against such life-altering treatment. They felt in their bones that the “wrong body” was no more their daughters’ primary problem than too much weight is the primary problem for anorexics.

A newly published study validates these parents’ concerns. “Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports,” by Lisa Littman, a researcher in the department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown University’s School of Public Health, is the first empirical academic descriptive exploration of “the psychosocial context of youth who have recently identified as transgender with a focus on vulnerabilities, co-morbidities, peer group interactions, and social media use.”

Littman notes that adolescent-onset of gender dysphoria is relatively new for natal females. Prior to 2012, little to no research had been done on it. Most available research on adolescents with gender dysphoria includes only those with onset during childhood and is not generalizable to the adolescent-onset genre. Before 2012, there were only two clinics (one in Canada and one in The Netherlands) with enough data amassed to provide empirical information on gender-dysphoric adolescents. Both institutions concluded that management is more complicated in these cases than with early-onset dysphoria, and that individuals with adolescent-onset were “more likely to have significant psychopathology.”

[…]

Almost invariably, these teenagers spend an inordinate amount of time on certain websites, notably Tumblr and Reddit. Here they can find advice on how to lie to clinicians: “Get a story ready in your head … keep the lie to a minimum” and “look up the DSM for the diagnostic criteria for transgender and make sure your story fits it.” Almost a third of the AYAs brought up the threat of suicide as a reason for transitioning; this is also something they are coached in. Some made up stories of childhood trans yearnings, presumably to impress gender therapists. One child actually edited her perfectly ordinary childhood diary to include material suggesting she had always been gender dysphoric.

Parents often felt betrayed by the unprofessional attitudes of clinicians they consulted: psychologists, pediatricians, gender therapists and endocrinologists. Many were resistant to exploring other sources of distress, or hostile to parental testimony regarding their children’s fabrications. One parent reported, “When we tried to give our son’s trans doctor a medical history of our son, she refused to accept it. She said the half-hour diagnosis in her office was sufficient … ” Another reported on her child’s therapist’s credulity: “I overheard my son boasting on the phone to his older brother that ‘the doc swallowed everything I said hook, line and sinker. Easiest thing I ever did.’ ”

Over By Christmas? – Growing Allied Confidence I THE GREAT WAR Week 213

Filed under: Britain, France, Germany, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Great War
Published on 23 Aug 2018

Get David Zabecki’s Book about the German 1918 Offensives: http://bit.ly/Zabecki1918

With the recent “Black Day of the German Army” and the success of the new strategy of Allied attacks along the Western Front and with the renewed offensives in Palestine, British Commander Sir Douglas Haig is confident the war can be won by the end of the year. Entente Generalissimo Ferdinand Foch is a bit more cautious but also thinks the war can be won by 1919.

From Software-as-a-Service to emerging Techno-Feudalism

Filed under: Business, Europe, History, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The shift from selling software to selling software subscriptions was a major sea-change in the technology world. Here’s a bit of historical perspective from The Z Man to explain why this could be a very bad thing indeed for the average user:

Feudalism only works when a small elite controls the source of wealth. Then they can control the exploitation of it. In Europe, as Christianity spread, the Church acquired lands, becoming one of the most powerful forces in society. The warrior elite was exclusively Catholic, thus they had a loyalty to the Pope, as God’s representative on earth. Therefore, the system of controlling wealth not only had a direct financial benefit to the people at the top, it had the blessing of God’s representative, who sat atop the whole system.

That’s something to keep in mind as we see technology evolve into a feudal system, where a small elite controls the resources and grants permission to users. The software oligopolies are now shifting all of their licensing to a subscription model. It’s not just the mobile platforms. Developers of enterprise software for business are adopting the same model. The users have no ownership rights. Instead they are renters, subject to terms and conditions imposed by the developer or platform holder. The user is literally a tenant.

The main reason developers are shifting to this model is that they cannot charge high fees for their software, due to the mass of software on the market. Competition has drive down prices. Further, customers are not inclined to pay high maintenance fees, when they can buy new systems at competitive rates. The solution is stop selling the stuff and start renting it. This fits the oligopoly scheme as it ultimately puts them in control of the developers. Apple and Google are now running protection rackets for developers.

It also means the end of any useful development. Take a look at the situation Stefan Molyneux faces. A band of religious fanatics has declared him a heretic and wants him burned. The Great Church of Technology is now in the process of having him expelled from the internet. As he wrote in a post, he invests 12 years building his business on-line, only to find out he owns none of it. He was always just a tenant farmer, who foolishly invested millions in YouTube. Like a peasant, he is now about to be evicted.

How long before someone like this monster discovers that Google and Apple will no longer allow him to use any apps on his phone? Or maybe he is denied access to his accounting system? How long before his insurer cuts off his business insurance, claiming the threat from homosexual terrorists poses too high of a risk? Federal law prevents the electric company from shutting off his power due to politics, but Federal law used to prevent secret courts and secret warrants. Things change as the people in charge change.

Tank Chats #35 Centurion | The Tank Museum

Filed under: Britain, History, Military, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published on 14 Apr 2017

The thirty-fifth Tank Chat, presented David Fletcher MBE, is the first of the videos on the Centurion series of tanks.

The Centurion is one of the most important tanks in the history of the British AFV and is one of the most significant post-war Western tanks. Introduced in the spring of 1945, a small number of the Beach Armoured Recovery Version (BARV) served with the British forces during the Iraq war of 2003, 58 years later.

To find out more, buy the Haynes Centurion tank manual. https://www.myonlinebooking.co.uk/tan…

Support the work of The Tank Museum on Patreon: ► https://www.patreon.com/tankmuseum
Or donate http://tankmuseum.org/support-us/donate

QotD: Kafkatrapping

Filed under: Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

One very notable pathology is a form of argument that, reduced to essence, runs like this: “Your refusal to acknowledge that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…} confirms that you are guilty of {sin,racism,sexism, homophobia,oppression…}.” I’ve been presented with enough instances of this recently that I’ve decided that it needs a name. I call this general style of argument “kafkatrapping”, and the above the Model A kafkatrap. In this essay, I will show that the kafkatrap is a form of argument that is so fallacious and manipulative that those subjected to it are entitled to reject it based entirely on the form of the argument, without reference to whatever particular sin or thoughtcrime is being alleged. I will also attempt to show that kafkatrapping is so self-destructive to the causes that employ it that change activists should root it out of their own speech and thoughts.

My reference, of course, is to Franz Kafka’s The Trial, in which the protagonist Josef K. is accused of crimes the nature of which are never actually specified, and enmeshed in a process designed to degrade, humiliate, and destroy him whether or not he has in fact committed any crime at all. The only way out of the trap is for him to acquiesce in his own destruction; indeed, forcing him to that point of acquiescence and the collapse of his will to live as a free human being seems to be the only point of the process, if it has one at all.

This is almost exactly the way the kafkatrap operates in religious and political argument. Real crimes – actual transgressions against flesh-and-blood individuals – are generally not specified. The aim of the kafkatrap is to produce a kind of free-floating guilt in the subject, a conviction of sinfulness that can be manipulated by the operator to make the subject say and do things that are convenient to the operator’s personal, political, or religious goals. Ideally, the subject will then internalize these demands, and then become complicit in the kafkatrapping of others.

Eric S. Raymond, “Kafkatrapping”, Armed and Dangerous, 2010-07-18.

August 23, 2018

It’s quite possible to spend too much on infrastructure

Filed under: Asia, China, Economics, Government — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Tim Worstall on the recent cancellation of two large Chinese infrastructure projects in Malaysia:

A working mantra of our times is that we should all be building much, much, more infrastructure. And that it should be government telling us where and what should be built, even going and building it. All of which rather runs into that brick wall of what is happening with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Yes, it’s entirely true that the old Silk Road was a useful and enriching trade route. It’s equally obvious that other trade routes have had the same effect, enriching. That is not though the same as the statement that building a trade link enriches. A trade route which is used does, one that is built still has to be used to enrich anyone other than the constructors who make off with their pay. The measure of whether the Belt and Road Initiative enriches is whether it is used, not whether it is built.

This being something that the planners in China have forgotten. Just as our own home grown ones fail to note our own past problems. The Humber Bridge never even paid back the cost of building it, let alone the interest upon it. Infrastructure doesn’t, necessarily, pay for itself. It is that upon which grand plans fail.

[…]

That it’s too expensive means that it’s not going to make money, not even meet its construction costs. And therefore it shouldn’t be built anyway, should it? Why spend more to build a railway than the benefit to be gained by having a railway? That’s just a waste of resources.

All of which is useful for our own infrastructure fetishists. It’s only if the new stuff is used that it can be worth building it. So, only build that which will be used, not whatever crosses those pretty little synapses of yours. Why, we might even insist that private economic actors put their own money at risk in order to concentrate minds on that very issue, of whether what is to be built will get used. Leave government planning out of it that is, in order to see what is worth building.

Lost model of the Avro Arrow found off Prince Edward County

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Call me a cynic, but this is likely to kick off yet another round of myth-making about the Avro Arrow:

An iconic piece of Canada’s aviation history has been pulled out of the depths of Lake Ontario and the recovery team is hoping to find more beneath the waves.

Divers brought what is believed to be a model of the Avro Arrow to the surface last week off Prince Edward County and brought it to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum on Tuesday.

Since last September, a series of models have been found at the bottom of Lake Ontario.

The model is about three metres long — a 1/8 scale of the actual plane, according to Erin Gregory, assistant curator at the museum.

“It looks like a rocket with large triangular wings,” she said.

1/8 scale model of the Avro Arrow recovered from Lake Ontario off the shores of Prince Edward County
Photo by OEX Recovery Group, via CBC.

The Canadian Conservation Institute and the aviation museum, will oversee the conservation and restoration of the test models.

What they found last week, is not the full replica of the Arrow, the search group was hoping to find. Instead they believe it is a smaller model, meant to test the delta wing design — the triangular shape the plane was known for.

“The delta wing was a relatively new concept at that point, so it required a lot of testing to determine whether or not it would perform well, particularly at supersonic speeds,” said Gregory.

The Avro Arrow holds a special place in the hearts of Canadian conspiracy theorists – it’s “artisanal Canadian myth-making, hand-woven, fair-trade, and 100% organic”. As I said back in 2004, this is the only truly Canadian conspiracy theory (Colby Cosh calls it our “Napoleon-hat” complex).

Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good: How Immigrants, Commerce, and Fusion Keep Food Delicious

Filed under: Americas, Business, Food, Health, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

ReasonTV
Published on 1 Aug 2018

Writer Gustavo Arellano talks about food slurs, the late Jonathan Gold, and why Donald Trump’s taco salad is a step in the right direction.
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Reason is the planet’s leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won’t get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines.

—————————

The late Jonathan Gold wrote about food in Southern California with an intimacy that brought readers closer to the people that made it. The Pulitzer Prize–winning critic visited high-end brick-and-mortar restaurants as well as low-end strip malls and food trucks in search of good food wherever he found it. Gold died of pancreatic cancer last month, but he still influences writers like Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times columnist and author of Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.

Arellano sat down with Reason‘s Nick Gillespie to talk about Gold’s legacy, political correctness in cuisine, and why Donald Trump’s love of taco salad gives him hope in the midst of all of the president’s anti-Mexican rhetoric. The interview took place at Burritos La Palma, named by Gold as home to one of the five best L.A. burritos.

QotD: Nietzsche’s idealised Übermensch

Filed under: Books, History, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The solution, [Nietzsche] believed, was a new individualistic morality system in which the strongest, bravest men would become their own masters and creators, and in turn would become philosopher kings and oligarchs of the spirit. This new man was to be embodied in his infamous, hypothetical Übermensch, or Superman (as Über means above and beyond in German, Nietzsche’s word used to be also translated as the Beyond-Man or Overman, but today is usually not translated at all. The Übermensch goes above and beyond.)

The arch-individual, non-conformist Superman rises above the morality of the herd and harnesses all of his internal energies, all the energy within – his ‘will to power’, which consists of his sexual drive, survival drive, pleasure drive and other non-rational forces – to embrace life fearlessly, and with nobility and courage. The ultimate task of the Übermensch is to face life and live it as if he had lived it an infinite number of times in the past, and will do so an infinite number of times in the future. In so doing he will accept all of life’s horrors and sufferings in a kind of neverending Groundhog Day. Nietzsche ostensibly took this ‘eternal recurrence’ to be literally true, not just a metaphor.

All of these thoughts were developed by Nietzsche in the third stage of his writing. The first stage, from 1872 to 1878, was marked by a preoccupation with the pre-Socratic Ancient Greeks, and how they used art and theatre to make sense of human existence and all its capricious cruelties. The second stage, encompassing the books Human, All Too Human (1878), The Dawn (1881) and The Joyful Science (1883), was marked by experimental and doubtful musings on the notion of truth. While his third and final stage, taking us up to January 1889, when he was struck down by madness, is characterised chiefly by the question of morality, and how his idealised Übermensch would confront and overcome nihilism.

Patrick West, “Nietzsche and the struggle against nihilism”, Spiked, 2018-08-03.

August 22, 2018

“The current spate of Jew-baiting is … like a Lord Of the Flies of the Woke”

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Julie Burchill‘s latest column at Spiked:

As a lifelong cheerleader for the Jewish people, these recent months have been bittersweet for me; a highly unusual example of not wanting to be proved right. I resigned from the Guardian a whopping 15 years ago in protest over what I perceived as its slimy anti-Semitism – and, it must be admitted, the offer of three times the wages from The Times. I often wonder how the left-wing Jewish half-wits who slammed me then feel now that they’ve been well and truly trashed by the bullies they sucked up to.

The current spate of Jew-baiting is interesting in that it’s like a Lord Of the Flies of the Woke; raised on tofu and now high on the taste of blood, the snowflakes have finally found a minority group it’s fine to demonise, and my gosh, doesn’t that Two Minute Twitter Hate feel good! (The meekness of the diaspora Jews makes them honorary women in the eyes of the left – then the toughness of the Israelis sends the brosocialists into a maelstrom of cognitive dissonance a gogo.) But I’m hoping my Jewish chums and I can put the unpleasantness out of our minds for a few tuneful hours when Trevor Nunn’s revival of Fiddler On The Roof opens in December, just in time for Hanukkah.

This heart-warming story follows the fortunes of a Jewish milkman living in a Russian village with his wife and five daughters as he fights to hold on to his dignity among growing anti-Semitism – what a relief that times have changed! In the spirit of keeping an open mind, I’m going to apply the popular PC theory of extreme type-casting to my appreciation of the new Fiddler, and sincerely trust that JEWS ONLY will be cast in the main roles – I don’t mind if Gentiles play such minor roles as Russian Official and Priest. After all, the singer Sierra Boggess, after being judged too pallid for the role of West Side Story’s Puerto Rican heroine Maria in the BBC Proms production, recanted in a positively Orwellian fashion after social-media monstering. As did Scarlett Johansson recently after being being bullied out of a putative role as a cross-dresser. Women, eh? Even the divas among us are so used to saying sorry that it’s a wonder we ever got the vote – imagine the Suffragettes today, going around apologising to racehorses for being insufficiently sensitive to their shared cultural oppression!

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