Extra Credits
Published on 16 Feb 2019The potato blight hit the United States first before it came to Ireland (and other countries). But what made it particularly devastating in Ireland was the factor of human influence — behind-the-scenes bureaucracy that prioritized economics over human lives.
The Irish Potato Famine ranks as one of Europe’s worst agricultural disasters — scattering a people to the winds.
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February 19, 2019
Irish Potato Famine – Isle of Blight – Extra History – #1
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Judging a book by its cover (or people by their appearance)
In the latest Libertarian Enterprise, Sean Gabb reviews How to Judge People by What They Look Like, by Edward Dutton:
This short book is equally naughty and entertaining. It bounces along, making its points in a light-hearted and generally a witty manner. It is naughty so far as it is a flat challenge to many of the pieties of our age.
We are told never to judge a book by its cover — that the substance of a person, this being character and intelligence, have no measurable relationship to his external form, this being his physical appearance. At the extreme, of looking at correlations between race and intelligence, you can get into serious trouble for disputing this piety. Even moderate dissent earns hostility or just ridicule. Look, for example, at the relevant textbooks. The phlogiston theory is covered as an early theory of combustion, superseded by the truth. Phrenology is denounced as barely short of a moral and intellectual failing. No one thinks ill of Lamarck for this theory of inherited characteristics. Lombroso and his measurement of criminal heads are seen as steps on the road to Auschwitz.
The author of this book takes aim at every one of these pieties. He begins with the easy targets. Within ethnic groups, he goes over the increasingly rehabilitated claim that intelligence is largely inherited — about 80 per cent. He adds the other increasingly rehabilitated claim that there are differences of average intelligence between groups—that the peaks of each distribution curve occur at different points along the scale.
[…]
Now, what follows from all this? The answer is that all truth is important — so far as this is the truth; and I do lack the statistical grounding and the time or inclination to check the author’s scholarship. Even when a particular truth has no practical value, a regard for truth is a generally useful prejudice. But there are certain conclusions that appear to follow.
First, there is has been a progressively greater diversity of external form since the industrial revolution. The stated reason for this is that the harsh conditions of a traditional society, in which about 40 per cent of children died, and the higher classes had more surviving offspring, created a strong bias towards the survival of the intelligent and conscientious. Since then, the fall of infant mortality towards zero has thrown this process into reverse. That may explain the growing fall in genius or just high intellectual quality as a fraction of modern populations. It may also explain the decay — and the author says nothing of this — of free institutions, and their replacement by less complex and more maternal forms of government. Old England was free because its people were capable of being free. Modern England is unfree because the people have changed.
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LOONEY TUNES (Looney Toons): Rookie Revue (1941)
8thManDVD.com™ Cartoon Channel
Published on 8 Dec 2013Random gags around military life, set on an army base. A bugler uses a jukebox to play reveille. In formation, one private has a great deal of trouble remembering what comes after “3”; after he gets it, he decides not to go for the $32 question. In the mess hall, the machine gunners machine gun their food while the bombers catch falling biscuits. The infantry marches for miles – past a “next time, take the train” billboard. The camouflage troops march by, invisibly. We see training substitutes: wooden guns, cars marked “tank” and, alas, a banner marked “parachute” deployed in mid-jump. More training: aerial games (of tic-tac-toe). The anti-aircraft division has target practice, on an aerial shooting gallery. Finally, in an elaborate process, a general provides firing instructions to a big gun; when it hits his own building, he says, “I’m a baaad general.”
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The looney tunes (commonly mistaken as Looney Toons) series features characters such as bugs bunny, daffy duck & porky pig. The looney tunes cartoons, movies and new looney tunes show have been produced for years. The looney tunes full episodes, produced by the official looney tunes are available on DVD and TV.
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QotD: Internal contradictions of political correctness
… there was an article in the magazine arguing, on what might loosely be called philosophical grounds, for an end to the separation of men and women in sports. Women tennis players, for example, should compete against men, even if this means (as it does) that no woman could ever again make a living as a tennis player. In the name of equality of the sexes, one sex should be eliminated from a whole field of endeavor. Presumably, also, there should be no concessions for the handicapped, who would be forced to compete not against those similarly handicapped but against the fully fit.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in it: For the greater political correctness’ violation of common sense, the better — at least if its goal is power over men’s minds and conduct. In this sense it is like Communist propaganda of old: The greater the disparity between the claims of that propaganda and the everyday experience of those at whom it was directed, the greater the humiliation suffered by the latter, especially when they were obliged to repeat it, thus destroying their ability to resist, even in the secret corners of their heart. That is why the politically correct insist that everyone uses their language: Unlike what the press is supposed to do, the politically correct speak power to truth.
One of the strange things about the politically correct is that they never seem to become bored with their own thoughts. And this leads to a dilemma for those who oppose political correctness, for to be constantly arguing against bores is to become a bore oneself. On the other hand, not to argue against them is to let them win by default. To argue against rubbish is to immerse oneself in rubbish; not to argue against rubbish is to allow it to triumph. All that is necessary for humbug to triumph is for honest men to say nothing.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Two Forms of Mass Hysteria”, Taki’s Magazine, 2017-03-11.
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