We live in a culture of “research” and “planning.” I’m not against honest research (which is rare), but mortally opposed to “planning.” The best it can ever achieve is failure, when some achievement comes despite its ham-fisted efforts. Countless billions, yanked from the taxpayers’ pockets, and collected through highly professional, tear-jerking campaigns, are spent “trying to find a cure” for this or that. When and if it comes, it is invariably the product of some nerd somewhere, with a messy lab. Should it be noticed at all, more billions will be spent appropriating the credit, or more likely, suppressing it for giving “false hope.” The regulators will be called in, as the police are to a crime scene.
For from the “planning” point of view, the little nerd has endangered billions of dollars in funding, and thus the livelihoods of innumerable bureaucratic drudges. That is, after all, why they retain the China Wall of lawyers: to prevent unplanned events from happening. But glory glory, sometimes they happen anyway.
David Warren, “That’s funny”, Essays in Idleness, 2018-03-08.
June 23, 2020
QotD: Scientific discoveries despite “research” and “planning”
June 22, 2020
QotD: Victimhood
The irony of all this, of course, is the reluctance to hold everyone to the same standard of conduct and the same rules of discourse proves that racism is still alive and well in America. We still, as a society, refuse to treat everyone equally. It is, in fact, an insult to Ali and West that no one thought them equal enough to be chastised and condemned. In our society’s own peculiarly paternalistic and condescending way, we are saying that some people must be handled differently because they are not yet quite equal.
Joseph Mussomeli, “Victim Privilege, Cultural Appropriation, & the New Enslavement”, The Imaginative Conservative, 2018-02-09.
June 21, 2020
QotD: “[T]he fascinating modern science of high-tech grave robbing”
As Fitzgerald’s friend Hemingway ended The Sun Also Rises, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
But now the brilliant Harvard geneticist David Reich has published a bombshell scientific book, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, whose revelations would have been found congenial by a smarter version of Buchanan (such as Fitzgerald himself).
Despite Reich’s occasional need to stop his otherwise lucid narrative to spew irrational rage against his fellow race-science heretics such as James D. Watson, the genome expert conclusively demolishes the post-Boasian anthropologists’ conventional wisdom.
[…]
Reich learned the fascinating modern science of high-tech grave robbing from Svante Pääbo. This Swedish biologist invented the techniques for extracting from ancient skeletons their DNA. (Interestingly, the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act makes it hard to get hold of ancient American Indian skeletons, but other races’ ancestors appear to be fair game.)
Reich applied to Pääbo’s breakthrough the traditional American knack for vast industrial scale. Assisted by English code-cracker Nick Patterson’s innovations in extracting meaning from bits and pieces of ancient genomes, Reich’s factory-like lab at the Broad Institute has been churning out a tsunami of papers on fascinating questions of prehistory.
Steve Sailer, “Reich’s Laboratory”, Taki’s Magazine, 2018-03-28.
June 20, 2020
QotD: Morality and the government
Gaze upon the members of Congress, the president and his lieutenants, the justices of the Supreme Court, and the leading figures of the government bureaucracies. As I do so, I cannot help but wonder: Who are these people? I am not personally acquainted with a single one of them; they are complete strangers to me. I have not contracted with them for the provision of any services, nor have I agreed to support them financially. Why then do these strangers presume to dictate to me what I must do and not do, and to threaten me with violence if I do not obey? They might as well be alien invaders from outer space.
Robert Higgs, “A Straightforward View of Morality and the Government”, The Beacon, 2018-03-06.
June 19, 2020
QotD: We call it the Corded Ware culture, not the Battle Axe culture to make it less interesting to boys
Jones went on to hypothesize that an ancient invasion of Dravidian-speaking India by Proto-Indo-European-speaking Aryans from Iran could help explain the curious distribution of language, skin color, and caste within the Hindu world today.
Jones’ ideas had unfortunate influence. Reich writes:
To the Nazis and others, the distribution of the Indo-European language family, linking Europe to India … spoke of an ancient conquest moving out of an ancestral homeland, displacing and subjugating the peoples of the conquered territories, an event they wished to emulate.
Hitler thus culturally appropriated the Hindu swastika.
Since 1945, the notion of Aryan invaders has been unsurprisingly unpopular.
In Europe, anthropologists have promoted the “pots not people” theory to argue that trade and changes in fashion must explain why Corded Ware pots suddenly showed up all over Europe about 4,900 years ago. (So did battle axes; indeed, early scientists called this the Battle Axe Culture. But that sounded too awesome. Hence, more recent academics renamed it after its pottery style to make these brutal barbarians sound dweebier and thus less interesting to boys.)
In India, the notion of Hindu culture as a giant conspiracy by Aryan invaders to enshrine their descendants at the top of the social order for the rest of eternity perhaps struck a little too close to home.
Steve Sailer, “Reich’s Laboratory”, Taki’s Magazine, 2018-03-28.
June 18, 2020
QotD: The feminization of culture
“The Z Man”, “The Soundtrack Of This Age”, The Z Blog, 2018-03-15.
June 17, 2020
QotD: The theological role of suffering in Catholicism
Same thing with Lenten sacrifices, which get misinterpreted as a device to remind you that the life of the spirit is superior to the life of the body — both a cultural error and a theological one, since in fact your soul and glorified body will be reunited on the Last Day. Giving something up for Lent is solely about deprivation; that’s why you’re specifically advised not just to give up smoking or eating sweets or anything else you’d give up as a New Year’s resolution, but to give up something that you will miss and that isn’t harmful to you. (Harmful stuff like yanking it you’re supposed to have permanently given up anyway.)
Tim Cavanaugh, “Don’t Cry. It’s a Waste of Good Suffering”, Reason Hit and Run, 2005-02-15.
June 16, 2020
QotD: A thumbnail history of the English language
English doesn’t just borrow words; it lifts whole phrases and grammatical ideas from other languages without so much as a by-your-leave. With the coming of the Saxons to Britain, Germanic languages crashed headlong into Brythonic and became Old English. Then the Vikings went for a multi-century beer run starting in the late 700s and left behind a bunch of Norse words, because who doesn’t invent a new language every time they go out carousing? In 1066, William the Bastard decided he didn’t like his name, and brought Norman French with him when he went to the town clerk’s office to have his name legally changed to William the Conqueror.
For the next two hundred years, the English upper classes spoke French and the lower classes spoke a zillion dialects of Middle English (travel was difficult for poor people, so regional variations survived). All legal business was done in French, which was often translated on the spot into Latin for the official records. A person couldn’t even submit a legal plea in English until 1362. But with the start of the Hundred Years’ War in 1337, Edward III decided that speaking French was très passé, and began encouraging English as a spoken and written language, with a little French thrown in, just to keep things interesting. And ever since, English has been debating how sophisticated it wants to be, while making rude gestures across the Channel at France and grumbling when the French sneer northwards.
Blake Smith, “A Brief History of English and Why it Matters”, Mad Genius Club, 2018-03-07.
June 15, 2020
QotD: The very first “road trip”
By 1888, he had a working prototype, which had successfully driven down a road. The now-patented Motorwagen had no gears and could not go up hills, but it worked. One morning, Benz’s wife Bertha decided to take the car on its first extended road trip. With her two sons, she pushed the car out of the garage, until it was far enough from the house that they could get it started without waking her husband.
Bertha Benz had a destination in mind — her parents’ house in Pforzheim, about 65 miles from her home. Following roads meant for wagons, she and her sons started the drive — the first recorded road trip in a car.
There were challenges. A pipe clogged; Benz cleaned it with her hat pin. A wire shorted; she insulated it with her garter. They needed more fuel; she convinced a pharmacist to sell her an unusually large amount of the gas the car used. When the brakes started wearing out, she had them shod with leather at a cobbler. When she reached a hill, she had the boys push (along with local help).
By the end of the day, the Benzes had reached Pforzheim, where Bertha telegraphed her husband that they were safe. After a few days’ visit, they drove back home to Mannheim.
Ten years ago, Germany created an official Bertha Benz Memorial Route, marking her historic road trip. Part of Bertha Benz’s motivation was to sell potential customers on the advantage of automobiles; although it took another decade or so, people eventually bought into this transportation revolution.
Sarah Laskow, “An 1888 Road Trip Sparked Germany’s Romance With Cars”, Atlas Obscura, 2018-02-28.
June 14, 2020
QotD: The seen gains and unseen losses of high tariffs
It’s easy to rejoice when a wall, literal or figurative, enriches you. And it’s even easier when the destruction wrought elsewhere by that wall is invisible. When a tariff wall causes people in Louisiana and Oregon to pay higher prices for steel made in Pittsburgh, no one can know how they would otherwise have used the extra funds they now pay to Pennsylvania steel producers. But those funds must be diverted from somewhere.
Yet because those somewheres are many, no one domestic industry suffers any great loss from higher steel tariffs. The destruction wrought by tariff walls is dispersed and, hence, invisible. But the sum of the losses is greater than the gain to domestic steel producers.
Americans on the whole are made poorer.
Don Boudreaux, “Mr. Trump, don’t build those walls!”, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 2016-11-22.
June 13, 2020
QotD: The liberal media
This is a universal principle. Everyone knows something about something, and is very backward on that which he knows. The one exception may be journalists, who know nothing about anything, and are therefore liberal all round.
David Warren, “I’ll be a Welshman”, Essays in Idleness, 2018-03-01.
June 12, 2020
QotD: Homelessness in America
90% of the homeless in America and the hard core ones are people with mental health issues, people with drug abuse issues and people who have found they can live without having to do anything for it, and can be “free” and outside society. I’ve overheard conversations in the park, and I suppose that most of the people who “dropped out” in the sixties are dead, but a lot of them are alive and going from soup kitchen to free clinic, with a bit of begging in between.
Yes, there are entire families in this system, including homeless children – but for them to stay in it, the parents need to have some sort of serious issue. Otherwise, even if they can’t find work, there is assistance available to get them at least into public housing, which, nightmarish though it is, is not living in the park.
I’m not going to pretend this doesn’t happen to normal families too – see where I came very close to that level and more than once too – but normal families usually tend to bounce back. They go through a few months of mess and horror, and then they claw back to some semblance of normalcy. (This might change as our economy dives and programs of necessity get cut. The ones for the DESERVING poor will be cut first, of course, since they rarely riot.)
The problem with this is that when people get appalled at the conditions the homeless live in and start offering “homeless services” there is an entire network, not just of homeless but of social workers who direct the homeless to the cities with better services.
I swear to you and I’m not even joking that right now there are plenty more homeless on Colorado Springs streets than in Denver, despite the Springs being much smaller.
The Springs also has its soup kitchens and other services downtown and within easy walking distance of each other.
This means downtown businesses are closing, except for bars and restaurants which can control access. And that the library is of course a place to camp in the cool/warm during the day.
It means more than that. We moved within easy driving distance of downtown, because when we lived downtown when we first came to Colorado Springs, I used to take walks every day. When we moved to our little mountain village, without these, I gained ten pounds a year. I used to love walking downtown, dropping by the deli and the three bookstores (only one left, and it’s MOSTLY a restaurant now) checking out the other little shops which ranged from yarn to weird import crafts.
Now those are gone. Worse – the last two times I walked downtown alone (i.e. without commanding the muscle, aka older son to go with me) someone FOLLOWED me and I had to employ stuff from my childhood to lose them. Once it was a large and addled looking male, and yes, he was following me. And once it was TWO large and addled looking males. For the icing on the cake – not related to this, but from a blog entry – I clicked on the sex offenders registry. Yes, I know, a lot of people there are there because someone accused them and was never proven. Our local one at least has notes on whether it’s accusation, trial or conviction and also whether the crime was against children or adults.
The downtown zipcode is FULL of registered sex offenders who’ve done hard time and who have committed their crimes against adults. The faces are very familiar from my walks, and yep, one was the guy who tried to follow me.
Sarah Hoyt, “Of Books, Compassion And Cruelty A Blast From The Past From June 2013”, According to Hoyt, 2020-03-10.
June 11, 2020
QotD: Equal rights
This reminds me of the debate in the late 1980s through mid-1990s about whether homosexuality was nature or nurture, something you were born to be or a lifestyle choice. Conservatives and Christians argued for the “choice” position and this led to efforts to “convert” gays to straight (or “pray the gay away”) because something that is learned can be unlearned. This led the gay community and supporters thereof to argue for the “born this way” position. The cumulative evidence from multiple lines of inquiry led to the nature position more than that of nurture, but this was another example of confusing the empirical question of the origin of homosexuality with the moral question of the rights of gays and lesbians (today the LGBTQ community). It should go without saying — but unfortunately in these times it must be said again and again — it doesn’t matter what the origins of homosexuality turn out to be, gays and lesbians and everyone else in the LGBTQ community are entitled to the same rights and privileges as everyone else protected by the constitution of their nation (and those nations that have yet to extend legal rights to gays and lesbians need to change their constitutions).
Michael Shermer, interviewed by Claire Lehmann, “The Skeptical Optimist: Interview with Michael Shermer”, Quillette, 2018-02-24.
June 10, 2020
QotD: “God is Dead”
People turn to things like ideologies, which I regard as parasites on an underlying religious substructure, to try to organize their thinking. That’s a catastrophe and what Nietzsche foresaw. He knew that, when we knocked the slats out of the base of Western civilization by destroying this representation, this God ideal, we would destabilize and move back and forth violently between nihilism and the extremes of ideology. He was particularly concerned about radical left ideology and believed — and predicted this in the late 1800s, which is really an absolute intellectual tour de force of staggering magnitude — that in the 20th century hundreds of millions of people would die because of the replacement of these underlying dream-like structures with this rational, but deeply incorrect, representation of the world. We’ve been oscillating back and forth between left and right ever since, with some good sprinkling of nihilism and despair. In some sense, that’s the situation of the modern Western person, and increasingly of people in general.
Jordan B. Peterson, “Biblical Series I: Introduction to the Idea of God” {transcript], jordanbpeterson.com, 2018-03-12.
June 9, 2020
QotD: Groupthink
Rule two is that, because they have shut their minds to any evidence which might contradict their belief, they like to insist that it is supported by a “consensus.” The one thing those caught up in groupthink cannot tolerate is that anyone should question it.
This leads on to the third rule, which is that they cannot properly debate the matter with those who disagree with their belief. Anyone holding a contrary view must simply be ignored, ridiculed, and dismissed as not worth listening to.
Christopher Booker, “Groupthink on Climate Change Ignores Inconvenient Facts”, Foundation for Economic Education, 2018-02-24.
