The Republicans might redeem themselves a bit if they can cut spending, cut taxes and gut Obamacare.
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
The morning after
Although in California we now have Governor Moonbeam 2.0 joining Nancy Lugosi and Barbara Botox, nationwide, the message is clear....sir.
The Republicans might redeem themselves a bit if they can cut spending, cut taxes and gut Obamacare.
The Republicans might redeem themselves a bit if they can cut spending, cut taxes and gut Obamacare.
Joy in Bagdad by the Bay
Hundreds of thousands of folks are lining the streets on this sunny warm day to welcome the Giants home. Willie Mays is riding in the parade.
A happy town.
(Solitary fan above; a native San Franciscan, not me.)
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
San Francisco
There is much that I love about this city. And there are some things I hate. I mean really hate. The Board of Supervisors, for the benefit of our health, has taken aim at the McDonald's Happy Meal. Foul, meddling busybodies.
I've exercised my franchise
An Alberta Park Ranger
Thom found this fella on line and suggested I might like his look.
Damn, the boy knows me well. It's a great thing, testosterone.
And not only is he effin beautiful, but a talented photographer, with a sense of humor*. His caption for this doubles shot:
Ever wanna tell yerself just to shut the fuck up?
*I seem to have a historical weakness for these type of guys...
In festo omnium fidelium defunctorum
All Souls' Day. To remember all those gone before us into death and whom we will one day follow.
A Catholic memory.
The old solemn high Mass in Latin. Black vestments, unbleached candles, the catafalque, the chant of Dies Irae. Visits to the cemetery.
On that day, too, when I was a kid, you could get three plenary indulgences for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, by visiting three churches on November 2nd and saying certain prayers. A plenary indulgence completely releases a soul from that post-mortem purifying state penultimate to heaven. (Details here). A big deal. But with the ingenuity that you find in large, old and non-bourgeois religious traditions, that requirement had been mitigated so that you could achieve the same goal of three plenaries by exiting and entering the same church three times. Easier for the living, more advantageous for the dead.
All day you could see people leave the church, stand on the steps and then go back in.
To a rationalist or a Protestant mind, this is kind of embarrassing. Mechanical and commercial. But to a naturally religious person, it is a mark of a connection and a care that lives beyond the separation of death.
A Catholic memory.
The old solemn high Mass in Latin. Black vestments, unbleached candles, the catafalque, the chant of Dies Irae. Visits to the cemetery.
On that day, too, when I was a kid, you could get three plenary indulgences for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, by visiting three churches on November 2nd and saying certain prayers. A plenary indulgence completely releases a soul from that post-mortem purifying state penultimate to heaven. (Details here). A big deal. But with the ingenuity that you find in large, old and non-bourgeois religious traditions, that requirement had been mitigated so that you could achieve the same goal of three plenaries by exiting and entering the same church three times. Easier for the living, more advantageous for the dead.
All day you could see people leave the church, stand on the steps and then go back in.
To a rationalist or a Protestant mind, this is kind of embarrassing. Mechanical and commercial. But to a naturally religious person, it is a mark of a connection and a care that lives beyond the separation of death.
While I'm at it,when I visited England I noticed that, as part of the Reformation "purification" of the churches from Romish corruption, they removed all the statues and altars of the saints. And replaced them over time with huge sepulchres of the upper classes, complete with life-size statues and plaques noting their virtues. Wow, that was an improvement.
Monday, November 01, 2010
World champs
This morning's SF Chronicle reports:
In the city's Castro neighborhood, rowdy residents tossed toilet paper over the Muni lines, briefly halting service while police officers did a quick cleanup.
About 1,000 people swarmed 18th and Castro streets, tossing more toilet paper and blocking the intersection.
Earlier, at the 44 Castro bar, the crowd had erupted in screams as the last strike flew over the plate to end the game and give the home team the trophy. Boys kissed boys, other boys booed George W. Bush and three beefy barmen stripped off their shirts and yelled, "Yeah!"
Manager Marshall Beichner leaped on the bar and shouted the oft-dreamt of, but rarely heard: "Open bar the next five minutes!"
All Saints, All Souls
Been reading some articles on IQ in relation to nations, races, professions, etc. Funny how liberals want to make IQ irrelevant (because blacks as a group always wind up at the bottom) unless someone on death row has a low IQ; then it's crucial and paramount.
Most of the anxiety about IQ comes not from the regular disparity between Asians and whites; whites seem to say, oh, well, waddaya know, they're smarter than we are, and go back to work. But it's all about the much lower scores of blacks. Clearly the "scientific" anxiety comes from societal anxiety about racism. Liberalism was once attached to science; now it's only science if it matches the progressive vision. Doubting the Darwinian theory of evolution is unthinkable, but endlessly constant results from many decades of IQ research, even after all kinds of culture bias was vetted, must be doubted. Progressivism is as much a religion, an unrevealed faith, as the religions it usually derides. Ask Larry Summers about that.
Reminds me of gender and the Bell Curve. Males have bigger numbers at both ends. More criminals. More geniuses. Sorry, girls. Less prison time for you, but fewer Nobels. Get used to it.
One of the qualities of liberals and progressives is that they decide in advance what would be nice to be true, how things ought to be, based on their victim/oppressor narrative of restitutive justice, and then demand that it actually be so. As the Epistle to the Hebrews say, Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.
The great crime for liberals is inequality. If the evil people --uncool white male Christian Western American capitalist warmonger consumerists-- who unjustly and dishonestly create unfair conditions which result in inequality are removed, then everyone would be pretty much the same everywhere! Planet Earth would become Lake Wobegon, where all the women a strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average. Wouldn't that be so, like, cool?
But, alas, males are bigger and stronger and faster than women and we die sooner. Just the facts, ma'am. True worldwide. Like or not. (John Kekes has a very funny half-serious discussion of how men ought to be compensated by government programs to address their unequal life span vis a vis women.) Liberalism really doesn't like actual difference and diversity, --which always creates inequality--only the pre-fab hothouse paint-by-numbers variety that serves their silly and dangerous agenda.
IQ is a big deal, but it's not everything. There are people with IQs lower than mine who are far more successful than I am. They have other skills or traits I lack, but I'm still smarter. Jews as a group were smarter than Germans. But six million of them got erased by the not quite as smart group. The Holocaust didn't make the Germans smarter, just way more effective. At least till they stupidly decided to take on the Russians AND the Western allies at the same time. When Stupid Things Happen To Smart People. Take a lesson.
And one of those lessons should be that if you are part of a group competing with another group that's on average smarter than you, then you'd better find other means to make up for that disadvantage.
Saw a map set for sale in one of the "socially conscious" stores in Noe Valley, a neighborhood so liberal that only rich people can afford to live there. It showed the world by actual land mass, making places like Africa very large in comparison, say, to little Europe. AND it had a South-North orientation. Seems that white male European Mercator privileged the North (gross "directionism") and his perspective made smaller lands seems larger. (Penis envy.) What a racist. I am sure that map really improved the lives of a lot of Africans.
At least on the surface, it is no longer OK to designate different nations or peoples as savages or barbarians (despite endless evidence that this is so). We Are All One. The Lie du Jour. But if you listen to Europeans talk about Americans, no such rules of egalitarian politeness seem to apply: we are violent, stupid, greedy, superstitious, crass, xenophobic, uninformed. (Like Obama talked about during his campaign. Surely they must only mean white Americans, like he did, not cool blacks like Josephine Baker.) If you talk about, say, the Congolese*, that way, you'd be a rank racist. Funny how that happens.
*The Congo is officially The Democratic Republic of the Congo. It's a sure sign; any country which styles itself a "democratic republic" is a hellhole. The other one that comes to mind is North Korea.
Most of the anxiety about IQ comes not from the regular disparity between Asians and whites; whites seem to say, oh, well, waddaya know, they're smarter than we are, and go back to work. But it's all about the much lower scores of blacks. Clearly the "scientific" anxiety comes from societal anxiety about racism. Liberalism was once attached to science; now it's only science if it matches the progressive vision. Doubting the Darwinian theory of evolution is unthinkable, but endlessly constant results from many decades of IQ research, even after all kinds of culture bias was vetted, must be doubted. Progressivism is as much a religion, an unrevealed faith, as the religions it usually derides. Ask Larry Summers about that.
Reminds me of gender and the Bell Curve. Males have bigger numbers at both ends. More criminals. More geniuses. Sorry, girls. Less prison time for you, but fewer Nobels. Get used to it.
One of the qualities of liberals and progressives is that they decide in advance what would be nice to be true, how things ought to be, based on their victim/oppressor narrative of restitutive justice, and then demand that it actually be so. As the Epistle to the Hebrews say, Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.
The great crime for liberals is inequality. If the evil people --uncool white male Christian Western American capitalist warmonger consumerists-- who unjustly and dishonestly create unfair conditions which result in inequality are removed, then everyone would be pretty much the same everywhere! Planet Earth would become Lake Wobegon, where all the women a strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average. Wouldn't that be so, like, cool?
But, alas, males are bigger and stronger and faster than women and we die sooner. Just the facts, ma'am. True worldwide. Like or not. (John Kekes has a very funny half-serious discussion of how men ought to be compensated by government programs to address their unequal life span vis a vis women.) Liberalism really doesn't like actual difference and diversity, --which always creates inequality--only the pre-fab hothouse paint-by-numbers variety that serves their silly and dangerous agenda.
IQ is a big deal, but it's not everything. There are people with IQs lower than mine who are far more successful than I am. They have other skills or traits I lack, but I'm still smarter. Jews as a group were smarter than Germans. But six million of them got erased by the not quite as smart group. The Holocaust didn't make the Germans smarter, just way more effective. At least till they stupidly decided to take on the Russians AND the Western allies at the same time. When Stupid Things Happen To Smart People. Take a lesson.
And one of those lessons should be that if you are part of a group competing with another group that's on average smarter than you, then you'd better find other means to make up for that disadvantage.
Saw a map set for sale in one of the "socially conscious" stores in Noe Valley, a neighborhood so liberal that only rich people can afford to live there. It showed the world by actual land mass, making places like Africa very large in comparison, say, to little Europe. AND it had a South-North orientation. Seems that white male European Mercator privileged the North (gross "directionism") and his perspective made smaller lands seems larger. (Penis envy.) What a racist. I am sure that map really improved the lives of a lot of Africans.
At least on the surface, it is no longer OK to designate different nations or peoples as savages or barbarians (despite endless evidence that this is so). We Are All One. The Lie du Jour. But if you listen to Europeans talk about Americans, no such rules of egalitarian politeness seem to apply: we are violent, stupid, greedy, superstitious, crass, xenophobic, uninformed. (Like Obama talked about during his campaign. Surely they must only mean white Americans, like he did, not cool blacks like Josephine Baker.) If you talk about, say, the Congolese*, that way, you'd be a rank racist. Funny how that happens.
*The Congo is officially The Democratic Republic of the Congo. It's a sure sign; any country which styles itself a "democratic republic" is a hellhole. The other one that comes to mind is North Korea.
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