We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Biden administration limits what Border Patrol can share with media about migrant surge at border. Restrictions on what border agents can share with the media were passed down verbally, say officials. Some have released videos of the border surge anyway.
Dead Sea scroll discovery brings tantalizing prospect of more yet to be found. With another 20 promising caves to be excavated — and 25% more of the Judean Desert still to be surveyed — stunning finds in Cave of Horror unlikely to be the last
Academia has become a closed system, a moral community defined by a set of sacred progressive values. The surge of no-platformings which took off in America in 2015 and hit Britain in 2018–19, or the fivefold jump in the rate of cancelling American academics which took place in 2019, present merely the tip of an iceberg of self-censorship and conformity. In this essay, I present extensive new survey data on the scale of the problem in the US, Canada, and Britain from my new report for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology entitled “Academic Freedom in Crisis: Punishment, Political Discrimination, and Self-Censorship.”
Anthony Fauci’s Brand of Truth Telling - When asked by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough to relate some of the lessons he’s learned as the face of the nation’s COVID-19 response over the last 13 months, Dr. Anthony Fauci had one lesson to relate: Tell the truth.
Social justice activists have been arguing for some time that scientific societies and institutions need to address systemic sexism and racism in STEM disciplines. However, their rationale is often anything but scientific. For example, whenever percentages in faculty positions, test scores, or grant recipients in various disciplines do not match percentages of national average populations, racism or sexism is generally said to be the cause. This is in spite of the fact that no explicit examples of racism or sexism generally accompany the statistics. Correlation, after all, is not causation. Without some underlying mechanism or independent evidence to explain a correlation of observed outcomes with population statistics, inferring racism or sexism in academia as the cause is inappropriate...
One might have hoped for more rigor from the leadership of scientific societies and research institutions.
The CDC Thinks 2-Year-Olds Should Wear Masks in Schools, Even If Everyone Else Is Vaccinated. The CDC's new guidance for child care facilities is practically begging to be ignored.
... there are lots of legends common across the political spectrum. Yet those of the Left are quicker to become fact. They become “truthful” because of the current appeasing progressive octopus of traditional media and Silicon Valley. In other words, some untruths become either “noble lies” that serve communitarian purposes or canonized lies that would cause too much collateral damage if exposed.
Traditional American values have long been under attack by social justice warriors, cultural Marxists advancing the insidious tenets of critical theory. Their “long march through the institutions” has infiltrated schools, universities, entertainment, the mass media, the courts, politics, and beyond. One might assume that business, adhering to the Milton Friedman doctrine of maximizing returns for shareholders, would be insulated from their malign agenda. But that assumption is no longer valid, according to Stephen Soukup’s recent book The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business. He illuminates how ‘progressive’ forces have insinuated themselves into regulatory agencies, the finance industry, and corporate America, jeopardizing capital markets and the free-market system itself.
Academic freedom? Freedom of speech? In the current atmosphere, these have become dangerous. This is evil, by American values.
Government still can't censor people but your employer can censor you, or worse. It is a climate of fear, as if we lived in some foreign country. "Shut up or we will destroy you" is not an argument.
2:2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.
2:3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.
2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us
2:5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved--
2:6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
2:7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God--
2:9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast.
2:10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
In a recent Manhattan Contrarian article, my dad pointed out that, by their own admission, the worst racists in our country are academics in our elite colleges and universities. Even as they make more and more efforts to improve their “diversity and inclusion” with committees, trainings, seminars, course curriculums, and town halls — just to name a few — by their own assessment, this has only resulted in more “systemic racism,” “oppression,” and “white supremacy.” Since that’s the case, it is time to question whether the model of elite-institutions-practicing-diversity-and-inclusion can ever bring society even one step closer to racial harmony — its stated intention — or if it’s only an exercise in punishment and disunion.
In June of 1994 a dangerous storm caught dozens of cruising sailors by surprise as they voyaged north from New Zealand. There are times when there is no rescue. "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday."
When you go boating, you make a lot of other people responsible for you. Amazing film.
Book Review: 
Harvard's Plan to Blot Out the Sun Is a Great Idea, 
Scientists may have solved ancient mystery of 'first computer'.