Saturday, June 27. 2020
 What It’s Like to Live in a City Full of Moose
Revisiting Mengele’s Malignant “Race Science”
The Declining Case for Municipal Recycling
Journalist Absolutely DESTROYS California Officials on Coronavirus and Face Masks
UK Government: “we must seize the opportunity to make the COVID-19 recovery a defining moment in tackling the climate crisis”
1 in 5 Ballots Rejected as Fraud Is Charged in N.J. Mail-In Election
VDH: When states go wild
Noonan in WSJ: The week it went south for Trump
JUDGE BLOCKS NEW YORK’S LIMITATION ON OUTDOOR RELIGIOUS SERVICES
Does the Black Community Support Abolishing the Police?
Then They Came for Abraham Lincoln Week in Higher Education
Tear Gas And Dumpster Fires: Antifa Militants Try to Take Over Portland Police Station
Ace:
I vote we should surrender and appease some more.
Even though following the C*ck plan of giving them the confederate statues doesn't seem to be working.
Quite the opposite: Meeting aggression with weakness seems to have just encouraged more aggression.
Weird that alleged "Reagan Republicans" would have to relearn that in 2020.
Abraham Lincoln at UW-Madison is the latest target of cancel culture
The Summer (1991)
After we come to see it and
know we scarcely live without it
we begin trying to describe
what art is and it seems to be
something we believe is human
whatever that is something that
says what we are but then the same
beam of recognition stops at
one penguin choosing a pebble
to offer to the penguin he
hopes to love and later the dance
of awkwardness holding an egg
on one foot away from the snow
of summer the balancing on
one foot in the flash of summer
Friday, June 26. 2020
Thanks in no small part to Youmans’s Spencerian pump, the scientific method permeated American popular culture and influenced the major American intellectual movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, notably pragmatism and behaviorism. These movements’ most important figures—including Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and, later, B.F. Skinner—developed their ideas about “the scientific method” partly in the pages of The Popular Science Monthly and its 1915 spinoff, The Scientific Monthly. In the series of articles introducing the philosophy of pragmatism, Peirce granted a monopoly on truth to “the scientific method,” which consisted of restricting one’s conception of a thing to its sensible effects. This method alone, Peirce promised, would carry people past their diverse points of view to converge upon a single, certain answer to any question, “like the operation of destiny.”
He tries again to get canceled. A good one.
Good fun. He is right that Obama and Biden behaved like traitors to the country, but few will say so. And he is right: the media is designed to make people upset.
Thursday, June 25. 2020
Seen on a boating outing the other day. Name that rig.
VDH: 2020 Election Will Be a Contest of the Angry
I am not angry. Anger is unhealthy for body and soul.
Wednesday, June 24. 2020
Even I am finding it difficult to keep up a solid routine. Maybe making excuses, but I had a good daily routine which blew up and with all of life complications, it has not been good.
I do not like the new rules at my gyms. I will not deadlift with a mask on, and forget cardio with a mask. That is just unhealthy.
I'll be back to my trainer's home garage on Monday for my heavy weights, I hope. Legal or not, I do not care.
What about you all?
At Quillette, The Great Awokening and the Second American Revolution
"Revolution"? I don't think so. Just a bunch of young white kids with nothing to do. Breaking things is much easier than making things.
Tuesday, June 23. 2020
I agree with this guy: For someone like me, that is a real tragedy and so I would like to understand how this new reality came about.
There are distinct and deep-rooted traditions of rational empiricism and religious sermonizing in American history. But these two modes seem to have become fused together in a new form of argumentation that is validated by elite institutions like the universities, The New York Times, Gracie Mansion, and especially on the new technology platforms where battles over the discourse are now waged. The new mode is argument by commandment: It borrows the form to game the discourse of rational argumentation in order to issue moral commandments. No official doctrine yet exists for this syncretic belief system but its features have been on display in all of the major debates over political morality of the past decade. Marrying the technical nomenclature of rational proof to the soaring eschatology of the sermon, it releases adherents from the normal bounds of reason. The arguer-commander is animated by a vision of secular hell—unremitting racial oppression that never improves despite myths about progress; society as a ceaseless subjection to rape and sexual assault; Trump himself, arriving to inaugurate a Luciferean reign of torture. Those in possession of this vision do not offer the possibility of redemption or transcendence, they come to deliver justice. In possession of justice, the arguer-commander is free at any moment to throw off the cloak of reason and proclaim you a bigot—racist, sexist, transphobe—who must be fired from your job and socially shunned.
Video: Are you ready America?
A darn good piece. And what's the deal about Teddy Roosevelt?
Monday, June 22. 2020
Captain Lorenzo Baker's 1800 mansion, in downtown Wellfleet, MA. He was the banana king.
12 bedrooms, 5 baths. And a two-story giant barn which needs work. In fact, it all needs work. No report on plumbing and heating. Roof looks ok for now.
Huge lawn for croquet, lawn tennis, badminten, frisbee, dogs, etc. Gee, as a bonus you get a Resident Beach Pass. It's in town - no waterfront. Own a piece of history, with plenty of room for all of your best friends.
What is it in the human heart that wants to possess wonderful, charming things? I mean, rather than just appreciating them. Is it a transmuted sexual thing?
I have posted often about grass lawns in the past.
Meadows are far better than lawns, but pretty la wns are a suburban real estate necessity. They are completely artificial. They rely on irrigation, fertilizer, weed and bug chemicals. etc. Like hydroponic gardening.
I happen to feel that lawns are perfect parts of English-style gardens. Lawn is one part of an appealing garden.
How can one minimize the artifice and fragility of the unnatural thing which is a mowed lawn (especially in the northern half of the US)?
- Irrigation. It fools the grasses into thinking it's Spring.
- Topdressing. It's what woodland grasses get naturally from fallen leaves and detritus.
- Aeration. It's what grasses get naturally from worms, moles, and digging animals.
What the hell is going on in this country? When did we, the majority, stop speaking up for ourselves? Crimes against common sense seem to happen every week, yet most of us stay silent.
Georgia House Advances Bill To Dissolve Police Depts Statewide…
Seattle Police Union Chief Begs For ‘Leadership’ After Fatal Shooting In CHOP; CHOP Defends ‘Defund The Police’
" I suspect this attack on an important Hispanic figure in US history will not endear this mob, or those who support it, to the many Americans who really care about Hispanic heritage in our country."
Theodore Roosevelt Statue To Be Removed From NY Museum Of Natural History
Huh?
George Washington Statue, Toppled by Anarchists, Causes 'Harm': Portland's Regional Arts and Culture Council
Historical Illiterates Deface Statue Of Miguel De Cervantes, A Former Slave…
Protester Geniuses Tear Down A Statue Of Ulysses Grant, Who Led Fight To End Slavery
San Francisco Allows Protesters to Topple U.S. Grant, Francis Scott Key Statues
Related, It's Time To Cancel The Democratic Party For Its Long History Of Racism
A Labor Council Has Expelled Seattle's Police Union. Good. Police unions exist to protect cops at the expense of the public.
Trump Supporter Bruce Carter, Who Happens To Be Black, Busts CNN Using Him To Create Fake News – Video…
The ‘cancel’ crew will come for you someday soon
The ACLU's 'Death Star' Client in Its Title IX Lawsuit
Venezuela hosting "disappearances"
Sunday, June 21. 2020
It's been decades since we spent time on the Cape in June, mainly because our annual family weeks are in August. This was a Father's Day gift.
June is better. Too early for swimming, but perfect for the outdoor fun that August is too warm for. No skeeters. Also, few vacationers. The birding is better in August, with all of the travellers heading down from the north. Still, Eagles and Ospreys and nesting herons. Nothing special except the Terrapins digging their eggs and the fox trying to find their nests for breakfast eggs.
We opted for a marsh-side cottage on Lieutenant Island, a quiet corner which is only accessible during lower tides.
More pics etc below the fold -
Continue reading "Cape Cod in June, with a few photos"
I hope all our readers who are fathers enjoy this day with their families.
My father and mother divorced when I was 8, though he'd already left the house when I was 6. For a good portion of my life, my memories of him were of weekend visitations, driving around with 4 kids in Triumph TR5, (2 in the front, 2 in the 'back', which wasn't really a seat). There was a period of several years when he lived in Micronesia with his wife and my half-sister, so our direct contact was minimal. By the time I was 14, I was usually taking a bus to see him for weekends, once a month or so, or for a week in the summer. Eventually I spent three full summers with him while I worked at the Jersey Shore. I was in college, and it was a good place to spend my summer months.
Divorce is difficult on everyone involved. I remember spending time being angry at my father for leaving. I give my mother a lot of credit for knowing that it's important for children to have a father in their lives, encouraging and enabling us to take time to see him. Even scolding us when we spoke ill of him. Eventually, as I got older and more educated, my relationship with my father became much closer. I am lucky to still have him around, and I will be seeing him later today for the first time in 4 months (thanks to this lockdown).
In a way, I may have been lucky, as my mother remarried, and I wound up having a step-father (though he was not officially a step-father as I still had my father). A tough WWII vet, a good man who did his able best to raise 6 children, 4 of which were not his own. He passed 15 years ago. I was able to have conversations about the war, the Depression (which he grew up during) and learned about real estate (his profession). He was a do-it-yourself man, unfortunately not very skilled, but taught me how to do plumbing, auto, and minor electrical work. There were things he passed on to me that my father never could have.
Being a father has no template. We are certainly not perfect. Hopefully, our mistakes are good learning experiences, for both us and our children.
Today will be a good day to share some of the better stories, both good and bad, with our fathers or our children. Of course, we can do that any day, but it's nice to have a day to really focus. Enjoy your day with your family.
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