Tuesday, May 5. 2015
From Dalrymple via Driscoll's The welfare state has led to remarkably similar trends among the white underclass in England over the same period via Sowell's The Inconvenient Truth about Ghetto Communities’ Social Breakdown:
You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility, and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.
I get the point, but I disagree. Just as with those who inherit a living, some would rise to the challenge and some would not bother. Being poor and in the chronically-dependent class does not always mean lacking in character, pride, and intelligence resources (although it clearly often does). Nobody in America today is as poor as Abe Lincoln was.
On the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, I realized that I could not locate Armenia on a map.
The nation has a complex and fascinating history. Most recently, they had been part of the Soviet Communist Empire. They were the first nation-state to embrace Christianity as a national religion in around 300 AD. They have the oldest cathedral in the world. They speak Armenian, and have the Armenian alphabet. There are roughly 11 million Armenians; 3 million in Armenia and the rest in Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan - and a huge population in the New York City area where most Armenians in the world, outside Armenia, live.
The latter are not all rug (rug - not drug) dealers, but it seems to be an Armenian specialty. Names usually end in -ian. I'll post on Caucasian rugs (mostly from what is now Armenia) later.
 Potatoes, mashed or fried, are the most popular side dishes in North America. Rightly so - the original tiny wild potato is from the Americas although it is really inedible.
Whatever you intend to do with a potato, you need to select the variety for the job at hand. If you have ever made gluey mashed taters, or had taters disintegrate in a stew, you know what I mean. Wrong potato. All of our potato types have been genetically-engineered for specific qualities. Special thanks to Mr. Johnson who came up with the Yukon Gold a few years ago.
This is handy: All The Potato Varieties You Need To Know About
As I have commented in the past, it's fun to think about all of the foods the New World native farmers and plant breeders contributed to Old World cuisine. For starters, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, beans, maize, zucchini and summer squash, winter squash and pumpkin, cocoa, strawberry, sunflower, sweet potato, peanut, vanilla, etc. etc.
At the time of the European invasions of the New World, there were few communities of pure hunter-gatherers (eg the Eskimos). Farming was big, supplemented by hunting-gathering. If you recall, the Pilgrims took over Indian hundred-acre cornfields.
 Peter Francisco, American Hercules
A Century Later, a New Look at the Sinking of the Lusitania
The red carpet at the Costume Institute Gala, an annual fund-raiser for the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute
Ancient DNA Tells a New Human Story
Snow, cold keep New England skiers stoked into May
Sippican goes for a little drive
Robot Workers: Many Businesses Will Hire Fewer People
What It’s Like to Hit a Man - I tried boxing. It was scary how good it felt.
Guy is overcivilized. Of course it's fun.
Millennials Not Ready for the Job Market
“drunker than 10,000 Indians”
Now even warriors must tiptoe through the tulips?
License to Kill: Wind and Solar Decimate Birds and Bats
Worse than DDT
They turned college into McDonald’s: Adjunct professors, fast-food wages and how colleges screw more than just students
Telling me to shut up because somebody might be offended? THAT is "fighting words."
PAMELA GELLER GOES OFF on CNN Host: Did Christians Burn Embassies When Jesus Christ Was Put in Jar of Urine?
PC Thought-Bots Embarrass Themselves With PEN Boycott
Charles Murray proposes a legal insurrection
Count me in
Why Are You Voting Against Your Own Interests?
The diverse Republicans:
For those keeping score at home, that is one old corrupt white woman against a female former CEO of a Fortune 500 company, a brain surgeon who is black, a former TV host and governor, the longest serving Governor of Texas, the Indian-American Governor of Louisiana, and we already have a doctor turned Senator, two Hispanic Senators, and we are waiting on the former Governor of Florida who speaks Spanish and is married to a lovely lady from Mexico, not to mention the very successful Governor of Wisconsin. There may be more.
Carly Fiorina: ‘We Have to Start Undoing Some Things’ to Improve the Economy
Ace:
Let me say something obvious: if you're paying $500,000 or $750,000 for Bill Clinton, you're not paying for a canned speech from an old man most of whose vague pronouncements have already been well-documented and are trite to the point of agony.
You're paying for something else.
... as long as I’ve been alive, Baltimore has been an eyesore.
20.7% of Jobs in Baltimore Are Government Jobs
Baltimore Protester Praises Burning of CVS “Let’s Get You Out of Our Community!”
Brilliant
New Republic: Know What Baltimore’s Actual Problem Is? It Didn’t Move Far Enough Left
Is it Liberation Day or Defeat Day in Saigon?
Monday, May 4. 2015
Trigger warnings for Ovid? If you haven't read Ovid, you can't understand half the references in Western literature. Read it and weep: Columbia Multicultural Advisors: Put Trigger Warning on Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Nobody has been "triggered" by Ovid for 2000 years until now. Trigger warnings for the Bible will be next, any day now.
Our point that we make repeatedly here, however, is that that students are not really bothered by reading things. They are manufacturing a victim role to bully, attack, and control. That's what Borderlines do.
These are not some new breed of precious snowflakes, this is pure manipulation. They got rid of Larry Summers the same sort of way, so it works. Why is it that nobody can see through these frauds? If not Columbia, then who?
And I should mention again that these evil and wantonly destructive people do trigger me badly with their barely-disguised macro- aggression. Chick-fil-A rejected for Johns Hopkins Univ., eatery called ‘microaggression’
And it is sad that it turned out to be. From Charles Cooke's Why the American Bill of Rights Would Never Pass Today:
As James Madison recorded in Federalist 45, “the powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.” In other words, what it was not clearly permitted to do, it could not do. That being so, a Bill of Rights made little sense, for, if the federal government had been accorded the opportunity to do only a certain number of things, listing what it could not do was superfluous. Underscoring this point, Alexander Hamilton submitted in Federalist 84 that a list of specific prohibitions would represent “various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted.” “Why declare,” Hamilton asked, “that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?”
"The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau."
Ludwig van Mises, as Eratosthenes noted, 70 years ago
Guided trips for hikers and bikers, worldwide: Backroads
Archeologist- and historian-led travel to Turkey, Greece, or Italy: Peter Sommer
Yes, they do have gulet trips down the Turkish coast. Excellent tours.
For self-planners, For Over Thirty Years, Karen Brown Has Helped Travelers Plan Perfect Trips
We use her books exclusively
Sunday, May 3. 2015
We had our annual crew of 6 (legal) immigrants helping me get my Springtime outdoor to-do list done this weekend. It's amazing what 6 or 7 guys with all the right tools can get done in 7 hours.
I am grateful for these high energy, botanically-knowledgeable guys doing the work which, apparently, Americans do not want to do. It is highly pleasurable to feel effective on a large scale.
Since ancient times philosophy has tried to cure us of anxiety. But worry is an important part of being a moral person
Who ever claimed that life was supposed to be fun, gratifying, and happy most of the time?
I am not wealthy enough for venture funds or other alternative investments. My simple goals are an interesting, adventurous, and pleasant life, and some prudent capital preservation. I have a million hobbies and interests. I have no interest in the American notion of retirement. Kids are mostly educated, which absorbed much more of my income that the mortgage did (and does). I've been advised to keep a sizable mortgage until death or severe illness.
3 reasons investors still buy actively-managed funds
Got a load of unexpected cash? Here's what to do
Nice sort of problem to deal with.
John 15
15:1 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.
15:2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.
15:3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.
15:4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.
15:5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.
15:6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.
15:7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
15:8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.
Saturday, May 2. 2015
 A surprising life: A Rare, Personal Look at Oliver Sacks’s Early Career
Pic is Oliver Sacks in his gay youth. He later gave up the gay life style and his motorcycles too. He's a distance swimmer even as he is dying.
 145 Intellectuals Agree: Dead Cartoonists Aren't Worthy of Free-Speech
Award if Their Murderers Come From a Disadvantaged Minority
Hayward's reading list
How to Be Real With God - What to do when spending time with God seems like chore.
Modern romance: An Ill-Defined Relationship Is All Drama
Wearing a Suit Makes People Think Differently - Formalwear elicits feelings of power, which change some mental processes.
See what it’s like to drive a blimp to work every day
The New Whitney: A Reply Against the fashionable tendency to regard ugliness as beauty
Veterans more likely to volunteer, vote, serve community than civilians
So What Ever Happened to Ebola?
SHOCKING: ANOTHER FOOD FAD THAT ISN’T BACKED BY SCIENCE.
 Pssst: Wanna Get Rich? Become a ‘Public Servant’
Debating the Moynihan Report, 50 Years Later
Rubio Talks Tough on Border Security: ‘No Right to Illegally Immigrate’
All diversity, all the time, everybody, right now
Why Does the Left Continue to Lie about Its Ideological Agenda?
Obama Regime Wouldn’t Let States Ask For Proof Of Citizenship…On Voter Registration Form
Is your city burning? Thank a Democrat!
Democrat-Run Baltimore is a Gangsters' Paradise
I predict an outward migration of whites, especially white small-business owners, from the city of Baltimore.
PHOTOS RELEASED of Racist Cops Charged in Freddie Gray’s Death
New Vietnam Spy Tale Sheds Light on How the U.S. Lost the War
The Fall of Saigon Revisited - Review: ‘Last Days in Vietnam’ on PBS
Hatred, Lies, and Violence in the World of Islam
Marxist Democrats and the Return of the Hanoi Lobby
New Russia-China alliance latest diplomatic, strategic blow to Obama
Russia may be readying for new Ukraine offensive: NATO commander
Africa: IQ
Chart on left via Carpe
A lyric for medieval plowing time in olde Englande
God spede the plow
And send us all corne enow
Our purpose for to mak
At crow of cok
Of the plwlete of Sygate
Be mery and glade
Wat Goodale this work mad
Friday, May 1. 2015
Yesterday I posted a bit about sexual anarchy.
It's nothing new in human cultures. It's been around forever. It's not culture that becomes sexualized, it's human nature. I think my point was that when you place mixed sexes in close proximity, really regardless of age, chemical things happen for a hundred different reasons. Often with unfortunate consequences. Work, home, school, wherever. More so today with coed campi and many women in the workforce.
Truth is, it can be overstimulating for both men and women. Overstimulating, and too easy for the weak of character and conscience.
My advice from such experience: Guys, if you desire your family's au pair, get rid of her. If you can't take your mind off your receptionist's body, get rid of her and hire an old lady.
This is why everybody needs his or her own code of behavior, and his or her own boundaries. No need to invent one's own because many smart people have thought about it already. God, too, as a gift to us.
Communism Killed 94M in 20th Century, Feels Need to Kill Again
and at Cafe Hayek:
May 1st now is the date every year on which socialists and many other people ignorant of economics (many of whom also lack even the scent of human decency, if only because it is smothered by the musk of their arrogance) celebrate “International Workers Day.”
Given the (at least) tens of millions of people – mostly workers (and peasants) – massacred, during the 20th century alone, in the name of workers (and peasants), today ought to be renamed Massacre Day. It should be an annual occasion to reflect solemnly and sadly on all the cruelty and horrors that human beings are capable of inflicting upon each other in the name of social engineering and “social justice.”
No sensible human being trusts any other human being with even small slivers of power.
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A friend sent that pic of the Greenfield Hill (in Fairfield, CT) Congregational Church's annual Dogwood Festival this weekend