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.
Americans should be pleased to know that the incidence of sexual assault (except in prisons) has been steadily in decline for many years. There is no epidemic and there is no rape culture in the US - indeed there is a strong Judeo-Christian anti-rape culture - but there are some individual sexual predators and rapists around, and there always will be. Here's a real rape culture:
Consider a genuine phenomenon of “rape culture:” the widespread practice of Pakistani pimps “grooming” underage English girls to be raped en masse by themselves and their clients.
Also interesting is that the incidence of violent sexual assault on campuses appears to be about half of that which occurs out in the real world. That is remarkable in some ways, considering that the campus today jams frequently-alcohol- or drug-intoxicated adolescent boys and girls too-close together in a generally sexually-disinhibited and hypersexualized atmosphere.
My view has always been this: if assaulted, sexually or otherwise, call the cops. It's a civic duty really, because odds are that the perp will strike again with someone else.
Best, most reasonable and comprehensive piece I've seen on the topic: The College Rape Overcorrection - Sexual assault on campus is a serious problem. But efforts to protect women from a putative epidemic of violence have led to misguided policies that infringe on the civil rights of men.
I am not sure why campus sexual assault is so often the focus of the media when sexual assault and violence of all sorts is far more frequent off campuses.
David Ryfe, director of UI's School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UI, has different ideas, however. "If it was up to me, and me alone," he told The Daily Iowan, "I would follow the lead of every European nation and ban this type of speech."
The scandal of mass incarceration is partly produced by the frivolity of the political class, which uses the multiplication of criminal offenses as a form of moral exhibitionism. This, like Eric Garner’s death, is a pebble in the mountain of evidence that American government is increasingly characterized by an ugly and sometimes lethal irresponsibility.
I don’t know what the Agency did to get on the wrong side of Dianne Feinstein, but the report is, seemingly, an act of revenge. I suspect that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed himself would render a more sympathetic account of the CIA’s interrogation program than we got from Senate Democrats.
I am glad that BD has scheduled a few Tim Keller posts for Advent. I attend the church in NYC where Tim is pastor, as do many of my friends. Some of my Jewish friends sometimes come with me too because the vibes are good and because Jesus was a serious Jew.
In the video posted yesterday, Keller was responding as an apologist to intellectual critiques of religion in general, and to Christianity in particular. He did so humbly, and often amusingly, but those intellectualized interrogations missed the point, I think.
In my humble and non-theological view (raised Catholic, then agnostic, now in it) is this: If you sense a spiritual vacuum in life, if you sense a secular, or an empty survival-oriented or self-oriented attitude towards life, then you can try believing first. Willing suspension of disbelief. Give it a chance. Then see what happens. There is nothing to lose, and maybe a fresh new existence in a new world, a new reality, to gain. A rebirth, as they say. This is a kingdom anybody can live in today.
You can't think your way into it.
If it does nothing, you can quit it anytime. If the baby in the manger is not ripe to be born in your heart today, you can wait as long as you want to. This kind of pregnancy can take many years, or never.
As California struggles through its drought and we deal with a Nor'easter here in NYC, it's worth considering the amount of work that goes into supplying water for urban areas.
Sometime in 1996, I was scuba diving off the Outer Banks. Between dives, the boat captain and I had a conversation. His view was that in 20 years, water would be big business. I found that humorous, but as time passed, it struck me it has become a major industry. Or has it?
We spend little time considering something so basic, so essential, to life. It seems like something we don't really have to think about. Water is, after all, plentiful. But it takes considerable work to make it as plentiful as it is.
While water is handled as a public utility, the reality is there is a huge market for it and it is, as the captain suggested, big business. But it's always been big business, we just don't pay much attention to it because it's always available.
I had no idea the NY Public Library was built on the remains of the Croton Reservoir...
Bill slanders his cops - Mayor de Blasio’s suggestion that NYPD racism killed Eric Garner – and fuels police-community tension – is baseless and odious
Feminists like to tell young women many crazy lies, so it’s hard to cover them all. Most of them, however, surround sex. Here are a few:
Sex is a purely physical act and is completely meaningless. Casual sex is not only a right, but it is also empowering! Casual sex will leave you with no emotional or psychological damage. There’s a “sexual double standard”: Guys get away with rampant casual sex, so why shouldn’t we encourage the same behavior for women?
The “national crisis” that has been provoked by the cases of Garner and Brown, they argue, has left them with no choice but to “stand for justice rather than sit and prepare for exams.”
Among the stereotypes you are allowed to have is that all German conservatives are Nazis. Among the stereotypes you are not allowed to have is that all Islamist terrorists are terrorists.
Christians use Christmas lights and Christmas candles to symbolize and celebrate Christ's coming to illuminate a dark, painful, and sinful world.
There are two mysteries to those strands of colored lights which I have never understood:
- No matter how carefully you stow them away, they always come out tangled. Are they self-tangling?
- You stow them away for 11 months untouched, but when you take them out in December, half the strands don't work and you have to run to Home Depot or CVS. Do they have a built-in obsolescence?
“The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.”
Last year, we were at a friend's and I was introduced to the Coquito. This is, basically, a Puerto Rican eggnog.
Very tasty, but also very fattening. Probably 10,000 calories per glass. Delicious as can be. After that party, I made some and brought them to our family Christmas party, where they were a hit. We all had to run marathons to burn off the calories, but it was worth it.
I decided to make them again this year and found another recipe to work with. Most of the recipes are similar, though there are minor variations which make it an interesting drink. This year's recipe called for egg yolks, last year's did not. Last year I added nutmeg and vanilla. This year I didn't.
I pour it into resealable bottles, and keep it cold. It needs to be shaken prior to pouring, and sometimes you have to warm the neck of the bottle a bit to loosen it up.
I don't usually like distilled liquors, but during the winter I'll have some whiskey or add rum to my drinks. Particularly when the temperature dips as it has lately.
...another ascendant group (is) the Clerisy, which is based in academia (where there are now many more administrators and staffers than full-time instructors), media, the nonprofit sector, and, especially, government: Since 1945, government employment has grown more than twice as fast as America’s population. The Founders worried about government being captured by factions; they did not foresee government becoming society’s most rapacious and overbearing faction.
The Clerisy is, Kotkin says, increasingly uniform in its views, and its power stems from “persuading, instructing and regulating the rest of society.” The Clerisy supplies the administrators of progressivism’s administrative state, the regulators of the majority that needs to be benevolently regulated toward progress.
The Democrats have been reduced to the party of the rich elite (George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Hollywood, Jonathan Gruber-types, edit al.) and the party of the poor exploited by those elites — a lethal combination that takes society exactly nowhere. In essence, they are the party of racism and sexism — that’s about it.
[Erdely was] going from campus to campus auditioning rape victims, contacting advocacy groups and asking for introductions. But the rapes she found at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Penn didn’t have the right narrative feel. They were just rapes, and she needed a cover-worthy rape. So she kept shopping until she found someone who would tell her a version of the story she had already decided to tell. She needed a big rape — something splashy, something with wild details and a frat house. She needed a rape that would go viral. You can’t do that with just some regular boring rape.
Do we humans tend to believe what we want to believe? Do we tend to believe what fits our preconceptions? Of course we do. God, however, has blessed us with a cerebral cortex with which to help balance our wishful fantasies against reality but our frontal cortex is a weak antidote.
Perhaps politics has always been about irrationality, propaganda, pandering, deception, etc. Socrates himself fell victim to a democratic witch hunt. There are always plenty of people out there who desire power, money, easy jobs, public recognition, etc. and who will do lots of things and compromise whatever integrity they have to get them. I understand that, but I do not respect it. I do not respect calculating, manipulative, dishonorable people, and I desire to insulate myself from them.
In recent years, it seems that the contagion of truthiness (useful fictions) goes hand-in-hand with the generation of underlying long-term politically-driven narratives. The seemingly-sociopathic Al Sharpton proved, in the 1987 Tawana Brawley episode, that a lie which fits the right political narrative can be profitable in many ways. In fact, his reckless, destructive ballsiness made his career as a public figure - while destroying many others involved in that famous non-story.
Truthy stories cannot get a foothold without media support or incurious acceptance. The media made Al Sharpton by refusing to treat him like the charlatan he is. The media made the Duke rape story, the "Hands up" story, and so many similar stories now culminating in the UVA gang rape story. None of these things were stories - they were ginned-up fictions to provide data points on a narrative line. That is what novelists and poets do.
These are modern versions of yellow journalism. We need more people willing to call "Foul" against tendentious PC baloney.
I don't really think this is all about gullibility and wish to believe. For the most naive, perhaps, but generally I think it's more cynical and calculating than that. There are agendas which seem, to some, to be more important than the truth. There are hardly enough Walter Duranty awards left to go around these days.
Advocacy journalism doesn't just run with fairy tales. Just as importantly, the MSM refuses to cover stories which would be fueled to near-fatal or fatal levels (eg, the IRS story) were a conservative in power. May I note the dearth of aggressive "investigative journalism" since the Left has held power in Washington? Has the Obama administration done anything worse, thus far, than the Nixon administration did? He has known, all along, that the MSM will cover for him because he is a lefty and has brown skin. Good insulation.
Pretty much everybody knows all of this now. The news is mostly spinfotainment and the only thing the public can do about it is to switch to FOX where "fair and balanced" means something - to the chagrin of the lefty narrative-spinners. Or Morning Joe too.
"What is truth?" asked the very clever Pontius Pilate
We'll see what happens with that UVA story eventually. To my mind, a "rape culture" is a feminist invention to keep their movement alive.Rape is a serious felony in the US, and is becoming more rare as time goes by. The criminality of rape is not controversial in the US although it is acceptable in many parts of the world and in many cultures. Dubious rape stories, like dubious racism stories, only harm a cause and create backlash. The same thing has happened to the "climate" hyperbole. For rape or attempted assault, call the cops, same as with a burglary or mugging. It's that simple. For climate, enjoy the day whatever the weather. Not to worry, in New England it will change tomorrow.
In no place in history on this planet has there ever been less sexism or racism, or more opportunity, or more generosity to the unfortunate, the feckless, the disabled, the homosexuals, and the transgenders, than there is in the Anglosphere today, and especially in the US. So why are the voices so shrill?Could it be because they see their relevance disappearing?
Mrs. BD snapped this pic of one of the wonderful tiles in NYC's Astor Place subway station."In the mid-to late-19th century, the area was home to many of the wealthiest New Yorkers, including members of the Astor, Vanderbilt and Delano families"
Why beavers? Because John Jacob Astor, at one time the wealthiest man in America, made his fortune in beaver pelts (and wisely went on to invest his beaver wealth in NYC real estate).
Why the Waldorf-Astoria? Because Johann Jakob Astor was an immigrant from Waldorf, Germany.
Other websites ask you to use their Amazon links or whatever to bring them a little revenue. Not us. It's just not worth the trouble (unless you wish to carry suitcases of cash to our bank in the Caymans like the Dunkin Donuts people, Sierra Trading Post, Bob Dylan, Sippican Cottage Furniture, and several others we routinely advertise, do).
We like give you ideas of other places to donate at Christmastime Holiday Season.
Like most people, I find Wikipedia to be an extremely handy introduction to all sorts of topics. At the very least, it offers enough information to be able to fool people into thinking that you know what you're talking about. At the most, a pretty good elementary education.
The old Britannica totally missed the boat. The writing was wordy, pedantic, the print was too small, it was expensive, and there were not enough pictures.
As everybody knows, Wiki is non-profit because Jimmy Wales just does his own thing and refuses to monetize his remarkable creation. They need money to operate, though, so throw them a few bucks if you use them. Their fundraiser is now.
1:1 The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
1:2 As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way;
1:3 the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'"
1:4 John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
1:5 And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
1:6 Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.
1:7 He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.
1:8 I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."
19 Secrets of UPS Drivers
Assume that 
As California struggles through its 
The Ugly Christmas Sweater: 
On Pearl Harbor Day, Boston Globe (Said) 
The Spiritual Shape of Political Ideas
