Culture

Jul 24 13:59

There is a ladder, but you must choose to climb it

An observation by Steve Sailer, interesting even without its context:

Ironically, when I left the "Collapse" exhibit, with its warnings about overpopulation, at Los Angeles's Natural History museum, I turned out of the parking lot onto Martin Luther King Boulevard, where the billboards were in Spanish. In LA, the African Americans have been pushed off even MLK Blvd. by Latin American immigrants.

I read years back that South Central, the notorious crack-and-gang neighborhood in L.A., was rebranded as South Los Angeles. Not necessarily by some wishful-thinking community organizers, but as recognition that Latinos had moved in and improved the character of the place.

Jul 23 12:34

Fury on the Horizon

Vox Day writes:

A private sector job which exists solely to comply with government-dictated paperwork is every bit as government-manufactured and unproductive as a public sector job. And that is precisely the type of job which is going to disappear entirely once the debt edifice collapses and the extent of the dollar-denominated imaginary economy is revealed. Just as stripping out the debt-funded component of GDP reveals that there has been no actual economic growth for decades, stripping out the paperwork jobs will demonstrate that the real labor force is still roughly 2/3rd male, just as it was in 1950.

Jul 18 18:29

College Marxists Are Just Adorable

At a campus coffee shop, sitting near a PoliSci major and a Planning major. There is so much nonsense, I wish I could just record the whole dialog. It has been a perfect stereotype of what Big Ed does to mushy young minds.

Individualism creates an environment where, if everyone can succeed and you don't, it is your fault. People need to recognize the system is at fault.

Yup, Jenny, in a Utopia without personal responsbility, nothing bad would ever happen.

Jul 17 19:54

Unemployment is Welfare

I may need to work up a better-documented rant about this. But I have had enough of people proudly proclaiming their extended unemployment benefits. Getting laid off is not an invitation to twiddle around working on your novel. YOU NEED A JOB!

Twiddling on a novel is not a job. It will not lead to a job. You need to develop a new skill that someone will actually pay you to practice.

If people are afraid to take a job because it pays less than the job they lost and choose to spend another six months on the dole, they are parasites. GET OFF THE PUBLIC TEAT!

Jun 26 15:38

Censorship in the Name of Tolerance

A U.S. Judge has upheld an anti-gay activist’s right to participate in this weekend’s Gay Pride celebration in Minneapolis. Pride leases a downtown park as the center of their festival. They thought they should have exclusive control over who can be there. The Minneapolis Park Board, surprisingly, sided with the activist.

The Park Board figured that it is still a public park, and anyone who wants to be there should be allowed to show up. The activist, a Christian evangelist, had been a regular at Pride for a decade without causing a ruckus. Maybe his message wasn’t well received, but the gays did at least tolerate him. Now the gay community is getting more exclusive. According to their lawyer:

Jun 26 00:19

Make ya lonesome, now

The Blues is a product of a distinctly American culture. Its peak and decline parallels American passenger railroading. The peaks left us with a wealth of blues songs about the rails. Since riding the railroad is something that our parents and grandparents did, the blues tunes are charged with a personal melancholy that puts the past right into your heart.

Here’s maybe my favorite of all:

Jun 20 21:58

Falling Out of Fashion

Back in the day, I lived many of the episodes of Sex and the City. I had friends that paralleled each of the main characters, and I was some shadow version of the various love interests. But not to my friends, so I got to be part of the dishing about their own Aidans and Mr. Bigs.

At the time, it was a blast. I was in step with popular culture. Or at least some pretty and insecure segment of it.

Those days are passed. I think the most awesome description of the series was from a cartoon show (Family Guy?); it’s about three hookers and their mom. So I haven’t been interested in the movie sequels.

Girl Friday has a review of the latest one:

Jun 20 20:19

Ummah All the Way

Today’s Rant of the Day makes the plainest case I’ve seen that Islam is a threat to everyone else:

Islam is not a religion, nor is it a cult. In its fullest form, it is a complete, total, 100% system of life.

Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, social, and military components. The religious component is a beard for all of the other components.

Islamization begins when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their religious privileges.

When politically correct, tolerant, and culturally diverse societies agree to Muslim demands for their religious privileges, some of the other components tend to creep in as well.

Jun 16 22:52

In Memory of Commisar Yezhov

From Chicago Boyz:

A new museum of World War II is opening in London. Some anonymous nanny stater has taken the liberty of airbrushing the cigar from Winston Churchill’s mouth.

nonsmoke

It isn’t even a very good job as the whole lower left side of his face is distorted. The museum directors say they don’t know who did it. It is a mystery but not surprising.

Jun 06 12:59

I Wanted to Like It, Too

Facebook posting with 666 likes

Also, respect to the men of Operation Overlord; and to the men at the Battle of Midway, who turned the tide against Imperial Japan a mere six months after Pearl Harbor. And don’t forget the last major battle of the Pacific in WWII, Okinawa.

Thanks to them, I am free to rock on 6/6 six decades later.

Jun 05 14:35

Somebody Got to Make Some Sacrifice

Lone man halts column of tanks -- Tiananmen Square 1989

Servitude is in the mind of death and life
Don't be confused with the terms of left and right
Statism is Statism by any name the same
Apathy is suicide and we won't bear the Blame.

Today is Tank Man’s anniversary. Stand up for yourself.

Quote from Tekno Jihad by Psykosonik.

Jun 04 19:26

Pelican Perspective

The Boston Globe has some excellent oily bird pictures that support the Hate BP narrative. And the Google suggests the birdy body count is well over 300:

So far 300 birds, the bulk of them identified as Brown Pelicans and northern gannets have been found along the US Gulf Coast during the first five weeks of the BP oil spill, and 31 have survived. They are currently being counted as casualties because of the proximity in time and location to the spill, but are being tested to confirm results. The mortality rate is expected to rise sharply since this is the middle of breeding season.

With a population of 650,000, this just isn’t that big of a deal. We’re talking about maybe five hundredths of a percent of the pelican stock.

Relatedly, the current President is having shrimp for dinner. Cobb did a little research, and we’re not running out of shrimp, either:

Jun 03 16:25

Can She Handle It?

It’s 1949, and what’s a well-dressed lady going to drive?

1949 Nash Airflyte Ad -- Long Hood

The daring ones drive a Nash Airflyte:

Its aerodynamic body shape was developed in a wind tunnel. Nils Wahlberg's theories on reducing an automobile body's drag coefficient resulted in a smooth shape and enclosed front fenders. The "cutting-edge aerodynamics" was the most "alarming" all-new postwar design in the industry.

Jun 02 11:34

Selecting Perception

From an opinion column in the Wall Street Journal comes a stark illustration of how Big Media works according to a narrative:

In news reporting, it's not unusual to encounter constructions such as this AP dispatch from the presidential campaign about Sarah Palin: "She has worshipped at a nondenominational Bible church since 2002, opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest and supports classroom discussions about creationism."

That's fair as far as it goes. Just once, however, wouldn't it be interesting to see a leading newspaper write something like, "Nancy Pelosi, who opposes any restrictions on abortion, even in cases where a pregnant minor is taken across state lines without a parent's permission or where the fetus is halfway out the mother"?

Jun 01 11:49

Voting on What to Steal

A recurring thought which I hope to develop someday…

Americans are trained to worship democracy. But the brilliance behind the U.S. Consititution is not that some most people get a vote. The true political innovation was that the Founders put limits on what government could do. Those limits mean the people do not get to vote on everything.

We’ve all become accumstomed to having our opinions catered to. Although the elected politicians almost universally fail our expectations, they still invoke the rituals of democratic religion. Those who wish to sell us goods ask our opinion both as a method of improving their product and as a sales technique. Once we are engaged, we are open to persuasion.