On this day:
490 BC
Battle of Marathon: The conventionally accepted date for the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians and their Plataean allies, defeat the first Persian invasion force of Greece.
1213
Albigensian Crusade: Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, defeats Peter II of Aragon at the Battle of Muret.
1683
Austro-Ottoman War: Battle of Vienna – several European armies join forces to defeat the Ottoman Empire.
1846
Elizabeth Barrett elopes with Robert Browning.
1857
The SS Central America sinks about 160 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, drowning a total of 426 passengers and crew, including Captain William Lewis Herndon. The ship was carrying 13–15 tons of gold from the San Francisco Gold Rush.
1940
Cave paintings are discovered in Lascaux, France.
Battle of Marathon: The conventionally accepted date for the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians and their Plataean allies, defeat the first Persian invasion force of Greece.
1213
Albigensian Crusade: Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, defeats Peter II of Aragon at the Battle of Muret.
1683
Austro-Ottoman War: Battle of Vienna – several European armies join forces to defeat the Ottoman Empire.
1846
Elizabeth Barrett elopes with Robert Browning.
1857
The SS Central America sinks about 160 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, drowning a total of 426 passengers and crew, including Captain William Lewis Herndon. The ship was carrying 13–15 tons of gold from the San Francisco Gold Rush.
1940
Cave paintings are discovered in Lascaux, France.
***
"The Supreme Court blocked me; it will not stop me."--Joe Biden. Is that threatening a constitutional crisis?
***
"The Supreme Court blocked me; it will not stop me."--Joe Biden. Is that threatening a constitutional crisis?
***
911 yesterday marked a significant national threat from a tiny external group. The Kirk murder is an internal threat by an individual. It is, like the external threat, a serious threat.
Strangely, both threats are marked by bravado.
***
In NYC, 63 people are responsible for 5000 arrests.
***
CMU is advertising on Gutfield.
***
In 2023, about 869,000 hourly workers —1.1% of all hourly workers — earned at or below the federal minimum wage, the lowest in history. Slightly less than 50% of them are aged 16 to 24. In the largest study ever done on homosexuality in the Western world, 0.7% of women and 1.4% of men admitted to having at least one (and some only one) episode of homosexual physical contact (kiss and/or caress included) in their entire adult lives.
Why is it that such small parts of our population --and such peripheral parts of the bell curve--demand such a disproportionately large part of society's time, attention, and energy? In a culture such as ours with economic problems, unemployment, drug use and crime, broken homes with fatherless children, endless and pointless wars, and general malaise and philosophical uncertainty, it cannot be that we have no more important projects to focus upon.
One would hate to think these small problems are the result of pointed, self-absorbed special interests or, worse, insincere political distraction from the bigger and more difficult problems.
Except for one thing: maniacs who stalk and kill strangers. How many maniacs does it take to ruin a society? It used to be that the destructive, homicidal maniac was royalty, whose poor subjects believed had a divine right to harm or kill them for his greater cause. Now that maniac is a poor brand of us.
In NYC, 63 people are responsible for 5000 arrests.
***
CMU is advertising on Gutfield.
***
Three Maniacs Walk into a Bar
Why is it that such small parts of our population --and such peripheral parts of the bell curve--demand such a disproportionately large part of society's time, attention, and energy? In a culture such as ours with economic problems, unemployment, drug use and crime, broken homes with fatherless children, endless and pointless wars, and general malaise and philosophical uncertainty, it cannot be that we have no more important projects to focus upon.
One would hate to think these small problems are the result of pointed, self-absorbed special interests or, worse, insincere political distraction from the bigger and more difficult problems.
Except for one thing: maniacs who stalk and kill strangers. How many maniacs does it take to ruin a society? It used to be that the destructive, homicidal maniac was royalty, whose poor subjects believed had a divine right to harm or kill them for his greater cause. Now that maniac is a poor brand of us.
For perspective, look at IQ. If IQ tests are collected and analyzed, a curve will develop, composed of the collected scores. 100 is the average, the norm. About 68% of scores will cluster between IQs of 85 to 115. One deviation. About 95% will cluster in the 70-130 range. Two deviations. So about 2.5% will have IQs over 130 and 2.5% below 70. That is a rarified group. But if that group is a subset of the larger population of 350 million people--and that subset is morons and maniacs--that's a lot of maniacs and morons. 8.75 million.
On the edge of the bell curve. Is two standard deviations off the mean enough? Or should it be three standard deviations? That's only 0.1% but among 350 million, that's 350,000 maniacs, most with gun ownership rights. And this doesn't include the simple criminal or the desperate addict. Or the ideologically bent. And two standard deviations is a lot more.
And, of course, there is the frightening undercurrent: the fear that the peripheral is bleeding into the mainstream. Is the guy who killed Kirk part of an early guerrilla movement? Or are these guys too crazy to organize?
A norm of death, fear, and chaos. Lunatics following the blueprint of the Heroes of Beslan. What's hard to understand is why the Left isn't as alarmed as the Right. Maybe civilization isn't as high on their list.
A Bell Curve:
No comments:
Post a Comment