Cab Thought 3/16/16

"I was told by the founding members of the Women's Studies Department at the State University of New York at Albany that I had been brainwashed by male scientists to believe that hormones even existed, much less had any role in the shaping of our identity and character."--Camille Paglia


I still can't get over that Camille Paglia quote.

Holland is composed of North Holland and South Holland, the two out of the twelve provinces in the Netherlands. The people of the Netherlands refer to their country as “Nederland” and to themselves as “Nederlanders”. However in English, the language uses the term “Dutch” for the people of Netherlands.

The Kalash are a Pakistani tribe. Many of the Kalash are blond haired and blue eyed, somewhat of an anomaly in Pakistan.  Some believe that that they are descendants of Alexander the Great’s army though DNA testing has not, however, produced any connection to Greek people. Yet although there is no genetic support for a Greek origin, the tests on the Kalash also showed no detectable East or South Asian lineages.

A letter to the editor at the WSJ: While many GOP voters today mindlessly heap lots of blame on immigrants and foreigners for America’s woes, many Dem voters today mindlessly heap lots of blame on “the rich.” While many GOP voters ignorantly suppose that transferring jobs from immigrants and foreign workers to Americans is a sure-fire way to make ordinary Americans more prosperous, many Dem voters ignorantly suppose that transferring incomes from “the rich” to ordinary Americans is a sure-fire way to make ordinary Americans more prosperous.  And while many GOP voters stupidly believe that immigrants and foreigners are natural and implacable enemies of the common good – enemies who prey upon us only because Uncle Sam has been too tolerant of evil in our midst – many Dem voters stupidly believe that “the rich” are natural and implacable enemies of the common good – enemies who prey upon us only because Uncle Sam has been too tolerant of evil in our midst.
The fact is, the success of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders testifies unmistakably that the ranks and files of both major parties are now filled with far too many simpletons who not only are utterly ignorant of the ways that economies and governments work, but who also are in equal parts mindless, bigoted, and uncivilized.

You can say almost anything negative about men now. “I am not Catholic, and yet I find myself drawn to the women saints. There is something about them that I admire. Maybe it is simply the lengths to which they went to avoid marrying.” Ms. Jessa Crispin wrote this in the New York Times, in a curious article that sees St. Theresa running from, not to.

Men (and children) must be a real problem in the modern world, the spiritual world decidedly not a question.

Who is...Tom Monaghan?

Inveigle v. 1. to entice, lure, or ensnare by flattery or artful talk or inducements (usually followed by into): to inveigle a person into playing bridge.
2. to acquire, win, or obtain by beguiling talk or methods (usually followed by from or away): to inveigle a theater pass from a person. Interesting ety.: Inveigle entered English as a variant of the word envegle from the Anglo-French enveogler. Strange ety. as it ultimately derives from the Vulgar Latin aboculus meaning "eyeless."

The phrase "tying the knot" initially came from an ancient Babylonian custom in which threads from the clothes of both the bride and bridegroom were tied in a knot to symbolize the couple's union. Literally tying some type of ceremonial knot at a wedding ceremony can be found across cultures.

Under ancient Jewish law, if a suspect on trial was unanimously found guilty by all judges, then the suspect was acquitted. This reasoning sounds counterintuitive, but the legislators of the time had noticed that unanimous agreement often indicates the presence of systemic error in the judicial process, even if the exact nature of the error is yet to be discovered. They intuitively reasoned that when something seems too good to be true, most likely a mistake was made.

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2010/04/tyranny-of-good-ideas.html

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was a law that created, for the first time in America, a national system of law enforcement. Anyone who aided or harbored a fugitive slave or interfered with the rendition process, for whatever reason, was subject to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail. In addition, they were subject to civil damages of $1,000 to be paid to the owner of a slave for each slave who was not recovered.

According to the law, 'In no trial or hearing under this act shall the testimony of such alleged fugitive be admitted in evidence.' Under this  law someone could be dragged south as a slave and never be allowed to offer his or her own voice as evidence that he or she was free.

A northern white could be fined, jailed, and sued for helping a black person who he mistakenly thought was free, but a southerner would face no sanction for seizing a free black and fraudulently or mistakenly claiming him or her as a slave."

In 1896, a banquet was planned in Moscow's Khodynka Field to celebrate the crowning of Nicholas II as Tsar of Russia. When rumors spread of lavish gifts to be bestowed by the new leader, hoards of people began gathering at the coronation square. Suddenly, rumors of a gift shortage began circulating through the crowd. In the resulting disorder and panic, 1,389 people were trampled to death and another 1,300 were injured.

Naturalism is a type of extreme realism. This movement suggested the role of family background, social conditions and environment in shaping human character. Thus, naturalistic writers write stories based on the idea that environment determines and governs human character. We also see use of some of the scientific principles in naturalistic works, and humans struggling for survival in hostile and alien society. In fact, naturalism took its cue from Darwin’s theory of evolution that says life is like a struggle and only fittest ones can survive. 

Both naturalism and realism are literary genres and interlinked; however, there are some differences between them:

• Naturalism suggests a philosophical pessimism in which writers use scientific techniques to depict human beings as objectives and impartial characters, whereas realism focuses on literary technique.
• Realism depicts things as they appear, while naturalism portrays a deterministic view of character’s actions and life.
• Naturalism concludes that natural forces predetermine character’s decisions, making him/her act in a particular way, whereas in realism decision of a character comes from his response to a certain situation.

There are more than 300 million guns in the U.S.. Strangely, the argument over guns--you can't find them all and control them--is the same argument over illegals.

Ave Maria, Florida is a small town about 40 miles northeast of Naples. Founded by  Tom Monaghan, the former founder and CEO of Domino's Pizza, it is a small community devoted to Catholic values. His original investment was $250 million. At the center of the town is the Ave Maria Oratory, the only church in the community. There are over 720 homes with 11,000 planned. There is a water park and a golf course.

The town was designed around Monaghan’s grand Catholic Oratory and Ave Maria University - a small Catholic liberal arts college that was relocated from Ypsilanti, Michigan and has a law school.

A recent article on the town revealed that Monaghan was a member of Opus Dei and centered on whether or not the local ob-gyn would prescribe birth control pills. Really.

How crazy is this: A suicide attack on a polio vaccination center in southwestern Pakistan on Wednesday killed 15 people, mainly police who had gathered to escort health workers, who have been repeatedly targeted in recent years by Islamic militants, officials said. Until you read this: Polio workers in Pakistan, and their police escorts, have been targeted in recent years by Islamic militants who accuse them of working as spies for the United States. The attacks intensified after a Pakistani doctor was arrested on charges of running a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign in the city of Abbottabad as a cover for a CIA-backed effort to obtain DNA samples from Osama bin Laden ahead of the 2011 U.S. raid that killed him.

Lumosity has been fined $50 million by the FTC. “Lumosity preyed on consumers’ fears about age-related cognitive decline, suggesting their games could stave off memory loss, dementia, and even Alzheimer’s disease,” Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a written statement. “But Lumosity simply did not have the science to back up its ads.”

The Pope seems to have had a readjustment if not a change of heart on immigration: "Given the immense influx and the inevitable problems it creates," he said, "a number of questions have be raised about the real possibilities for accepting and accommodating people, about changes in the cultural and social structures of the receiving countries, and about the reshaping of certain regional geopolitical balances." He pointed to Islam's problem with assimilation and said migrants have a responsibility to "respect the value, traditions and laws of the community that takes them in." Then this: "Equally significant are fears about security, further exacerbated by the growing threat of international terrorism. The present wave of migration seems to be undermining the foundations of that 'humanistic spirit' which Europe has always loved and defended." 

Did you ever think you would see the Pope extolling humanism?

Emily ("Mickey") Hahn was born in 1905. She wrote fifty-two books, had a sixty-eight-year career at The New Yorker Hahn, she got the mining degree -- the first woman to do so at Wisconsin -- and hardly practiced the profession. Nay-saying and head-shaking attended her cigar-smoking, her enjoyment of men and alcohol, her trip across the U.S. in a Model T with her girlfriend (both disguised as men), her journey to the Belgian Congo as a Red Cross worker, her time as the concubine of a Chinese poet in Shanghai, her addiction to opium, her affair and illegitimate child with the head of the British Secret Service in Hong Kong, and her pioneer work in environmentalism and wildlife preservation. Hahn's years in the Far East are currently the focus of a British movie and a Canadian television documentary, and her 1970 Times and Places was reissued in 2001 (under the title No Hurry to Get Home).

The problem with redistribution: Most of the wealth of the superrich is in the form of productive assets that not only will lose most of their monetary value if seized by the state for ‘redistribution’ but is also in a form that produces significant economic benefits for its non-owners. The assets could be nationalized, i.e. given to a politician, his friends and family or liquidated, i.e. destroyed and broken down so its production is lost forever but some value--after the overhead of the liquidation is paid to the politician, his friends and family--trickles down to somebody.

AAAAAAnnnnnnddddd....a picture of Ave Maria, Florida: