You're not religious, you're superstitious.--Thomas Larkin
Good morning. Happy St. Patrick's Day, a day of officially approved debauchery.
Mom is back from visiting the Stewarts.
The Larkins came in.
Star Wars is still a dumb series.
I slept for eleven hours last night.
Chelsea Clinton was confronted by several students who claimed her "rhetoric" criticizing anti-Semitism had "stoked" the anger that provoked the New Zealand atrocity. "Anger," not "lunacy." The current climate has become a black hole of unreason.
In Star Wars, a frightened republic gives Emergency Powers to a leader who, unbeknownst to them, is a Dark Lord of the Sith. Coincidence? Prophesy?
Today's gospel was The Transfiguration, a dramatic display of Christ's divinity, which shows through His human disguise. One wonders why He did not do it all the time.
The Apple Watch was able to detect irregular heart pulse rates that could signal the need for further monitoring for a serious heart rhythm problem, according to data from a large study funded by Apple Inc, demonstrating a potential future role for wearable consumer technology in healthcare.
It was funny to see the "Children's Crusade" against global warming, the school strike and the Feinstein embarrassment earlier. Reminded me of the protest days of the '60s: When the enthusiasm flagged --or if opposition threatened--the cry went up, "Chicks up front." Of course, enlisting children in politics is a lot creepier than that; aside from the obvious puppeteering, it's a hallmark of fascism.
Lobbyists are using a technique known as geofencing to send digital ads via Twitter, as well as Facebook and You-Tube, touting the benefits of foreign tourism. Instead of targeting the entire capital, they were aimed at the coordinates of a vanishingly small audience: the President and his top aides, wherever they happened to be. The consultants tracked Team Trump’s movements inside the Beltway and beyond. When the commander in chief was in Washington, they sent their ads to IP addresses that covered the White House and the Trump hotel. If Trump headed to his golf club in New Jersey, they beamed the ads to IP addresses there. When he went to Mar-a-Lago, they sent them to his club in Florida. This tactic is part of what’s known, in the parlance of the industry, as the “audience of one” strategy.
Tarrant used Facebook Live to broadcast the first of two Friday attacks on local mosques that left 50 dead and 50 injured, which was rapidly disseminated across various file hosing platforms and websites, including Kiwi Farms - which received the preservation request on Saturday.
An article in "The Atlantic" had this headline: Chimpanzees Are Going Through a Tragic Loss: By fragmenting forests and killing off individuals, humans are stopping the flow of ideas among our closest relatives.
In Europe, Neanderthals appeared in fossil records as a distinct population more than 400,000 years ago, and went on to occupy a vast swathe of Eurasia. Then they vanished 42,000-40,000 years ago. This period also witnessed the appearance in Europe of another hominin species: us, Homo sapiens. We have no fossil evidence for H sapiens west of the Danube delta – never mind southern Iberia – before 45,000 years ago. Increasingly refined data suggest that humans and Neanderthals shared an ancestor around 800,000-700,000 years ago, before they split along different evolutionary paths. Neanderthals shared more genetic variants with present-day humans in Eurasia than with present-day humans in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that gene flow from Neanderthals into the ancestors of non-Africans occurred before the divergence of Eurasian groups from each other. Living people preserve a stunning 20 per cent, maybe more, of the Neanderthal genome, albeit as a somewhat tattered archive that’s distributed between different populations. Even more surprisingly, it’s not Western Europeans who have the most Neanderthal DNA: East Asians have up to a fifth more. There were also numerous phases of hybridisation. The earliest known encounter happened more than 220,000 years ago, when a female ancestor of H sapiens mated with a male Neanderthal – much earlier than other known interbreeding between the two groups. At the other end of the temporal scale, the jaw of a human who lived 40,000 years ago in Romania reveals that he counted a Neanderthal among his ancestors just four to six generations back – right at the time when they were about to disappear from the fossil record.
"Democracy means preventing an aristocracy. Democracy should mean taking power and wealth from those who hoard it and making sure it belongs to everyone."--this interesting quote is from AOC's former manager. Sort of like Vikings, but with someone else doing the stealing for them.
Focusing on the Peripheral
The New Zealand atrocity will now stimulate the usual heartfelt self examination by the West. What does this mean? The murderer had a Manifesto, that means he had a philosophy to advance. What can we learn from this?
The society has a problem. We have now moved from a democracy, where the majority has a responsibility to protect the rights of the minority, to where the majority must take the minority seriously and, in most cases, defer to them. The Flat Earth Society gets interviewed. People who believe the U.S. faked the moon landing speak wryly on night time television shows. A child who wants to change his gender gets a contract instead of therapy.
The individual, the ultimate minority, is now the cynosure of the West. Everything he does has its own inherent value and validity. The Bell Curve is now irrelevant because we accept no norms. The Adam Smith community of productive, self-interested and industrious individuals have had, insinuated into their midst, the inept, the disinterested and the deranged--all of whom, in our brave new world, have their own value and story, too. Only the Nationalist seems to have allegiance less to an idea and more to some sinister, unseen group.
Recall the tremor that went through the academic community when the Unabomber was caught, the conflict and ambiguous reflections. The guy was a bright, serious student and his social concerns overlapped those of many sensible, concerned observers of the new technological world. But you don't get a "Good Content-Bad Conduct Gentleman's C" in living. You can't get your murderous, vicious acts offset by a childhood Eagle Scout badge. No society can function on "compartmentalism;" Mussolini did make the trains run on time. But that is not enough. There is a bigger picture here. Ted Bundy was charming. World War II was loud. Goebbels had a PhD and a good first novel.
It's really quite simple: "By their fruits you will know them." Murder, chaos, mendacity, destruction. These are not faults in a greater, purer whole: These are the whole.
"Democracy means preventing an aristocracy. Democracy should mean taking power and wealth from those who hoard it and making sure it belongs to everyone."--this interesting quote is from AOC's former manager. Sort of like Vikings, but with someone else doing the stealing for them.
Focusing on the Peripheral
The New Zealand atrocity will now stimulate the usual heartfelt self examination by the West. What does this mean? The murderer had a Manifesto, that means he had a philosophy to advance. What can we learn from this?
The society has a problem. We have now moved from a democracy, where the majority has a responsibility to protect the rights of the minority, to where the majority must take the minority seriously and, in most cases, defer to them. The Flat Earth Society gets interviewed. People who believe the U.S. faked the moon landing speak wryly on night time television shows. A child who wants to change his gender gets a contract instead of therapy.
The individual, the ultimate minority, is now the cynosure of the West. Everything he does has its own inherent value and validity. The Bell Curve is now irrelevant because we accept no norms. The Adam Smith community of productive, self-interested and industrious individuals have had, insinuated into their midst, the inept, the disinterested and the deranged--all of whom, in our brave new world, have their own value and story, too. Only the Nationalist seems to have allegiance less to an idea and more to some sinister, unseen group.
Recall the tremor that went through the academic community when the Unabomber was caught, the conflict and ambiguous reflections. The guy was a bright, serious student and his social concerns overlapped those of many sensible, concerned observers of the new technological world. But you don't get a "Good Content-Bad Conduct Gentleman's C" in living. You can't get your murderous, vicious acts offset by a childhood Eagle Scout badge. No society can function on "compartmentalism;" Mussolini did make the trains run on time. But that is not enough. There is a bigger picture here. Ted Bundy was charming. World War II was loud. Goebbels had a PhD and a good first novel.
It's really quite simple: "By their fruits you will know them." Murder, chaos, mendacity, destruction. These are not faults in a greater, purer whole: These are the whole.
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