Utopia, you are standing in it!

Steve is doing a full-court press publicizing his new book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, which has now risen to #10 on Amazon.  And this publicity is exactly what I’d be doing if I had his renown and intellectual chops. At any rate, I’ll call your attention to three news items that are based on the book, including two excerpts or rewrites.

The first is from The Chronicle of Higher Education, and you can see it by clicking on the screenshot below.  It’s fairly similar to Steve’s 2013 piece in The New Republic, “Science is not your enemy“, in that it calls for an infusion of science into some areas of the humanities while still extolling those areas of the humanities, like literary interpretation, that have little to do with science.  That piece drew an intemperate response from literary editor Leon…

This post is simply to collect some notes for my future use. Details after the break …

18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Sunday, April 13, 1913:  Went to Sunday School this morning. Took dinner with Carrie.

Source: Ladies Home Journal (July, 1911)

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Which meal did Grandma eat with her friend, Carrie Stout?

I’m almost sure that it was the noon meal—but today it seems like most people are refer to the evening meal as dinner.

When I was a child growing up we always called the mid-day meal dinner. But, I’m never sure if other people understand what I mean when I say dinner–so my family eats breakfast, lunch and supper.

What do you call the meals?

17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Sunday, January 5, 1913:  Went to Sunday School this morning. Would like to go every Sunday of this year. Was over to see Carrie this afternoon. Went along with her to church this evening.

Source; Ladies Home Journal (November, 1913)

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Carrie Stout was a friend of Grandma’s who lived on a nearby farm. What did the two teens talk about? . . . do?

When I was young my friends and I enjoyed fixing each other’s hair. Maybe Grandma and Carrie also enjoyed fixing each other’s hair.

There’s a fun YouTube video that shows how to do an early 1900s updo.

Beauty Through the Decades, 1900-1910 Hairstyle

In the latest Jesus and Mo strip, called “lives,” the boys debate the timely question of who’s a man and who’s a woman. The author included this statement in the email:

A significant proportion of the political establishment seems to be losing its mind over this issue. To be clear: trans women are trans women and trans men are trans men. They deserve to be treated with the same kindness and respect as any other human being. But, as I am sure most regular readers of J&M know, you don’t have to believe in bullshit to be kind. Don’t trust anyone who tells you otherwise.

Curiously, Mo takes the woke position, but the barmaid asks a salient question—especially salient when it comes to sports participation.

Who doesn’t like James Carville? He’s smart, strongly liberal and pro-Democratic Party, and has an impish look but a potty mouth. His Louisiana accent is endearing. And he’s famous as a campaign strategist and for posting these three mantras on the wall of the Clinton election’s “campaign war room” in 1992:

1. Change vs. more of the same.
2. The economy, stupid.
3. Don’t forget health care.

The man doesn’t mince words. Carville now teaches at Louisiana State University, and he’s still married to conservative Mary Matalin (I have no idea how that marriage works!).

So Carville has a recent interview in Vox with Sean Illig, and makes some strong pronouncements about how the Democratic Presidential race this year is going south, and what we need to do to fix it. Click on the screenshot to read it. I’ve given quotes below from only a part of the interview, which you…

Nicola Sturgeon has stated her intention to endorse a modern Claim of Right for Scotland, but there has been little discussion about the 1988 Claim that is the precedent for her new proposal. David Torrance describes the Claim’s history, and argues that it has meant different things at different times to various people.

Speaking in Edinburgh last week, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she intended to invite Scotland’s ‘elected representatives’ to ‘come together to endorse a modern Claim of Right for Scotland through a new Constitutional Convention’ to:

‘declare that it is for the Scottish Parliament to decide whether and when there should be an independence choice and build support for that principle amongst civic Scotland.’

The First Minister was referring to the 1988/89 Claim of Right, which argued for a Scottish Constitutional Convention. That Claim is much cited but little studied. This blog will look at three different uses…

Today (5 Feb) marks the birthday of Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), the 19th century prime minister traditionally credited with founding the modern Conservative party. Peel is also subject of a new BBC ‘Prime Properties’ episode – click here to view – and the latest video from the History of Parliament’s public engagement team.

Perhaps more than any other Victorian leader, Peel’s career was dominated by themes and events that continue to have striking resonances today. These include implementing controversial constitutional reforms that divided his party, heading a short-lived minority Tory government and winning a landslide Conservative election victory using new electoral techniques. The extent of Peel’s role in rebuilding the Conservative party after its catastrophic election defeat in 1832, however, has always been a moot point. Peel was notoriously aloof and awkward as a leader. A new breed of party officials instead exerted considerable control behind the scenes during…

Acculturation – the cultural modification of an individual, group, or people by adapting to or borrowing traits from another culture or a merging of cultures – is increasingly evident in this country’s public agencies.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has not escaped the process.  In July 2018, soon after Adrian Orr became the governor, the Otago Daily Times reported the new  head of the country’s august central bank was planning to shift the mindset of the institution towards better embracing the rich cultural diversity of the country.

Since he had taken up the post (the ODT reported)

… phrases like tikanga Maori and te reo have begun to feature prominently on its priority list.

And:

Under his watch, the bank’s Statement of Intent, where it sets out its strategic objectives to the Government for the next four years, highlights its intent to embed  te reo and tikanga Maori into…

“The common enemy of humanity is man.
In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up
with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming,
water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these
dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through
changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome.
The real enemy then, is humanity itself.“
– Club of Rome,
premier environmental think-tank,
consultants to the United Nations

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the
industrialized civilizations collapse?
Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?”
– Maurice Strong,
founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

•••

ANTHROPOGENIC “climate change”, and the control of carbon dioxide (energy) has deep roots in a radical, yet gravely misguided campaign to reduce the world’s population.

A misanthropic agenda engineered by the environmental movement in the…

Whilst the Hollywood blacklisting of the mid-20th century claimed some innocent victims,it’s undeniable that the problem of communist infiltration into US society, including the motion picture industry, was a legitimate national security threat. So, if the means used to fight this threat were often flawed, it was certainly based on an entirely accurate diagnosis: That the root cause of the Cold War was Soviet Communism.

The recent release of the UN Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC)blacklist of (mostly Israeli) companies that operate in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and other disputed territories across the 1949 Armistice lines represents a different dynamic: an entirely ahistorical diagnosis of the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  The political premise of the blacklist, which represents conventional wisdom at international bodies like the UNHRC, in the mainstream media and, at least until recently, within the US government, is that Israeli ‘settlements’ represent the…

A few days ago, and previously as well, I discussed the difficult issue of transgender women seeking to compete in women’s sports. The thorny issue of “what do you do with males transitioning to the female gender?” or with those who have completed their transition, is often resolved by many with the simple Diktat: “Transgender women are women.” Well, when it comes to “transgender” women who have undergone no hormonal or medical therapy, but are simply biological men who have declared that they are women, the issue isn’t so simple, at least when it comes to sports.

Of course, as I’ve repeated endlessly, anybody who claims they’re a woman should be respected as such, and not discriminated against in nearly any way. But sports is an exception.

I won’t go into the issue of men who have had hormone therapy and the like, though many times they…