Leaving the Goolag

I will blog again no more. Not really, just not here; Wordpress will now host the Burned-Over District Observer [new address: burnedoverdistrictobserver.wordpress.com]. After fourteen years at Blogger, which is owned by Google, this zek is leaving in response to l'Affair Damore — Making Sense of the Google Memo.

I long ago gave up their search engine in favor of DuckDuckGo, Gmail in favor of Zoho Mail, Google Chrome in favor of Firefox, and encourage any and all to do the same.

Rhiannon Giddens Performs "Wayfaring Stranger"

Deep State vs. Our President

President Donald J. Trump's "existential threat to cultural Marxist memes that dominate the prevailing cultural narrative" is behing the attacks against him from "‘deep state’ actors, globalists, bankers, Islamists, and establishment Republicans" — Here’s the Memo That Blew Up the NSC.

Looking Ahead to the Next Total Eclipse

We're about 12 hours from the 2017 Path of Totality, but smack dab in the middle of it for the next one according to the above "NY-centric view of the path of the next great American eclipse on April 8, 2024" — Stargazing in Upstate NY: Where to find solar eclipse parties.

"Gun" Violence or Black Violence in Chicongo

Hearing this story on the commute home got me thinking — Chicago teen finds escape from gun violence in funeral home. It got me thinking not about the enterprising youth who is the subject of the story, but the term "gun violence" that gets thrown around so much. That got me looking.

"Illustrating Chicago Values" (murders, homicides, gun crime, gun violence, filth, corruption, obscenity, idiocy, moronic buffoonery, barbaric crime) is what this site promises — HeyJackass! From the site, two telling infographics shed some light:


The site's chart on "2017 Race of Victim/Assailant" tells us that Blacks account for 80.5% of homicide victims and and 88.7% of known assailants. Demographically, Blacks are punching way above their weight as the city if "32.9% Black or African American" according to Wikipedia's Chicago page. Only 1.8% of the known assailants are White, while they make up 45.0% of the city's population. Whites do a bit better as victims, though, accounting for 2.8% of the total. Of course, with 84.7% of these homicides having unknown assailants, it could be the Klan behind all of these killings.

American Crime Story: The People vs. O. J. Simpson

The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story is far better television than the "media circus" that inspired it. At the heart of the story is Marcia Clark, whose Williams syndrome-esque race naivete (see Children with Williams Syndrome don’t form racial stereotypes) in refusing to believe that a Black jury would let emotion rather than facts quide them is what lost them the verdict. Christopher Darden comes off as the most complex and sympathetic figure.

Henry Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas" Performed by L'Arpeggiata, Directed by Christina Pluhar

Being performed locally this weekend by our local treasure Pegasus Early Music here in what Her Honor Mayor Lovely A. Warren, perhaps naively, has called "the City of the Arts" (see below). A theme from the great Henry Purcell was the behind the music in this blog's last musical post — Benjamin Britten's "The Young People's Guide to the Orchestra," Performed by the Kölner Philharmonie & WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Conducted by Jukka Pekka Saraste.

A Woman's Thinking Cannot Be "Naive"

Mayor Lovely A. Warren is mad, saying that "in this day and age, a man calling a woman 'naive' is not acceptable" — Rochester Mayor Says Theater Artistic Director Owes Her, Other Women An Apology.

Gasped Her Honor, clutching her pearls as she fainted, "I think to demean someone in the way that he demeaned me as a woman in this community, he owes the women and the young girls in this community an apology."

Here's what the accused hate-speaker said [trigger warning]:

She is quoted as saying, "Syracuse is a college sports town, Buffalo has pro teams, we are the City of the Arts and we have to have a venue that gives us that title." We find that thinking to be naive at best.

Pass the smelling salts. The accused hate-speaker is correct in "insist[ing] he did not call the mayor 'naive'" as it was "that thinking" and not the mayor herself that was modified by the predicate adjective. And while the word "naïve" is the feminine, singular for of "naïf" in French, we do not have grammatical gender in English and the adjective is used to describe persons of both sexes.

For the record, I would love for ours to truly be "the City of the Arts" but agree with the accused hate-speaker that to think that "building a 3,000-seat theater on Parcel 5 to be the thing that makes us the City of the Arts [is] flawed." Government cannot mandate us becoming "the City of the Arts."

Decriminalize Private Discrimination

Right libertarians should support this — Airbnb Deletes Accounts Of People Planning To Attend ‘Unite The Right’ Rally. And then we should boycott Airbnb.

We should support all businesses' right to discriminate, for whatever reason. The freedom of association implies the freedom of disassociation. Most business will choose not to discriminate, because it means less revenue, but business should have the choice. Of course, Airbnb knows it is likely to make up any short-term losses with long-term gains here by scoring some cheap grace and free advertising with this move. Banning right-wingers will not produce the backlash that would occur if a similar company banned gays or blacks, so businesses would be less likely to make such moves, but interesting niche markets would develop.

State Health Care in the Empire State

The kind of care we can all expect when the State takes over health care — Patient under New York state care is infested with maggots. And this was the second time.

"Holocaustianity"

Or "Holocuckstianity" perhaps, the West's true religion — The Corruption Of The White Westerner Foundation Myth:

[A]ll cultures have a foundation myth that tells them who they are, and the foundation myth of modern Europeans is a negative one.

How do you recognise a foundation myth? It fulfills three functions.

1)It explains the origin and structure of the world (and society).
2)It defines ultimate good and evil (and from those definitions are derived the values that are used to justify the holding of power).
3)It determines what is held sacred in that society.

For modern Westerners the story of WWII has become their foundation myth. It fulfils all three functions.

1)We live in the ‘Post-War World’. The lines on the map, the institutions, the sense of what era we live in, all arise from the starting point of WWII.

2)Ultimate evil is Nazis. Ultimate good is opposing Nazis. The values derived from these definitions are anti-racism, equality, diversity, anti-nationalism and so on.

3)The only thing that is held sacred, that cannot be denied or mocked in the contemporary West, is the Holocaust.

The problem is that all three functions are backwards or negative.

Instead of the origin event being one of fertility and new life, it was a conflagration of death and destruction.

Instead of ultimate good taking the central position in the story that slot is occupied by ultimate evil. Everyone knows that Adolf Hitler, the personification of evil, holds the centre point of the WWII story.

Instead of that which is held sacred being something mysterious and sublime it (the Holocaust) is an obscenity.

Having a negative foundation myth means the tree of life for Westerners is poisoned. People don’t realise it but the bounds of allowable thought and the orientation of ideas are all downstream from the myth of the society. As long as our understanding of who we are is determined by this negative foundation myth the only direction is down.

Extremely well said, and noted before — Holocaust as Religious Dogma.

Benjamin Britten's "The Young People's Guide to the Orchestra," Performed by the Kölner Philharmonie & WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Conducted by Jukka Pekka Saraste

Music that plays a prominent role in Moonrise Kingdom (2012).

Human Biodiversity Weekend

From the Monroe County Library System, I finally got around to picking up a book I have been meaning to read for sometime, The 10,000 Year Explosion. Back-cover blurb from the Derb (John Derbyshire):

Did human evolution come to a screeching halt fifty thousand years ago when Homo sapiens emerged from Africa, thus ensuring the psychic unity of mankind? Don't be silly, say the authors of this latest addition to the fast-emerging discipline of Biohistory. In clear prose backed by a wealth of hard data, Cochran and Harpending add a biological dimension to the history of our species, and hammer another nail into the coffin lid of "nothing but culture" anthropology.

It's a quick and lively read, from what I've read so far.

Unavailable in our county's shelves is IQ and the Wealth of Nations, whose authors "argues that differences in national income (in the form of per capita gross domestic product) are correlated with differences in the average national intelligence quotient (IQ)." I can guess why our library system does not stock that book. Although the authors conclude "that it is the ethical responsibility of rich, high-IQ nations to assist poor, low-IQ nations financially," the mere act of documenting that different human populations have different average intellectual capabilities is outside the Overton window.

The great James Watson came to the same conclusions and become a persona non grata by saying that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really." About the reaction to this statement, said the man of science:

I turned against the left wing because they don't like genetics, because genetics implies that sometimes in life we fail because we have bad genes. They want all failure in life to be due to the evil system.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

"The Greatest Film of the XXI^th Century" had us turn to Auntie Beeb and #95 on her list — The 21st Century’s 100 greatest films. A nice, sweet film, in the truest sense of those words.

Gaia, False Goddess

Of a false religion that "could have disastrous consequences" — Environmentalism as a religion.

Sœur Marie Keyrouz Sings "Ave Maria"

Áve María, grátia pléna, Dóminus técum. Benedícta tū in muliéribus, et benedíctus frúctus véntris túi, Iésus. Sáncta María, Máter Déi, óra pro nóbis peccatóribus, nunc et in hóra mórtis nóstrae. Ámen
السلامُ عليكِ يا مريم يا مُمتلِئَةً نِعْمَةً مريم يا مُمتلِئَةً نِعْمَةً مريم يا مُمتلِئَةً نِعْمَةً الربُّ مَعَكِ مُبَارَكَةٌ أنتِ بَيْنَ النِسَاء وَمُبَارَكَةٌ وَمُبَارَكَةٌ ثَمَرَةُ بَطْنِكِ سَيِّدِنَا يَسُوعَ المَسيح السلامُ عليكِ يا مريم السلامُ عليكِ يا مريم يا مُمتلِئَةً نِعْمَةً مريم يا مُمتلِئَةً نِعْمَةً مريم يا مُمتلِئَةً نِعْمَةً الربُّ مَعَكِ مُبَارَكَةٌ أنتِ بَيْنَ النِسَاء وَمُبَارَكَةٌ وَمُبَارَكَةٌ ثَمَرَةُ بَطْنِكِ سَيِّدِنَا يَسُوعَ المَسيح السلامُ عليكِ يا مريم

President Trump Takes on the Quiet Americans

"C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, recommended to President Trump that he shut down a four-year-old effort to arm and train Syrian rebels" and our "president swiftly ended the program" — Behind the Sudden Death of a $1 Billion Secret C.I.A. War in Syria. Blessed are the peacemakers.

Remember, under the Obama régime, in a criminal misuse of American treasure, "US-backed and armed groups [were] fighting other US-backed rebel groups" — U.S. vs. U.S. in Syria.

Remember, too, this bullet we dodged — Trump warns of World War III if Clinton is elected.

Remember also, the last presidency that stood up to the C.I.A. like this ended on November 22, 1963.

The Greatest Film of the XXIth Century

Having just watched it a third time, I agree with Auntie Beeb's meta-analysis — Mulholland Drive tops BBC Culture greatest film poll. For those new to the film, I would recommend a fist viewing, followed by some reading of plot analyses before a second viewing.

The Mountain Goats Perform "Blood Capsules," "Andrew Eldrich Is Moving Back To Leeds," "Shelved" & "San Bernardino"

White Athena

So much for "the 'Black Athena' hypothesis of the Afroasiatic origins of Classical Greek civilization" — Ancient DNA analysis reveals Minoan and Mycenaean origins. Brief descriptions of "Europe's first advanced civilizations" and their genetic origins:

The Minoan civilization flourished on Crete beginning in the third millennium before the Common Era. and was astonishingly advanced artistically and technologically. The Minoans were also the first literate people of Europe. The Mycenaean civilization developed in mainland Greece in the second millennium before the Common Era [sic]. It shared many cultural features with the Minoans. They used the Linear B script, an early form of Greek.

[....]

Study results show that Minoans and Mycenaeans were genetically highly similar - but not identical - and that modern Greeks descend from these populations. The Minoans and Mycenaeans descended mainly from early Neolithic farmers, likely migrating thousands of years prior to the Bronze Age from Anatolia, in what is today modern Turkey.

"Minoans, Mycenaeans, and modern Greeks also had some ancestry related to the ancient people of the Caucasus, Armenia, and Iran. This finding suggests that some migration occurred in the Aegean and southwestern Anatolia from further east after the time of the earliest farmers," said Lazaridis.

While both Minoans and Mycenaeans had both "first farmer" and "eastern" genetic origins, Mycenaeans traced an additional minor component of their ancestry to ancient inhabitants of Eastern Europe and northern Eurasia. This type of so-called Ancient North Eurasian ancestry is one of the three ancestral populations of present-day Europeans, and is also found in modern Greeks.

Here's a book exposing true cultural appropriation — White Athena: The Afrocentrist Theft of Greek Civilization.

Two Stories from the Country that Used to Be England

Europe Without Germany; Germany Without Germans

An imagined map of a post-war Europe, without Germany, that went around the internets a while back comes to mind with this news — Nearly One Quarter of Germans Now Have a Foreign Background. Enemies within are accomplishing what enemies without were unable to do.

Long Live Sacred Germany!