I believe that what progressives want most of all is to fail. They are most comfortable being against things. They are most comfortable campaigning for purposes that will never come to fruition. They are so dependent on the perpetuation of social ills like racism that in a pinch they will invent “microaggressions” undetectable to the naked eye; starved of racism, they will make the racism up. For progressives, a proper utopia, with nothing and no one left to denounce, would be hell.
Category: Silly people
Hymn, him, hmm
Recent discussions at Severian’s place and elsewhere brought this old favorite to mind.
The Lambeth Goose Step
No comment necessary.
Gyneco-Obstetric Algebraic Didactics and Post-Partum Group Theory
According to a recently published paper,
A case study with pregnant mathematicians and aspiring gynecologists demonstrates that integrating the Fibonacci sequence into labor progression charts induces spontaneous appreciation for abstract algebra and mild cravings for prime numbers. These findings challenge the traditional boundaries between prenatal care and set theory, suggesting that mathematical didactics and obstetric gynecology, when merged, can birth new paradigms in both fields. Further research is encouraged, especially in the context of cesarean matrices and post-partum group theory.
(Via Eugene Volokh.)
Not quite as impactful as Alan Sokal’s classic paper, perhaps, but much more efficiently created. As the author notes, “All procedures followed the principles of academic transparency and surreal humor.”
Increase your word power
Our Most Intellectual Supreme Court Justice has introduced a new word, “cisginger.” Here’s the archetypical example.
Footnote
In case anyone reading this doesn’t understand what it means to “serve humanity,” here’s Damon Knight’s explanation.
No more toxic positivity
Yeah, right
Someone at Standard EBooks is a prankster.
Today’s quote: At the circus in clown world
In the present election, we have to choose between a confidence man and a courtesan, two types the American people warmly approve as less obese reflections of themselves. Trump’s talent is the power to embolden nervous investors and make them sign checks they would not sign if they were not under the spell of Trump. Harris’s talent is the power to do whatever she is told to do while cluelessly enjoying dumb luck.
A hundred and more years ago, Trump and Harris might have been working together in a sideshow of a travelling circus, Trump outside the tent persuading the yokels to part with a quarter to take an edifying gander at the Queen of Sheba, Harris inside the tent beguiling the yokels with phony-exotic allure.
*****
I myself am still more likely to write in Dave Barry for his stand on plumbing issues1, though I am considering Vincent D. Furnier for his policy on school reform.
Who is more royal?
Let’s have another silly poll. Which of this pair looks more like a king?
Today’s quote
“Pre-Vatican II” includes everyone from the Hildegard of Bingen to Teresa of Avila to Edith Stein. Heck, it includes most of Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton’s writings. “Pre-Vatican II” includes the life, witness and prayers of St. Francis of Assisi. “Pre-Vatican II” includes, well, every single Catholic thing that emerged before 1962, I guess.
Historical-botanical footnote
Joseph Moore’s most recent post mentions the Iron Chancellor. That reminded me of a bit of horticultural history.
One rose I grew many years ago was a fine white hybrid perpetual called “Frau Karl Druschki.” That’s a bad enough name, but it could have been much worse. From an online discussion:
According to a reference, for some years from 1900 there was an annual competition for the best new seedling of German origin, to be named ‘Otto von Bismarck’. The rose described here is pink, from 1908. However there is an illustration dated 1900. Was that a different rose? (Or as a passing thought, a typo?)
1900 was the year that the rose eventually named ‘Frau Karl Druschki’ was entered in the competition….… ‘Frau Karl Druschki’, at the time still unnamed, had participated in the original competition in 1900, but the judges found no rose to be good enough to be called ‘Otto von Bismarck’. So, Lambert named his rose FKD and commercialzed it and was out of the game. The original prize money of 1000 Marks was increased first to 2000, then to 3000, to no vail – nothing was good enough! Finally in 1906 Kiese’s rose made it. The irony is that FKD went on to become one of the hottest introductions of the early 20th century, while Kiese’s ‘Otto von Bismarck’ almost disappeared.
You can call the rose “Snow Queen” or “Schneekönigin” if you find “Frau Karl Druschki” too clunky.
*****
Bonus foolishness: A note from the Modern Language Association’s annual meeting:
But amid the usual carnival of perversity there was one bijou we thought might interest our readers. No, it has nothing to do with, you know, literature. The denizens of the mla and indeed of the humanities departments of most of our universities wouldn’t countenance anything so retrograde. But how’s this, a session on “Vegetal Afterlives”?
“Advancing recent work in critical plant studies”—“critical plant studies”? alas, yes—“asking how plants offer vibrant models of resistance to environmental destruction through their persistent attempts to create a Plantocene, . . . panelists focus on the theme of vegetal resistance, considering how plants can offer models of resistance for human crises like systemic racism, unnatural disasters, and climate change.”
Just wondering
Is there anything that isn’t carcinogenic in California?
Today’s question
The real plague of modernity is our unwillingness to accept reality: we are multi-cellular, carbon based life forms. We are vulnerable to injury and disease. We get sick, we get old and we die.
When did it become bad manners to say this?
Aha
An alternative hypothesis is that Bing AI is simply the aggregate beliefs and attitudes of the Microsoft Corporation, in the same way that Giambattista Vico said that Homer was “the common sense of the Greek people.” It has the personality that inevitably arises from putting together the minds of all the people who gave us Windows. You wondered what Windows would say if it could talk. Now you know: “You have not been a good user.”
Notes for the State of Reality Address
The shortest distance between two points apparently isn’t a straight line or geodesic.
Rusting away
I gather that youngsters have not heard of Neil Young. He was a musician popular about fifty years ago, noted for having the thinnest tenor of any professional singer. He ranks third on the list of the most whiny vocalists in rock, surpassed only by Kurt Cobain and Thom “Creep” Yorke. He wrote one listenable song, but Petrus Ratajczyk did it better.
Joyous multiples
It’s been a while since I last ran a poll. Let’s see if I can remember how to set one up.
(For the significance of “joy multiplier,” see here.)
Just wondering, and a note
Any test of Joe Biden’s cognitive functions would be a waste of time. At this point, I wonder: could he pass a Turing test?
In related news, I see that the democrats have picked the most nakedly demagogic of the candidates to finish out Biden’s hypothetical term. Some months back she blindsided the senile creep for not supporting busing enthusiastically enough. At the time I wrote a brief note on an aspect of sending children to distant schools that is usually overlooked, but for some reason I never published it. I might as well put it up here now.
Why is there only one “s” in “busing”?
During the middle of second grade, my parents transferred me to the nearest Catholic grade school, 30 miles south of our home in northern Utah. My home was the second stop on the morning bus route, and the second-last in the evening. Every school morning I needed to get up while it was still dark out — always a bitter struggle — swallow something (I got thoroughly sick of Carnation Instant Breakfast) and run out to the bus before it drove off. The bus spent the next half-hour picking up other sleepy students around town, and another half-hour on the highway to school. I was barely awake, my parent were cross, the other students were cranky, and the bus driver resented us all. It was a marvelous way to start the day.
After school, the process was reversed. The main difference was that we were all tired and hungry rather than sleepy, but it was nevertheless as much a pleasure to ride the bus then as it was in the morning.
So, every school day through fifth grade, I spent two hours each day confined in a decrepit old school bus with bad shocks2, enjoying the company of 30 or so other surly children, because my parents thought I would benefit from being in a Catholic school. Were they right? No. Even assuming that the education in the Catholic school was indeed superior3, it was not worth the waste of two hours every day.4
Note that I spent those hours on the bus because my parents wanted me in a Catholic school. There was no question of good or bad neighborhoods or schools. Even so, it was a mistake. Busing itself is intrinsically bad.5
Contrarian classics online
Richard Grenier, “The Gandhi Nobody Knows”
Michael Crichton, “Aliens Cause Global Warming” (PDF)
(Via Ed Driscoll and Maggie’s Farm.)