Category Archives: Social Commentary

The Hubble Group

So the big news today is that they’ve named the supercluster we live in:

Scientists previously placed the Milky Way in the Virgo Supercluster, but under Tully and colleagues’ definition, this region becomes just an appendage of the much larger Laniakea, which is 160 million parsecs (520 million light years) across and contains the mass of 100 million billion Suns.

Which kicked off this Twitter exchange between me and Lee Billings.

Accordingly, I propose that we rename the Local Group the Hubble Group, in honor of its namer, and making it consistent with the other names. I will henceforth call it that. If anyone asks, I’ll explain.

Rape-Culture-Obsessed “Feminists”

They don’t care about the real rape cultures, in Rotherham (and the Muslim world in general).

[Update a while later]

It’s not just the “feminist” left. The Grey Lady has a bias, too:

Ever since the story about the horrific and widespread sex abuse in Rotherham broke, pundits have scrambled for an explanation as to how crimes on that scale could continue unchecked for so long. Yesterday the NYT released a story on Rotherham that at least reached for an explanation. But though the NYT notes both the ethnicity of the abusers and British officials’ “fear of being accused of racism,” as Dawn Eden points out on the Get Religion site, the article conspicuously fails to mention religion. . . .

To understand how crazy this is, think about how the NYT would have covered this story if a ring of Catholic priests had been responsible—or even Catholics otherwise involved in the church. Not only would the story mention the religious angle, but we would see a slew of op-eds condemning Christian theology itself for creating the abuse and calling for changes to that theology. This is a clear sign of bias, albeit not necessarily conscious or malicious, at work. The NYT is so wrapped in its own ideology that its readers don’t get the straight story.

This story points to the problem of Muslim integration in Europe (and elsewhere). Policy elites have authorized mass immigration without much public discussion or consent, and the cultures and values aren’t mixing well (exacerbated by horrible economic problems in much of Europe, thanks also to the elite’s euro fiasco). These factors combine to create a potentially explosive situation on the ground. Readers of the Times won’t understand this very well and will miss one of the key issues driving European, and therefore world, politics.

There is only one religion that it is politically correct to criticize. Well, OK, Jews can be fair game, too.

Joni Mitchell

Her secret torment.

I have to agree with this comment:

As difficult and delusional a person as Joni Mitchell is — and as little desire as I have to actually meet her — I find it extremely hard to harbor any personal animosity towards the person who wrote “The Urge for Going”, “That Song About the Midway”, “All I Want”, “California”, “River”, “A Case of You”, “Free Man in Paris”, “Refuge of the Roads” and numerous other brilliant pop songs, and who also recorded the definitive — indeed, timeless — versions of most of them.

Yes, she was an amazingly talented young woman. I’ve never been able to figure out what she does on guitar, with the weird and haunting tunings. Beautiful voice, beautiful melodies, poetic lyrics, great piano and guitar.

The Reformation Of Manners

Some thoughts from Mark Steyn on the Rotherham capitulation:

Now, in the new multiculti Britain, the child sex trade is back, as part of the rich, vibrant tapestry of diversity – along with Jew-hate, and honor killings, and decapitation porn.

…Old-school thugs – Mubarak and even Saddam – felt obliged to lie to the world: no, no torture going on here; we’re civilized men, just like you. But, as in Rotherham, the ISIS lads are “brazen” about it – they’re in your face about offing your head. And it’s worked for them: The more they post decapitated victims on Twitter and Facebook, the more followers they get in the “civilized” world. In an ill advised choice of words, the Prime Minister David Cameron said, “We need to tackle the ideology of Islamist extremism head on” – because trying to do it with your head off doesn’t seem to be working out for those poor fellows in Mosul.

But what does “head on” mean? I was listening to Congressman Peter King on the radio the other day discuss the issue of American and other western Muslims sallying forth to fight for ISIS, and his warnings about jihadists with western passports being able to move freely within Europe and North America made a lot of sense. But I had the uneasy feeling, as with Cameron, that the upshot would be a world in which, in five or ten years’ time, it will be more difficult and burdensome for law-abiding persons to fly from London to New York a two-day business meeting or from Toronto to Athens for a week in the Greek islands. In other words, the political leadership of the western world will attempt to micro-manage the problem through the panopticon security state.

Underneath the watchful eyes of the digital panopticon, however, the Islamization of the west will continue. Not every Muslim wants to chop your head off. Not every Muslim wants to “groom” your 11-year-old daughter. But these pathologies nest within Islam, and thrive at the intersection of Islam and the west. As long as Islam is your biggest source of population growth – to the point where Mohammed is now the most popular boy’s name in Oslo – you’re not “tackling” the issue, and certainly not “head on”.

In a bizarre column even for the post-Conrad National Post, Afsun Qureshi suggests the best thing you could do to lessen the likelihood of being set upon by Muslims is to learn to recite the shahadah, “a testimony to the identity of Allah as the one true God, and Muhammad as his prophet”. She might be right. Wearing a burqa might help, too. Or the shalwar kameez. On the other hand, most of those Syrian men paraded through the desert in their BVDs to their rendezvous with death knew the shahadah, and a fat lot of good it did.

To recite the shahadah when you’re accosted on the streets is to accept the basic premise of your attackers – that Islam now has universal jurisdiction. There’s way too much of that already. In essence, the entire establishment of a South Yorkshire town accepted that the cultural mores of Islam superseded whatever squeamishness they might otherwise have about child rape.

This will not end well.

Plus, “we have to face the truth to deal with the Rotherham hell“>

Facing the truth is something that the multi-culti Leftist, “reality-based” community studiously avoids.

Public School As Child Abuse

And overpriced colleges as young-adult abuse:

The student was given two options: face an “administrative panel” whose decision would be final and unable to be appealed (but suspension or expulsion not an option) or face a Student Conduct Panel, which would leave room for appeal but put suspension/expulsion back on the table.

The administration’s “bright line” for determining guilt is (I AM NOT KIDDING) whether the incident “more likely than not” occurred. Any discussion about whether the shouted joke “more likely than not” should have resulted in having the book thrown at the student apparently isn’t up for discussion.

If either panel finds the student “more likely than not” guilty of making an offensive, one-line joke, she pays the administrative fees and deals with whatever punishment is decided. If declared “more likely than not” not guilty, no one pays anything, not even the couple whose existence was rendered ghastly and nightmarish by a couple of seconds of careless window shouting nearly three months ago.

Don’t give your money to these people. Especially don’t go into undischargeable debt to give money to these people.

The Future

It could work, if we let it.

I do think that driverless cars are going to make things like high-speed rail (particularly California’s plan) look even more monumentally stupid in retrospect than it does now (and that’s a high bar). But history teaches us that it’s very difficult to predict the societal side effects of technological advances.