Category Archives: Life
Far Off Broadway
After some trial and error (less than I thought there would be, honestly), I restrung my guitar. I haven’t played it in 2 or 3 years, and it’s painfully clear that I have a lot of relearning to do. Still, I remembered a number of the basic major/minor chord structures and was close on the ones I missed. So it’s not exactly time to catch the Greyhound bus for home, as it were.
Pure Progressivism
From Cafe Hayek comes “Rents And Race: Legacies of Progressive Policies” (PDF). The abstract reads –
Could it be that the institutional racism of Jim Crow occurred not despite the Progressive era but because of it? Not only did the Progressive reforms create new economic rents that could be exploited by whites and by the politicians who enacted those reforms, but many leading Progressives espoused views on racial purity and segregation that put them in the vanguard of the American apartheid system.
The authors continue –
Robert Higgs ([1977] 2008) writes that despite racist views by whites and despite the residual interracial violence and discrimination that existed after the Civil War, black Americans made significant economic and social gains. Many of those gains, however, occurred before the onslaught of Progressive economic regulation and the imposition of Jim Crow.Thus, one cannot claim that the institutionalized racism that came with progressivism simply was based on residual racism that existed after the war, as though the racial attitudes of that time inevitably would end in Jim Crow. [1977] 2008. Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865–1914. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.]
The Davis-Bacon Act is a pro-union law that discriminates against non-unionized black construction contractors and black workers. In fact, that was the original intent of the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. During its 1931 legislative debate, quite a few congressmen expressed their racist intentions, such as Rep. Clayton Allgood, D-Ala., who said, “Reference has been made to a contractor from Alabama who went to New York with bootleg labor. This is a fact. That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country.”
Night Skies
Last night I went with Allamagoosa and her brother to watch the Perseid meteor shower. We took a few mats out to a field and kicked back while watching shooting stars. The only manmade lights I could see were a faint light by a barn or something and some radio towers way off in the distance. I can’t recall the last time I was able to see so many stars.
After about a half hour, clouds started moving in and obscured our view. We waited a little to see if they would clear, but no luck, so we called it a night and left. Fun times.
Girl Is A Danger!
[Or: Allamagoosa Unleashed]
“I stun and amaze in my ability to harm myself” – Allie
Allamagoosa and I have long joked about her needing a leash so she doesn’t wander into traffic. A couple days ago, she was getting into my car and must not have ducked low enough because she banged her shoulder on the roof edge. Her right shoulder. Getting in the passenger side. Not quite sure just how she managed that one.
The leash is sounding less like a joke and more like a necessity. Even non-moving traffic is a risk.
Pacific Rim
I recently saw Pacific Rim with Allie and her family. They asked if I wanted to go along, and explained that it was about “giant monsters fighting giant robots.” I decided it would be a fun lark, expecting a sillyass popcorn flick with good special FX. To quote director Guillermo del Toro, “We cannot pretend this is Ibsen with monsters and giant robots. I cannot pretend I’m doing a profound reflection on mankind.”
If you haven’t seen it yet and plan to, you might wanna stop reading here.
Even though it was live-action, this was the biggest, baddest, most hardcore anime ever. Giant monsters and robots, explosions, cities being razed, incredible effects, insane weapons, and a battle cry of “This is for my family!” Some of the action scenes are a little too dark, but the colors are so vivid it almost doesn’t matter. Amazing camera work as well. There’s minimal blood and guts – children around 8 years old or older should be able to handle the movie just fine.
But what surprised me a little was that there was an actual story, and how it was handled. Del Toro said, “I shot about an hour more of material than is in the movie. Every character had a bigger arc, the characters were more complex. But I was really trying to strike the balance where I said,… let me try to get each character to its minimal requirements to have an arc that has a beginning, middle and end, and a payoff.”
I think this helped the movie quite a bit. None of the navel-gazing or handwringing that can be found in nearly any other movie these days. No overblown soliloquies about courage, duty, or sacrifice – they just do it. If a movie with themes like this can be made (by a pacifist, at that) and do well, then maybe Western civilization isn’t totally down the crapper yet.
This is the movie that “Man Of Steel” should have been.
100
I’m up to my 100th post, and I wanted to make it something insightful, noble, uplifting, and memorable.
“Don’t forget, it’s a two-drink minimum in my pants, hot stuff!”
Hey, it’s 1 out of 4. I guess I could count it as 2 out of 4 since something is kinda being uplifted in that pic.
Okay, fine. Have something awesome.
Stephen Hawking’s video for The Big Bang Theory panel at Comic-Con 2013.
Thanks for hanging out at this train wreck of a site.
Property Rights Vs. Abortion
The libertarian case against abortion –
…My journey and reasoning on abortion begins and ends with the view that it is the taking of an innocent life. Whatever the cause of the pregnancy – chosen or not – the unborn child was innocent of causing the pregnancy and therefore not justifiably subject to aggression in the so-called self-defense of the mother.However, for my purpose here, I will approach this issue via the positions of two of the staunchest libertarians of recent times – Murray Rothbard and Walter Block, and primarily Block. Although I believe it to be a moral issue, I will approach it here on their terms. Both have written in favor of abortion (although Block uses the term “evictionism”), and both have defended their respective positions from what they consider to be a libertarian viewpoint: a trespass by the unborn child and the property rights of the mother.With this in mind, I will present the case that it is the unborn child, and not the mother, that has the right of use of the womb for the term of the pregnancy. I base this on causation, reasonable reliance, unilateral contract, and, as Block has introduced the language of landlord and tenant, a lease and the covenant of quiet enjoyment.
Hat tip to The Observer.
Trippin’ Cross Country
So I moved and am pirating Allamagoosa’s bandwidth until I get a connection. I’m getting slowly settled into my new place, it’s pretty nice.
Her designs may be fabulous, but her cat’s still a snob
She showed me the movie Kiki’s Delivery Service, an animated Japanese film with Phil Hartman doing one of the voices. mostly ad libbing. So yeah, I had to check it out. Very cute, but not smarmy. It’s a perfect kid’s movie – if you’ve got little ones, they would probably love it. Or as Allie says, the best part is that your kids will love it and you won’t hate it, especially if they want to watch it over and over. The flight animations and scenes are particularly well executed.
Allie informs me that in the version currently available, most of Hartman’s ad libs had been sliced out. Still worth watching though. She also has a book about the art, which should surprise no one.
I’ve been wanting to watch Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex for quite a while now. Guess who has the entire series? I’m liking it. The Tachikomas are disturbingly appealing.
The real caped crusader calls his crime-fighting cohorts when he‘s running late
I’ve been returning the favor (if you can call it that) by showing her Big Bang Theory episodes. Sometimes she laughs so hard I think she’s going to run out of oxygen.
Last night, I showed her the first episode of Breaking Bad. She doesn’t know yet if she liked it or not.
Pointless
* “Why do people always want to talk to me when I have something stuffed in my mouth?” – Allamagoosa, eating a cookie.
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* Penny’s Diner in Rawlins Wyoming is awesome. If you ever pass by that way, stop in and be sure to get the chocolate and peanut butter milkshake.
“Make the caption funny” he said – Allamagoosa, who took the picture
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* “I don’t even know what to think of it.” – Allamagoosa
Random Static Emissions
The Programming Director here at Night Sky Radio has taken a sudden and urgent sabbatical, leaving only three pesos and a hastily scrawled note saying he’s going on a trip. The playlist for the night has disappeared, along with the contents of the hidden compartment in his bottom desk drawer. The News Director was the only one who answered the midnight phone call, and provided the following (to use the term loosely) “thoughts” on current affairs to fill the dead air between commercials, along with several swear words that no one would have thought he was familiar with.
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A Biblical Feminist (huh?) critiques the show Girls. I tried to read it, but got so lost in the wandering pretzel logic trails that all I could do to escape was keep scrolling down in the hopes that the article would eventually end.
What I did get out of it – I think, I’m not really sure what she was trying to say – is that Girls is rooted in the Goddess concept, when the truth is actually the Divine Daughter Of God concept. I suppose it is a half-step more humble to merely be a “divinely empowered” (her words) than actually divine. I also got the idea that no matter what the creator of the show, Lena Dunham, says or does, she will be criticized by feminists for not going far enough (whether the writer actually intended to make this point or not is kinda fuzzy to me).
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Following from the above… White Girl Feminism At Its Worst –
Lena Dunham won big at the Golden Globe Awards last night for Best Actress in a Comedy Series, and Best TV Comedy or Musical. In her acceptance speech she said, “This is for any women that’s felt like there wasn’t a space for her.”
Which women? The white millennial female who lives in New York? Dunham says she finally has a space for herself in creating the show but what about the other two-thirds of Brooklyn? The issues with HBO’s Girls have been discussed at length.
…That’s the problem with white girl feminism. It is the belief that showing smart intelligent white women is somehow enough — that it should be applauded; that women everywhere should be proud that these types of characters are even on TV at all; that all women should be happy that there is a show based around intelligent college educated women. But that’s not enough for me.
It’s not enough because there are people who are alienated, who routinely experience erasure of their own experiences for the sake of a joke or to set up a plot. There are those that would say it is her own right to write about whatever she wants, to exhibit characters in whatever way she desires. That’s true. But if we don’t evaluate our own privilege as white females than what are doing? How do we move forward?
Strip out the polysyllabics and buzzwords and it says “Just because you have the Constitutional right to write whatever you want, it’s not good enough. You have to include PC-approved caricatures of every splinter group, down to the last lesbian eskimo midget left-handed ninja albino.”
My favorite line in the entire article is “If feminism isn’t intersectional, it means nothing.” I suppose she’s half right.
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…I can look at you from inside as well… – The Vapors, “Turning Japanese”
One can never tell if the news coming out of Japan is real or fake. They’re just that weird. The latest reported trend is teenagers licking each other’s eyeballs –
…a post by a middle school teacher, originally shared on Naver Matome and translated by Japan Crush, describes the disturbing trend behind the patches:
After class one day, I went into the equipment store in the gymnasium to tidy up. The door had been left open, and when I looked inside, a male pupil and a female pupil had their faces close together and were kind of fumbling around. Could it be bullying? I wondered, but when I had a good look, the boy was licking the girl’s eye! Surprised, a shouted “What are you doing? Stop it at once!” and the two of them were so shocked they jumped apart. The girl burst into tears, and the boy just went bright red and was shaken up. At any rate, to try to calm them down I took them to the janitor’s room and listened to their story.
On questioning, the two students revealed that eyeball licking is basically like second base – what you graduate to after Frenching.
Mr. Y immediately told the school staff the story. A classroom assembly for the year 6 students was held, and when each homeroom teacher questioned the students, it was revealed that a surprising one third of the kids had done “eyeball licking”, or had had their eyeballs licked.
Lest you think this is just cod moralising from a squicked out adult, eyeball licking is a great way of spreading trachoma (eye chlamydia) and conjunctivitis/pink-eye.
One potential inspiration for the eyeball licking trend is this video from Japanese band Born, in which the lead singer gets his eyeball licked by a knife-wielding woman (around 3:35, warning video contains terrible emo rock):
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The last 20 seconds of that song sound like a cross between Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” and “Diva Fever” by Spinal Tap.
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Lastly, someone alert da GBFM that Ben Bernanke made a joke.
Even the guy’s humor is hopelessly Bernankified. You’d think all that fiat money could afford him a better speechwriter.
Express Air Medical Transport
A tip from Captain Capitalism –
Express Air Medical Transport.
1-800-304-8094
If you don’t know precisely what they do, don’t worry, it is a very specialized service, namely air ambulance. So say you are out on vacation, snow birding down south, or for whatever reason you or a loved one needs to get transported to a specialist in some other hospital in quick order Express Air Medical will fly you out there.They are based in Florida but serve the entire United States. And don’t wait for an emergency to happen, you might as well put their number in your cell phone now because putzing around looking for it on ole Cappy Cap’s site will take too long.
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