Poster that shows up in wide circulation, and posted here via the Fair Use exception. I don't know who the author is, but this was used as long ago as 1987 on the cover of Fifth Estate magazine, which is apparently a left wing British journal. They have an online presence you may find. Anyhow, this seems to sum up what some regard as the view of the youngest generations entering work, but at the same time, this image is so old that it predates my legal career. . .what's that say?
Some of my friends in the business and legal worlds very much insist, sometimes with real anger, that there is something going on here. What they generally seem to feel is that during COVID-19 the Federal Government acclimated millions of Americans, including millions of young Americans, to doing nothing. Indeed, some insist that younger people aren't working as they're on the Federal dole, although those programs have run out.
I'd note, if that's true, the entire thing would be one big failed "Universal Basic Income" experiment.
I think something is going on, but as I've noted before, I think people are generally misreading it. Here's what I've recently stated.
Much of what we see today in general family trends is merely a return to the past. Adult children who are not married living at home is a return to the past. Even married children living in a parent's home is a return to the past. Not really feeling like moving all over the country, and focusing on work to support your life, rather than it being your life, well. . . that is in some ways too.
But I think my view here is a minority one.
Maybe nothing is really going on at all. Or maybe what we're seeing is purely economic. With a worker shortage, people don't have to sell their labor as dear, and can afford to be choosy in all sorts of ways.
That definitely wasn't the case when I was young.
And I've been hearing this about younger generations since I was a child. According to the Baby Boomer generation, no generation after them wanted to work. But according to their parents, that generation was lazy and didn't want to work, when it was young.
Maybe the young are never keen on entering work if they don't have to, and hold some of their cards back. Or maybe a feature of modern industrial work, as opposed to more traditional distributist type work, creates this perception.
Poppies. Poppy seeds were added to Italian bread in the middle ages by the poor, specifically to keep themsleves stoned most of the time. This was because their lives were bad. The German army passed out booze, and sometimes drugs, late in World War Two to "motivate" troops, or in other words stone them before they went into horrors. Somehow, we're headed back into the Italian situation.
Headline from The Denver Post:
Gov. Polis tells Bill Maher he’s
“excited” about medical ‘shrooms after voters pass psilocybin legalization
Colorado becomes the second state after Oregon to establish a regulated system for substances like psilocybin and psilocin.
Because Americans aren't stupid enough already, and Denver isn't enough of a giant doped up smelly dump.
Seriously, the march of intoxicants in this society ought to be an alarm bell going off. Something is really screwed up and the only thing a lot of people, and governments, can think to do is to keep people stoned.
A walk thought Denver's capitol city should show anyone, including Governor Polis, how messed up Colorado is as an example of this. Truly, and I'm not a teetotaler, if there's one thing that could have been done to help keep the country from getting where it now is, that we could go back and do, not repealing prohibition would be it.
Panem et circenses?
It seems so.
Bias?
Colorado Springs shooting suspect Anderson Aldrich is a registered member of the Mormon church, spokesman confirms
So what?
I note this as this does seem to be the sort of headline that imports next to no useful information but which reporters, because of a bias, believe it does. It's impossible not to read this and think that the suggestion is that Anderson Aldrich shot up a gay club because he's a Mormon.
I'm rather obviously not a Mormon, but I'm confident that the LDS church does not advocate this sort of thing in any sense.
This is, I'd note, just a stone's throw from suggesting that all members of any conservative religion that generally holds conservative social views is a menace to society, a suggestion I've seen in news articles more than once.
Bias confirmation
Most folks here no doubt don't follow it, but there's a thing called "Catholic Twitter", which is made up of Catholics, on Twitter.
The main thing about Twitter is the gross exaggeration of any one topic until it's at the screaming level. Most of the people on Twitter don't take Twitter all that seriously to start with, and they shouldn't, and any one topic that's on it is not likely to be all that important or reflective of what is going on in the real world.
Anyhow, below is a part of a conservation that got rolling and rapidly morphed into "blind my eyes to the evidence". How it got started I'm not sure, as it involves the now actually relatively old story of Catholic cleric's abusing some sexually.
It's worth noting that this story is horrific in general. But at the same time it was a minority of clerics, and most of this story is now really old. To the extent that it remains a real present story it is is because the Church has a lot of older leaders, much like American society in general, who haven't done a good job of confronting this, in part because they seem to have ignored it and don't quite get the story.
Anyhow, one Priest noted.
Fr Matthew P. Schneider, LC
@FrMatthewLC
The majority of victims of clerical sex abuse were post-pubescent males who were still minors.
Allowing men who were sexually attracted to post-pubescent male teens become priests likely had a part to do with the abuse (whatever name you give that).
Quote Tweet
Joshua McElwee
@joshjmac
·
Asked about prior comments that gay clergy were responsible for the Catholic clergy abuse crisis, new US Catholic bishop president Archbishop Broglio claims: "It's certainly an aspect of the sexual crisis that can't be denied." Academic studies have found no such relationship.
·Twitter for Android
Fr. Schneider is correct. Most of the abuse that occurred was male on male, and most of that was on post pubescent males who were legally minors.
Let's take a diversion here for a moment.
Just recently a French Cardinal publically confessed and condemned himself for what was translated as "an affair" with a 14-year-old female back many years ago when he was a priest, not a bishop.
That's horrific.
The headlines, however, rapidly went from "an affair" to "rape", or at least the Twitter ones did.
Here's the thing. Under the applicable French law, she was over the age of consent and could do just that. So the act was icky, gross, immoral, inexcusable, but not illegal. It wasn't rape as the law of that land, at the time, defined it.
FWIW, as that surprised me, I looked it up. The age of consent in France is now 15.
I always think of the age of consent being 18, but by and large in most of Europe, Ireland I think aside, the age of consent is lower than 18, with ages in the mid-teens not uncommon. I'm not going to post them all, but that's interesting in part because Europeans like to criticize the US for having legal pathways to "child marriage" while they have legal pathways to what we'd regard here as rape.
Anyhow, this is an example of following the evidence.
And the evidence generally is that most priest abusers were engaging in homosexual abuse, as legal line or not, "post pubescent" is a legal, not a physical, line.
Occam's Razor holds that the simplest answer is generally the best, because it's generally correct. The simplest explanation here is that most of the abusers were homosexuals.
Indeed, they pretty clearly were.
No, that doesn't make all homosexual men abusers, but if you put anyone in a situation in which they have no legitimate means for an outlet, problems arise. The real question, therefore, is how did enough homosexual men end up in the priesthood (and in Boy Scout leadership positions) for this to be statistically observable.
I've posted on it before, but my view is, on the priesthood, that this occurred as it gave homosexual Catholic men a place to professionally hide. That seems to be where the evidence leads. They weren't there because they were homosexuals per se, but because it gave them a socially acceptable excuse for not being married and, even more than that, not exhibiting any interest in women.
Well, of course, the Twitterverse couldn't accept that. The competing explanation, violating the principal of pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, was that the abuse was male on male only males were around, and therefore they were the only targets of opportunity.
That explanation leaves a lot lacking. For one thing, males aren't the only humans around. The French example, which has become two examples, demonstrates that, and an example in our own diocese of many years ago demonstrates that as well.
And while all male environments do give rise to this, it's not quite in the same fashion. Those examples tend to be instances in which not only are only males around, but their virtually cloistered for long periods of time. Groups of straight conscripts, for example, don't start engaging in male on male sexual contact as there aren't women around. Indeed, studies have shown that in areas where there are only males for long periods of time, what tends to happen is that their testosterone levels plummet on their own, and they're simply less interested.
But because we must maintain this fiction socially now, we can't entertain the possibility that the abusers were homosexuals. We can't even really engage in the possibility that a small number of homosexuals are abusers.
The Zeitgeist.
What about the Boy Scouts?
I haven't researched it, but I'd guess that those abusers were attracted to those leadership roles specifically for the target of opportunity situation. So that situation was different yet. The difference, therefore, is that in the priest example I suspect homosexual men put themselves into that situation to avoid suspicion as to their inclinations, and then yielded in crossing a line which they should not have, and which in the US is illegal, but in the same country, at a time when pornification of child models was common, isn't surprising. In the Boy Scout example, that was probably a group of men who were abusers in the first instance, but with homosexual inclinations.
And no, that doesn't mean all homosexuals are abusers.
Less government?
The State gave out $6,600,000 in rent relief, funded by the Federal Government, last month.
This program has stopped now, but its interesting in that there's been so much howling in the state about Federal money. As other examples have shown, people can howl about the dangers of Federal money and take it at the same time.
Credit Cart Sales and Firearms
A recent headline read:
Guns bought through credit cards in the US will now be trackable
So what?
In the United States, you have a right to keep and bear arms. We all know this. But that really doesn't mean that private companies can't track it.
They're already tracking everything else.
If we really don't like this, what we ought to do is simply ban credit cars, which are inherently inflationary to start with.
Misplaced Complaints
A lot of people are complaining about Elon Musk buying Twitter and treating it like a toy.
Well, he's super rich and for him, it probably is a toy. He's probably loving seeing people complain as they dance to his tune. And that probably explains why he let Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene back on Twitters.
Just ignore it.
Twitter really doesn't matter. I noted this all the other day here:
Elon Musk has bought Twitter and is busy making changes to it internally. This, in turn, has resulted in a lots of righteous anger about his behavior.
Here's the real question.
Who cares?
We have a Twitter Feed. You can see it on the bottom right-hand corner of this page. That doesn't stop the fact that Twitter is basically stupid.
A person can't say anything worth saying in as few of words as Twitter restricts you to. All Twitter really is for us is redirection to this blog. Does it work? Who knows. But as far as weighty conversation, not happening.
Indeed, the fact that people seem to think its weighty shows how dim the American intellect has become, as if there wasn't plenty of proof for that otherwise.
Now, I have some feeds that I follow I really like. Some do nothing other than what this one does, direct you to other things Some are basically photo feeds, much like Instagram.
But as far as news or anything worth reading, not going to happen.
Some people seem to think that Musk shouldn't be allowed to own Twitter or, if he does, he shouldn't be allowed to wreck it. Well, why not? He owns it. If you are uncomfortable with that, as many are, the real argument is that a person shouldn't be allowed to amass the size of fortune that Musk has. Musk was born into a wealthy South African family, and he's made more money, showing I suppose that being born to a wealthy family is a good way to get richer.
It also shows how screwed up American immigration laws are, as Musk apparently lives in Texas. Why was he allowed to immigrate here? No good reason at all, and in a society whose immigration laws made sense he'd be back in South Africa, or perhaps someplace in what's left of the British Commonwealth.
His personal life also shows how Western morality has declined. Musk has ten children by three women, the first six by his former wife Justine Musk, then two by Claire Elise Boucher, the Canadian singer who goes by the absurd stage name Grimes, and finally twins via Shivon Zilis. If nothing else, this proves that vast amounts of money will get the male holder of the same money and sex, but it's not admirable and that this sort of conduct is no longer the type that is regarded as scandalous, although it should be.
None of which is a reason to get all in a twitter about Twitter. If he wrecks it, well, he bought it.
Who cares?
A bigger topic regarding Must, really, is should a just society allow one person to have so much of the planet's resources.
I risk sounding like Huey Long on this, but I really don't think so. There shouldn't be billionaires at all. Before you reach a billion in assets, indeed, before you reach $500,000,000, you simply ought to be taxed down to size. And no, I don't believe that disincentivises a person from "developing the economy". And if it does, well, I don't care.
We're now past the election, but speaking of that and I guess twitter, it's really time for John Barasso to stop coming on Twitter and complaining about the price of gasoline.
Here's how the price of gasoline works.
It's made from petroleum oil.
Petroleum oil is produced in certain spots of the globe and sold all over the planet before it's refined.
Most of the world, the United States included, uses more oil than it produces. This is true of the US even though its a major petroleum producer.
US petroleum is expensive to produce. Normally, Mexican, Venezuelan, Arabian and Russian oil, are not.
If the price per gallon is low (West Texas is $79.19/bbl as I write this. . . low), a lot of North American oil becomes uneconomic to produce. Just about $60.00/bbl is that point for the US.
If the price per gallon is high, it means that a lot of North American oil is economic to produce.
Wyoming only makes money on petroleum when the price is relatively high.
An unstable price doesn't benefit anyone.
Russia invaded Ukraine, and for a variety of reasons this has driven up the price of oil. OPEC+, which includes Russia, has operated to try to keep the price high.
Want lower prices?
Lower demand or increase cheap supplies.
We have no cheap supplies in North America.
Joe Biden doesn't set the price of gasoline.
Scary
North Korean is rapidly becoming a frightening menace.
The question is what, if anything, can be done about this short of military action, and will we reach a point where this seems necessary to any administration other than a Trump administration, which probably wouldn't.
The Red Army completed encircling the German 6th Army, which was trapped in Stalingrad.
In a matter of mere days, the Red Army had blasted through Romanian lines north and south of the city and completely routed it. German efforts at counter-attacks failed. 250,000 German troops were besieged in the city. It was a brilliantly planned and executed Red Army offensive, featuring massive use of artillery and rapid advancement of armor and horse cavalry.
Romanian stamp showing a Romanian and German servicemen serving in the "Holy War against Bolshevism." The designer of the stamp probably didn't realize that the symbol that he put on the German's helmet would make him part of the Luftwaffe.
The offensive also showed that the Germans had committed a fatal error in trusting the front near Stalingrad to their allies. To the north of the city the front was defended by Romanian, Hungarian and Italian armies. To the south, Romanian. The Romanian Army had already shown itself to be worn out earlier in 1942.
The Governor General of French West Africa accepted the authority of Admiral Darlan.
Japanese general Tomitarō Horii, age 52, was swept out to sea after trying to canoe to his troops in the Battle of Buno-Gona. This resulted in his death due to drowning.
President Harding nominated Democrat Pierce Butler to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace William R. Day. Nominating a Democrat assured Harding that he could get his nomination past the then Democratic U.S. Senate.
Gee, it's almost like politics played a role in Supreme Court nominations back then. . .
While he was a Democrat, he was also a staunch conservative, this being a day when conservatives still existed in the Democratic Party. He was one of the justices that proved to be trouble for Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s.
Butler was also a devout Catholic. Today he's partially remembered for issuing the only dissenting opinion in Buck v. Bell, a case which permitted compulsory sterilization of the intellectually disabled and which is regarded now as one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time. Bell's dissent, was, interestingly, without a dissenting opinion, but it was a dissent. Oliver Wendell Holmes attributed his dissent to his Catholicism.
Butler also dissented from Olmstead v. United States, which upheld Federal wiretapping.
He died at age 73 in 1939.
Võ Văn Kiệt, a North Vietnamese Communist figure who later played a prominent role in opening the Vietnamese economy back up, and who served as the Prime Minister of the country in the 1990s, was born.
Tom from Sheridan was Thomas McIntyre, a writer and big game hunter who lived in Sheridan. The reason for his sudden departure is his sudden departure from this life. Tom has passed on at age 70. He left us on November 3.
I'm indebted to the Stephen Bodio blog, linked in at the side as one of the outdoor blogs we follow, for posting the news. Tom commented so frequently that the sudden cessation of his comments made me wonder if I'd said something to offend him somehow, or if he just realized that he'd be in the category of "my betters" and just chose to pursue more worthwhile pursuits.
Tom's entry onto our pages here was due to a recommendation from another reader, I don't know who. He sure improved the blog with his comments, and on one occasion improved a post by correcting some of my writing. He was an obviously highly educated and thoughtful man.
He was also a big game hunter, and writer on the topic. I'd been looking forward to a book he was finishing on wild cattle, which apparently he did finish before his death. The book is entitled Thunder Without Rain. He quoted a few snippets of it here in some of his comments. Tom and I, therefore, shared that vocation, hunter, although he is much more traveled than I ever will be. My only experience with cattle is with the domestic kind, which are of course occasionally wild.
Tom and I were also co-religious, although in his comments here he was vague on the topic. I had the sense, although I didn't know him personally, that something had caused him to become nonobservant in our faith, although he obviously retained a deep knowledge of the faith and its traditions. In response to a question of mine, he'd only noted that if Mass was still being held in the catacombs, he'd be there. I noticed on his Sheridan funeral home listing, there was a short comment from "Fr. Jim", so he was obviously in contact somehow with a man of the Catholic cloth somewhere. Whatever his status was, and it wasn't clear, I hope and pray that he was reconciled in the end and that this cheerful man passed with the peace he clearly daily exhibited.
The Red Army established a bridgehead across the Don at Kalach-na-Donu, trapping 250,000 German and Romanian troops at Stalingrad.
The Germans, facing plenty of problems on the Don, formed Army Group Don with Erich von Manstein as its commander. The group was located between Group A, in the south, and Group B, in the north.
Von Manstein, who would lose a son in the war, was an excellent German general who was known to openly clash with Hitler. However, that fact and his post-war writings have glossed over his culpability for horrific German actions during the war, something that was not uncommon with surviving officers of the German army who operated to create the "clean army" myth. Von Manstein was one of those German figures who regarded Communism and Judaism as part and parcel of each other.
Von Manstein served a prison term post war for war crimes and did not rejoin the West German Army when it was formed, but did receive a secret veto over which German officers could be members of it. He died at age 85 in 1973.
Paul Ludwig von Kleist was made commander of Army Group A on this day as well.
Von Keist would not be as lucky as Von Manstein, post-war. He was turned over by the Western Allies to Yugoslavia and convicted of war crimes there. The Yugoslavians then turned him over to the Soviets, who also convicted him of war crimes. He died in Soviet captivity of a heart attack in 1954 at age 73.
A mine explosion in Dolomite, Alabama killed 90 people.
Wilhelm Cuno.
Businessman Wilhelm Cuno was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Friedrich Ebert. It was an appointment, not an elective, commission.
An independent politician, Cuno would serve in the role for less than a year and then retire from politics. He'd become an economic advisor to Hitler in 1932, which he didn't do long either, given his death in 1933.
By most reckonings, the humans, and they were humans, who were grilling up the carp were not members of our species, Homo sapiens.
They likely would have been Homo Heidelbergensis or Homo Erectus, the former having at one time been regarded as a subspecies of the latter.
No matter, these people were a lot closer to you than you might imagine. Their brain capacity, for one thing, is just about the same as modern humans at 1200 cc. FWIW, the brain capacity of archaic Homo Sapiens was actually larger than that of current people, members of the species Homo Sapien Sapien. Our current brain sizes are pretty big, in relative terms, at about 1400 cc, although Neanderthals' were bigger, at 1500cc.
About the "archaic" members of our species, it's been said that they're not regarded their own species as they have been "admitted to membership in our species because of their almost modern-sized brains, but set off as ‘archaic' because of their primitive looking cranial morphology".1Having said that, some people say, no, those are Homo Heidlebergensis. It can be pretty difficult to tell, actually, and as been noted:
One of the greatest challenges facing students of human evolution comes at the tail end of the Homo erectus span. After Homo erectus, there is little consensus about what taxonomic name to give the hominins that have been found. As a result, they are assigned the kitchen-sink label of “archaic Homo sapiens.”
Tattersall (2007) notes that the Kabwe skull bears more than a passing resemblance to one of the most prominent finds in Europe, the Petralona skull from Greece. In turn, as I mentioned above, the Petralona skull is very similar to one of the most complete skulls from Atapuerca, SH 5, and at least somewhat similar to the Arago skull.
Further, it is noted that the Bodo cranium from Africa shares striking similarities to the material from Gran Dolina (such as it is). This suggests that, as was the case with Homo erectus, there is widespread genetic homogeneity in these populations. Given the time depth involved, it is likely that there was considerable and persistent gene flow between them. Tattersall (2007), argues that, since the first example of this hominin form is represented by the Mauer mandible, the taxonomic designation Homo heidelbergensis should be used to designate these forms. This would stretch the limits of this taxon, however, since it would include the later forms from Africa as well. If there was considerable migration and hybridization between these populations, it could be argued that a single taxon makes sense. However, at present, there is no definitive material evidence for such migration, or widespread agreement on calling all these hominins anything other than “archaic Homo sapiens.”2
Regarding our first ancestors, of our species, appearance:
When comparing Homo erectus, archaic Homo sapiens, and anatomically modern Homo sapiens across several anatomical features, one can see quite clearly that archaic Homo sapiens are intermediate in their physical form. This follows the trends first seen in Homo erectus for some features and in other features having early, less developed forms of traits more clearly seen in modern Homo sapiens. For example, archaic Homo sapiens trended toward less angular and higher skulls than Homo erectus but had skulls notably not as short and globular in shape and with a less developed forehead than anatomically modern Homo sapiens. archaic Homo sapiens had smaller brow ridges and a less-projecting face than Homo erectus and slightly smaller teeth, although incisors and canines were often about as large as that of Homo erectus. Archaic Homo sapiens also had a wider nasal aperture, or opening for the nose, as well as a forward-projecting midfacial region, known as midfacial prognathism. The occipital bone often projected and the cranial bone was of intermediate thickness, somewhat reduced from Homo erectus but not nearly as thin as that of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. The postcrania remained fairly robust, as well. To identify a set of features that is unique to the group archaic Homo sapiens is a challenging task, due to both individual variation—these developments were not all present to the same degree in all individuals—and the transitional nature of their features. Neanderthals will be the exception, as they have several clearly unique traits that make them notably different from modern Homo sapiens as well as their closely related archaic cousins.3
Well, what that tells us overall is that we were undergoing some changes during this period of the Pleistocene, that geologic period lasting from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago.
And that, dear reader, points out that we're a Pleistocene mammal.
It also points out that we don't have yet a really good grasp as to when our species really fully came about. We think we know what the preceding species was, but we're not super sure when we emerged from it. And of course, we didn't really emerge, but just kind of rolled along mother and father to children.
Which tells us that Heidlebergensis may have been pretty much like us, really.
Just not as photogenic.
On that, it's also been recently noted that the best explanation for the disappearance of the Neanderthals, which are now widely regarded as a separate species that emerged also from Heidelbergensis disappeared as they just cross bread themselves out of existence. Apparently they thought our species was hotter than their own.
Assuming they are a separate species, which I frankly doubt.
Here were definitely morphology differences between Heidelbergensis and us, but as we addressed the other day in a different context, everybody has a great, great, great . . . grandmother/grandfather who was one of them.
And another thing.
They ate a lot of meat.
A lot.
I note that as it was in vogue for a while for those adopting an unnatural diet, i.e. vegetarianism, to claim that this is what we were evolved to eat.
Not hardly. With huge brains, and cold weather burning up calories, we were, and remain, meat eaters.
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