Some Thoughts About Dearborn After Light Review of Last Night’s Events

-In his infamous documentary Pumping Iron, Arnold has a conversation with Lou which discusses whether it is better to be the king of the hill (defending from all comers) or the singularly focused threat on the way up. America is obviously the king of the hill. With this status comes threats and enemies and trolls and jokers etc. Islam needs to be relegated to the myth section of the bookstore, but I am not sure of the path to make that happen.

-In recap: a bunch of (in the case of Dearborn, presumably legal) immigrants outbred and then outvoted natives. At face value, I have no issue with this.

-If we believe the mohammedans lie at will (we do believe they lie and they do lie), I am not sure that talking with them is the answer.

-If my above recap is correct, one path would be to move to Dearborn or any other similar towns and out politic them. But that seems like a weird goal to have and a weird life to lead. Most people simply move for better jobs, not a crusade.

-In my recent readings on Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Revolutionary War before them, I am struck by how turbulent the times and events were. And yet here we are.

No, I Don’t Think You Do—smh

“We’ve been reading that Huck Finn book you used for school.” The student would have known by “we” the man meant, “your mom and I”. “It has some highlighting in it. Would you say that it is a previous student’s or yours?”

The driving age step-son answered, “Probably mine.”

“Oh,” said the step-dad, who for 8 years has tried to impress upon the lad the penultimate nature of truthfulness. “I was going to say, ‘If you had said it was some other kid’s annotations, that it seemed like a kid just marked up things because he had to, without actually meaning to mark where he highlighted.’”

There was a slight pause, not long enough to indicate shame, then a ready confession , “That was the first book I read at [excellent charter school]. So I probably highlighted at random because I didn’t understand what annotating meant.”

“Ah. Okay.”

Silence ensued for the next few hundred yards of road.

The man began again, “Would you say that you understand what annotating means now?”

“Yeah. I mean, sometimes, I still probably make extra marks because my hand is there with the highlighter and all,” the boy rambled, still not betraying he understood the nature of the path he had set off on. “And anyhow, they don’t really check highlighting anymore. Now they look at the notes in the margin.”

The family finally arrived on the home stretch.

The dad resumed, “So what I am trying to understand is why you would try to fool them instead of ask for help. Like highlighting at random is some kind of deception, versus just asking for additional explanation.”

“Then my homework scores wouldn’t have been good,” the teenager countered. Against all odds and historical evidence, he delivered his next claim with moral superiority, approaching outrage. “You want me to get bad grades?!”

I looked at A-, I mean, the man looked at the student in the eyes. The student pulled his backpack from the trunk without breaking eye-contact, in some sort of primal posturing ritual, taught by who knows who.

The man, from a the street corner just beside hopelessness, concluded, “Yes. I would rather you always tell the truth and fail.”

My Style Solution to Trans Insanity (Laughably Unserious, If Ultimately Provocative)

A recent debater on Triggernometry said, “So the sex that was recorded um and the gender that was recorded on their birth certificate, you can say, ‘Actually that was a mistake’.”

I assure you, dear reader, that I am earnest when I ask this, no matter how it sounds. But I ask, “So, if we stop recording gender/sex on birth certificates, how does a person know they’re trans? If that is the mistake, then why not nip it in the bud right then and there? Birth certificate has name and weight but no recording of a gender/sex?”

Has anyone heard this approach of mine in a debate or discussion forum? Please do share if you know how they respond.

Point of Clarification from One Closer to the Revolution

Washington Irving, in his 5 volume biography of GW, mentioned a book called “History of the Siege of Boston, and the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill; Also, an Account of the Bunker Hill Monument; with Illustrative Documents” by Richard Frothingham.

For the historians, I am not a comparative history scholar. So take it easy on me if other historians disagree with Frothingham. Just the same, I cannot imagine anyone providing evidence to discount the sentiments in the following paragraph.

To the modern patriots: I am not sure there is a parallel behavior available to us. What say you? All the militia groups I ever hear tell of seem legitimately illegitimate. And I have to admit I trust the military. The stories of Mohammedans becoming cops causes concern. But I think we have time. What say you? Am I burying my head in the sand? Is there a modern minute-men worth joining?

In sum, my point in sharing is to make sure we teach the right history to our kiddos. With or without membership in any gun-toting club, we can all do this.

Just Stop. Stop Saying (and Believing) “AI Got It Wrong”

Every time that someone says or types “AI got it wrong” all we know is that person does not know what AI is.

So, let’s all remember Mark Twain’s admonition, “It is be to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.”

(To be clear, AI is a substantively different way of computing. It is not a person. It does not think. It is not bound by morality. It does not have a soul or free will. It is not ever right. And it is not ever wrong.)

I Feel Like I’m Looking Through One Eye

“It just doesn’t stop,” the dad said to his daughter at the table. She was finishing Cheetos (“the big ones”) before starting on her cookie.

“It does stop,” the girl corrected.

“What? It is playing again right now.”

“No, when we were playing outside it stopped at 20,” she insisted.

He was perplexed, but never forgot that every moment is another chance at achieving communication.

“A-. The stereo is still playing. It doesn’t stop,” he circled back.

“No,” big breath, “it stops at 20.”

A glimmer of hope appeared.

“A-. Let’s try again. The stereo keeps playing. But the CD only has 20 songs. Is that what you’re trying to say? That there won’t be new songs forever and ever?”

“Yes. It will play only two times. Then it stops.”

“Okay. That makes sense. Now we are communicating. Doesn’t it feel good to communicate? To actually say things that have meaning?” he lectured in his particular fatherly way, leaning in close to her face for Old Testament emphasis.

“Yeah,” she said distractedly, bravely meeting his eyes, before adding, “I feel like I’m looking through one eye!”

Note on Christian’s “Science Proves God” Excitability

I recently read Erwin Schrödinger’s essay called, “Heredity and the Quantum Theory”. In it he uses the word “code” to describe parts of his overall point. He may have meant simply something encoded, like the way Morse code works. But it still called to mind the latest great excitement among smart conservatives who stop short of making Gospel Proclamation the basis of their platform. That excitement being the response to the discovery that the human genome is a code.

Why do they get excited? Well, code means programmer and we suddenly find ourselves back in Aquinas’ watchmaker world.

The trouble is, Hume destroyed the “watchmaker” apologetic. (In short, there need to be two “watches” in order for there to be a watch—nobody finds one gadget and declares it was made. Instead, they know one gadget was made and when they find a second ((or more) similar gadget, by analogy, they are confident to assert it was made. The point is, says Hume, there is one “gadget” ((the known universe)) that we have “found”. And so the debate over whether it was made or not cannot possibly be solved by analogy.)

Anyhow, the excitement is unfounded for a larger reason. In a word, that reason is “revelation”. All the truths of the Bible’s writings are declared or asserted to be revealed truths; that is, men reporting and recording what Yahweh or Jesus or the Holy Spirit communicated to us mortals. Don’t ask me how I know as if I have some special insight—it is the authors themselves who assert this. It isn’t mystical; it is their actual claim. You can read it for yourself!

The Biblical canon is closed—yes? But let’s say it isn’t.

Are we going to say that the additional material should be rooted in the quantification of material evidence? 66 writings formed from revelation from the God himself, but the next are from the images (objective measurements) of creation, as taken by devices only created thousands of years into the advent of mankind? No. And you agree with me deep down already.

How do I know?

Because, like me, you look around and likewise see the sheer lunacy of people’s claims about God.

And you know that the Bible is, and must remain, a limiting factor on human power. Yes, the God of Moses, the God of Abraham before him, and the Godman Jesus is really real. Yes, he selected and used a small number of men over a large period of time to communicate himself to us. And, yes, the communication has ceased. The canon is closed. Unless you want to open it by asserting the claim that God is using you to communicate to mankind something new and inherently contradictory to the other 66 writings.

This is what is meant by the canon is closed. Anything matching the canon has already been said. Anything not matching is inherently not canonical.

The Bible writers claimed to be divinely appointed to pass a message from God to mankind, to you and me. It is a bold claim. It is not what scientists claim.

We are well served to not conflate the two.

My Latest Thought On The Leadership Void

I have long held (recent years) that there is a void in leadership.

As I continue to read articles from the major historical events of Vietnam, WW2, and Civil Rights (thank you to Library of America), a new thought occurred.

We have poor leaders—that is given. My new thought: the reason we have such poor leaders is there is nothing to do. There is no group to lead, no task to accomplish, and no need to unify.

“What’s In A Name?”, A Brief Review of Masters of the Universe by Travis Knight

To catchup unfaithful readers, and remind faithful readers, my most prescient observations on “movies about toys” include (1) re: Michael Bay’s Transformers, Bay understood how to make a movie based on the way boys play with the Transformer toys, and according to boys’ rules (ie “Crushed! Dead! But wait! He’s back alive!) and (2) re: Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, Scott’s final duel is the most perfect rendering of what every boy pictures a duel to be.

That said, the opening of Mr. Knight’s Masters of the Universe continues, without plagiarism, the theme Bay hit upon (and resultantly has no concern with imitating Nolan’s TDK motif) and, what’s more, creates, in a way that doesn’t even hint as disrespect towards any child at heart for being a child at heart, the single greatest scene of what it feels like to hold a He-Man toy as a boy.

For that, Mr. Knight and all those involved in the movie are to be applauded, and rousingly so.

The rest of the movie (post Adam’s finding the sword) is perfectly fine. The comedy is real. And the action can be satisfying.

Lastly, and this is difficult to describe (so please do check it out) but the scene in Adam’s boss’s office is frightening in its ease. How can a He-Man movie be more trad than Taylor Sheridan and all other wannabe rebels in this time of Black Helen’s?