Category: Varia

• Leftists devouring themselves and proving that diversity is not their strength: a delightful social justice  shit show.  By the way, Trump (or his writers) came up with a great line last night during his powerful speech under Mount Rushmore. Quoting from memory: Social justice is neither just nor good for society.
• Rod Serling could not have predicted the Twilight Zone of our current predicament.

• The GOP is a disgusting pseudo-con joke:

This week, Senate Republicans continue to beclown themselves. During a June 30 appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, Senator Mike Braun (R-Ind.) fumbled his way through a heated interview about his bill to make it easier to sue police officers and his support for Black Lives Matter. Just as statues of Christopher Columbus started to fall across the country, Senators James Lankford (R-Ok.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) introduced a bill to scrap Columbus Day and instead declare a national holiday for Juneteenth.

• The awesome destructive power of concupiscence unchecked: Jeffrey Epstein and his pimp and paramour Ghislaine Maxwell.
  

• Was President Trump's Mt. Rushmore speech last night "dark and divisive"?

A philosopher sympathetic to my views asked me this question a year or two ago. I said that I used to, but no longer.

Now why might that be despite an enlarged readership in a time of increasing political anger?  One possible explanation is that we are now so 'siloed' into our positions that we read only our own.  

Speaking of silos, a Mormon friend of a non-Mormon friend of mine purchased an old ICBM silo in Arizona. Now that's one serious prepper.  Moderate in all things, including moderation, I keep my prepping within the bounds of sense. And I read everything. Nihil humanum, et cetera.

Companion post: Word of the Day: Oubliette

. . . of nervous black cats and noises perhaps not all of them caused by the wayward wind, a restless wind.

I'm on a roll. I seek a few good men and women to help me defend the Republic. No progs need apply. An ugly name for an ugly bunch.

I'm on a roll. Daily punch-back against leftist loons on a wide variety of topics. Culture critique in the bowels of the Zuckerbergian beast.  No lefties need apply. I am looking for a few good men and women to join me in the fight for sense and sanity and the defense of the Republic. 

I received 'friend' requests from a couple of hotties the other day who proudly strut their stuff and sport their 'racks' on pages including links to their 'nude pics.'  Sorry girls, you are not MavPhil material.  

Dr. Vito B. Caiati, historian, contributes the following:

With regard to Notre Dame, I have several observations. First, the cathedral had not been properly maintained. Its neglect by the French government has been raised by architectural conservationists for several years. Second, the fire alarm systems of Notre Dame appear to have been inadequate, in that the first alarm sounded at 18:20 on the day of the fire, but the technology employed did not indicate the location of the fire to the technicians in the cathedral. Thus, this first alarm was judged to be “false.” A second alarm sounded 23 minutes later, a lapse that allowed the fire to spread to the “forest” of ancient, roof-supporting oak timbers, many of which dated from the time of Charlemagne. The fire was so extensive and intense that the north tower of the cathedral was almost lost to it (15-30 minutes more of flame and it would have collapsed). Only now is the Minister of Culture calling for a review of the security systems in all cathedrals: too late. Fourth, there are “modernist” forces at work to interfere with the historical reconstruction of the cathedral. It is one thing to argue that the structure supporting the roof, which will be invisible, masked by the stone vault below and the copper roof above, need not be made of oak (1200 very old oak trees would be needed) as the original but rather of concrete, as in the reconstructed Cathedral of Reims or metal as the recently restored Collège de Bernardins in Paris, and quite another to impose some modernist horror in the form of a new spire, which is what the bien-pensant rulers of France apparently have in mind, the prime minister Edouard Philippe calling for a competition on its design and Macron (to whom Matteo Salvini hilariously refers as “il signorino”) recommending “un geste architectural contemporain.” These people are drawn from the same smart-set multiculturalists who blocked any reference to Europe’s Christian roots in the European Constitution and who have remained largely silent in face of the wave of church desecrations that have swept France in the last few years (878 cases in 2017 alone). Moreover, they are enthusiastic admirers of the modernist architectural horrors that now beset Paris, from the Pompidou Centre, to the Tour Montparnasse, to the Grande Arche, to the Bibliothèque nationale de France, to the Philarmonie de Paris, and to the proposed monstrosity The Triangle Tower. So the reconstruction may well become a real problem, given the disdain for history, tradition, and Christianity that infects the ruling elites of France. It seems to me that the spire should either be reconstructed according to the 19^th century design of Viollet-le-duc or left off the roof entirely as it was before his renovation.

Thanks to Vlastimil Vohanka for digging this up and linking to it. Excellent ComBox discussion.

C. P. and J.I.O. warrant my gratitude for catching errors.  Platonizer that I am,  my mind goes directly to the trans-sensible sense and is appropriately inattentive to its mere material embodiment.  I try to catch all my typographical errors but I am regularly surprised at how many I miss.

I probably missed one in the line just written. 

And damned if I didn't find one, after writing the last sentence, a typo now duly corrected.