If you need an app to pray . . .

. . . I will say a prayer for you.

You don't even need the 'closet' referred to at Matt 6:6:

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." (KJV)

Tu autem cum oraveris, intra in cubiculum tuum, et clauso ostio, ora Patrem tuum in abscondito: et Pater tuus, qui videt in abscondito, reddet tibi. (Biblia Vulgata)

Related words: closet, claustra, enclosure, claustrophobia, exclaustration. 

Situational Awareness

Another MavPhil public service message:  Don't walk around with your head up your app!

You're a dumbass with a smartphone if you don't understand that it is perhaps the greatest enemy of situational awareness. 

And if you pack heat, bear this in mind: if you have to go to guns, there's probably been a failure of  situational awareness. (Steve Tarani)  Head on a swivel! (Sebastian Gorka)

Memorize and implement Colonel Jeff Cooper's situational awareness color codes!

Don't be a pollyanna.  (And don't confuse her with polyanna, an Anna with multiple personality disorder.)

Gunfire Tonight!

One of the exciting things about living out here in the Arizona Territory is that all too many local hombres love to greet the the New Year with a hail of gunfire aimed heavenward. It adds a nice Middle Eastern touch to the Copper State.

Part of the problem is the sad state of science education in these United States. There are people who do not understand that a falling projectile poses a threat. (I have actually met such people.) They understand that they cannot catch with their bare hands a round fired at them; but they don’t understand that that same round, falling on a human head from a sufficient height, will kill the head’s unlucky possessor.

Let’s see if we can understand the physics. If I jump from a chair to the floor, no problem. Same if I jump from a table to the floor. But I shrink back from neighbor Bob’s suggestion that I jump from my roof to the ground. "Just kick away the ladder, like Wittgenstein, and jump down." Nosiree Bob! But why should it be any different? The mass of my body remains invariant across the three scenarios. And the gravitational field remains the same. But the longer I remain falling in that field, the faster I move. A body falling in the earth’s gravitational field falls at the rate of 32 feet per second PER SECOND. Thus the body ACCELERATES. The body’s velocity is ever increasing. Now the momentum of a moving object — which is roughly a measure of the amount of effort it would take to stop it from moving — is the product of its velocity and its mass. So a small mass like a bullet, left falling for a long enough time, will attain a high velocity and thus a high momentum, and so do a lot of damage to anything it comes in contact with, a human skull for example.

Buk on New Year's Eve

Alliteration

A reader who likes my alliteration found this specimen in a post from 2010:

The sobriety of solitary silence is superior to the sloughing off of self into the social . . . .

Perhaps I overdo it. An argument against alliterative excess is that it could distract the reader from the content.  

A good writer attends to his style, but does not permit style to get in the way of content.

"Style is the physiognomy of the mind," wrote Schopenhauer to open his great essay, On Style.

Here is a long list of literary devices. There I go, alliterating again.  I did not do it intentionally! It just came out like that. 

The Racism of Reduced Expectations

To tolerate and excuse Harvard president Claudine Gay's  plagiarism has been cited by some as an example of the so-called 'racism of reduced expectations' (RRE). For what you are then doing by your toleration and excusal is lowering the standard for blacks when, or rather on the assumption that, they are as capable as any other group of meeting those standards.  Such a slighting  of blacks would indeed be racist.

But is the assumption true? The assumption underpinning  RRE is that blacks as a group are the equal of Jews, Asians, and whites in respect of intelligence, intellectual honesty, love of truth, interest in the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, commitment to the traditional values of the university, respect for high standards of scholarship, and the like. If this is the case, then it is indeed racist to tolerate and excuse the bad behavior of blacks such as President Gay, and in her case 'sexist' as well.  

So whether there is racism here or not depends on whether the underlying assumption is true. Most establishment conservatives believe that it is.  They believe that blacks are the equals of the other groups mentioned in respect of the attributes mentioned. I don't doubt their good faith. Jesse Watters a few nights ago played the RRE card: to tolerate and excuse President Gay's plagiarism is to treat her as either incapable or unwilling due to her race of being objective, truth-seeking, and intellectually honest. It is to suggest black intellectual and moral inferiority when they are not inferior. Hence the racism of reduced expectations.  But if blacks as a group really are inferior when it comes to the appreciation and implementation of the values in question then the reduced expectations are justified and there is no racism of reduced expectations.

My point is that reduced expectations are racist only if the assumption is true.  If the assumption is false then a reduction in expectations is in order  and there is no racism.  One is entitled to play the RRE card only if one has already shown or given good evidence for the truth of the assumption.

Political Opponents or Political Enemies?

If you are among the sane, reasonable, and morally decent, then you ought to consider leftists, and this includes today's Democrats, as political enemies. Here is one reason among many:

Earlier this year, RCP [RealClear Politics] learned that it was one of many news sites that appeared on an advertising blacklist put out by a group called Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a British NGO that advises advertisers and search engine companies. GDI labeled RealClear Politics as a high-risk news site for disinformation. All because we include voices they don’t like. That we pair such voices with those they agree with doesn’t seem to matter to them. 

Alles klar?

A Lefty Sees the Light

Sasha Stone, An Ex-Democrat's Case for Trump

Good advice:

What the Democrats and Never Trumpers want now is to push Trump and MAGA back into the danger zone. They want more violence. They want riots. They want an uprising [so] that they can then bring in the military, weaponize dissent, speech, and ideology, and have the full backing of the American public. We’re almost there now.

But don’t take the bait, MAGA. You can defeat them by being the calm, reasonable side. Make them the crazy ones. They are just waiting for any chance to exploit the law more than they already have. Don’t give them that chance.

That's right. Stay calm. Speak out but don't overreact. No violence! No threats!  Don't fuel the fascism of our political enemies. You must  realize that they are not good people.* They hate you and they will crush you if they can. Step on their toes and you will get a jackboot to the face.  Anyone who will cancel your livelihood will cancel your life. Quietly prepare.  Hope and pray for the best, but prepare for the worst. Be ready should SHTF. These are very dangerous times. The fate of the Republic hangs in the balance.  Cf. Civil Courage and Practical Dissidence.

The case for Trump is simple, four words on a red hat: Make America Great Again.

Make America able to take a joke again. Make America understand basic biology again. Make America the land of the free and home of the brave again. Make it okay to be white, a Christian, a male, a Jew, a woman, a mother, an American again. Make Thomas Jefferson a hero again. Make movies watchable again.

Make America a country where we can still say what we think without fear of banishment, public humiliation, or the loss of our jobs. Make America tolerant again. Make reality cool again. Make it okay to reward merit. Make it okay to be friends with people you don’t agree with.

———————

*That's a generic a statement.  Of course there some good people on the wrong side, but they are useful idiots.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Christmas Tunes

BoulevardierMerry Christmas everybody.  Pour yourself a drink, and enjoy.  Me, I'm nursing a Boulevardier.  It's a Negroni with cojones: swap out the gin for bourbon.  One ounce bourbon, one ounce sweet vermouth, one ounce Campari, straight up or on the rocks, with a twist of orange.  A serious libation.  It'll melt a snowflake for sure. The vermouth rosso contests the harshness of the bourbon, but then the Campari joins the fight on the side of the bourbon. 

Or you  can think of it as a Manhattan wherein the Campari substitutes for the angostura bitters.  That there are people who don't like Campari shows that there is no hope for humanity. An irrational prejudice against artichokes? Razzismo vegetale!

Cheech and Chong, Santa Claus and His Old Lady
Canned Heat, Christmas Boogie

Leon Redbone and Dr. John, Frosty the Snowman
Beach Boys, Little St. Nick.  A rarely heard alternate version.

Elvis Presley, Blue Christmas.  

Captain Beefheart, There Ain't No Santa Claus on the Evening Stage

Charles Brown, Please Come Home for Christmas

Eric Clapton, Cryin' Christmas Tears
Judy Collins, Silver Bells

Ry Cooder, Christmas in Southgate
Bob Dylan, Must Be Santa

Is this the same guy who sang Desolation Row back in '65?  This is the 'stoned' version.  It'll grow on you! Give it chance. YouTuber comment: "The original was already the stoned version." An alternate version for the true Dylan aficionado with period shots of Albert Grossmann, et al.

Bob Dylan, Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache. Not Christmasy, but a good tune.  Remember Bob Luman? His version. Luman's signature number.

Who could possibly follow Dylan's growl except

Tom Waits, Silent Night.  Give it a chance. 

The Band, Christmas Must be Tonight

A surprising number of Christmas songs were written by Jews.