new france

 What would have happened if there had been no Louisiana Purchase, and the entire Mississippi Valley had remained New France?

ipcc 6th assessment

 Well, the newest IPCC assessment of climate change has come out, and it ain't pretty:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/09/ipcc-report-un-climate-report-delivers-starkest-warning-yet.html?__source=sharebar|facebook&par=sharebar&fbclid=IwAR3Ee9puGHgiEfsyouTaimTkzwzlNfhmoAiSCHiIQ_VF_q82RXH_vDKA2Uw

This report puts things in pretty stark perspective. The UN Secretary General calls it 'Code Red' for the planet.

scientists and engineers

 We need more and better scientists and engineers.

the divine spark

Only human beings, it seems to me, have mathematical-logical ability to any significant degree. Only human beings, for example, can hold perfect geometric forms in their minds' eye. Does any other species have this ability? Why do we?

I call this the divine spark. It is this ability that is the basis of science and technology and our beginning exploration of the cosmos. It is this ability that has created our fabulous standard of living. It's not that we walk upright and have jointed thumbs that makes us so different and special; it's this mysterious ability to understand and manipulate physical reality. Why do we alone have this? What is our responsibility in using it?

mathematical/logical ability is more important than sexual prowess

Mathematical/logical ability is more important than sexual prowess.

a tipping point

This whole affair with Jeffrey Epstein has really changed my thinking on a rather touchy subject: antisemitism. I have concluded that Epstein, and his girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell—and her father, Robert Maxwell, for that matter—that these people really did believe that the Goyim are inferior beings placed on Earth to be manipulated and exploited for their own pleasure and profit.

I didn’t used to think this. By an accident of fate and real estate patterns, I went to elementary school with a lot of Jewish kids. I never thought much about it. In fact, the big distinction in the suburb of Milwaukee I grew up in was between Catholic kids and the rest of us, because some of the Catholic kids went to a totally separate school. To the extent that I thought about it at all—which wasn’t much—I probably thought of Judaism as just a somewhat unusual form of Protestantism.

This attitude pretty much took me through high school and college, where I also knew a lot of Jewish kids. It was only after that that I started occasionally running into people whose dismissiveness I found unusual. But even then, my attitude was simply quizzical: ‘What’s up with that?’ The Epstein business seems to have brought these occasional experiences into a certain focus. Perhaps these people behaved the way they did because they genuinely assumed their superiority to others.

I think a small fraction of Jews are like this, probably not even a tenth, although the percentage may be higher in Israel. I would place Benjamin Netanyahu and his disgusting wife in this category, for example. I once saw Mike Huckabee, that fine Christian gentleman, interviewing Netanyahu. As Huckabee threw softball after softball question at him, I could just see the wheels turning in Netanyahu’s head: ‘Man, I’ve got a live one here.  This guy’ll swallow anything I say!’ He had that same knowing smirk that one sees in some photos of Epstein.

The tipoff for me is the rudeness, the gratuitous rudeness. When someone behaves this way toward total strangers, he probably also feels entitled to lie to and cheat them as well. After all, that’s why they’re there, right? So now when I get this kind of attitude, I push back: ‘Are you this rude to everybody? Why are you so rude? What’s your problem?’ People like this need to be challenged right from the get-go, so that’s what I do now. And I can thank Jeffrey Epstein for helping bring this into focus.

RIH jeffrey epstein

I'm so sorry that Jeffrey Epstein is gone. I was so looking forward to suspending the constitutional prohibition on 'cruel and unusual punishment' so that Mr. Epstein could be put to death in a most cruel and unusual way. First of all, he should have been publicly executed, preferably in Yankee Stadium or someplace, to the taunts and cheers of thousands of blood-lusting revenge seekers.

As to method, my personal choice would be garroting, which I believe was a specialty of the Spanish Inquisition. The executor comes up behind the executee, puts a length of piano wire around his neck, and proceeds to squeeze the life out him. In Epstein's case, this should have been done very slowly and painfully, prolonging the agony as long as possible.

But now all that won't happen because Epstein (assuming he did actually kill himself) didn't have the guts to confront the young women whose lives he destroyed for his own personal pleasure. It is for that reason-- and that reason alone-- that I'm sorry he's gone.