Offbeat Humor

My wife was born and raised in Cuba.

I just asked her and her friends what they think of this “controversy.” Verbatim response:

“Los americanos no tienen problemas entonces se los inventan.” (Americans don’t have problems so they invent them.) https://t.co/i1sDPI4Uwr

— Giancarlo Sopo (@GiancarloSopo) December 27, 2021

 And I suppose the corollary might be that the worse the education they provide is correlated with the degree to which they feel endangered.

Data Talks

95% of NFL players, 97% of NBA players, and nearly 100% of NHL players are vaccinated. Yet all three sports leagues continue to set all time covid case highs. This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt Biden’s claim that if everyone was vaccinated covid would go away is a lie.

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 27, 2021

 

Reverie (In the Days of Sappho) - c 1904

 Reverie (In the Days of Sappho) - c 1904 by John William Godward

Click to enlarge.

Too Young the Hero

I watched a movie the other evening, Too Young the Hero.  Not a great movie, adequate.  But a great story.  The protagonist is Calvin Graham.

Calvin Leon Graham (April 3, 1930 – November 6, 1992) was the youngest U.S. serviceman to serve and fight during World War II.  Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the United States Navy from Houston, Texas on August 15, 1942, at the age of 12.  His case was similar to that of Jack W. Hill, who was granted significant media attention due to holding service number one million during World War II, but later was discovered to have lied about his age and subsequently discharged.

He got all the way through boot camp without discovery and then to his duty station on the USS South Dakota in Pearl Harbor.

The South Dakota left Pearl Harbor on October 16. On October 26, 1942, he participated in the Battle of the Santa Cruz. The South Dakota and her crew received a Navy Unit Commendation for the action. On the night of November 14–15, 1942, Graham was wounded during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, he served as a loader for a 40 mm anti-aircraft gun and was hit by shrapnel while taking a hand message to an officer.  Though he received fragmentation wounds, he helped in rescue duty by aiding and pulling the wounded aboard ship to safety.  He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart Medal, and he and his crewmates were awarded another Navy Unit Commendation.

The South Dakota returned to the East Coast on December 18, 1942, for an overhaul and battle damage repairs (she had taken 42 hits from at least three enemy ships) in New York City, and since then, was named "Battleship X" in order to make the Japanese think she had been sunk. Graham's mother revealed his age after he traveled to his grandmother's funeral in Texas (he arrived a day late) without permission from the Navy, for which afterwards he spent three months in a Texas brig. He was released after his sister threatened to contact the newspapers. Although he had tried to return to his ship, he was discharged from the Navy on April 1, 1943, and his awards were revoked.  The South Dakota's gunnery officer, who was involved in handling his case, was Sargent Shriver.

He then worked in a Houston shipyard as a welder after dropping out of school.  At age 14 he married and became a father the following year. At age 17 he was divorced when he enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Battle duty, one purple heart, a Bonze Star Medal and two Presidential Navy Unit Commendations.  Twelve years old.

His awards were later reinstated but he spent much of his life wrangling with Naval bureaucracy.

Twelve years old.

In World War I the British still had midshipman who could be as young as 12, but usually more like 14.  But in that more informal period, and when opportunities were driven as much by connections as anything related to capability, midshipman as young as ten were not unheard of.

During the Battle of Jutland, when fourteen British ships were sunk with some 9,000 casualties, some 6,100 of home died.  Nearly two dozen midshipman were also killed, between the ages of 16 and 18.  I cannot find it but I seem to recall a 12 or 14 year old midshipman dying in the battle questions about the stationing of midshipman on active service ships.

History

Human made rocky niches, remains of an ancient civilization. Such niches can be seen on megaliths throughout Eastern Rhodope Mountain, Bulgaria. It is obvious that these megaliths are not accidentally picked. The most commonly spread theory is that these niches are tombs. pic.twitter.com/YCeKQ5SeIk

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) December 27, 2021

 

An Insight

I like a country where a normal citizen can say whatever he wants to the President. Thanks. https://t.co/XzsxUkt8I5

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) December 24, 2021

 

Censors think that eliminating free speech will increase trust

From The Folly of Pandemic Censorship by Matt Taibbi.

Even in a society with fairly robust protections, as ours once was, the most dangerous misinformation is always, without exception, official.

Read the whole thing.

Instead of seeing the root causes of this atmosphere of rapidly declining trust, officials keep pushing for even more sweeping campaigns of control, most recently seeking to make platforms like Google and Twitter arbiters of speech.

I’ve used Substack to show the amazingly diverse range of speech deemed unallowable on private platforms, from raw footage of both anti-Trump protests and the January 6th riots, to satirical videos no one had even seen yet, to advocates and detractors of the medication Ivermectin, to a Jewish tweeter’s pictorial account of Hitler’s life, to a now proven-true expose about the president’s son. The latter case is on point, because the widely distributed story that the New York Post’s Hunter Biden report was Russian disinformation was the actual disinformation. If the fact-checkers are themselves untrustworthy, and you can’t get around the fact-checkers, that’s when you’re really screwed.

This puts the issue of the reliability of authorities front and center, which is the main problem with pandemic messaging. One does not need to be a medical expert to see that the FDA, CDC, the NIH, as well as the White House (both under Biden and Trump) have all been untruthful, or wrong, or inconsistent, about a spectacular range of issues in the last two years.

Then:

Censors have a fantasy that if they get rid of all the Berensons and Mercolas and Malones, and rein in people like Joe Rogan, that all the holdouts will suddenly rush to get vaccinated. The opposite is true. If you wipe out critics, people will immediately default to higher levels of suspicion. They will now be sure there’s something wrong with the vaccine. If you want to convince audiences, you have to allow everyone to talk, even the ones you disagree with. You have to make a better case. The Substack people, thank God, still get this, but the censor’s disease of thinking there are shortcuts to trust is spreading.

I especially like the last line.  We know that decline in trust is a huge impediment to effective governance (and the normal greasing of social skids).  By seeking to rid itself of free speech, the censoring state merely accelerates the loss of trust.  A point none of them seem willing to acknowledge. 

I see wonderful things

Traditional Nubian Houses :

Nubia, a region along Nile river (northern Sudan and southern Egypt). One of earliest civilizations of ancient Northeastern Africa, 2000 BC, onward through Nubian monuments and artifacts as well as written records from Egypt & Rome.#archaeohistories pic.twitter.com/pzMjc2fGC7

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) December 29, 2021

 

The keen-eyed among you might notice that one of these people is rather unlike the others.

From My hot take – Lenin was bad by Ed West.  He starts off with a striking exchange in Britain.

After Boris Johnson had told Keir Starmer ‘you’re a lawyer, not a leader’, Labour frontbencher Emily Thornberry (whose father was also a lawyer) hit back: ‘On Lawyers and Leaders #PMQs:- I think it's pretty cool to be in the company of the lawyers Obama, Mandela, Blair, Ghandi, Clinton, Roosevelt, Lenin and Lincoln. And better that than to be remembered as the leader who needed a lawyer! #PartyGate’

The keen-eyed among you might notice that one of these people is rather unlike the others.

Vladimir Lenin, like Tony Blair, was a former resident of Thornberry’s Islington South and Finsbury constituency, working on the revolutionary paper The Spark while living in Clerkenwell Green. Finsbury Council actually made a bust of the man during the Second World War to show their solidarity with our great allies. (You know, that war which the Soviets helped start alongside the Nazis.)

Emily Thornberry is the Labour Party shadow Attorney General.  

Her list - Obama, Mandela, Blair, Ghandi, Clinton, Roosevelt, Lenin and Lincoln - is striking.  Yes, all lawyers, but Lenin was clearly and obviously a murderous tyrant and shouldn't be on there.  In fact, for your normal classical liberal, only Lincoln and Mandela warrant being on a Classical Liberal heroes list.  All the others were authoritarian chancers always in pursuit of power, rejecting central tenets of Age of Enlightenment and Classical Liberalism

West spends most his time documenting why Lenin should not be on anyone's admiration list.  I agree but I have a simpler question.  What is it with leftwing socialists like Thornberry and their inherent admiration for dictators and thugs?  We have it here in the US as well where many of our public "intellectuals" frequently swoon in admiration of China's ability to take direct and swift action on some issue.  They have no regard for due process or human rights, etc.  They simply like to see governments doing things decisively without regard to the actual consequences.

Ed West is more relaxed about the sins of the others on Thornberry's list.  While they do not rise to the fever pitch of Lenin's psychotic blood thirst, few of them are respectable figures in terms of delivering the culture of Classical Liberalism.  Still, his is one of the few voices insisting that we remember the real crimes of those whom the progressive left are always trying to redeem: Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Lenin, Mao, etc.  These were all evil men.  Those who seek to normalize them are the angels of autocracy.  

Offbeat Humor

In Push For Diversity, Military Canine Units To Give Equal Opportunities To Chihuahuas https://t.co/neUt80MBJM

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 27, 2021