The Death of Character

It’s dead, Honey. Dead as any old ideal that has come into conflict with self-interest.

Whose character?

Those self-important 60s and 70s Elitists who avowed that their refusal to go along with the draft was strictly due to their principled stance on war. NOTHING, you understand, to do with fear of dying/being maimed.

If you want to buy this book, click here. I can highly recommend it.

Those ardent Pro-Women activists who tirelessly fought for Women’s Rights. Until that fight brought them into conflict with entrenched Dems who’d been grossly exploitative of their staffers, volunteers, and hangers-on. So, the Faces of Feminism whored themselves out to save those Nasty Leftist Men.

Below, one of the truly depraved Feminists, whose comment woke me up to reality.

And, now, those “OMG, Trump’s possession of confidential government documents is reason enough to put him in jail” hysterics, once Biden is exposed as having been FAR more careless with Secret Docs:

People of character have the same standards for other people as they have for themselves.

We are not that far removed from the peasants of the Middle Ages, who lived under harsher rules than the Elite. Let’s face it, Entitled Elites STILL face penalties for CRIMINAL activity that is less that the lightest sentences imposed upon the non-Elite. The initial reason for the push to de-criminalize drugs was because too many children of the Elite were getting caught with quantities that would qualify them for long sentences at Hard Time.

Can’t have THAT!

Same with many of the Educational Accommodations – are there kids who do have quirky brain functioning, and could be helped to show what they know through those accommodations? Sure. I’ve seen them in the classroom; many times, they have demonstrated exceptional understanding of concepts that they struggle to show in written format.

However, the system is gamed heavily by the Elite, who cannot accept that their Precious Little Reflection of Themselves is just not all that Bright. Smart enough, but not extraordinary. So, they argue and fight for special breaks for their NOT-qualifying kids, any otherwise exploit the system to push them to ‘glory’ in school.

Only to have them fall apart in many colleges or jobs, when their perfectly average capabilities are revealed. Parental Push can only go so far.

Side Effect

     [It’s time for something light-hearted, as I’ve actually been depressing myself with the public-affairs commentary. So have a story about a young man who works at a quack-remedies mill who discovers something that actually works…and finds love in the bargain — FWP]

==<O>==

     Harley Crandall is a Texan émigré and a businessman of the old school. The oldest school: the one that regards caveat emptor as the only binding commandment. He’d sell you your own hat if you were fool enough to leave it on his counter–and he’d charge you a transaction fee should you demand a refund.
     All the same, there’s no more successful figure in what’s euphemistically called “over-the-counter medicine”…what we insiders prefer to call legalized quackery. Virtually everything we sell is close enough to useless to make no difference, but it’s what we do, and it sells. The federal government regulates all the useful stuff to the hilt. The medical profession is in full accord with the policy, since it forces the sick layman to pay for more visits to the doctor. And don’t look to the drugstores for an objection; they rake it in bigger than everyone else.
     Still, hope springs eternal in the achy, sniffly breast. People will always put more credence in a sunny-sounding promise than in the harsh and unsparing laws of economics; if you need proof, just contemplate your elected officials. So when a patent nostrum firm comes out with something it claims will relieve some misery that nothing else has helped, millions of good-hearted, overly trusting souls will pull out their wallets in a fresh demonstration that hope will always triumph over experience.
     And to think they used to tar and feather snake-oil salesmen.
     Anyway, Crandall Pharmaceuticals was my first employment opportunity after I received my doctorate. In truth, it was my only employment opportunity. When CP’s offer arrived I’d been out of school for more than a year, had been living for two months on a diet of chow mein noodles and chicken bouillon, and was getting low enough to consider taking a gig at a home-improvement warehouse. Despite the firm’s less-than-sterling reputation, I was thrilled by the offer. By then I’d have been thrilled by any offer at all. I did force myself to ponder what starting my career at a patent-medicines firm would do to my later prospects. For about five milliseconds.
     I didn’t realize that it was for show. CP had to have at least a facsimile of a research group to make it look serious. In twenty-three years of operation, no one in the group had ever come up with anything that would have a detectable effect on the human body—good or bad. Not too surprising, considering that the most up-to-date equipment in our labs was a twelve year old mass spectrometer. Neither was it a place to rub shoulders with great minds in the field. Over those twenty-three years, only two pharmacologists had ever left the group…one to become a bookkeeper, the other to manage a bowling alley.
     We did a lot of time-filling and kaffeeklatsch-ing.
     Still, I liked pharmacology. I wanted to make my mark. I kept thinking about the great unsolved problems in the field. I dreamed of possible approaches to solving them. Interleaved with all the time-filling stuff, of course.
     There were some nice things about the job. For one, if you wanted to be left alone, you’d be left alone. For another, the boss’s door was sincerely open. If you had a product idea, he’d give you his full attention, no matter whether you’re the assistant night janitor or the queen of the may. For a third, there was Teresa Hallberg.
     Terri isn’t a classic “looker.” She’s average height and weight. Her typical style of dress for a work day, a consistent marriage of oversized fleece sweatshirts, jeans, and low-quarter sneakers, hid her figure assets from a potential admirer’s eyes. But she has a pretty face. Not glamorous, not exotic, not alluring; just pretty. Yet from the first I found her more appealing than any of the great beauties Hollywood has shown us.
     It’s probably an effect of her personality. It’s a winner. She’s lively and cheerful without overdoing it. You can’t help but smile when she approaches, and the smile tends to linger for awhile after she leaves. No matter who you are, she’ll give you the impression that she’s sincerely glad to see you. At least if she isn’t, she’s never given a sign of it—and Crandall’s research group has had some pretty sour lemons in it.
     It baffled me that at twenty-eight she was still single. I’ve known some seriously beautiful women—not in the Biblical sense, of course—who couldn’t come near to her appeal. You know the old canard about “the girl you’d happily take home to Mom?” That’s Terri.
     I spent a fair amount of my typical work day chatting with her. I spent even more time looking for reasons to do so.
     Terri was our lab manager and purchasing agent. Don’t ask me why a group with scant resources and virtually no budget needed such a person. There she was, holder of magna cum laude master’s degrees in biology and chemistry, working as a glorified secretary for a company that sold useless patent medicines, and I was glad of it. Any opportunity I got to stop by her cubicle was good enough.
     It should be clear how I felt about her, but like most young science nerds, I was way too shy to do anything about it. For most of my two years at CP, I strained to work up the courage to ask her out. As our story begins, I hadn’t quite made it.

#

     There was enough money and enough equipment—barely—to look into the properties of any compound we could get into the lab for a modest amount. When you read “modest,” think “trivial.” Crandall wouldn’t approve the purchase of anything that snuck into three digits unless you held a gun to his head. The whole time I was there, he never approved a purchase request for anything more expensive than a decent lunch, except for advertising.
     Terri did manage to get me samples of a lot of common and obsolete compounds, though. I spent a lot of time pulling them apart and studying the parts with our old mass spectrometer. No one else was making much use of it, so why not?
     There was one compound—sorry, I won’t say which—that was more interesting than the rest. It was originally marketed as a relaxant for irritated sinuses that would help you get your cold-riddled head through a night’s sleep without waking up every five minutes to cough or honk your honker. It worked about as well as most over-the-counter remedies: i.e., to no extent you’d notice. But it was complex, and had some interesting bonds in it that looked like the devil to produce, so I toyed with it for a fair while.
     While I was playing with it, I caught my very own monster of a cold. After the initial siege, it left me with the most annoying of all supposedly minor maladies: the dreaded post-nasal drip.
     Happy the man who’s never had post-nasal drip! The continual coughing and choking are enough to make you wish you’d never been born. You don’t dare to slough work for something so minor. All the same, your co-workers don’t want anything to do with you; your presence among them is too noisy, too disgusting, and too potent a reminder of their last encounters with the Tickle from the Trickle. So while you’re afflicted, you tend to keep to yourself…and to be left that way.
     I was in the middle of analyzing one of the components I’d managed to separate out of the original preparation, an ester of benzodiazepine I was unfamiliar with. I’d taken it straight from the centrifuge to the mass spec without capping the tube. Unwise, I know, but the original compound was so utterly without significant known effects that it had lured me into carelessness.
     I paused on the way to the mass spec to check my email. One-handed. With the uncapped tube in the other hand. Coughing violently all the while. You can probably guess what followed.
     I didn’t get much of it on me. Most landed on my lab coat. A drop or two spattered on my hand. The rest fell on my desk. I growled, fished a cap out of my lab coat pocket, sealed what remained in the tube, and laid the tube down carefully while I finished up.
     It took a moment for me to realize that my post-nasal drip was gone. Not just mitigated; completely gone. My throat was untroubled and my sinuses had become comfortably, healthily dry. For the first time in two weeks, I felt no slightest urge to cough.
     “Holy shit,” I said. I didn’t realize I’d said it out loud…quite out loud.
     Terri was passing nearby at the time. She stopped and peeked into my cubicle at the exclamation.
     “Mike? Are you all right?”
     I looked up and smiled.
     “Dear God,” I said, “what is wrong with me that I can’t invite this sweet, gentle, totally wonderful creature out to dinner? It’s not like I’d be asking her to have my baby. I must be some sort of wimp.”
     Again, out loud. Quite out loud.
     Terri’s eyes flew wide. One hand went to her lips.
     God bless her, she didn’t flee. She edged into my cubicle and peered at me as if I’d sprouted wings.
     “Did you really just say that?” she murmured.
     “Say what?” I said. “There she is, moron. As sweet as a June breeze and fresh as the morning dew, and you can’t bring yourself to ask her for anything but a box of pencils.”
     Terri dropped to her knees, gasping.
     “Terri? Are you all right?” I said. “Get off your ass and help her, idiot. This is your chance to be her hero. Don’t waste it.”
     She fainted and collapsed into my arms.
     It was a real grade-A faint. It took a couple of minutes of gentle nagging and rubbing of various extremities to revive her. Nate Kerrigan just happened to come by toward the conclusion of the process. He stopped and gawked. Of course he did. Nate’s never passed by a social gathering he thought he might be allowed to join, especially if there were any single women in it. Finding me with the office sweetheart unconscious in my arms was impossible for him to resist.
     “Uh, Mike?” Nate said. His look of concern morphed into a lascivious grin. “Is Terri…okay?”
     “You smarmy prick, you can’t look at anything in a skirt without getting that leer,” I said. At least that’s what I was later told I said. Nate’s face turned the brightest shade of red I’ve ever seen on a living creature. He stiffened and stalked away, leaving me wondering just what the hell was going on.
     It didn’t take long. It became all too clear once Terri had returned to consciousness.

#

     “I said that?
     Terri nodded. “You did. But Mike…”
     I looked away. I couldn’t bear to look at her. The heat in my face testified to what must have been a world-class blush. I was on the point of vowing to become a Trappist monk.
     “Mike?” She reached out hesitantly, put gentle fingers to my chin, and turned my head to face her. “I’d love to go out with you. I’ve been waiting for you to ask.
     I should have been overjoyed, but what she’d said hadn’t registered. I was too focused on the incredible faux pas I’d committed, and wondering whether I’d said something similarly unrestrained to Nate Kerrigan. From my memory of his reaction, it seemed all too likely.
     “Forgive me, Terri,” I murmured. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
     She baffled me by giggling and caressing my cheek. “You didn’t upset me, silly. You surprised me. Didn’t you hear what I just said? I’ll happily go out with you. Just name a date, a time, and a place!”
     That time it came through. “You would?”
     She nodded. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask. No one else here is both nice and near enough to my age.”
     “Oh.” I sat back. “But…what on earth made me…”
     “Speak your mind?” she said. “I don’t know, but I thank God for it all the same.” She glanced at the capped test tube lying beside my monitor. “What are you working on?”
     That’s what finally reminded me of the benzodiazepine ester I’d been working on…and what I’d done with it. I picked up the tube, uncapped it carefully, and eyeballed the contents. It didn’t seem to be precipitating in either direction. I forced a smile.
     “It’s a component of an old patent medicine that was supposed to help a cold sufferer sleep,” I said. “Seems it was about as effective as the crap we sell. The manufacturer took it off the market years ago. But this piece of it seems to have some effects all its own.”
     She waited, eyes intent.
     “I think it cleared up my post-nasal drip.”
     That rolled her eyelids all the way up. “Completely?”
     I nodded. “Remember how I couldn’t stop coughing? I haven’t got the hint of a tickle now. I can’t think of another explanation.”
     There was a moment of silence.
     “All by itself,” she said, “that’s a billion-dollar discovery. Assuming the other effects aren’t too terrible.” She looked me in the eyes and waited.
     “Well, that’s the other part.” I recapped the tube and thought for a moment. “I can’t come up with another explanation for…the other thing that happened.”
     Terri pressed her lips together. “The stuff you said.”
     “Yeah.”
     Her face brightened visibly. She rose, took my hands, and yanked me out of my seat. Quite a feat, as I’m nearly a foot taller and about a hundred pounds heavier than she is.
     “A good scientist,” she intoned, “never allows a plausible hypothesis to go unexplored. He designs experiments to test its validity.” She grinned mischievously. “Over and over and over. You know, looking for a falsifying result. The last I noticed, Adamski and Peterson were coughing just like you.” She set her arms akimbo. “Well, Dr. Conlon? Where’s your scientist’s initiative…and your lab notebook?”
     My grin rose to match hers. I knew it would be wrong. I knew it would cause no end of trouble. I knew Crandall would find out and raise holy hell. It might even get us both fired.
     We did it anyway.

#

     Yes, Crandall called us onto the carpet.
     “According to your colleagues,” he said as he doffed his Stetson and hung it on the rack behind his desk, “you two were the only ones who stayed completely out of the riot. I might not run the tightest ship in our industry, but I’m not gonna sit around while my PhDs get into fist fights and break up my expensive glassware.” He plopped his ass into his custom-built leather desk chair, steepled his hands, and glared at us. “Especially not if two of ‘em were the cause. Just what kind of mischief have you gotten into?”
     Terri visibly suppressed a giggle. Crandall’s glare swerved from her to me. “Conlon?”
     I produced what I hoped was a blandly innocent smile. “An informal test of a potential product.”
     “And what is this product supposed to do?” he growled. “Apart from starting a riot in my lab, that is?”
     “It appears to provide complete and immediate relief,” I said in my most scholarly cadence, “from the condition called post-nasal drip.”
     That altered the whole tenor of the exchange. Crandall’s mouth dropped open. His eyes went wider than I’d ever seen them. You could almost see the dollar signs cavorting in his brain.
     “Permanent or temporary?” he said.
     “That’s as yet uncertain.” I shrugged. “It’s only been three hours since I, ah, self-administered the substance under investigation, and less than that since I…extended the experiment to our colleagues. We could check, of course. Do you have the phone number at Onteora General?”
     Crandall’s glare returned. “Was the fight another of the effects of your…substance?”
     “Not a direct consequence, no,” I said.
     “More likely,” Terri chimed in brightly, “it resulted from Adamski calling Peterson an ‘obnoxious fraud’ and Peterson replying that Adamski’s wife is a ‘horse-faced pig.’”
     “That would have done it,” I said. “Though I do tend to concur with Peterson’s evaluation.”
     Terri’s hand flew to her lips. The giggle came out anyway.
     “God damn it,” Crandall bellowed, “Can’t you be serious for five minutes? Exactly why did two perfectly ordinary researchers, who’ve barely even noticed one another’s existence up to now, decide to go at it hammer and tongs in the middle of a work day? Did this drug of yours…do something to them?”
     “Well, of course it did, sir,” I said. “It cleared up their post-nasal drip. Perhaps that was the first time they could express their opinions of one another intelligibly.”
     Crandall rose from his chair looking for all the world as if he were about to throttle me. I held up a placating hand.
     “Candidly, Mr. Crandall,” I said, “there does seem to be an unintended side effect. It appears that the drug temporarily neutralizes the real-time verbal censor—the stage in our brains that prevents our entire thought stream from being orally expressed. If it weren’t for that, this would be the medical find of the century.”
     Crandall’s expression went from furious to thoughtful.
     “Let’s not be hasty,” he said. “How long does this…side effect last?”
     I shrugged. “Long enough to cause a fist fight between pharmacologists with time on their hands.”
     “Conlon…” he growled.
     “I can’t really say, sir,” I said. “A psychotropic effect such as this is very hard to measure accurately. The onset occurs in less than a minute. The, ah, null-censorship phase lasts at least two or three minutes.” I glanced at Terri. “But it’s over about five minutes from onset. At the very most.”
     If there’s an entry in the dictionary for unbridled money lust, you’re guaranteed to find the expression my estimate produced on Harley Crandall’s face right next to it.
     “That’s good enough,” he said.

#

     Crandall swore us to secrecy, on pain of death and worse than death. He promised that if either of us so much as muttered about the compound in our sleep, he’d have us disemboweled in Macy’s Herald Square window, our entire families murdered, and all the bodies strung up for the buzzards. Then he set us to work.
     The task was almost painfully obvious. We had to find a way of administering the ester that would keep the user from speaking intelligibly until his verbal censor was back on duty. We could numb his tongue. We could paralyze his vocal cords. We could force him to speak some unknown language in which sexual innuendo was unknown and insults had never been invented. The user’s muting only had to last for five minutes, so anything that would disable his speech functions for that long, but would otherwise leave him alive and well, would suffice.
     We had a lab to ourselves. For the first time, I had Terri working beside me. It made perfect sense. She already knew; no one else did. Besides, it had been obvious for a long while that her intellect, knowledge, and energy were seriously under-employed.
     We proved to be an efficient partnership. Our verbal communication was terse but clear. Our physical coordination was spookily smooth. We often reached the same conclusion at the same instant. It made the work fun.
     Fun, but frustrating.
     The ester was powerful. Transcutaneous subduction would induce its effects as swiftly and powerfully as inhalation. A drop you could produce with an eyedropper, if applied to the skin, would induce the null-censorship effect within seconds. At least, that’s what it did to Terri and me. It did help us to make some fascinating discoveries about one another, though.
     Crandall absolutely forbade us to experiment further on other CP employees. A pity; the first trial been such fun.
     However, nothing we tried would dampen the null-censorship effect. Worse, the tiniest modifications of the molecule robbed it of the main effect, rendering it no more effective than…well, than anything else CP sold. We threw up our hands and tried buffering. We tried every buffering technique approved by the FDA. None of them worked either, but every one of them nullified the ester’s potency against post-nasal drip.
     We had to make do with a specially designed delivery system.

#

     Crandall turned our device in his hand, struggling to understand how it fit the bill.
     “Exactly how,” he said, “is this supposed to work?”
     “The smaller bulb,” I said, “contains the minimum dose of the drug that will eliminate a post-nasal drip, suspended in a small amount of distilled water. To administer it, the user must put the large bulb into his mouth, clamp his lips and teeth tightly on the neck, press the white button on the other end—”
     “And suck like he’s trying to pull a golf ball through a garden hose,” Terri piped up.
     “Terri!” I said.
     “Never you mind, Conlon,” Crandall said. “So the device itself will prevent him from shooting off his yap, eh?”
     I nodded. “No human being can produce a suction strong enough to ingest the whole dose in less than five minutes. At that point, the anti-censorship effect would have passed.”
     Crandall grinned wolfishly. “And it’s just a big ol’ piece of rubber.”
     “With a single-use atomizer embedded in one end,” Terri said.
     “How long before the post-nasal drip comes back?”
     “About a day,” I said.
     “Well glory hallelujah,” Crandall said. The Texas twang he usually took great pains to suppress was in full flower. “You two are in for a pair of fat raises.” He sat back and swung his cowboy boots onto his desk. “And I’ve got a mansion on Aruba all picked out.”

#

     Crandall set his finagling powers to work at once. He went to the manufacturer of the original drug and negotiated to purchase the patent. He got the FDA to agree that the drug was already approved for human consumption, had no perceptible ill effects, and could be safely taken orally in doses far larger than the tiny amount in our delivery device. The medical-devices section approved the device itself with stupefying speed. Crandall obviously knew which palms to grease and how thickly.
     While he and his marketing gurus were hashing out the publicity campaign and arguing over a name, Terri and I were learning interesting things about one another. Lots of interesting things.
     One night after…well, one night kinda late, she propped herself on an elbow and asked me The Question: the one every pharmacology researcher is supposed to ask himself at every moment of every day.
     “Did we overlook anything?” she said.
     I smirked and looked her up and down. She was much shapelier than I’d ever guessed from the way she dressed for work. “I don’t think I did, though I’ll let you speak for yourself.”
     She giggled and tweaked my nose. “You know what I mean. We didn’t test it for very long, or have a huge sample space to try it out on. Could there be any extra effects, say from long-term use, that we ought to know about?”
     I shrugged. “The sample space was what it was. Crandall would have had a cow if we’d, ah, returned to our earlier testing protocols. And long-term use doesn’t strike me as a concern, since the drip goes away after about seven days and the drug promises nothing but relief from that. What’s on your mind, love? Did you think of something else?”
     She didn’t answer at once. It set me to worrying.
     “I’ve been thinking about the device itself,” she said at last. “It’s pretty obvious that the value is in the little end. Won’t someone eventually slice a few of them open and try ingesting the contents all at once—no delay?”
     “Well,” I said, “he’d have to pierce that little atomizer pretty carefully to avoid spilling the whole dose.”
     “You know someone’s going to manage it eventually,” she said. “Then what?”
     “Then we read about it in the papers.”
     “Mike…”
     “I know, I know.” I gathered her into my arms and relished her softness and warmth as she snuggled against me. “Divorces. Affairs. Firings. Promotions. Bar fights. Celebrities coming out of the closet. Criminals confessing to unsolved crimes. Talk show hosts asking politicians serious questions and the politicians answering with the truth. God alone knows what else. But Terri, every negative consequence I can imagine is matched by a positive one. Add the defeat of the ancient scourge of post-nasal drip and how does the balance sheet read?”
     “I don’t know, Mike.” She rested her chin on my shoulder. “But maybe we ought to arrange to be somewhere else before it’s read in public.”
     I said nothing more. She had a point.

#

     The Big Day featured two events of world-shaking impact. The later one was the one o’clock announcement of Trickless, the name CP’s marketing group had bestowed upon the anti-post-nasal-drip drug. The earlier one—four hours earlier—was Crandall’s summons to his office for his grandiloquent announcement of the “fat raises” he’d decided to bestow on Terri and me.
     Five percent.
     We’d given him a drug that would make CP several billion dollars per year—and as CP is a sole proprietorship, he’d get it all. For this gift of riches beyond the imagination of any emperor, he increased our not-particularly-generous salaries by five percent.
     I controlled my reaction with an effort. Terri let a bit more of hers show on her face, but she managed to keep silent. When Crandall dismissed us, I hustled us out of his office and clean out of the building.
     The door had barely finished closing behind us when Terri erupted in a shrieking fit.
     I shan’t reproduce her words. Some of them were of a category I’d never heard from her before. But she could have chanted “hasenpfeffer, hasenpfeffer, hasenpfeffer,” and her fury would have come through loud and clear.
     It took me several minutes to calm her down. The result of the process was an angry glint in her eye and an inexorable suspicion on my part that she had resolved upon revenge.
     My suspicion was correct.

#

     Crandall doesn’t spend money on much, but he excludes from his penchant for penury anything he thinks might benefit him personally. So CP’s public-access room is a far richer sight than anyone might guess from the Spartan condition of our labs.
     The room’s lectern was a beautiful piece of darkest mahogany. The fittings were gleaming brass; the antique-style microphone, which was hardly necessary given the modest size of the room and the usually modest turnout of the press for a Crandall proclamation, was polished silver.
     No one but Harley Crandall had ever stood at that lectern, and likely no one ever would.
     When the appointed hour was upon us, Crandall shepherded the research team into the room as his entourage, almost like a palace guard. With the dour gazes of a couple dozen weary-looking reporters upon us, we marched in dutifully and lined up against the wall behind the lectern. The great man himself went straight to his accustomed place, glanced down at the brass handrail, and turned a dangerous shade of red.
     Terri darted forward. “Is it smudged, sir?” she said.
     She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead she pulled a folded handkerchief out of a hip pocket and rubbed the rail vigorously along its full length. Presently she smiled and invited Crandall’s renewed attention. He scowled, motioned her back, and rested his mitts upon the rail as he beamed at the assembled agents of the Fourth Estate.
     “Ladies and gentlemen,” he boomed, “Crandall Pharmaceuticals has completed the development, testing, and certification for human use of a remedy for one of Mankind’s most annoying afflictions: the terror called post-nasal drip.” He fished an applicator out of his jacket pocket and waved it back and forth at the crowd. “Our new product, which will bear the registered name Trickless, will be made available over the counter in pharmacies and supermarkets nationwide, beginning this coming Monday.”
     I was surprised to hear his Texas twang come forth.
     “Now you fine folks have helped me to promote remedies for various minor ailments before, and most of them were crap, so you’re probably thinkin’ ‘the old boy is gonna try hornswogglin’ us again,’ but this time it’s for real! I know, the other stuff we sell ain’t no better’n sugar pills an’ don’t taste near as good, but clamp yore yap on the fat end of this baby, press the li’l button on the other end, and suck for about five minutes like a whore tryin’ to get all the chrome off a trailer hitch, and yore drip’ll vanish faster’n yore dreams of a Pulitzer. For ‘bout a day, that is. I mean, if the effect were permanent, I’d hardly make money on it, an’ I mean t’have a crib in Aruba so plush that the president himself will beg me to invite him for a weekend of bunnies ’n’ coke.” He leered. “Y’all know how Prexy loves that shit, don’t ya?”
     There are no words sufficient to capture the astonishment of the assembled gentlemen of the press. They’d have been no more stunned had Godzilla crashed through wall in a tux and tails, fanned out a deck of cards, and invited them to pick one.
     A moment later they were streaming out the door, every one of them tapping furiously on his tablet or smartphone. Crandall frowned.
     “Hey, what’d I say?”
     Less than a minute later the reporters had run en masse from the room. So had all my fellow pharmacologists. Terri pulled me out to the parking lot, where every reporter I could see was talking furiously on his cell phone.
     Crandall came out behind us a minute later. His look of stunned incredulity was better than any five percent raise.

#

     Yes, Harley Crandall is a greedy bastard with the morals of a rattlesnake. Yes, he’d sell his daughters into slavery for a shot at a million-dollar haul, even at ten to one against. But he isn’t stupid. At one-twenty he bellowed at Terri and me that we no longer had jobs at CP and had better never darken his door again. By one-thirty we’d collected our belongings and were on our way back to the apartment we’d rented together at Lakeshore Vistas.
     It was far from being a sad occasion, though I didn’t realize that at first. Just the day before, Terri had learned something she hadn’t yet told me…something Crandall would learn to his sorrow, but only after we’d made the appropriate use of the information.
     He’d bought the patent on the wrong drug.

==<O>==

Copyright © 2020 Francis W. Porretto. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Paywalls: A Demurrer

     I’ve been asked by several Gentle Readers why there’s no way to create a regular monthly or yearly “paid subscription” to Liberty’s Torch. I received another such inquiry a few minutes ago. It’s simple: My opinions are mine alone and freely dispensed, so that’s what I charge for them. The Blogosphere started as a place of freely expressed and freely consumed material, including the sort of drivel I produce. I intend to keep my corner of it that way until I cease to write or depart from this vale of tears (whichever comes first).

     I dislike paywalls. Even on sites I enjoy and to which I’d appreciate unfettered access, I refuse to pay for it. I might be less averse to the practice were it not for two things:

  1. They’re all “auto-renew,” and many of them do it silently.
  2. Many site owners will sell their paying subscribers’ email addresses to others for the extra revenue.

     There are already many outfits selling collected email addresses to charities, businesses, scam artists, and others who hope to solicit wider attention. I refuse to abet the practice. Atop that, now that I no longer have a PayPal account – the “$2500 fine” scandal put an end to that — there’s no method by which I could reliably protect my credit card information…though in all candor I doubt I’d decide otherwise if there were.

     Fortunately (and happily), I don’t need money. As retirees go I’m well off. So Liberty’s Torch will be a place where what we produce is free to all men of good will. As for men of other than good will…I’m fairly sure they can find other sites more to their liking, and it wouldn’t take more than one visit here to send them off to find them.

“Give Me A Ho! Give Me A Hum!”

     It’s time to exercise our arithmetic skills:

     A group of two dozen Senate Republicans have signed a letter vowing to oppose any increase in the nation’s debt limit unless Congress agrees to spending cuts to help pay down the national debt.

     “We, the undersigned members of the Senate Republican Conference, write to express our outright opposition to a debt-ceiling hike without real structural spending reform that reduces deficit spending and brings fiscal sanity back to Washington,” the group, lead by Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee, wrote to President Joe Biden.

     “Our nation’s fiscal policy is a disaster,” they continued. “Our country owes $31 trillion, a level of debt that now well exceeds the size of our economy. Inflation is making life more expensive for American families every single day.”

     The lawmakers then point to policies of the Biden administration, asserting they had imposed additional, onerous burdens on Americans.

     “Americans are keenly aware that their government is not only failing to work for them — but actively working against them,” they went on. “We do not intend to vote for a debt-ceiling increase without structural reforms to address current and future fiscal realities, actually enforce the budget and spending rules on the books, and manage out-of-control government policies.”

     Two dozen, you say? Let’s see now: Is that fewer than forty? I believe so. Mind you, these days “journalists” will say “two dozen” about a group that numbers anywhere from 19 to 29, but if we count the signatures, this time it appears accurate. Of course, having signed that letter doesn’t predetermine how those Senators will vote on an eventual appropriations bill, but let’s leave that aside for the nonce. Let’s entertain some relevant questions about them instead:

  • What’s their price for yielding on the debt ceiling?
  • Have they the approval of the Republican Majority Leader?
  • Will any Republican Senator commit to voting against a debt increase?
  • Even if all 49 of them eventually do so, will it matter? What Democrats will join them?

     Naughty me, asking such pointed and potentially insulting questions of “our” “elected” “representatives!” I assure you, they just…slipped out! What a pity my backspace and delete keys are down for maintenance!

     (I seldom end every sentence in a paragraph with a “bang,” but it’s a short paragraph, and besides, it’s a day for “stepping out of one’s comfort zone.”)

     The Republican Senate caucus is heavily biased toward the political Establishment, and that Establishment loves to spend money it doesn’t have. After all, they won’t get the bill. We shall soon see whether this is merely a bit of meaningless grandstanding in the hope of preserving conservative support, or the prelude to an act in defense of the Republic. I know where I’m betting.

Feminist Tactics

     Beware, Gentle Reader. There’s one set of rules for men, and another for women:

     A Google executive claims he was booted by the tech giant for rejecting a high-ranking female colleague’s grabby advances at a posh company dinner.

     Ryan Olohan, 48, accuses Google of firing him after one its top executives, Tiffany Miller, groped him at a Chelsea restaurant in December 2019 and told him she knew he liked Asian women — which Miller is, according to a blockbuster November federal lawsuit filed in Manhattan.

     Miller, director of Google’s programmatic media, rubbed Olohan’s abs, complimented his physique, and told him her marriage lacked “spice,” according to court papers.

     The alleged hands-on encounter unfolded during a drunken company gathering at Fig & Olive on West 13th Street shortly after Olohan was promoted to managing director of food, beverages, and restaurants and joined a new management team that included Miller in Google’s Manhattan offices, according to the lawsuit….

     Olohan said he reported the issue to Google’s human resources department the following week, but nothing ever came of the complaint.

     Ah, but something did come of it, eventually:

     Olohan claims Miller began retaliating against him after he made the complaint by criticizing him and reporting him to human resources for “microaggressions,” although the complaint does not specify what Miller accused him of.

     The retaliation allegedly continued at a Google-hosted event in December 2021 where Miller drunkenly admonished Olohan in front of his colleagues. The rancor was so bad that colleagues encouraged Miller to move to the other end of the table, according to the lawsuit.

     Miller later apologized and “although Google was aware that Miller’s continued harassment of Olohan stemmed from his rejection of her sexual advances, it again took no action,” the suit claims.

     Miller drunkenly berated Olohan yet again during a company get-together at a karaoke bar in April 2022, where she mocked him upon arrival and reiterated that she knew he preferred Asian women over white women — knowing that Olohan’s wife is Asian, according to court papers.

     Given the dominance of HR departments nationwide by women – and feminist women, at that – men have no defense against this sort of assault except to avoid all women at all times. Even then, without a videorecorded biography of one’s whole life, a vindictive woman can fabricate accusations and press them home with the assistance of her sisters.

     Who was it who said “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?” I’d like to buy him a drink.

As Long As The Subject Is Abortion

     There has been some good news:

     Catholic pro-life activist Mark Houck on Monday was found NOT GUILTY on both counts of federal charges.

     Mark Houck was charged with two counts of violating the federal FACE Act for shoving a pro-abortion volunteer who threatened his son outside of Planned Parenthood in Philadelphia in 2021.

     The FACE Act prohibits “violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain, or provide reproductive health services.”

     Mark Houck is a Catholic father of 7 children and often prays outside of abortion clinics.

     That the myrmidons of the Omnipotent State should do their utmost to discourage pro-life sentiment is inarguable. That’s why they chose this method of taking Houck into custody:

     Mark’s wife, Ryan-Marie Houck, shared about the events on September 23, 2022.

     On that morning as the corrupt members of the FBI were banging on his door, Mark said to the agents:

     Please, I have seven babies in the house, I’m going to open the door.”

     The FBI then charged into their house with guns pointed at them and their children – their babies – and took their father away on bogus charges against the pro-life author.

     If there’s a case in which any pro-abortion activist was treated in such a violent and threatening manner, I’m unaware of it. Indeed, given the way the regime has treated the 1/6/2021 protestors, I was surprised to learn that Houck was allowed bail.

     You’re probably aware that a woman in Britain was arrested for praying silently across the street from an abortion clinic. I don’t know of any comparable case in these United States, but I’d be unsurprised by one. Abortion is the Left’s sacrament, and thou shalt not oppose the administration thereof by any means.

     I know, I know: “And this, too, shall pass away.” But it’s taking one bloody long time to do so.

One In The Eye For The Feminists

     If you’re a “feminist,” it would logically follow that you favor the protection of women, wouldn’t it? If so, the information in this article “should” upset you:

     100 Percent Fed Up reports – Did you know that between 1970 and 2017, there were 45 million “missing” female births due to prenatal sex selection? This information came from a British Medical Journal Global Health in-depth study in 2021. It was based on examining 3.26 billion birth records.

     Over 95% of these missing births were in China or India.

     What about the United States?

     Sex-selective abortions are abortions performed for the purpose of eliminating an unborn child of an undesired sex. Usually, females are the “undesired” sex. Only seven states in the U.S. ban sex-selective abortions.

     Such a ban is unenforceable, given the state of the law. After all, a woman who seeks an abortion isn’t legally required to say why. But that’s less relevant than the statistics.

     A pronounced sex-ratio imbalance has implications for the birth rate beyond the abortions involved. In case some Gentle Reader wasn’t paying attention during high school biology, to bear a baby, a woman’s participation is required…at this time, that is. And that’s to say nothing of the sociological consequences of a regime in which men are born at much greater numbers than women. China could tell you about that.

     Cock your ear to the breezes. Hear that roar of disapproval from the feminists? Neither do I. Can you guess why? Of course you can! Feminism is an integral component of the political Left, and the Left wants “abortion rights” to go unchallenged.

     I imagine there will be more reporting on this subject. However, it might need to be samizdat, as our media are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Left. Stay tuned.

A Badly Crafted Yet Revealing Article

     Here’s the first sentence:

     After previously advertising they would wear LGBTQ+-themed warmup jerseys and use rainbow tape for their seventh annual Pride Night, New York Rangers players reversed course.

     Who did the “advertising?” Was it the players, or someone from the non-playing front office?

     The article continues to be nonspecific to the extent that on one knows who said what, or when, or why. Even the quasi-apologetic statement is like that:

     “Our organization respects the LGBTQ+ community, and we are proud to bring attention to important local community organizations as part of another great Pride Night. In keeping with our organization’s core values, we support everyone’s individual right to respectfully express their beliefs.”

     As PR intended to say nothing of substance, I doubt it could be bettered.

     Needless to say, the Left is wetting its panties over the episode. You’re simply not allowed to have private convictions that differ from the Left’s gospel. It’s the state religion in our time.

     The “LGBTQ+ community” is slipping into the same category as the race hustlers. There’s some point at which normal people – yes, it’s normal to be heterosexual and unconfused about one’s sex – will say “We’ve had enough” and exercise their anger on those groups in a fashion they won’t like. Where that point is, no one can say…but I definitely can say that we’re getting closer to it.

Bad Apple

I’d never heard about most of this. I have owned some Apple products:

  • My iPhone – this is, for now, non-negotiable. Hearing aids are difficult to get to work with many brands of cellphone. Only Apple has seamless integration of just about EVERY hearing aid on the market. I depend on using the Bluetooth features, and so, reluctantly, keep using Apple phones.
  • iPad – I’ve owned several. At present, I use it mostly for travel, due to the light weight. It’s replaced my Kindle device. And, for remote work in the field, it allows use of the iPhone’s connection to the internet with few problems. I MIGHT look into replacing it when it gets old; if I did, I’d probably look into a Fire device (I tried the MS Surface – not robust enough).
  • Mac – this was the easiest one to give up. I have an old one that needs some work – the trackpad doesn’t work. I turned it over to my son-in-law, who probably can get it working. I won’t replace it when it dies, I’ll just let him have it for parts.

Given the apparently credible accusations made in this article, I’d recommend against Apple products. If a cellphone provider would take users of hearing aids seriously, and provide full integration with their phones, I would, of course, switch the next time the phone needs replacement. Otherwise, I’m pretty much stuck with them.

Other reasons to switch from Apple?

  • Crappy customer service – I made an appointment for a Mac a few years ago at the “Genius Bar”. Due to unfamiliarity with the mall, I was slightly late for the appointment. I was informed that my appointment had been cancelled, and I would have to make another trip to the store (one that was 45 minutes away). I had a hissy fit. After a little discussion with the manager, he agreed to take me 1/2 hour later (a perfectly acceptable solution). I did express my irritation at the superior, snooty attitude of the semi-geniuses to him, though.
  • Price – Apple products – ALL of them, both the core machine, and the extensions/upgrades, are WAY overpriced. Even the refurbished ones are too pricey.
  • Ease of repair. I understand Apple wanting to have control over what components are used in their products (it’s that limitation that makes them work so seamlessly). But not permitting non-Apple/certified Apple repairs is silly. There is really no reason for knowledgeable users not to be able to upgrade memory, replace a failing part, or switch out a keyboard – these are simple repairs. Only the App-Sheep put up with that without complaint.

I’m writing this on a Samsung computer. It replaced the previous Dell that died a sorry death (I used to like Dell – no more. The quality has gone done since I bought my last one. I require a laptop that can handle a lot of use and is lightweight). It’s both lightweight and fully functional, and so far has been up to the challenge of handling daily use.

None So Blind Dept.

     It’s amazing the contortions some people will twist themselves into to avoid acknowledging an unpleasant fact. The fact, of course, is the measurable, race-correlated differences between blacks and the other races as regards aggression and lawlessness. Charles Murray went to considerable difficulty to pin it down factually and firmly, without recourse to anecdotes. The rest of the scholarly community upbraided him for daring to do so…but no one has refuted his statistics or their implications.

     Consider the headline of this piece about the Tyre Nichols incident by CBD at Ace’s place:

     It’s Not A Race Problem; It’s A Policing Problem

     Does CBD stop to consider that the Tyre Nichols incident involved only blacks – and that the penchant for violence visible from the crime statistics might manifest itself in black police as well? He does not. Here’s what he does say:

     What stands out, aside from the casual brutality, is that these men were lousy cops. They clearly did not know how to do their jobs. Or maybe they simply didn’t understand what their jobs were! Or even worse…their level of violence was accepted by their bosses, was accepted by their fellow policemen, and was part of the ethos of policing.

     Those five cops were black, which is unsurprising because Memphis is about 2/3 black. Was their beating of Nichols precipitated by his color? Or was it precipitated by the complete disconnect between the police and the communities they are charged with protecting? What is most frustrating is that had those five cops been white, Nichols probably would have survived the encounter because of the insane calculations that are necessary in today’s racially charged environment.

     This completely evades the implications of a highly illustrative incident. “Lousy cops,” indeed! When was the last incident in which white policemen, however numerous, beat a detainee to death? Given that persons who actively seek careers as police must have some inclination toward the use of force, what accounts for the difference?

     But “It’s Not A Race Problem; It’s A Policing Problem.” We dare not imagine – or explore – any other possible explanation. Paul Kersey would mutter “Yet another vignette from Black-Run America,” and he would be right.

This Writer Has An Uncanny Foresight

     I’ve mentioned Mackey Chandler’s April series more than once here. I liked it enough that I’m now reading his other works. Just now I’m enjoying his 2011 novel Paper or Plastic, an unusual first contact story in several ways. A moment ago I encountered this passage, in which a very human alien is explaining aspects of her world to the Earthman who’s harboring her:

     “A lot of people work for the government, so their script is issued by the government, but there isn’t a big supply of it for everybody to use like here. Some agencies and companies print them with an expiration date and if they aren’t cashed in the credit goes back to your account and the note is void, so there isn’t a bunch of it out there floating around. You can’t save them up. Some you have to sign, to validate where you spend them.”
     “That all sounds like it is intended to avoid a hot economy. Restricting the money supply always keeps a lid on development. But, Dear God Martee, don’t tell our government anything about perishable banknotes. They’d embrace the idea, but forget the part about the unused value going back in your account. It would just be another hidden tax on people who let them expire.”

     Sound like anything you’ve heard proposed recently?

The Most Obscure Beatitude

     Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. – Matthew 5:3

     Have you ever pondered the first of the Beatitudes, Gentle Reader? Were you uncertain about what it might mean? Perhaps, given that the Sermon on the Mount is deemed an indispensable roadmap to living a Christian life, you were baffled by what it commands of you. Those are all common reactions to Christ’s declaration that the “poor in spirit” are blessed, or will be.

     As the Sermon on the Mount was the first of Christ’s great pronouncements on what God wants of us, it’s appropriate that we should give it serious thought. Yet Christian clergy of all denominations have been tentative, muddled, or both in explicating it. Their parishioners have endured a fair amount of confusion as a result. I endured a muddled discourse on it this very morning.

     So for what it’s worth – which will be for you to decide – I’ve decided to put my own shoulder to this wheel.

***

     First, imagine the following dialogue between our old friends Smith and Jones:

Smith: The Giants will host the Pygmies this coming Wednesday at Oversized Arena!
Jones: Of course I know! I’m a huge Giants fan.

Smith: So am I. I’ve got two tickets to the game. Want to come with me?
Jones: Sorry, I can’t, but I’ll be with you in spirit.

     What did Jones mean by his last statement above? Surely not that his ghost would sit beside Smith (or hover above his head) during the game. As he’s another fan of the Giants – the only maze-hockey team worth following after the recent barrage of trades – Jones will be rooting for them against the Pygmies just as Smith will. So while he can’t attend the game in person, Jones will be pulling for his team right along with Smith. He’ll be there in spirit, though his cheers and exhortations will be inaudible to Smith.

     That’s one approach to “poor in spirit.” There are poor persons in the world, and while we may not be numbered among them in fact, we can empathize with them. We can and should assist them when and as appropriate, just as (we hope) they would do for us were our circumstances reversed.

     While it’s a valid interpretation, it’s not the only one – nor is it the most important one.

***

     To say “I’m poor in X” implies a corresponding hunger for X, or for those things that go into making X. If you were to say instead “I don’t have any X,” it would lack that implication; you might want some, or you might not. To express a poverty of any kind says concurrently that you want more of whatever it is you’re poor in.

     “Things of the spirit” are of several varieties:

  • Faith in God’s love;
  • Hope of His mercy;
  • Comprehension of His will;
  • Humility in thinking of and dealing with others;
  • The cardinal virtues:
    1. Prudence;
    2. Temperance;
    3. Justice;
    4. Fortitude.

     With those things in stock, the love of God and neighbor, as Christ prescribed to us in the two Great Commandments, becomes achievable. But the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican comes to mind:

     Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
     And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
     I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

     [Luke 18:10-14]

     The humble man never says to himself, “Okay, I’ve got the virtues in good supply, so I can stop worrying about them and concentrate on other things.” Neither does he judge others’ supply of them. The virtues aren’t merely abstractions to be honored in one’s skull; they’re perishable skills that must be exercised through one’s words and deeds. The humble man works at the virtues, practicing them consciously when the opportunity arises. Should his hunger for the things of the spirit ever fail him, he’ll be in trouble in the hereafter.

     This is a more imperative interpretation of “poor in spirit.”

***

     I don’t claim the above to be exhaustive or definitive. It’s simply my take on the first Beatitude. I’ve never heard any priest, minister, or lay preacher utter a comparable interpretation.

     The usual closure at this point would be “Your mileage may vary,” or something like it. But however you approach the Beatitudes, let’s pray for one another and ourselves that:

  • We come to understand them as Christ intended;
  • We’ll practice them assiduously throughout our lives.

     A roadmap is of no use unless one follows the course it indicates. So also with the Beatitudes.

     May God bless and keep you all.

The Ugliest Front In The Race Wars

     Full disclosure: I’m married. I’m not going anywhere except to the grave. Hopefully, neither is my wife. So you wouldn’t think the subject of racial preferences in dating would be of intense personal interest to me. However, as it happens, I have some relevant experience with interracial dating: all of it bad.

     It’s natural to prefer the company of one’s own kind, and supremely so when the subjects are love, sex, and procreation. However, there are institutions that have made it their policy to “debias” white people’s “desire.” Some of them have effective control over our entertainment and our Web experiences. Jason Kessler has a video on the subject. If you’re 1) white, and 2) easily angered, you might not want to watch it.

     As it happens, many American singles go looking for love through an online dating app. I have no idea what frequency of success they enjoy. However, it’s become apparent that the one thing a white singleton looking for a sweetheart must not do is to state openly that he’s looking for a white date. That, we are told in stentorian tones, is racist:

     On the surface, the dating site Where White People Meet – launched in late 2015 by a married man who publicly defended the site, for white people who want to date other white people, by stating he isn’t a racist because he dated a black woman once – may seem like a fair endeavor. There are lots of dating sites catering to people of certain identities, like jdate.com for Jewish people or ourtime.com for those older than 50.

     But while sites catering to specific religions help adherents meet requirements of their faith, and sites for people with shared interests help connect likeminded souls, Where White People Meet is just another example of racism. White people are already one of the most desired demographics on most dating sites anyway. And according to a recent study out of Australia on online dating apps, people who display a marked romantic preference for one race are more likely to be racist.

     If you search for “Dating apps for whites,” you might find one or two – I did – but you’re guaranteed to find articles denouncing them as well. I searched for “dating apps for blacks” and “dating apps for Asians,” and failed to find any such articles. The distinction could hardly be clearer.

     But Quartz wants you to know that you don’t need a dating app for whites:

     The creator of the online dating website WhereWhitePeopleMeet has been getting some questions about why he and his wife would build such a site. The answer, according to the website’s “About Us” page, is “why not?”

     But despite criticisms that the website is inherently racist, Sam Russell, the 53-year-old Utah man who founded the website with his wife Tami, told the Washington Post that the site is not racially motivated in any way. He insisted that it was born of the idea that singletons of “every origin, race, religion and lifestyle” can find someone for them, even white people.

     “It’s about equal opportunity,” Russell said. “The last thing in the world I am is racist.”

     He compared WhereWhitePeopleMeet to Christian Mingle and Farmers Only as examples of preference-based dating websites. In addition, there’s also Tinder, for mobile-first millennials, and Hinge, for anyone who’s afraid of Tinder, and Grouper, for those who prefer to bring two friends along to blind dates. The League caters to a crop of Ivy League graduates and high-earning young professionals. Grindr is a popular option for gay men; Her bills itself as a dating app for lesbians built by lesbians.

     But what seems to have escaped Russell is that white people can already find each other with ease on these apps—and in real life, especially in Russell’s state of Utah, which is 91% white. The country as a whole is 77% white. ”Where White People Meet” could pretty much describe almost every online dating website.

     Got that? It’s all in your head! The constant hectoring about “white supremacy,” the barrage of “anti-racism” ploys and pitches, the demands for “reparations,” the barrage of entertainment that always contains an interracial couple, and the instant, savage condemnations of any mechanism by which white people can find one another for any reason or none. You’re imagining it all! It’s just one more artifact of your “white privilege” and your “systemic racism.”

     As I said, I have some experience in this matter, though it was pre-Internet and conducted through a dating service. Today, as singles strive to connect with someone to love through the Web, the tech giants are doing their best to “debias our desire.” What’s that you say? You don’t find black or Asian woman attractive? You prefer to be with your own kind? You want your children to look like you? YOU RACIST MONSTER!

     Many years ago, when I first confronted the thesis that there’s a sotto voce genocide in progress against the white race, I was skeptical, to say the least. No longer, though I have no idea how to counteract it. I hope someone is working on it.

Conditional Hypotheticals

     “Say, what if there were no hypothetical questions?” – Originator unknown

     I found this at Ace’s place:

     I can’t speak to whether the figures cited are accurate. However, the suggestion that persons of below-average intelligence would have trouble understanding such propositions seems like that most uncommon of all things, “common sense.” Moreover, when a hypothetical is buried two or more layers deep, such that it occupies a “nested fantasy” universe, I’d imagine even bright people would have some difficulty with it. It requires the patient, accurate operation of mechanisms most people don’t possess, much less exercise regularly.

     And it bears directly and heavily on storytelling.

     I use the technique called “framing” – the embedding of the “main” story within a “frame” story whose action and dialogue occur later in fictional time – fairly often. I employed it in Chosen One, Polymath, Statesman, Love in the Time of Cinema, Antiquities, and The Warm Lands, and I feel it served my purposes well. But it can be confusing if done poorly.

     Formatting the “frame” segments to distinguish them from the “main story” segments, which is my approach to maintaining clarity, can help the reader to keep the two timelines separate. Other writers prefer other methods. But however one goes about it, any deviation from regularity in treatment can produce an incomprehensible mess.

     Now imagine that in a tale structured that way, one character within the “main” story tells an extensive “inner” story to an interlocutor. Imagine further that the “inner” story contains a dialogue between two persons, one or both of whom appear in the “main” story. Can you see the difficulties the reader would face in keeping the timelines and events properly segregated?

     It can get worse, of course. Imagine that within the “inner” story, one of the “main” story characters proposes hypothetical questions to another – questions that bear indirectly on what happens in the “main” story. At this point, the reader is struggling to separate what’s happened in the various timelines and to what extent those “inner” story hypotheticals, and the conditions on which they’re based, drive the events in the “main” story.

     I’ve never done such a thing, and I hope never to feel an irresistible urge to do so. I don’t know of any popular writer who’s done it, either. It would make the hash some storytellers make of their verb moods and temporal referent language appear simple and clear by comparison.

     Add it to the list of pre-anathematized practices all storytellers should avoid. Complexity for the sake of describing truly, unavoidably complex events is forgivable; enmeshing your reader in a maze of timelines, hypotheticals, and conditional propositions that require a CPM chart to keep straight is not.

Deep Fakes on Ace of Spades ONT

Follow the link – it’s eerie to see just how ‘real’ this looks.

What’s really interesting is a comment made on Ace of Spades about the uneasiness most of us feel about ‘almost-human’ entities:

Food for thought: The existence of the uncanny valley means that sometime in the history of our species, there was an evolutionary or survival advantage to being uneasy about things that looked almost human, but weren’t.

In the past, there had to be ‘close enough’ species that interbred with ours. The offspring would be closer to our genome, but not quite. Acceptance of a stranger with a body composition near to ours would not necessarily be a good idea, particularly if that stranger held some attraction for the females in that group (not uncommon, women then, and today, are often attracted to men on the edge).

Which brings to mind:

Were most wars of the prehistoric era intra-species combat? Did the outcome decide the fate of the human race? And, does our almost instinctive suspicion towards those exhibiting ‘almost right’ traits reflect the past need to keep the barriers up, lest our genome be overrun?

We clearly interbred. Analysis of current DNA shows some variance in the incidence of Neandertal and Denisovan genetic markers, but it’s present in a significant portion of the White and Asian races. It’s nearly completely absent in those of African heritage (unless they have White/Asian ancestors).

The apparent correlation between those humanoid sub-types in the DNA, and superior abilities in math and other STEM subjects, speaks to the idea that interbreeding was a major advantage to humans. It may have made our modern society possible. I’d love to know whether the traits are tied to the X or Y chromosome. That would give us a clue as to whether humans were the aggressors, or those other types were. It may have been somewhat mutual.

I hope some of these questions are answered in my lifetime. It just fascinates me.

It’s Plain And Open Now…

     By now you’ve heard about the Project Veritas capture of a Director of Pfizer, Jordon Walker, talking about how his employer might perform a “directed evolution of the COVID-19 virus so it can devise new vaccines for the variants. Here’s the video:

     Here’s James O’Keefe himself to tell you why YouTube is suppressing that video:

     It’s always been something of an “open secret” that Google and YouTube censor those emissions they disfavor for political reasons. Now it’s right out in front of God and everybody, as blatant as a fart in a cathedral. Decide for yourself what that means to you, Gentle Reader. I shan’t insult your intelligence by explicating it for you.

One Of My Heroes Is No Longer With Us

Gerard Vanderleun:
December 26, 1945 – January 27, 2023

     For many years, Gerard set the Web standard for graceful and evocative writing. Whether in poetry or in prose, and regardless of the subject, his pieces consistently demonstrated what I call “The poet’s gift:” The right words in the right order. One who loves this language of ours could not help but love him. He will be remembered widely, long, and fondly.

     Rest in peace, my friend.

One Positive to Old Age

I can generally only sleep 3-4 hours at a stretch, before I have to get up to go to the bathroom. That’s true of nearly all of us.

I use that time, when I’m too wired to immediately go back to bed, toread, study, or write blog posts. I’ve been doing that last a lot, lately, both here and at Right As Usual – The Next Generation. I’m no longer trying to be the Founding Mother for a New Generation of Patriots. I’m just linking to important or useful posts by smarter people than I, passing along information I’ve learned that I thought might be useful, and letting people know what my own Next Steps are, in hope of sparking others to think about where they are at.

Oh, and occasionally writing the Get-it-Off-My-Chest posts, lest I pop off in public or in a quiet family dinner. Gotta let the steam out, ‘ya know.

Personal: I’m hip deep in clearing out the junk in our southern house. I’m starting to see progress. I’m in frequent communication with husband and family about my progress, and they’ve given me some good suggestions about handling the process.

I delivered the Radio and Physics talk to the AAPT (American Association of Physics Teachers) last week. It went well, and I’m hopeful that we can develop some projects between AAPT and ARRL (American Radio Relay League). Gotta love these acronyms, doncha?

The warmer weather is helping my joints (other than the recent storm system that came through this week). Doggo is loving the new neighborhood to explore, and I’m getting my mileage in. It’s going to be tight timing, but I’m hopeful that we can clear it up and get it finished in the next month. That would take a big load off my plate, and my budget.

Why I Am Not A Republican

     Republican Party partisans and assorted functionaries have on several occasions striven to persuade me that I “belong” in the Republican Party. I countered that I belong elsewhere – specifically, in that void where no party goes – but my interlocutors seldom take me seriously.

     A nice person on Gab has developed a graphical explanation:

     I feel it expresses a deep truth.

More Likely Than Not?

     One of the enduring characteristics of the Leftist is that he refuses to accept the responsibility for anything that goes wrong. This is utterly evident in matters of public policy, but it’s also visible as regards personal decisions. Two graphics – one intended as black humor; the other a fake headline – illustrate the point:

     The first graphic expresses a truth of the current controversy about the COVID-19 vaccines. The second graphic is a brilliant tongue-in-cheek prediction of what will happen when the Left is finally compelled to notice the elephant in the first one. If the Left can blame the tidal wave of vaccine-induced maladies on us in the Right, it’s likely to do so.

     This is the conclusion of a fairly simple syllogism:

  1. As the Left cannot admit to being wrong about anything, whatever goes wrong must be the Right’s fault.
  2. It appears the Left was wrong about the COVID-19 vaccines.
  3. Therefore it must be the Right’s fault.

     Why mention this in pixels? Because getting this prediction into general circulation reduces the probability that it will come true. It’s anticipatory derision — laughter now for what may come in the near future – and like Satan, the Left absolutely hates to be laughed at. This has two virtues:

  • First, it’s good for us in the Right to take amusement from something so ludicrous;
  • Second, it increases the probability that the Left will admit to having been wrong.

     Now, not everyone who aggressively evangelized the vaccines is on the political Left. Donald Trump certainly isn’t. But a good many of the “Thou shalt get the Jab or be forever shunned” crowd are also on the Left. Leftists are the sort of people most likely to say “If we think it’s good, then it should be compulsory.” (And the inverse, of course.)

     So I suggest spreading this one around. Do it in a good-humored way. Don’t get into long arguments over whether trusting the experts about COVID-19, the vaccines, or both was justifiable on any grounds. Just put it out there and let it make the rounds.

     I expect we’ll get a fair amount of mileage out of it.

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