Gender Is Just Fetish

What happens when you don't have an objective reference standard? How can you test hypotheses?  For example, to say that some substance has a temperature of 135 degrees Kelvin only has meaning because 0 degrees Kelvin is a reference standard and the gradations of degrees are defined as well.

What does it mean to claim that you are "gendered" as a man or a woman? In our world of zillions of genders, what is the reference standard against which we measure gender? If it is your say-so and a biological woman who, without any surgery or drugs, is a man because she says she is, why does she then need the surgery? She's already a man by definition. The changes she is making to her body are not part of our definition of gender at all.

If there is no objective reference standard for man and woman, then gender is simply sexual preference. It's a definition of what gets you off. If I get off to looking at pictures of muskrats while rubbing raisins on my chest, then I should be given my own gender and pronouns if I say it is a gender. And I do.

My pronouns are muskx / musrax.

But if I do get off like that and I do define that as my gender and I do demand you call me by my muskratty pronouns, how is that different from a fetish? A difference that makes no difference is no difference. This, the societal endorsement of ever more bizarre fetishes, is what eventually happens when you abandon objective reference standards.

If 0 degrees Kelvin is defined solely by self-reference or arbitrary feelings, then the entire Kelvin temperature scale is meaningless. It is then useless for drawing conclusions about the world around us.

Sort of like gender.

There Is No Great Conspiracy At Work

Instead, it's the Empire of the Lizards.

Lizards want three things: food, safety and sex. Their primitive brains are designed to optimize life for these three things. If we take those three and add in stimulants that lizards have never experienced like virtue signalling and drugs / alcohol, we get the Empire of the Lizards.

Several books that I've read in the past couple of years trace the decline of our culture to the invasion of postmodernist thought. That is, the rejection of Western traditions and beliefs such as Christianity in favor of secular relativism. I think that has a great deal of merit and was one catalyst for what has happened, but it was not a sufficient condition. A pack of academic wonkheads blathering in their faculty lounges can say lots of things and never launch a major shift in the culture. When they told us that we could all behave like lizards is when it took off. In fact, they told us that lizard life was morally superior.

Politicians, the media and the entertainment industry have done the same thing. Everything should be free and anyone who doesn't endorse your Lizard Life is a bigot! Each group is maximizing their own self-interest equations. It's not a conspiracy, it's a natural Lizard Alliance. They're all lizards, too and by making common cause, they can get what they want.

When we find logical fallacies in their arguments, we're only doing part of the work necessary to push back on the Empire. Douglas Murray points out in his excellent book, The Madness of Crowds, that if we're waiting for the Lizards to collapse due to internal contradictions and outright nonsense, we'll be waiting a long time. If it was going to happen, it would have happened by now.

Tucker Carlson suggests that the Lizard Empire's response is to silence you so that the contradictions and misery remain as invisible as possible. I find that quite persuasive.

I don't want to make this too long of a post, so I'll close with this. The Empire of the Lizards lacks structure and predictability. Who could have predicted a few years ago that we'd now be allowing sexual perverts to engage in child-grooming in our libraries and defend that so vigorously? The Empire is by it's nature chaotic as it is an uncontrolled mass of lizards. I think you could argue that in the end, chaos will lead to tyranny as long as that tyranny promises to make the general lizard population content even if it doesn't make them happy.

Hmmm.

Happy Thanksgiving!

From George Washington's original proclamation of Thanksgiving:

By the President of the United States of America. a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor—and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be—That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks—for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation—for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war—for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed—for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted—for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

For myself, I'm giving thanks for the great good fortune to have had mama kitteh in my life for so long and for both her and my father loving, guiding and teaching me throughout life. Thanksgiving indeed.

Giving thanks with the morning coffee.

On Flowers And Ladybugs

My tobacco plants are all in bloom. For the size of the plant, most are over 4' tall, the flowers are small and rather unremarkable. I left the photo below large, so it might be worth a click.

While I was tending my mom, the plants collected some little, black bugs. It's a small population, but they are clearly feeding on the tobacco, getting a nicotine high at the same time, I'm sure. I'm exhausted from the emotional ordeal of losing my mom and being visited by the sheriff, so I haven't bothered to identify the critters. Aphids, perhaps, but who knows and right now who cares.

Yesterday, I stopped at a garden center and bought two helpings of ladybugs. The instructions tell you to release them at dusk so they spend the night on your infested plants and don't just fly off. Whatever. I've always followed those directions in the past, but this time I dumped them out on the tobacco patch around noon. They immediately got active, crawling around and making short flights. I figured they'd slaughter the invaders as they normally do before taking a powder. Up to now, I've had terrific results every time I'd brought in the ladybug cavalry.

Not this time. Sure enough, by the end of the day, there weren't more than 10 ladybugs in the patch. Everyone else had flown away. Greener pastures, I suppose.

Oh well. It's too cold for the infestors to reproduce rapidly, so I think the tobacco are safe.

With The Fences Down

... the only thing stopping us from engaging in previously unacceptable behavior are the marks on the ground where the fences used to be.

I saw something on Twitter about Cosmo running an article telling women how awesome sex with your dad could be. There was an interesting conversation in the replies with not a few people asking, "What business is it of yours what consenting adults do?"

Or consenting teens with consenting adults, perhaps.

And there goes another taboo, trampled underfoot by the herd, some of whom want to make sure their fetishes are protected and some who want the adulation that comes with being non-judgmental. The old fences are down and the folks who used to be on the outside are now beckoning to the rest of us to join them. After all, there's no reason why not if you can't derive your morals from first principles.

That made me think about pedophilia and the trans movement. If it's OK to permanently damage children's sex organs through chemicals and surgery just because the child says they want it, why isn't it OK to temporarily "pleasure" a child's sex organs if the child says they want it?

A while back, I read a Jeffrey Epstein quote to the effect that eventually, pedophilia would be acceptable. If you can't explain why not, then it's bound to happen.

Jethro, I do believe that dilapidated fence isn't going to stop the herd running wild.

Back In The Saddle

Mama kitteh passed away yesterday. If you think that's the most stressful thing that happened, I am here to inform you that it was not.

Once the dust settles, I'll address that. In the meantime, I'll be back in the saddle, blogging shortly.

Love you guys, love mama kitteh, even love the folks who tried to put me in jail.

Yep, you read that right.

Now go say your prayers and have a beer.

Come With Me

Today, for the first time, my mom realized that she's dying. She's probably a day or so away.

As we talked, she asked me in tenderness and love, "Will you come with me?" She didn't completely understand what she was asking. She just wanted her son to be with her all the time.

As I teared up, I said, "No, mom, I can't come with you, but you'll always be with me."

Admitting I Was Wrong

Wife kitteh is tending to mama kitteh right now, so I've got a break and can blog.

If you've missed a previous chapter in this story, 90-year-old mama kitteh is dying. She's got a broken hip, is bedridden, practically blind, needs oxygen and a feeding tube and is partially demented. In her demented thrashing about the other night, she ripped out her feeding tube. That's actually a good thing as it will accelerate the process and she is that much closer to joining her husband of 68 years, my father, who died about two years ago. She misses him tremendously and I'm sure he misses her as well.

On with the show.

Sitting with mama kitteh while she has drifted through morphine dreamland, I came across a collection of Kipling stories on her bookshelves. I've always been a fan, but considered him not quite as good as Charles Dickens, who I felt was the greatest writer of all time. I was wrong. Kipling is simply unmatched. His writing is a hybrid of poetry and prose, condensing oceans of information into single paragraphs. Consider this from a short story that you've never heard of before, Only A Subaltern.

Papa Wick had been a Commissioner in his day, holding authority over three millions of men in the Chota-Buldana Division, building great works for the good of the land, and doing his best to make two blades of grass grow where there was but one before. Of course, nobody knew anything about this in the little English village where he was just ‘old Mr. Wick,’ and had forgotten that he was a Companion of the Order of the Star of India.

In a single paragraph, Kipling gives you a rich sketch of Papa Wick's life, his personality, his place in the world and the way the world used and rewarded him. Your imagination can fill in stories from his life with ease. That paragraph simply blew my mind. It's pure genius. It's so good that it filled me with excitement and I've read it over and over in awe.

I was indeed wrong. Dickens is fabulous, make no mistake. But then there's Kipling and as far as I've read, there's none better.

All I can say is, "Dude."

Fox News Sucks

... and that's saying a lot as it's the best of the bunch. CNN and MSNBC are simply intolerable.

Sitting with mom while she passes, we've been watching her favorite channel, Fox News. She's in a hospital bed in her living room with the TV right in front of her. It's a measure of where she is in life because she never watched TV and never stayed in bed. She was always out accomplishing something productive. There's even a scholarship named after her at a local junior college. She was that kind of woman.

Anywho, as much as I agree politically with mom, which is 90+%, I've discovered I can't stand Fox News. Even Tucker, whose speeches I love and whose YouTube snippets I devour with relish, is horrible to watch. I hate the whole circus. It's just rabid, clickbait panting. I want to be cooking or gardening or doing something, anything while listening to redneck music instead. I do like to watch football and soccer, but news shows where they sit at a table and discuss what Important People did today make me itch.

The Important People aren't important. You're important. What you accomplish is important. Screw what they think and say. You'd be far better off learning to make sauces or working out or praying the Rosary than consuming that trash.

After walking through the meaning of life on this blog for more than 13 years, watching those dingledorks yap is painful. At the end of their shows, no one is enlightened. The debt is still a tsunami off at sea, hurtling towards us. Kids from non-traditional homes are still screwed. Our now morally-untethered culture is still thrashing around in the dark, discovering new perversions to accept and praise. Meanwhile, people watch those worse-than-useless shows thinking something crucial is being said.

Last night, I wondered if social media and the search for eyeballs online and on screen, is a lizard-brain craving for which we have no antidote. Are followers and clicks and ratings the killer virus that will wipe out civilization?

Wild.

Meanwhile, there are dying moms to comfort and caregivers to console and deceased dads to respect. Out of love for all of those and all of you, I'll leave you with this, a photo of a nun with a cat on her back. Details here. That photo is what life is all about in all ways imaginable. It shows love and sacrifice and piety and effort and so much more. Hurrah for nuns! Hurrah for cats!

Love you all. Have a great weekend.

Intermittent Blogging

Momma kitteh fell and broke her hip last week. She gets out of the hospital today. She's 90 and as far as I can tell, there is no way she will ever stand up again, much less walk. The break was pretty bad and required the insertion of a rod and screws. She's 90 and could barely walk even with a walker before the fall.

She's now jacked up constantly on serious morphine doses for the pain. She's not the kind to complain and sitting with her at the hospital is the first time I've ever seen her cry and scream from it.

She's going home to Hospice care. She'd been on Hospice Palliative, which is long term, prior to the fall, but this certainly looks like straight-up Hospice now.

To quote Han Solo, "I don't know how we're going to get out of this one."

Sometimes you don't.

I'll catch you all on the flip side.

The International Symbol For Jeffrey Epstein

I Don't Buy The Welfare Queen Argument

... and I also don't buy the idea that government policy drives out-of-wedlock births.

Susie likes Bobby. She likes him very much. Susie also likes babies. She likes them very much. That tramp, Heather, is always hanging around Bobby, but that idiot is so blind he can't see that Heather is trying to steal Bobby away. Men! Plus, Heather doesn't even really like Bobby, she's just looking for a quick hit of attention.

Susie goes to church. Well, she did when she was younger, but when she moved away to college, she stopped because no one else went. Susie wants to sleep with Bobby, but she also really wants him to pledge his heart to her.

Susie has seen some of the old movies her mom and dad like. They're horribly boring and totally unrealistic, but sometimes, there's a cute part where the couple in love gets married and then sleep together. But not before. They don't move in together in those old movies. 

Let me know when the Republican tax cuts for families or Democrat plans for slavery, err, cradle-to-grave entitlements that only coincidentally sound exactly like Jeff Davis' defense of the Peculiar Institution show up in the story.

See, Susie loves Bobby. Susie needs Bobby. She wants Bobby forever and ever and ever. She wants to have Bobby's babies. 

Bobby is a boy, so Bobby needs Susie, but not in the same way. With that strumpet Heather hanging around, Susie has to play the game everyone else does. If she doesn't, Bobby will probably get his jollies with Heather. Once that happens, Bobby will be lost to Susie forever.

Susie is just one girl in an ocean of girls, some of them virtual. Susie may recall some blah-blah about chastity from Paul's Letter to the Thistletownians, or whoever that was, and she may even crave purity, but at any given moment, that craving for purity gets stacked up against the desire for Bobby and the threat of Heather and porn.

That is only going to end up one way.

Of course, if Heather was shunned and ridiculed for being a tramp, she wouldn't be a threat. If porn was universally condemned and its producers tarred and feathered, it wouldn't be a threat. Susie could relax a bit and have a chance to tease Bobby into popping the question. But this is 2019 and it is America and we're all open and cool with porn and sleeping around even if individual girls would really rather not. 

Oh well. Too bad for Susie.

Republicans: Susie, we'll give three of these a year to Bobby as tax cuts for families and he'll propose!

Democrats: We'll give three of these a year to your daycare provider and you can go work for Megacorp editing spreadsheets! No need for Bobby!

Both, in unison: And it won't cost anyone a thing because we can print more of them any time we want!

Too Many Dogs

5 is too many. Take it from me. I'm watching 5 this weekend in addition to taking care of my mom who is having a rough time. Wife kitteh is off in Arizona at a friend's wedding. I had planned to go, but dogs and momma kitteh intervened.

At the park with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 dogs. One is deaf and wanders off in the wrong direction and one is utterly undisciplined. The three original Catican Guards are awesome.

Evangelicals And ABC

Evangelicals, for the most part, acknowledged Trump's moral shortcomings and voted for him anyway. They were afraid of being slowly, culturally exterminated by the progressives. They thought that Hillary would have continued down the same path as Obama.

Perhaps ABC News scotched the Epstein expose three years ago for similar reasons, even though they acknowledged Epstein and Clinton's moral shortcomings. Maybe they were afraid of white supremacists being organized by Trump into ... the things into which white supremacists organize themselves.

Did both sides fear existential threats?

For my part, I have no idea what it is the progressives fear. I mean real things, not inchoate societal blobs. For the life of me, I can't find anyway to resolve their logical contradictions and overcome mountains of contradictory data like high school test scores. On the other hand, with things like the drag queen story hour stuff and aggressive pursuit of cake-makers, I do see an existential threat to Christians.

Doesn't that make the argument all about proving your hypothesis?

Ignorance And A Megaphone

What if they don't know anything and struggle with critical thinking? The writers at the Huffington Post, I mean. What if they're super-emotional and prone to spazzing out on their keyboards? Like this.

There's no need to click on the link and read the article, Little Greta's sneer captures the essence of the thing.

Scientists say we're all going to die and we need to ban stuff and it might be too late and blah blah blah. There's not a single mention of China in the article.

China's emissions are the only thing that matters when it comes to Global Warming Climate Change. Everything else is noise in the data.

As I continue to try to puzzle out just what is going on around me, the only thing I can think about the HuffPo and the other outlets breathlessly warning us that we're climate-doomed is that they've never seen this graph or if they have, they don't understand it.

Well, that and lots of the scientists like their research funding and the politicians want to grab more power, of course.

Kavanaugh, Epstein And The End

I asked this question back in 2018 about the Brett Kavanaugh attacks in the media.

What are we doing?

Honestly, what are we doing now? By all accounts, the guy has lived his life like Sir Galahad. Some far-left extremist says he felt her up in high school 35 years ago at a place she can't name with people she can't name at a time she can't name and we paused for more than 10 minutes to consider her accusations? It should have delayed things only long enough to stop laughing.

Now it turns out that 3 years ago, during the campaign, while they were howling about Trump's Access Hollywood tape, ABC had evidence and witnesses showing how Elites, including Bill Clinton, were raping Epstein's child sex slaves and they spiked the story.

OK, that's it. They're done. There is no way to recover from this. It's simply a total waste of time to watch the news, read the newspapers or click around the media's websites. All you know is that they are manipulating you by picking and choosing what they show.

Whether it's true or not, it's all fake news.

The Fences Are Down

... and society is finding out that there are no boundaries to behavior or belief.

Alice Roberts is a professor with an excellent resume. From her website:

I make programmes and write books about human anatomy, physiology, evolution, archaeology and history. I passionately believe that universities are about generating and spreading knowledge to the widest possible audience.

I’m a medical doctor, and went on to become a university lecturer. I taught human anatomy to students and doctors, and did research into human origins and disease in ancient skeletons - which formed the basis for my PhD.

She has also discarded rational thought when it comes to the transgendered.

I’ll bet your school biology told you species couldn’t interbreed and have fertile offspring either... biology is, quite simply, messier and more wonderful than some people would like it to be. Ask a clown fish!

— Prof Alice Roberts (@theAliceRoberts) November 4, 2019

Here, Alice is comparing the mental illness of transgendered people with the biological reality of clown fish changing sex.

If you were wondering about the difference, clown fish can perform as their new sex after the transition. The mentally ill cannot. That's biology. That's science. That's fact. Alice, who by all rights ought to know better and in her heart, surely does, denies this. Her analogy is ludicrous, prima facie.

How have we gotten to the point where a legitimate, educated, accomplished science-woman is deliberately spouting twaddle and then defending it online? When she can't defend it, she blocks people who try to engage in rational debate.

You didn’t mention humans...

— Prof Alice Roberts (@theAliceRoberts) November 4, 2019

After which she blocked him.

I would argue that she blocked him because his line of questioning leads to a fence, a boundary on human behavior. She's not defending transgender people so much as she's defending the right to do whatever you want, say whatever you want and espouse whatever you want without contradiction or limits to your actions. I don't mean First Amendment stuff here, I mean disagreement or disapproval.

No one knows where this is going to lead. Like Modern Monetary Theory, discarding objective reality and rational conversation can lead anywhere.

We now allow sexual perverts ready access to our children. When we discarded rational conversation, we found we lost any reason why not.

Happy Backy

... is flowering backy!

Not wacky backy, mind you.

My Cubans have all got flower buds. They hit 3 1/2' tall and now have decided to flower.

Obama And Pope Francis

Two data points.  Connect them as you will.

Whatever the promises the Vatican got from the Chinese government in their recent accord seem to be ignored as persecution of Catholics is increasing in China. https://t.co/BbSlqYHqgS

— 🍂Fr. Matthew Schneider, LC🍁 (@FrMatthewLC) November 3, 2019

And this from Richard Fernandez.

"I still say Kayla should be here, and if Obama had been as decisive as President Trump, maybe she would have been," Marsha Mueller said, referring to the death of her daughter at the hands of ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. "After Kayla's death, the Muellers became outspoken critics of the American government's handling of its foreign hostages. They had been encouraged to keep her captivity secret, and discouraged from attempting to free her or pay a ransom."

Leaving aside the question of whether Obama ever had a good tactical option at rescuing Kayla Mueller, "decisive" is probably the wrong word to characterize the former president's style. Obama knew what he wanted and valued signaling and appearances in a sincere way. He was always signaling. If the Muellers were instructed not to speak it was so as not to jam his carefully crafted messages. By treating Bin Laden's corpse reverently; by an excruciating choice of words and many other ways he was signaling. Always signaling, which he saw as an important part of his job.

To be fair, Obama had a point. Messaging is certainly an important part of statesmanship. What he never quite accepted was that his signals never had the intended effect. Baghdadi was a thug and Obama's punctilio never made it past the brutal filter. Like Dr. Arthur Carrington from the movie "The Thing from Another World," he was always trying to reason with the monster, convinced that words would win the day, little realizing it would not work.

My own take is Matthew 7:15-20.

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them.

Tobacco Shoots Up Fast

I'm estimating that my crop is growing a bit more than 1/2" per day. The biggest ones are now 3 1/2 feet tall. The leaves are massive, too.

We've had a Santa Ana recently, which means the air is hot and dry. The tobacco didn't take kindly to that and some of the leaves burned and withered. Not to worry, there are tons of them that didn't get damaged. I learned the hard way that on dry days, I need to check the plants and water them by hand if they start to wilt.

A Traditional Vs SJW Test

I'd like to suggest that there are two explanations for why groups of people fail.

1. Their culture is a dumpster fire, the collective product of bad, personal decisions made, in a great part, as a result of cultural pressures. We'll call this the Traditional hypothesis.
2. They are victims of oppression. An oppressor class exists and takes all kinds of steps to make sure the oppressed fail. We'll call this the SJW hypothesis.

You can test these two hypotheses relatively simply. Take your data, any data you like, and divide it according to group populations. 

In one group are the homogeneous communities where there is almost no mixing the oppressors and the oppressed. Discard any sets where the dominant group does not also control the levers of power. That is, you don't want a set where the oppressed are the vast majority, but the oppressors still hold most of the political offices.

In the other group are the heterogeneous communities where the oppressed and oppressors live together. It's best if the oppressors outnumber the oppressed and they control the levers of power.

Take a look at the data scoreboard for these two sets. 

Under the Traditional hypothesis, you would expect performance to be roughly the same for both sets or superior for the heterogeneous communities. That would indicate that the underlying group cultures can be modified by the collective culture of the mixed sets or that the underlying group culture dominates. If either condition holds, it shows that oppression is not the dominant factor.

Under the SJW hypothesis, you would expect performance of the oppressed groups to excel in those sets that are numerically dominated and run by the oppressed group. This would indicate that, in the absence of oppressors oppressing, the oppressed would flourish.

You can do this with historical data, too. Going back in time, America was worse for the oppressed  groups. I don't think anyone disputes that. If the SJW hypothesis holds, then the performance differences between the homogeneous and heterogeneous groups would grow as you went back in time.

Of course, none of this matters if you've discarded objective facts and logic. In that case, hypothesis testing itself becomes impossible. If you held to the SJW hypothesis and the data disproved it, then the only way to continue to hold onto it would be to discard objective facts and logic.