I Hate The Title

Back in the day, when my group at work did murder boards for VIP presentations, there was a running gag. You'd put up your first slide and some wag would say, "Well, I hate the title." Everyone would laugh and we'd get down to the real work of crafting the message. Sometimes the title did, in fact, stink. Most of the time, it was a joke about how some people like to feel important by finding fault with everything. 

And, yes, I do own a mirror. :-)

I'm just starting Richard Rohr's smash hit book, The Universal Christ. I don't hate the title, but the first paragraph made me want to put the book down and never pick it back up again.

In recent years, I have come to see something that my have been obvious to many for a long time. When we argue about religion and theology, we're actually arguing about the kind of world we want to live in.

Italics in the original. Three paragraphs farther in, there are swipes at white men, so you can kind of see where this thing is going.

That gibberish paragraph wasn't written by Rich, who is perfectly capable of writing his own gibberish, it was written by Brian D. MacLaren. Other than the fact that he ends sentences with prepositions and writes nonsense, I have no idea who he is and don't plan to track him down. Let sleeping nitwits lie, I say.

If I wanted a solid definition of religion and theology, I'd turn to Peter Kreeft, but this is a blog post, so it's my job to pontificate with an unfounded air of authority, so, like Brian, I'll just wing it.

Religion and theology are fields of philosophy. They attempt to describe the world as it is. They are governed by logic and must withstand the tests of objective reality. You can do as you like with reality after that. As a Catholic, I'm all in on the Nicene Creed, but the Creed doesn't inform my opinions on tax policy or the designated hitter*.

Conversely, when I argue in favor of personal freedom and personal responsibility, I don't whip out the Catechism. As Ben Shapiro would tell you, it's an argument from authority when the other person might not grant the authority in the first place. If you do grant the authority of the Catechism, it's possible that I might use it was a cudgel in an argument. The hardbound edition on the end of a stick would be most efficacious in certain discussions. Still, it's not universally accepted, so I don't use it often.

It seems to me that in the paragraph quoted above, Brian is telling us what informed his theology, at least in the past. He wanted to trash white men in prose, so he came up with a religion that helped him do that. That's the opposite of the scientific method and logic in general. "I want it to be true, now let's justify it," is no way to build a philosophy.

And so it goes. I'm 20 pages in and trying to remain open-minded. That's not easy to do, but we'll give it a go.

This is a tree from Alabama. It has nothing to do with the post, but I liked the scene. So there.

* - The designated hitter is self-evidently an abomination in the sight of God.

On The UFO Sightings

I think they're pretty cool. It would be wild if it was really aliens from Zorgon-9.

Listening to some podcasts, I've heard takes from all sides. It's a hoax! It's aliens! These things are only being seen in restricted airspace so it's really some DARPA experiment!

The objections that didn't make a lot of sense to me were based on probabilities. Those posit that the process to create life from non-life is so hopelessly complicated and insanely improbable that there's almost no chance any planet within travel distance would have life, much less a civilization capable of interstellar travel. 

Why accept that?

As far as I'm concerned, life was created by God. He made a universe that could sustain it, but not one that could create it from random chance, so, ZORP!*, He made it. Why couldn't He do it any number of times on any number of planets?

After all, the Big Guy loves adventure stories and what makes for a better adventure story than inscrutable aliens doing wheelies in front of the US Navy?

"I see you've met My aliens. Excellent! Have you found out about the iguanas yet?
Ooh, you haven't?
I probably shouldn't have said anything. Forget I brought it up at all."

* - This is a matter of considerable, theological debate. Protestants believe it was more of a KA-THWANG! Hindus describe it as a BLOORSH! Muslims believe it was a big BOING!

Bellingrath Gardens

 ... in Mobile is beautiful. I left the photo below large enough to be worth a click. Enjoy!

Fish Don't Do Nothing

Here in San Diego, we have very few decent waterways, one of which is Pine Creek. It's literally just a creek. That's it. That's all you get in the desert known as San Diego.

The Catican Guards love it because there's plenty of room to romp and chase squirrels. We went yesterday so they could scamper and I could test out my new GoPro Hero 9 underwater. The video looks like what I was always trying to achieve with my aquariums back in the day. Clear water, thriving plants and plenty of minnow-like fishies.

Fishies that don't do anything.

Enjoy?

The Confederacy, Chicago And BLM

I stopped at Natchez Brewing for a pint while on my recent Dixie 2021 adventure. There, I met a young man who lived across the river in Louisiana. He worked as a teacher and an assistant coach at the local high school. He'd just moved from Los Angeles, so we had lots in common. During our 2-hour chat, he talked about the older fellow who was the head coach and whose family went back many generations in the area. The young man told me how the older dude defended the Confederacy, telling family stories about how hard they worked on their plantation back in the day.

I'd seen this before and done it myself - defending ancestors who were guilty of moral wrongs simply because it was great-great-grandpa. When you abstracted what the guy was doing, he was protecting his family name. Had he been from Iowa, he'd have no such loyalty to Johnny Reb. He didn't really have a position on 1850s politics so much as one required by pride.

Chicago

We have friends from Chicago who come over for dinner from time to time. They're older and love to tell stories about bribing ChiTown officials. In one, a guy administering a driving test had to be bribed to pass the student. The Chicago people all laugh and then tell everyone that it may have been corrupt, but things got done. Ha ha!

Of course, they had just driven on SoCal freeways to get to our place, mingling with lots of other drivers who got their licenses from DMVs whose employees didn't have to be bribed. It's not that the bribes got things done, it's that the place was corrupt.

The stories aren't tales of worldliness and sophistication, they're about some GS-9 toad forcing citizens to kneel before him. The $10 isn't the big deal, it's the kneeling to the government worm that matters.

And yet, I understand what's happening. Like the guy in Louisiana, they're not defending the corruption, they're standing up for their home town. To insult it is to insult them.

KT's Theory of Everything - Defending the Brothers Edition

That leads me to BLM and the whole race craze. It's one thing to be proud of great-great-grandpappy and Chicago, it's another thing to be proud of your race. The first two force you to defend the sins of people you've never met, but at least that's somewhat constrained. There are only so many Chicagoans, after all. Great-great-grandpappy may have owned slaves, but he inherited them, he didn't capture and sell them like black Africans did. In any case, death has drawn a line under his list of mistakes. He ain't gonna make no more.

If you identify with your "race," a concept that Europeans and Africans would dispute as they can tell the differences between an Italian and a Norwegian and a Nigerian and a Somali, then there's practically no limit to what you have to defend.

Yesterday, I shared this link of a professor who feels the need to explain away black-on-Asian violence.

A critical race studies and ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder says Americans wondering why Black citizens commit anti-Asian hate crimes have an answer: “White supremacy.”

I sympathize with the guy who has a soft spot for the Confederacy. He's showing family pride. I sympathize with the Chicagoans who think bribery got things done. They're showing civic pride. I do not have sympathy for the professor who is driven to spout insane excuses for horrific acts of cruelty because she's been told that she must identify with her "race."

The first two have well-defined limits. That last one has no bottom. The dude from Dixie doesn't want to return to slavery and the Chicagoans don't want to carry around wads of bribe cash in San Diego. The professor cannot draw a line anywhere because the behavior is ongoing and keeps getting worse.

Like a whirlpool sucking her in with every turn, each evil defended pulls her deeper into the madness. Defending black thugs beating up Asian seniors makes it that much harder for her to escape her emotional trap. What's left of her soul to sell?

She didn't choose this, our modern culture jammed it down her throat. She wasn't strong enough to resist. Not many are. Could you swim out of that whirlpool?

Macro MGB Madness

Macro first. Thanks to Tim's suggestions about using my new 105mm howitzer macro lens on the Nikon Artillery Piece, I ventured away from the auto setting and tried my hand at aperture priority with manual focus. Scary! I sat in my garden with the camera on a tripod and shot bees.

I learned quite a bit. The first thing I learned was that the tripod was terrible for this sort of thing. The handle poked me in the chest and my legs and feet kept colliding with its legs and feet. It was like I was doing the rumba and it was doing the waltz. Not good. I bought a monopod and hope to try it out today.

I learned a bit about focusing and aperture as well. One cool trick I learned was how to take tunnel shots. That is, the bee would be deep in the plants and when I focused on him, it blurred out the surrounding "tunnel" of foliage. Very cool! I didn't manage to get any good pictures of that, but it gave me ideas for the future.

MGBs

I finished my center console yesterday and installed it. The car started up immediately, despite the battery having sat there for months. It was great! I drove the car down the street and the clutch started going all the way to the floor without resistance. Shifting became nearly impossible. I got it into second and limped back home.

The cause was the most MGB failure I've ever had. When you pushed down the clutch, fluid shot out of the filler cap. Amazing! I didn't realize they could do that. At first, I thought a hole had been accidentally poked in the filler cap, but when I examined it more thoroughly, I discovered that there is indeed a pinhole in the cap, probably to allow for pressure relief. The line is so clogged that all of the fluid that's supposed to go down to the clutch slave cylinder is instead escaping through the tiny hole in the cap. Hence the jet of Dot 3.

Today, we'll tear the master cylinder apart and see what's wrong with it.

KT's Theory Of Everything, Madness Edition

Dig this.

A critical race studies and ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder says Americans wondering why Black citizens commit anti-Asian hate crimes have an answer: “White supremacy.” ...

“Anti-Asian racism has the same source as anti-Black racism: White supremacy,” Ms. Ho wrote for The Conversation. “So when a Black person attacks an Asian person, the encounter is fueled perhaps by racism, but very specifically by White supremacy. White supremacy does not require a White person to perpetuate it.”

Ms. Ho isn't an idiot, it's just that she's been driven insane trying to carry out her assigned task of squaring the circle of racial justice. Here are her boundary conditions.

• Everything is about race
• Blacks are oppressed
• Whites are oppressors
• Lately, there have been a lot of blacks attacking Asians

It's not possible to satisfy them all, but she's trying to do it. That's enough to drive anyone crazy. She's not evil, she's just one of those people that struggles with seeing that a task is impossible.

Poor Ms. Ho is trapped in a system that can only produce madness. I don't feel scorn, but pity. We all have our weaknesses and difficulty noticing that her social justice mission can't be done is hers.

Political Atheism

I'm not an atheist, but as far as I can figure out, if an atheist hears a Lutheran and a Muslim having a theological discussion, an excellent option is to stay out of it. What difference does the conversation make since they're essentially debating fairy tales? Who's better, George MacDonald or Andrew Lang?

I admit, that question was a gimme. Andrew Lang wins that race, going away.

We had friends over for dinner the other night and I think I was the only one in the room who voted for Trump. Politics came up, as it sometimes does when wine is poured freely, and after the compulsory Orange Man Bad yelling had been completed, I was queried about my opinions. Not having imbibed much at all, I was simply observing and pondering. I deferred.

What I decided, as one person was going on and on and on* about Trump's personality flaws, was that I had become a political atheist. That is, while I'm a Republican and a staunch fiscal and social conservative, I don't think politics matter all that much. Vote however you want, the powers at work in this country are beyond the reach of political control.

Venice Beach As Infantry Combat

For those of you who aren't familiar with SoCal, Venice Beach used to be a hip place. It's where the body builders hung out. The neighborhood was pricey and the people were of the Right Sort. That morning, I had come across Venice Beach Boardwalk on Twitter. Choosing nearly at random, this is what Venice Beach looks like today.

Venice Beach Boardwalk - Friday May 21, 2021 6:51am pic.twitter.com/MS1rwyA7WI

— Venice Beach Boardwalk (@BoardwalkVenice) May 21, 2021

Vote all you want, it makes no difference if you are incapable of enforcing your laws or extracting taxes. Sure, you can hand out printed money, but that's just about it. No matter who has the title of Mayor of Venice or Venetian Gauleiter or Archduke of the Boardwalk, if their infantry - the police - can't or won't make the residents follow their orders, they ain't Archduke of nothing.

Chicago As Infantry Combat

The same goes for ChiTown. Dig these from the Chicago crime website.

Carjackers aren't caught.

Murderers aren't caught.

Look, I get that Lori Lightfoot is beyond criticism because she's black and she digs other chicks, but let's get serious for a moment. She makes rules and her subjects ignore them. Lori's cops do not control much territory. You could stack lubed-up lesbians of color 8 deep in the Wacker Building, give them all Official Titles and right outside, there would be carjackings and shootings.

Who cares what votes were cast? We're post-political here.

See also: $30T debt, ramifications of.

* - and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...

I Don't Know Why I Was Surprised

 ... I had figured this out on my own long before seeing the video below. It's simple fluid mechanics.

When they tell you to "follow the science," what they're really saying is, "follow what I tell you."

Science isn't obedience.

You can perform your own, simple experiment to validate what that video demonstrates. Put on your mask and take a deep breath, then exhale. You can feel the wind of your exhalation go past your skin. For me, I feel it mostly on my eyes as the air, which is a fluid, flows out through the gaps around my nose. Of course it does. Those gaps are the easiest way to relieve the pressure inside the mask as you exhale.

I've started going back to the gym and lifting weights. Everyone there is wearing a mask, but loosely so we can breathe heavily as we work out. That means they aren't doing a blasted thing. It's all a charade.

Why didn't I realize this before? I had my own experimental data and saw that the people telling me to "follow the science" were closing hiking trails, where it was practically impossible to contract the Wuhan Flu. I had objective data and the "experts" were clearly charlatans.

It just goes to show how easy it is to get sucked into the popular zeitgeist.

Fiberglass Panties

OK, I'll admit it. That title was 100% clickbait. We'll see if it works.

Fiberglass

On Friday, I painted my MGB center console after having carefully cut out holes for the pushbutton ignition and starter switches, funky key fob, hazard flasher switch and digital voltmeter readouts. It's my third version of the thing and I finally have one I like. Yesterday, I installed most of the parts. I'm waiting for a new, unscratched switch and pushbutton assembly to arrive today. I should have the whole thing done, installed and the MGB drivable by the end of tomorrow.

This represents a major success. No, really.

After that, I'll get my local repair shop to install a new fuel gauge sender and the car will be done.

I can't believe I typed that sentence. Mostly Nothing will probably need smelling salts. Sorry about that, Vermin.

Panties

I keep arguing that the Lizard Empire is a real thing and then Teen Vogue goes out and tries to conquer Moscow. Or maybe Helsinki. In any case, it's an outpost far* from the borders of the Empire.

In witchcraft, one’s menstrual cycle is considered to be an extremely powerful time.

Menstrual Blood Magic: 3 Spells For Your Period

How to make your menstruation magical.

Witchcraft and used panties from a major fashion publication. Well, OK then. Please tell me that's Moscow. Please. I don't want to hear that, no, this is only a small leap from this or that high-traffic website and really represents a consolidating attack on the Moesia salient.

My Lizard Empire is an allegorical construct which describes our sexual mores using a map of the Roman Empire. The Romans wanted a large empire to protect Rome. The Lizards want to make wild degeneracy as acceptable as possible so our own degeneracies seem normal.

To recapitulate my mapping:

• Rome is all acts acceptable to the Catholic Church.
• Italia is all acts acceptable in America, circa, say, 2000 AD.
• You, a person who likes to watch abusive threesomes online, are somewhere in Aquitania.
• Epstein is just barely beyond the border of Dacia. When ABC spiked the Epstein story three years ago, that was an attempt to conquer that territory and make Epstein acceptable.
• Trannies in the library are Brittania.
• Desmond is Amazing, the 11-year-old who dresses in drag and performs in gay bars, is Mauretania.
• Allowing children to choose their gender is Assyria.

Just where using a teen's panties, spotted with menstrual blood, for witchcraft would place you is open for discussion.

* - Maybe it's not as far as I think. I'll admit I don't have accounts on Porn Hub or Only Fans.

Returning The Favor

I recently bought a candle with one of those exaggerated Catholic icons on it. Mine is the Virgin Mary with a big heart on her chest. The heart is surrounded by a crown of thorns and has a gold crown on top of it. It's the sort of thing you seen in Mexican markets down here in San Diego. It's really cheesy and I love it.

Most mornings, I get my coffee ere the sun is up and before I go clicky-click through the Interweb Tubes, I sit in silent meditation and prayer. Since Adoration is still closed locally, it's my chance to listen to The Big Guy.

I was musing over recurring fights I have with my favorite sins and the fact that I keep fighting even after I fail when it hit me that this is my repayment for the crucifixion. Christ was crucified for our sins which means that when I sin, the game isn't over. I can get back up and try again. Trying again is my act of love to Him.

In the above paragraph, I was going to write that it was my "tiny" repayment, but it isn't tiny, is it? I'm human, He wasn't. Well, not completely. He doesn't expect divinity from me, so why should I? When I plan and scheme ways to avoid temptation and sin, it's not tiny at all. It's a nonzero effort on my part. Why demean it?

Anywho, that's where my thoughts took me today. He loved me through the cross. I love Him by refusing to surrender to my weaknesses. Seems like a good relationship to me.

Welfare And Failure

Tim left this link in a comment on my Theory of Everything post. Here's a snippet.

(W)elfare, on paper, penalizes both biological parents living with their children, married or not. But in practice, welfare uniquely penalizes marriage and incentivizes cohabitation. Yet cohabitating relationships are uniquely unstable, and thus not ideal for children.

About half of non-marital births are to cohabitating parents, and an even greater share are to parents who view themselves as being in a long-term relationship. These cohabiting couples are most vulnerable to feel, or substantially perceive, marriage penalties at the point of having a child. While they may continue to cohabit after their child is born, they often eventually separate.

Ultimately, about two-in-three cohabiting couples with children will break up by the time their child turns 12 years old, compared to only one-quarter of children with married parents. By encouraging cohabitation, government policy is tilting the scales toward unstable families.

So we know that traditional, nuclear families produce superior results. We just don't say it because ... what? That's what's been driving me crazy all this time. When I used to do Science!, it would have been inconceivable to see an adaptive digital filter do one thing and then act like it did something completely different. It would never have even occurred to me to dismiss my data.

Dismissing data isn't the act of a scientist, it's the act of a zealot. When you dismiss data, you're telling us that you've lied about your motives.

Chasing The Laser Pointer 

Powerline has this blog post about Nazi Race Theory making it's way into one of their neighborhood schools.

Examples of other unacceptable covert “white supremacy” include thinking “but we’re just one human family,” “colorblindness,” “cultural appropriation,” “celebration of Columbus Day,” “police murdering POC [people of color],” and “bootstrap theory.”

Blah blah blah. Whatever.

The race crazies haven't laid out a path to success or even provided an achievable definition of success. They're just flashing a laser pointer around the room and yelling at us to "do better."

Nah. I'm done with that.

Do better, Kitty!
Do better, Kitty!
Do better, Kitty!
Do better, Kitty!
Do better, Kitty!

KT's Theory Of Everything, Cardi B Edition

Yesterday, I went full tinfoil hat nutjob and suggested that Critical Race Theory and all the rest of the Social Justice gibberish is just a diversionary attack. The real war is being fought over John Paul II's (JP II's) Theology of the Body (TotB). The Secular Left is trying to stave off obliteration by the logic of and overwhelming evidence for TotB.

To make complete sense of this post, you'll need to read the previous one, linked above.

Aside: My blog posts are coherent to me, but I've been told many times that I leave the dots too far apart to be easily connected. The resulting essays appear even more insane than they already are. I'm sure I did that yesterday, in spades. Oh well. This blog exists to codify my mental ravings and the posts are all One Take Wonders. I think I've got a book or three in me which I'll tackle after retirement. There, I'll be much more disciplined. In the meantime, please accept my apologies for any apparent gaps in my logic.

Cardi B Is A Strong, Black Woman

You can find the lyrics to her hit song, WAP, here. Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion both said in interviews that they were proud whores. Here's a snippet of their anthem to whorism.

Ask for a car while you ride (him)

As a defense of this, we were told by news media luminaries and power players in the Democratic Party that Cardi was a strong, black woman.

Huh? How did that make any sense at all? It obivously didn't. It was noise and light, like a flashbang grenade. It was a diversion, but a diversion for what?

The defense of WAP was not a defense of Cardi as a black, it was a defense of whores. "Black" was the shield and whore was the payload.

If there's nothing wrong with this, then me hooking up with guys on Tinder is perfectly fine.

Cardi B built a fort out on the borders of Gaul, claiming more territory for the Lizard Empire. The Secular Left played the race card as a reinforcement of that garrison. When the Democrats pump the Systemic Racism lie, they may be shoring up their base among black voters, but they're also strengthening the defenses of the Empire.

Yelling that Cardi B is a strong, black woman is disorienting to sane people. It's obvious she's just a whore. But the constant and deafening background noise from the progs screaming, "RACISM!" makes it very difficult to think through what's happening.

It's not about race at all. It's a defensive campaign to fight JP II.

KT's Theory Of Everything: Saint Pope John Paul II Vs Critical Race Theory

To recap previous madness here on the 'Post, I claim that the primary feature of modern, American culture is sexual degeneracy. I call it the Lizard Empire, named after the limbic system in our brain, which we have in common with lizards. Your limbic system is only concerned with food, danger and sex. In the 21st Century US, the Lizard Empire reduces us down to our groins.

Here's why I call it the Empire.

One of the reasons the Romans liked a big empire was that it pushed the borders, where lived dangerous barbarians, far, far away from them. The larger the Empire, the safer you were, no matter where you were. I'd like to suggest that Jeffrey Epstein, children in drag and trannies in the library are all part of the modern-day American cultural Empire. That is, acceptance of their behavior expands the empire by normalizing ever more degeneracy.

Remember, your behavior might be degenerate under some definition, but the farther out the borders go, the less degenerate you look.

I've spent a ton of time on this blog taking the Secular Left's bait and arguing that America isn't racist. I fell right into their trap. Critical Race Theory (CRT), Systemic Racism, Intersectionality, whatever you want to call it, is nothing more than a diversionary attack. It's designed to protect the most cherished aspect of their lives, sexual freedom.

In effect, the battle is not about racism, sexism, homophobia or any of the other baseless accusations we face. All of that is a defense against the ultimate enemy, Saint Pope John Paul II. He wrote Theology of the Human Person, aka Theology of the Body. TotB is a wholistic approach to human sexuality. It claims that men and women are incomplete in and of themselves, that they are different in kind and ultimately complimentary. Derived from biology and theology, it argues the cases for traditional marriage, traditional sexual morality and a meaning to life. You can nitpick it, but you can't take it lightly. It's a work of genius.

Acceptance of TotB would put an end to the Lizard Empire. Your own particular perversion would be seen for what it was: degenerate. Everyone engaged in acts that violate the norms of traditional sexual morality has a vested interest in defeating JP II.

BOOM.
"I'll just leave this little pamphlet here. You may read it at your leisure ..."

Individuals, Not Groups

I totally disagree with those who think that CRT is some kind of conspiracy. I don't believe in conspiracies in general because most groups are not capable of secrecy or intricate plans. Most intricate plans fall apart as soon as they contact reality. My Theory of Everything (ToE?) relies only on the self-interests of the individuals. My groups below are self-selecting and membership indicates personal choice and interest.

The foot soldiers of the racial justice movement truly believe in the cause. They are dedicated to fighting hate and white supremacy. They receive heavily filtered information from their news sources like CNN, NBC, NPR and the like. They marinate in a media environment that only tells them about racism and victimization so they think it's real. They are driven by altruism.

The Democratic Party apparatchiks know where all of this is headed. After 60 years of misrule of black communities, the only tool they have to maintain loyalty is fear. The instant blacks begin to think that they aren't actually hated or victimized, they'll wake up to the political destruction of their communities and the jig is up. Without blacks voting as a monolith, the Party is ruined. Some of the left wing political class know it's all a sham, but their lust for money and power overwhelms their consciences.

The entertainment industry can be dismissed without discussion. They're airheads who go whichever way the wind if blowing.

It's the academy where the real evil lies. There's no way social science researchers don't know where the objective data leads. The education industry is the worst of all. They can see what's happening in their classrooms and either don't speak out for fear of reprisal, or are so committed to The Cause that they've lost the ability to reason. Some are so cynical and amoral that any amount of damage is preferable to the alternative presented by JP II.

The SATs Were A Clue

The discarding of the SAT by elite universities were part of what tipped me off to this. It's a great predictor of college performance. It's an objective test with known components. English as a Second Language (ESL) students can do well on it. It's not racist. It doesn't discriminate. It is universal across the country. It provides mountains of excellent data ready for analysis.

SAT scores are reliable predictors of all kinds of things.

Academia is getting rid of the SATs to hide the truth. There's no other reason to do it. It's a well-established fact that high school students with mediocre SATs will almost always flunk out of elite universities. The academics see this all the time and they don't seem to care.

SAT scores correlate strongly with family structure. JP II was right.

The Slaughter In The Streets Was A Clue

Black Lives Matter can't possibly be about black lives. We've been chasing the specter of white supremacy for almost a year with support at every level of society and we've ended up with mountains of extra dead blacks. It's simply impossible to believe that they care about blacks.

Murder rates correlate strongly with family structure. JP II was right.

A breakdown of murder by race in Chicago. Remove blacks and you've got a pretty peaceful city. BLM's take on this is silence. BLM was never about black lives.

A Battle of Hypotheses

In the end, the cultural war in America is really a battle of two, diametrically-opposed hypotheses. One is that America is racist. People of Color (PoCs) are victims of white supremacy and systemic racism is everywhere. 

The other hypothesis is JP II's. It's all about family. Here, "family" means accepting human biology and a higher purpose for our lives. That leads to inescapable conclusions about sexual behavior.

For the Lizard Empire, that leads inevitably to the sack of Rome.

The carnage wrought by traditionalists would be incalculable. Here, you can see women who stopped twerking to shield little boys who were in the act of dancing at gay strip clubs. Horrible. Simply horrible.

The defeat of TotB and JP II is an existential question for the Secular Left and the Democratic Party. That's why they are stopping at nothing to destroy the objective data, silence speakers on campus and crush alternative media. If the Truth gets out, they're finished.

Off To My Padded Cell

And that's all I have time for now. I'm going to go out into my garage, turn on my Jesus music and finish my MGB wiring once and for all.

Meanwhile, my wife will be out spreading Catholic hate in the form of food for the poor.

Feel free to shoot holes in my theory in the comments.

The Lizard Empire Is Throwing Away The Data

 ... that's what we're doing by discarding the SATs here in California.

The University of California system will no longer require SAT and ACT scores for admission after reaching a settlement agreement, a statement from the UC system said.

UC first announced the new policy on April 1, 2020, for incoming freshman in fall of 2021, and in May of 2020 the regents board extended the policy for 2022 and 2023.

However, the UC system said it would allow campuses to make the tests optional for freshman admissions for fall 2021 and 2022.

A judge ruled in September, though, that campuses could not consider scores from students who still chose to submit them.

Ostensibly, this is done because the SAT is racist, but that's nonsense.

This is being done so academia doesn't have to explain the data. Academics have to prop up Modern Nazi Race Theory while mountains of objective data point in the opposite direction. That's what this is all about. If we admit tens of thousands of unqualified black students and they flunk out, that's a small price to pay for being able to cling to Critical Race Theory.

The deepest fear in the academy is not white supremacy, but family supremacy. The racial disparities in SAT scores reveal the underlying truth shown here.

That chart is downstream of this chart.

That last one is why the SATs are being ditched. The Secular Left hates this chart because it destroys the myth of systemic racism. Worse than that, it imperils the Lizard Empire to which they belong. All families are not equal which means all sexual unions are not equal. Objective data proves that conclusively. Unable to defend the Lizard Empire with facts and logic, they're forced to discard the data and silence opponents.

This is a prelude to a future blog post which will provide KT's Theory of Everything. I don't have time to describe it more fully today since the nice men in white coats are coming over for a straightjacket fitting.

With Just A Little Bit Of Work

 ... we can get her back at sea again!

Bon Secour, AL is full of boats just like this. My bet is that every hurricane cripples a bunch of them and then the hulks are left to rot. I'm fascinated by them. I'd love to buy one like this and see if I could restore it. What fun!

Wuhan Flu Update

I got my second shot yesterday and am feeling a bit blargulous today. I'll be sure to consult Dr. Fauci and follow his guidance. 

As far as I know, I should shouldn't should shouldn't should shouldn't should shouldn't wear a mask.

Bodie The Wonder Dog, 2008-2021

The Captain of the Catican Guard passed away on Friday. In human years, he was roughly 80 years old. We're going to miss him very, very much. Wife kitteh, who is returning today from a trip to take care of a family member out of town, is devastated. The girls, Lily and Leah, are stunned and only now starting to return to normal.

He was adored by all and with good reason. He was a very good boy.

One of his earliest photos. I nicknamed him Bodius spasmodius because he was such a high-energy dog.

When he was little, he was quite the handful.

Living with Bodie the Wonder Dog is like living with a four-legged flood. He puts everything he can find into his mouth - socks, shoes, wood scraps, rocks, dirt, flowers, pens, pencils, broken glass, bits of pottery - absolutely everything. Consequently we have to keep everything of value well above his reach. It looks like we're preparing for a hurricane or a breach of local levees. Our countertops are covered with things off the floor and the tops of dressers have mounds of dirty clothes since he can reach into most hampers.

Last night, I was hanging up some curtains downstairs while Bodie was scampering about, devouring something or other. I was absent-mindedly throwing the cardboard curtain rod containers into what seemed to be a trash can on the floor. My wife said, "Don't put that in there. That's not a trashcan, that's Bodie's toy bin." I replied, "You're making a rather fine point there, don't you think?"

He paid attention to the lessons taught by our Maximum Leader and quickly learned Cat Protocol.

He was a patient instructor in his own right, teaching the girls how to be proper Catican Guards.

Fortunately, he was active right up until the end and other than the normal aches and pains that come with age, he didn't suffer.

He's going to be missed sorely. We loved the old man to the moon and back.

Lolcat Of The Day

There's a story to be told, but it will have to wait. I've got pressing issues here involving small dogs.

Have a great Sunday!

Rural Mississippi At 150 MPH

I just got back from my Dixie 2021 trip where I had a wonderful time. I had a hectic schedule in Arkansas and Mississippi, trying to see and do as much as I could. When I got to God's Country - Fairhope, Alabama - I slowed down. I know I'll be back, so I relaxed and let the green beauty and friendly people wash over me.

On the trip, I spent some quality time with my new GoPro 9. I had bought a suction cup base for it so I could do driving videos. The documentation said it was made to be attached to the outside of the car, but I was worried about whether or not that was safe. The GoPro 9 comes with two guaranteed camera replacements, so if the thing fell off onto the road, GoPro would send me a new one for free. Still, it didn't seem safe.

The interior mount gave poor results. The primary problem was the glare off the windshield, but it had other drawbacks as well. I finally gave in and mounted it on the roof of the car. From there on our, the thing produced clear, stabilized movies. I love it.

The film below starts with a shot of driving at normal speed so you get a sense of a dirt road in the Magnolia State. It then speeds up to 4x normal, which would have been about 150 MPH.

Enjoy!

The Scientific Community Is Nothing But Charlatans And Poltroons

Well, the CDC, President Biden and even the infallible Fauci are now telling us what right-wing extremists and white supremacists have been saying for quite a while.

1. Wearing a mask outdoors is idiotic.
2. If you've been vaccinated, you don't need a mask, not no way, not no how.
3. Kids can go back to school.

This isn't science, this is and always was self-esteem pornography. That doctors and hospitals didn't shout out against it is an indication of just how corrupt and cowardly they are. The bloody thing was transmitted through prolonged exposure indoors. Closing our beaches and hiking trails never made sense. Never. And they knew it.

Not only did closing outdoor recreation areas make no sense as a preventative measure, it actually worked against you as it meant more people were spending more time in the one place they were at risk - indoors.

Again, they knew it, but it was all about Orange Man Bad or Social Justice or whatever gave them orgasmic delight.

Wanna know what's next? We're going to "discover" that giving children puberty blockers and adult women insane doses of testosterone is very, very bad for them. It will cause cancer or early organ failure or God knows what else because testosterone in even moderate doses is poisonous to women.

And they all know it.

Wanna know what else? No one in the mainstream media will raise a peep about the prolonged lying and cowardice just like they're not doing it now because Racism or Sexism or whatever gives them orgasms.

I made my living as a scientist for many years. It makes me sick to see what's happened to the field.

Trees And Inflation

It's a travel day, so this will be short. Heading back to the desert in a few hours. Apologies for spelling or grammatical errors I didn't catch in the first draft.

I figured out why I like Dixie so much. It's warm, green, friendly and has plenty of water. That's also why I like Maui. Maui has better snorkeling and diving, but I prefer the food and people in the deep South. I stumbled upon the comparison when I took this photo of a massive tree in the front yard of my VRBO place. It reminded me of the road to Hana.

Inflation

I read only a few econobloggers these days and they're all nearly apolitical and very data-driven. They're not making much of the inflation scare, but I wonder if they're not misapplying lessons of the past. Yes, this is a boomerang moment in the economy and some inflation is expected, but it's compounded by an attack on production through taxation and regulation.

That is, we're printing money like mad at the same time as we take steps to prevent goods and services from making their way to market. We pay people to stay out of the workforce. We shut down pipelines. We keep schools closed, forcing parents to stay home instead of return to work. And then there are all the little, niggling regulations that come with the modern Ds.

More money and fewer goods gets you worse inflation than more money and the same amount of goods.

Just a thought. 

Trees Eating A Boat

Here's another example of predatory vegetation. Yes, those are trees growing up out of the middle of the boat. Amazing.

I left the photos quite large, so I think they're worth a click. Enjoy!

Predatory Vegetation

Today was a bit damp, so I drove to various spots in southern Alabama to take stock and take photos. Photos first.

I mentioned previously that in the South, the vegetation is particularly predatory. I've got a few examples of human structures that are being consumed even as you read this.

Confronting My Prejudices

There are a couple of places in Alabama that are a 2 on the Bortle Scale. That is, they are almost as dark at night as the middle of the ocean and are therefore excellent for photographing the Milky Way. It's going to be overcast while I'm here, so I won't have a chance to shoot the stars, but I did drive to those spots to check them out.

I had expected rural Alabama to be decrepit and a bit sketchy. I was an idiot. It wasn't decrepit and it wasn't sketchy. It was what we scientists call "farmland." 

Sigh.

That was the kind of bigotry that had me sneering at the South up to about 15 years ago. When I realized what I had done, I was bit surprised that my biases had stuck with me even after becoming a Dixiephile.

There's nothing like getting out into the real world to dispel misconceptions.

A Chihuahua Plantation

 ... is what I see here in Fairhope, Alabama. Dig this lovely piece of property.

Down a beautiful, tree-lined drive lies stately Catican Manor where chihuahuas roam free on 40 acres of grasslands.

Can't you just see it? Noble chihuahuas or, rather, chihuahua mixes, running here and there, wherever their delighted hearts and very, very small brains wished. There would be no risk of them running away as they'd never make it to the boundaries of the property.

Managing the situation would be several ill-tempered cats. Perpetually annoyed by the diminutive, frolicking nutjobs, they'd ensure that order was maintained, at least to some degree.

Yes, that would be heaven. Oh, you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

Well, actually, to be honest, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one.

Sigh. Mine is a high and lonely destiny.

Pink

Yeah, this is a cop out post, but to tell you the truth, I'm whipped. I drove from Vicksburg to Mobile with a stop at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Hattiesburg for Mass. Last night was 4 hours of sleep. Not complaining, just ... complaining. I'm sure you can tell the difference.

This beauty is from Bellingrath Gardens in Mobile. It made me think of my mom. It might be worth a click. Enjoy!

Reality Will Trump Disney

Far-right extremists, which may include everyone who thinks $40T in debt might be a bit too much, and white supremacists, which may include any white who doesn't flagellate in racial penance on a daily basis, are noticing that Disney has embraced Modern Nazi Race Theory.

In the past year, Disney executives have elevated the ideology of critical race theory into a new corporate dogma, bombarded employees with trainings on “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” “white fragility,” and “white saviors,” and launched racially segregated “affinity groups” at the company’s headquarters.

Blah blah blah. So what? It's got a half-life of, what, another year or so? Just how much flagellating can the average wokester do before the reality in front of their faces makes them throw up their hands and give up on the thing?

Yazoo City Data

Yesterday, I drove through Yazoo City, MS, the boyhood home of one of my heroes, Zig Ziglar. It was less than the inspiring event I had hoped it would be. I was too spooked to take snapshots as I passed the ruined houses, but I went on Google Street View this morning and grabbed a couple of screenshots. Here's two of them, plus a ruined industrial building plus the test scores of the local, all-black high school.

The house seems habitable, but it's clearly abandoned. Dig the blinds. Blinds? You can't repair or replace blinds? That's got to be the easiest and cheapest home repair job in the world. Pathetic. 

Another abandoned house. Unlike others I've seen in rural neighborhoods across the country, the roofs here are intact. Collapsing roofs are the ultimate marker of doom. In this case, a perfectly livable place has been left to rot.

Best of all, dig the trash. You might make a weak case for not having money to fix blinds, but there's no case to be made for allowing trash to just lay there. Even if the place is abandoned, why can't the neighbors pick it up? It would take 30 minutes and it's free. This isn't oppression, it's sloth.

An industrial building returning to the jungle. In San Diego, I've had neighbors who were swine and allowed their houses and yards to go to pot. In SD, the desert climate means it takes a lot longer for nature to consume a structure. Here in the South, predatory vegetation doesn't give you nearly as much time to react. All of the ruins I've seen on this trip have been partially devoured by plant life.

It's the same story everywhere. Everyone I saw on the street had smart phones. English is reading. Project Gutenberg offers free classics online. 90% illiteracy means you're not even trying.

No Dads

What hit me on this trip was the realization that dads do more than supply money and discipline to a family. They also fix things. It's a cliché, but it's true. Wife kitteh is as competent a woman as you're likely to meet, but tools are an alien language to her. My first wife grew up in a family that built houses on their mountain property with their bare hands. She participated and was very skilled, for a woman. Late in our marriage, I had gotten to the point in handiness that I had to finish every job she started. She was good, but not good enough to get things completed.

So what does it mean to have an 80% illegitimacy rate? It means nothing gets fixed. Everything falls to ruin. Here in the South, with aggressive, imperialist greenery all around you, it doesn't take long for deferred maintenance to lead to a wrecked house.

It's not race. It's family.

Back To Disney

The lunatics goose-stepping around Disney's offices, preaching the Gospel of der Volk, are living on borrowed time. The poor devils suffering through their propaganda sessions can adopt all the anti-racist postures they want for all it matters. While they're doing it, the ruin will continue.

Eventually, all but the dimmest of bulbs will see that it hasn't accomplished a thing.

Post Apocalyptic

 ... is a good way to describe parts of Yazoo City, MS. Parts are good, but a lot of it has been left to decay by the residents. Dig this photo, which I left large and might be worth a click.

I have a couple more just like it. I don't spook easily, particularly not in the daylight, but this place creeped me out so I didn't snap a lot of pictures. I just wanted to leave. I had been looking forward to visiting because it's the home town of my man, Zig Ziglar. He talked about having a serious inferiority complex coming from poverty in Yazoo, but I had no idea how bad it was.

Of course, not everyone is allowing things to fall to pieces. Here are the test scores from the standardized English language exam at the local public high school.

I have some ponderings to share about what I'm seeing, but I think they will have to wait until I get back to San Diego. I like this little MSFT Surface, but its cramped keyboard is an impediment to long blatherings.

Waterfalls And Butterflies

... have been the order of the day so far on Dixie 2021. I've got more to share, but I've got more to do, too. I'll leave you with these two photos. I think they're worth clicks. Enjoy!

Note to Tim: I didn't take the time to identify the butterfly. If you feel like it, I'd love to know what it is.

The Classic Waffle House Experience

I love Dixie and I love Waffle House. That's all there is to it. Every time I go to a Waffle House for breakfast, I get the same thing - waffle, sausage and coffee. And then I get the secret ingredient: the people.

Le Chateau avec Waffles.

Yesterday morning, I went to the Waffle House in Hot Springs, Arkansas. I sat down at the counter, my favorite place, but I was all alone there. That didn't last. A young man with a motorcycle helmet sat down one seat away. He couldn't have been more than 20 and had tats everywhere, including his neck. He looked like life had been pretty rough on him.

I asked him how he was doing and he told me he was really happy. He had just landed a second job. He was working at a restaurant whose name I can't recall, and his new one was working on a landscape crew. He was genuinely excited to get a gig doing landscape in the coming Arkansas summer. He opened his wallet and showed me the reason. It was a photo of his 2-year-old son. "I'm doing it for him," he said. "I got to take care of him." I didn't look for a ring or ask about mom. That would have been gauche.

A black family came in, mom, dad and ~7-year-old daughter. There were no booths available, so they stood and waited right behind us. Daughter was wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt. This being the South, it's OK to be friendly. I told mom that it had been a while since I'd seen a TMNT shirt as our youngest was at least 17 years older than her. Mom, young enough to be our daughter, beamed. "I grew up on them!"

Tat boy moved over to sit next to me and cheerfully offered counter seats to the family. They smiled warmly and said they really wanted a booth.

We resumed our conversation. I told him my theory that fatherhood makes a man. He blurted out, "I didn't have a father." I smiled and said, "Well, you're doing a fine job of it now." In my mind, I thought, "Now there's a man's man for you." He didn't look like much on the outside, but, by God, he was John Wayne on the inside.

We talked a bit more. He told me he was building a small motorcycle for his son to share his passion for riding. "I know he's not old enough, but he will be soon." It was beautiful.

I finished and paid. As I left, I told him, "You're a good man, son."

He laughed and replied, "No matter what people say!"

I patted him on the back and said, "You can't trust everything you read on bathroom walls, now."

We both laughed.

And that's a Waffle House experience. It's good to be back in Dixie.

Arkansas Is Gorgeous

I'm cooking and otherwise occupied right now on the first full day of Dixie 2021. I'll just drop this photo here and run off. I left it fairly large, so it might be worth a click. It's from Ouachita National Park. Enjoy!

Flowers Wearing Diamonds

We had a bit of misty rain yesterday morning. Along with the mass-casualty traffic accidents that happen every time panicked San Diegans sense the sky gods becoming angry and spraying us with water, it also left some pretty droplets on our plants. Some of these look like the facets on cut gemstones. I left this photo as large as possible, so I think it's worth a click. Enjoy!

On Masks And Normalcy

Once the risks of the Wuhan Flu drop into the region of the standard, annual flu or pneumonia, we should go back to normal. We weren't wearing masks and avoiding each other for those so we shouldn't be neurotic for this.

I haven't done the calculations, but just on a gut feel, we hit the equivalency point about a month ago, once almost all of the high-risk people had been vaccinated. It's all a charade now.

And above all, take off the mask when you're outside.

The image came from this excellent Twitter thread.

Integrating The Lunch Counters On Sunset Boulevard

I recently heard about a church-sponsored trip across the South, visiting a whole chain of Civil Rights museums and places where important events occurred in the struggle for black equality. Pondering how the racial justice crowd clings to the Old Days while here in 2021, black men are being shot in massive numbers by other black men and how black women are getting smacked around since no fathers or husbands are there to protect them, an analogy hit me like a ton of bricks this morning.

They're playing out the movie Sunset Boulevard.

Sunset Boulevard is a film from 1950. William Holden is a writer who needs money and Gloria Swanson plays Norma Desmond, an actress from the silent era who clings to the glories of the past. Decades have passed since the silents were shown in theaters, great art has been created, movie technologies have made leaps and bounds, but Norma can only see the distant past. Those were real stars. Those were the great movies. You'll see. They're going to make a comeback.

Integrating lunch counters in Mississippi was the real struggle. Like Norma Desmond's old movies, it's still going on in the minds of the racial justice crowd. 

Meanwhile, the world outside keeps turning and cares not a whit for the silent movies of 60 years ago.

(I)t simply cannot be disputed that the prevalence of unjust killing and violence in the Twin Cities area has vastly increased since last summer’s protests and riots. Minneapolis recorded its second-most homicides ever in 2020 — after only 1995, when the city was ignobly dubbed “Murderapolis” in national media. And the trend has continued to escalate in 2021: between January 1 and April 25, the number of homicides increased by 92% compared to the same period in 2020. More than 80% of the shooting victims in 2020 were black.

“We’re gonna blow Murderopolis off the charts this year,” one Minneapolis cop told me...

The situation is roughly the same in Saint Paul, which tied its all-time record for homicides in 2020. This year, it is on pace to break that record comfortably. The latest homicide was on Sunday night; a man was shot and killed outside a bar in an apparent carjacking. I visited the bar the following day and there was hardly any sign something was amiss — the manager only insisted that the killing had nothing to do with the bar. (Carjackings in the area have surged to an astronomical degree, as I can personally attest.)

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I would bet my bottom dollar that black girls in the hood are getting thrashed at record rates. Meanwhile, the silent movie crowd is telling black girls that Cardi B is the model for a strong, black woman and only far-right white supremacists thought Cuties was degenerate.

I'll stop here because I'm sure you not only get the point, but can find dozens more examples with almost no effort using less than 90 seconds of Interweb clickery.

I'll leave you with a look into what the civil rights tour will be like.