Just saw an article noting that a chef had decided use "Aztec culinary tradition" to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Since the major Aztec culinary tradition I'm aware if is ritual cannibalism after human sacrifice, no, thanks!
(seriously, a good portion of modern Mexican cuisine derives in part from the more respectable parts of Aztec cooking, like the use of chilies and chocllate, but sorry...could not resist...)
I am not a huge fan of former President Trump, nor do I endorse his character, but if indeed Alvin Bragg's case against President Trump does not actually describe the crime of which he's accused, and if indeed Bragg's calling "Stormy Daniels" to the stand has nothing to do with whether this crime might have occurred, we need to get the disbarment courts going for Bragg, his team of 15 attorneys prosecuting the case, and of course the judge who should have spotted these obvious flaws and stopped this whole charade.
The reality here is that the "crime"--misrepresenting spending on hush money--is a misdemeanor, with the statute of limitations expired for over five years, but the damage done to Trump and the public (who are paying Bragg and his staff of course) amounts to many felonies. Bragg, his staff, and Judge Merchan should all really be imprisoned for what they've done, especially Bragg, but realistically speaking, the best we can hope for is that they all be disbarred.
And when, Lord willing, the disbarment train stops in New York, it needs to head south to Georgia for Fani Willis and her team. There are very real reasons to put politicians on trial--I can think of some fairly obvious sale of influence by our current President--but when prosecutors have "creative new ideas" on how to prosecute unpopular politicians, they are generally weaponizing the courts, and need to be removed for life from the legal profession.
British actor, an atheist, makes the claim that the Bible is one of the "worst books ever". Well, worst ever, except for being the wellspring of the thinking that made Western Europe and North America some of the most humane culture out there, instead of leaving Mr. Cox to paint himself blue and throw innocent kids on a bone-fire, I guess. And except for the--ahem--institutionalized atheism that generated the world's worst genocides in the 20th Century.
If you read this article carefully, you'll probably notice what I'm noticing; the studies that prove that gas stove use causes unsafe levels of nitrogen oxides in home air does not mention something that most kitchens in the country have; a ventilation fan to the outside.
It strikes me as very interesting that the researchers miss something I've had in every home that I've owned, save one that didn't even have natural gas service to the building. It's almost like they're starting the so-called "research" with the end goal in mind, that of eliminating good cooking from the country.
Apparently, the "lost & found" page for the pro-Hamas, pro-Nazi demonstrators at Columbia includes an entry where the owners of Heinrich the Piglet lament the loss of his suicide vest.
So apparently the neo-Nazis at Columbia see nothing amiss with naming a piglet "Heinrich" (nice German name) and making a hog an emblem for jihad. With friends like these, the only worse enemies Hamas could have are the IDF and Mossad.
And really, when thinking about this, it strikes me that if those who chant "from the river to the sea" need to be reminded that what they're cheering for is the destruction of a mostly Jewish nation of ten million people.
Note to those who do this; just put on your swastika armbands already and start chanting "Sieg Heil". Wave around your copies of Mein Kampf while you sing the Horst Wessel Lied. Want to be a....words not suitable for this blog....then have at it, but be honest about who you really are.
If, on the other hand, you're a sane person, raise a cold one to the brothers of Pi Kappa Psi at UNC and their Greek brothers and sisters who stepped in and protected the U.S. flag from the Nazis. Maybe even contribute to the party they're planning, as it should be a lot of fun.
And of course, pray that some of them get better taste than "White Claw", but that's a side note.
It strikes me that one thing the "trans rights" movement does not grasp is the relative nature of "unclothed encounters" between people.
To draw a picture, when two men or two women encounter one another in a fully or partially unclothed state, they have, assuming a rate of homosexuality of 3% or less, very low odds (0.09%, one in a thousand or so) that both of them will be looking at something they are sexually attracted to in a state which suggests that sexual relations could happen.
However, when two people of the opposite sex encounter one another in a fully or partially unclothed state, the odds are 99.9% that at least one of the two people in that encounter are attracted to the sex they're looking at. Add more people, and of course the odds become virtually certain.
Now with due "respect" to rude jokes about appearance, what this means is this; when people of the opposite expose more than a certain amount of skin, a degree of sexual tension is inevitable. It is, at its core, what's going on when actresses and musicians of modest ability but spectacular beauty put that beauty on display; the attempt is being made to divert the rational mind and engage the hormones. It works.
And so when I consider the reality of "trans women" entering womens' only spaces, it's obvious that this sexual tension is being created, and the relevant question is whether or not they are aware of this tension, and if they are, whether or not they care. At a certain level, we would suggest that people are intentionally breaching womens' only spaces in a way that is....much like "flashing"....a level of sexual assault.
Inside and outside of sports, it's time to make it stop.
A Russian Iskander missile, accurate to within 30 meters and loaded with a cluster bomb, hits a building used as a school, killing at least five people. Double bonus is that the owner has been historically pro-Russian, so one wonders what he did to tick off Putin.
But to the point, you have to wonder what on earth is wrong with people who would launch a cluster bomb at a school. This is why military academies have a fair amount of coursework regarding war crimes...well, at least in the civilized world. Maybe that's not the case in Russia.
"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" comes to mind as I contemplate this study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Why? Well, I presume the underlying data are accurate, but notice how the data are presented; as a percentage of total murders, not as a raw number.
So as a public service, here are the raw numbers. Approximately 1700 women were murdered by intimate partners in 2021, and approximately 960 1080 men were victims of the same crime-approximately 36% 39% of the total. For comparison, in 2017, the numbers were approximately 1500 women murdered (13% higher) by intimate partners, and about 700 men were murdered by intimate partners (about 37% 50% higher). (corrections due to my initial math error)
For comparison's sake, overall population grew by only 2% in this period in our country, so we would infer that the "Violence Against Women Act" is doing a great job of ensuring violence against women--and men.
So why the misleading way of presenting the data? My hunch is that there is a cultural imperative in the BJS to present domestic violence in the same way the Duluth Model does; as an almost exclusively male phenomenon. But when we look at the actual data, we see that unless the LGBTQ+ community is doing a huge proportion of intimate partner violence (and we'd need to review some Supreme Court cases, ahem), we must infer that both sexes are likely to commit this particular crime, and our approach is simply not working.
Let's start by taking a look at the actual data a bit more closely. What portion of the deaths are of spouses? What portion involve adultery? What portion are unmarried couples? What portion are of prostitutes and johns? What portion are "couples for one night"?
Sometimes, we need to take our blinders off and look at data.
...from the National Review editorial board. As I noted yesterday, it's not just an attack on women's sports, but on women and men in general, really anyone connected even tangentially with any school receiving federal funding.
A side note here is that this is a big reason why home educators really shouldn't want school vouchers; what the government funds, it controls. "He who pays the piper calls the tune" and all that.
Side note from the side note; if indeed social workers are working with the schools to transition children without their parents' knowledge or consent, five will get you ten that they're going to be trying to do this with kids who aren't even in the public schools soon. Really, as government bureaucrats try to redefine "sex" on behalf of the LGBTQ+++ community, nobody's rights are safe.
That is, for what it's worth, also what wiser people were saying when Obergefgell vs. Hodges was being decided; that there were clear implications where the protection of same sex mirage by the government would have tremendous implications for the reach of the 1st Amendment.
One of the most important things to remember about the Title IX guidance that has recently become notorious (H/T Riley Gaines) for what it appears to do to college and high school sports is that it's not primarily directed at athletic programs, but at schools in general.
That means that when your daughters go to the bathroom or enter a locker room, the Department of "Education" will in effect be there to make sure that they may be sharing that space with a "trans" person who was born male. When your daughters get assigned dormitory rooms, they may be assigned with one or more people who have a Y chromosome. When your daughters go to gym class, they will need to play whatever games are available with whatever men decide they are "trans" in their school. Oops, sorry your daughter got boxed out by someone 50 lbs heavier and twice as strong in that basketball game and got a concussion!
And when this happens, the guidance more or less says that unless the "trans" person actually sexually harasses others or actually assaults them, they have no recourse. Keep in mind as well that the category of "indecent exposure" does not count if they're in a bathroom or locker room.
If they object to this on their own behalf, or on behalf of a friend, it is extremely likely that they will become the subject of a Title IX investigation. What's worth noting as well in this regard is that the Department of "Education" also has decreed that certain protections of the accused--the right to counsel, the right to cross examine witnesses, the right to a trial by jury, the "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" standard for conviction--are not applicable, but the consequences of being expelled from a high school or college can be a lifelong penalty.
Hopefully the courts will slap this down so hard it makes heads spin at the "DoED", but I don't believe we can just wait on this and depend on them to do the right thing. Send a note to the President and your legislators and explain why this move is totally contrary to the goal of the 1972 legislation that created Title IX, to create opportunities for women and to protect them from poor treatment and discrimination.
The new Title IX guidance for colleges and high schools goes, apparently, to about 1500 pages, close to the length of "Obamacare", and a third the length of HIPAA. So while some are appalled (rightly) that it apparently grants biological males (people with XY chromosomes, for those out there in Rio Linda) access to womens' bathrooms and locker rooms, I'm appalled at the fact that it apparently takes the DoED 1500 pages to discuss a concept that is expressed in only 37 words in the actual law:
No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.
Yes, it's appalling that in the "minds" of people trying to "educate" us, "sex" is equivalent to "gender identity", and hopefully the courts will slap them into next week. It's not as if the common view of "sex" when Title IX was passed by Congress and signed by President Nixon includes "gender identity", after all. This is another great reason why we want not only jurists, but also bureaucrats, to be legal originalists, remembering what the people who wrote the law were thinking.
Regarding the actual objections, yes, I do think women have a right to determine which males may be allowed to see them naked, as well as which males they are willing to see naked--and vice versa. I guess that makes me a reactionary.
Update: another risk of allowing "trans" men onto womens' teams, and into womens' locker rooms, is that it will destroy mens' sports too. The trick is that per Title IX, spots in womens' sports need to be proportional to their student population, with an adjustment for the football team. So if women quit en masse because they don't want to be injured, or because they don't want to see penises in their locker room, or because they don't want to be seen naked by just any male, then those same colleges and universities need to cut mens' sports, too.
We might end up, really, with just football as a sport, which is ironic because football players have, I believe, about the highest rate of sexual assault of athletes overall. Some win for women!
Although I am not a terribly big fan of Harry Potter, I am indebted to J.K. Rowling for her linking on her Twitter feed to the Cass report on the horrors of National Health Service juvenile transition therapies. More or less, it demonstrates that the science behind juvenile transition therapies is inconclusive at best, and one of the big reasons for that many so-called "doctors" are administering therapies without doing any good tests/assays for gender dysphoria.
Yes, you read that correctly. Certain "doctors" in the National Health Service are, in effect, saying "Sure, I'll adminster puberty blockers and hormones, or even cut off your breasts or nuts, without figuring out if you've actually got this condition."
I can only imagine that in other areas. I can imagine someone coming in for blood pressure medications, blood sugar medications, cholesterol medications, colonoscopies, or even open heart surgery, and....the doctors giving that to them without even bringing out a blood pressure cuff, reviewing a patient's medical history, or other diagnostic tools? Seriously? Any good medical center would pull that doctor aside and say "knock it off, or we're firing you and going after your medical license." Or they'd just go directly to the firing and professional discipline stage, as they ought to have known better.
Which is, really, my solution for "doctors" using the "affirmative" model for gender transition therapies. If we can't simply evict them from the medical profession for life, let's at least make the statute of limitations for criminal and civil cases in this area at least 30 years.
(and yes, this is a bit personal with me, as at least one relative of mine is considering some of these therapies)
If we don't choose to hold these so-called "doctors" accountable by force of law, the sad reality is that the fourth box of freedom will eventually be used by their victims....the cartridge box. And suffice it to say that if called for a jury for someone who killed the "doctors" who mutilated him, I'd be hard pressed to find reasons to convict.
A final note is that I found this bit of beautiful wisdom by Mrs. Rowling, one I think is worthy of none less than Winston Churchill or Samuel Clemens, when a commenter claimed there was no reality to biological sex. Put this woman in Parliament, if she'll consent to stand. I am also personally very glad that all six of my children "chose" to gestate in Mrs. Bubba's womb, too, for obvious reasons.
President Biden has apparently claimed that his uncle, an aviator in the Army Air Force in World War Two, was killed and eaten by cannibals in New Guinea. Now the real story is that the plane crashed into the ocean off the coast, and three crewmen didn't survive that crash, but the wag in me thinks it would really be fun to get into TOTUS ("Teleprompter Of The United States") and see if Biden will claim that his uncle crash-landed in the Avocado Jungle of Death.
(but can Biden actually pronounce "Avocado"?.....)
On a call at work, my coworker's search history showed up...."cheeseburger soup with Velveeta". So be very careful what's on your browsing history when you're on meetings! It could show that your taste buds were shot off in the war.
The CDC has published a report on the dangers of infant co-sleeping, noting that between 2/3 and 3/4 of infant "SIDS" deaths occur when the infant is sleeping in an adult bed or with an adult. Interestingly, though, these numbers are far less than the 4-7000 deaths annually that were stated when my first children were young, and then I decided to take a look and see what percentage of parents sleep with their infant children.
The answer? 81% of infants below 3 months of age, and 63% of infants up to 6 months of age. In other words, infant co-sleeping deaths are roughly proportional to the rate of infants sharing beds with their parents, and there does not appear to be a significant relative risk to co-sleeping.
It's also remarkable how much SIDS deaths have dropped in the past few decades, from around 7000 annually to 1500 or less. I'm guessing a huge portion of this is because infants are sleeping on their backs or sides instead of on their stomachs, as used to be customary.
It doesn't mean we don't need to be careful--there is still a lot of bedding that doesn't need to be there with a child, and certainly it doesn't mean that it's OK to come to bed with a child while intoxicated--but it does mean that we've made tremendous progress, and we're at a point where the things we're looking for are far more subtle than they used to be.
