Category Archives: Humor – Satire – Wry Commentary

Where It All Went Wrong

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When the usual suspects were rioting, looting, and destroying their own habitat last summer (and many previous summers), did you wonder what happened to the Riot Act? Said act, in its original (British) form, provides that

if any persons to the number of twelve or more, being unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together, to the disturbance of the publick peace, at any time after the last day of July in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and fifteen, and being required or commanded by any one or more justice or justices of the peace, or by the sheriff of the county, or his under-sheriff, or by the mayor, bailiff or bailiffs, or other head-officer, or justice of the peace of any city or town corporate, where such assembly shall be, by proclamation to be made in the King’s name, in the form herin after directed, to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, shall, to the number of twelve or more (notwithstanding such proclamation made) unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously remain or continue together by the space of one hour after such command or request made by proclamation, that then such continuing together to the number of twelve or more, after such command or request made by proclamation, shall be adjudged felony without benefit of clergy, and the offenders therein shall be adjudged felons, and shall suffer death as in a case of felony without benefit of clergy.

Would that it were so in these times.

But it isn’t so because the sob-sisters, bleeding-hearts and weeping-willies — who have always been with us — have for centuries (if not millennia) chipped away at the protections that keep the bad guys more or less in line. They have likewise chipped away at standards of performance.

The effective abolition of the death penalty in this country is just the tip of the melting iceberg of punishment.

Awards for showing up are symptomatic of the erosion of standards.

The two phenomena have been conjoined in the left’s treatment of law-enforcement. There are too many felons running loose because pre-felonious crimes aren’t punished harshly enough (a failure that is often justified by the demographic characteristics of offenders); felonies aren’t punished harshly enough; paroles are too easily granted; police (those who are still on the force) are increasingly edgy about “mistreating” suspects who resist arrest; and affirmative action has ensured that law-enforcers are no longer as strong or quick-witted as they were in the past.

What did happen to the Riot Act (British version)? This:

The death penalty created by sections one, four and five of the act was reduced to transportation for life by section one of the Punishment of Offences Act 1837.

The Riot Act eventually drifted into disuse. The last time it was definitely read in England was in Birkenhead, Cheshire, on 3 August 1919, during the second police strike, when large numbers of police officers from Birkenhead, Liverpool and Bootle joined the strike. Troops were called in to deal with the rioting and looting that had begun, and a magistrate read out the Riot Act. None of the rioters subsequently faced the charge of a statutory felony. Earlier in the same year, at the battle of George Square on 31 January, in Glasgow, the city’s sheriff was in the process of reading the Riot Act to a crowd of 20-25,000 – when the sheet of paper he was reading from was ripped out of his hands by one of the rioters.

The last time it was read in the Scotland was by the deputy town clerk James Gildea in Airdrie in 1971

The act was repealed on 18 July 1973 for the United Kingdom by the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1973, by which time riot was no longer punishable by death.

There is still a riot act in the United States, and it is sometimes used. Its use by President Trump during the Antifa-BLM riots of 2020 provoked the usual reactions: “Trump is a racist.” “Trump is Hitler.” And the left’s allies in the media simply refused to acknowledge the riots or, when they couldn’t be tossed down the memory hole, insisted on referring to them as “protests” (“mostly peaceful”, of course).

But the history of the Riot Act in Britain, which died from disuse long before it died officially, tells the sad tale of how sob-sisters, bleeding-hearts, and weeping-willies — and leftists — have undermined the rule of law and made the world a less-civilized and less-safe place for the vast majority of its denizens.

None of this would have happened if God had smitten Adam and Eve for their transgression. Perhaps that’s where it all went wrong.

Seriously, though, it all went wrong in the way that most good things go bad. Just a little tweak here to make someone happier and a little tweak there to make someone else happier, and the next thing you know: the think is all tweaked out of shape. It’s like making a mountain out of a molehill: a shovelful at a time over a long period of time will do the trick.

Related posts: Most of the posts listed here.

Why Not Confiscate Automobiles?

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It is obvious that the aim of “gun control” is the confiscation of all privately owned firearms in the United States. There will be exceptions for private security forces who protect well-heeled leftists, of course.

Why is “gun control” such a visceral issue for leftists? Well, there’s the usual leftist urge to control things, especially “risky” things. This is compounded by leftists’ aversion to things that are associated with masculinity, and which have (male) sexual connotations. (Guns shoot bullets — very Freudian.) Leftists of my acquaintance really do have a visceral aversion to guns. It’s on a par with an aversion to broccoli, which is equally irrational.

Which leaves me with this question: If deaths from gunfire are so horrendous to contemplate, what about deaths from automobile accidents — which claim more lives? (It wouldn’t even be close if suicides by gun weren’t counted — and they shouldn’t be, in this context. We’re talking about people who take the lives of other people.)

Well, in fact the very same leftists who want to confiscate guns also want to force people to use bicycles and public transit. That’s why leftist-controlled cities are rife with bike lanes and light-rail networks (or plans for them). That’s why leftists are so keen on taxes that penalize the ownership and operation of automobiles. (Which doesn’t bother rich leftists, who own fleets of gas-guzzlers.)

So leftists are trying to confiscate automobiles (just not their own).

Ho, Ho, Ho?

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Despite the impending vaccination of most Americans, and the surcease from COVID-19 that should result from it, I am not eagerly anticipating 2021. It will see the installation of the Harris-Biden regime, which in fairly short order will disarm America in the face of growing threats from Russia and China, and impoverish it by tilting at the windmill of “climate change”. Perhaps, when Russia and China take over, that foolishness will come to an end.

The prospect of Russian-Chinese hegemony over the U.S. might have been dreadful (correct usage) as few as twelve years ago, before the advent of Barack Obama’s warm-up act for state socialism. Now, with Harris-Biden poised to complete what FDR, LBJ, and BHO started, and with wokeness in the saddle, Russian-Chinese hegemony may well seem like a logical continuation of the status quo. I take that back: Harvard will have to quit discriminating against Asians, if Harvard continues to exist.

On a brighter (?) note, I am in my 80th year* and rapidly approaching what used to be considered great old age. Which means that whatever happens with Harris-Biden, Russia, and China — or another plague — may not be mine to endure for too many years. Though I do rage — albeit silently — when I think of the lives that my children, grandchildren, and their progeny may be forced to lead.

That wasn’t a bright note, was it?

Here’s one: The flight of tech companies from California to Texas and financial companies from New York to Florida may hasten the bankruptcy of California and New York. And I wouldn’t be surprised if a large number of Blue States join Red ones in refusing to bail out California and New York. I hope I’m around to see it.

Happy New Year?
__________
* For the benefit of anyone who says things like 25-year anniversary, when 25th anniversary is correct, or — even worse — 25-year birthday, being in one’s xxth year means that one is approaching xx years of age, not that one has already reached one’s xxth birthday. I learned this as a lad, whilst listening to a Canadian radio station that broadcast from a city across the river from the one in Michigan where I was raised. In those days, Anglo-Canadians were more British than American in the way that they used English. Americans also used to know what being in one’s xxth year means, witness an obituary of Alexander Graham Bell from The New York Times of August 3, 1922:

SYDNEY, N. S., Aug. 2.–Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, died at 2 o’clock this morning at Beinn Breagh, his estate near Baddeck.

Although the inventor, who was in his seventy-sixth year, had been in failing health for several months, he had not been confined to bed, and the end was unexpected….

The inventor of the telephone was born in Edinburgh, on March 3, 1847.

A bit of arithmetic will tell you that Dr. Bell was 75 years old at the time of his death, having observed his 75th birthday on March 3, 1922. In other words, he had completed 75 years of life and was in his 76th year when he died.

Churchill’s “Divisiveness”

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Sir Winston Churchill said many memorable things in his long and eloquent life. Nowadays, much of what he said would be considered “divisive”, that is, espousing the defense of liberty and reason. Here are some examples (drawn from this site):

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Speaking of Cultural Appropriation …

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… as I was here, I have a serious bone to pick with the parents of yore who broke the gender barrier by giving boy names to girl babies. There was a time when Ashley, Beverly, Evelyn, Leslie, Marion, Meredith, Merle, Shirley, and Vivian were boy names (exclusively or predominantly). The Brits even had girl-name equivalents for Leslie (Lesley) and Vivian (Vivien).

That was in the dim past. Naming has since gotten out of hand:

In 1910, just 5% of American babies named “Charlie” were girls. Over 100 years later, girl Charlies took over their male counterparts for the first time in 2016—making up 51% of the share.

With little fuss or fanfare, Charlie has gone gender-neutral….

Quartz analyzed the Social Security Administration’s public data on baby names to find out whether what happened with “Charlie” is an exception, or part of a wider trend. Our results show that, on average, the country is slowly moving toward using more gender-neutral names. And a few popular names are leading the way.

To analyze the trend, we calculated a “genderedness score” for every American baby name—and for the country on the whole. The score goes from zero to one. A zero means a name is perfectly non-gendered. That is to say, exactly half of the babies with that name are boys, and the other half are girls. A one, meanwhile, means the name is used exclusively for one gender. So a lower score means a name is more gender-neutral, and less biased.

“Biased”? What’s biased about calling a boy by a boy’s name and a girl by a girl’s name? The PC brigade to the contrary  notwithstanding, sex (a.k.a. gender) isn’t “assigned” at birth — it just is.

Anyway …

American parents have long had a strong preference for gendered names. The overall genderedness score was 0.97 in 1920, meaning nearly every kid had a name that was used almost exclusively for just boys or just girls. The score is falling, though. It hit 0.946 in 2016, the most recent year the SSA has name data for. The 1920 score is close to the historical average for names like “Billy,” “Selma,” and “Otis.” Names around the new—less gender-specific—number include “Jerry,” “Aden,” and “Orion.”

That’s another thing: Made-up names that have no historical roots. (And don’t get me started on “black” names.)

Continuing …

Several popular names, Charlie among them, are driving this trend [toward gender-neutrality]. No girls named “Blake” show up in the data at all until 1951. But today, one-quarter of American Blakes are female. And it’s not just boys’ names being given to girls, either. “Marion,” for example, has seen a major shift from girls to boys….

Many other popular names from the 2016 dataset are also gender-neutral, including “Finley,” “Justice,” and “Armani.” Here are the least-gendered 20, only including those with more than 500 babies with that name.

Name Gendered score Births
Charlie 0.02 3,448
Oakley 0.05 1,009
Justice 0.05 1,257
Landry 0.07 612
Armani 0.07 962
Skyler 0.09 1,667
Azariah 0.1 656
Finley 0.16 2,961
Royal 0.16 1,134
Lennon 0.19 1,095
Hayden 0.2 3,942
Casey 0.22 834
Emerson 0.23 3,163
Rowan 0.24 3,522
Baylor 0.24 548
Dakota 0.24 2,266
River 0.24 2,943
Remy 0.24 1,042
Emory 0.25 715
Phoenix 0.26 1,945

At the same time, some names are becoming more gendered. “Ashton” has gone from being pretty equal to primarily a boys’ name. “Harper” used to be more common for boys, but is now over 97% girls. And the most popular names from 2016 score high on the genderedness scale—Emma and Olivia at 0.99, and Scarlett and Victoria at 1.00, without a single boy.

Given that the average is moving the other way, though, it seems these mono-gendered choices are slowly becoming less popular. Gender-neutral options like Parker, Jordan, and Riley were among the top 100 in 2016.

Note the number of made-up names and names that (in saner times) would be thought of as masculine (e.g., Landry, Finley, Lennon, Casey, Emerson, Baylor, and Emory).

Unmentioned by the author is a phenomenon that would be obvious to an attentive reader: The appropriation of names (like cultural appropriation generally) is a one-way street. Girls get to do it (well, their parents do); boys just suffer in silence (or else) as their names become sissified.

You’ll know that the cultural revolution has succeeded when Emma, Scarlett, and Victoria become accepted as boys’ names.

“Cultural Appropriation” Is a Stupid Concept

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Just for the fun of it, let’s divide the world into the old racial categories — Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid — and stipulate that they are associated with broadly different cultural heritages. By cultural heritages, I mean not just such things as weird languages, funny dance steps, and peculiar ways of decorating oneself, but also such things as the STEM disciplines, the technologies resulting from their application, and various other refinements (or lack thereof) in the various arts (e.g., plastic, visual, musical, and terpsichorean).

Now, it is widely believed by those persons who are sensitive to such things that Caucasoids commit grievous social sins when they adopt and adapt (i.e., appropriate) the cultural artifacts of Mongoloids and Negroids. But Mongoloids and Negroids are free of sin when the appropriate the cultural artifacts of Caucasoids.

This is a good thing for Mongoloids and Negroids because, unlike Caucasoids who claim to detest cultural appropriation, they know where they would be without it. Where’s that? Living in primitive conditions without the following (and much more):

Computers (of all sizes)

Internet

Smart phones

Radio and TV

Movies

Automobiles (of all kinds), airplanes, and trains (including subways)

Mass production of myriad products, from foodstuffs to folderol

Complex and efficient distribution networks for the aforesaid products

The vast array of services that has accompanies, enabled, and evolved with the aforesaid artifacts (and other)

Classical music

Country music

Various sports (e.g., baseball, basketball, soccer, football)

That’s enough of that.

Now consider the number of Mongoloids and Negroids (billions, actually) who benefit from such things. And consider the number of Mongoloids and Negroids in the U.S. (millions, certainly) who are among the country’s top earners because of such things.

Where would those billions and millions be if cultural appropriation were banned by force of law?

A Few Thoughts about Anarchy

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This light-hearted post is inspired by comments on “Extreme Libertarianism and the Accountable State“. I considered a long disquisition on the subject but decided that it (the subject) isn’t worth the effort.

Anarchy is a pipe dream. A state of one kind or another always exists or emerges, on a scale that ranges from the family unit to the globe-spanning empire.

If you are looking for a life in which you aren’t subject to another person — even one — you must be prepared to strike out on your own, go off the grid, and live entirely by your own wits and physical skills. If you want to take with you some things that you have acquired — things that were made by corporations that you might otherwise disdain because they are in bed with their regulators — be my guest. Sunk costs are sunk.

What about taking along a significant other or a close friend? Well, that might work if the person is your identical twin (assuming that an identical twin would share your psychological makeup). But, otherwise, you are setting yourself up for conflict. And if you value the other person emotionally or rely on his or her help to make your way through life, you will find yourself necessarily (and fairly often) acquiescing to that person; that is, being ruled by him or her in a way. Unless, of course, you are domineering and make the other person bow to your every wish, though that’s hardly in the spirit of anarchy, is it?

Oh, you’re not that kind of anarchist. You just want conflicts to be resolved and rules to be made locally rather than at some remove, so that you are a full participant in the resolution of conflicts and the making of rules. You can live with decisions with which you disagree as long as you have a direct hand in the making of them.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but that is no longer possible, and hasn’t been possible (in what is now the United States) since 1585. Yes, there is the occasional commune, and a few of them have lasted for more than 50 years. But they are the rare exceptions that prove the rule.

Small towns and villages? Well, they’re really in the same boat as the rare commune that doesn’t collapse like a soufflé after a few years. There’s nothing like the tyranny of small-town mores and ostracism. Even those (mythical) small towns and villages that are actually run in a participatory way — and not by local élites and power-mongers — are no more than microscopic nodes in the vast network of statutes, regulations, ordinances, codes, and judicial decrees that govern almost every economic transaction and far too many social transactions in the United States of America.

So, even a true believer in anarchy who actually wants to attain it must strive realistically. That means working hard just to contain (and occasionally curtail) the powers of the central government, State governments, and local governments. You won’t get far, but you will do more good than you will by preaching anarchy, which ain’t gonna happen and which only kooks like you believe in.

But maybe preaching anarchy gives you a lot of pleasure. So do other fruitless pursuits (e.g., this one), and they’re less frustrating.

P.S. If anarchy were a viable option, it would have long since thrived. If it seems to have eked out a tenuous existence in isolated cases because of state sponsorship, isn’t that evidence of its inviability? And if it hasn’t thrived because statists of one kind and another have suppressed it, isn’t that also proof of its inviability? Call it a non-existence proof. Case closed.

America’s Long Vac

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COVID-19 has shut down much of America (and the world, too, I suppose). The shutdowns are coinciding with, extending, and preempting spring breaks at schools, colleges, and universities. You might say that America is taking a Long Vac. That’s the British term for summer vacation from school, college, or university. (See Oxford Glossary.)

How long will it last? Hard to say. Necessity rather than prevention may force the resumption of normal operations and activities. Although — and this is merely a hope — Americans will be less inclined to demand and supply products and services which are merely the excess fruits of capitalism (e.g., ocean cruises, boisterous rock concerts, destination weddings, and professional basketball).

Good News from the Federal Government

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According to The Wall Street Journal,

Congress has struck a tentative bipartisan agreement that would authorize 12 weeks of paid parental leave for all federal workers, in a potentially historic deal negotiated with the White House.

Draft language for a must-pass annual defense policy bill includes a provision that would allow 2.1 million civilians who work for the U.S. government across the country to take paid leave to care for a new baby after birth, adoption or the initiation of foster care, according to multiple people familiar with the deal.

Under current law, military service members can take up to 12 weeks of paid leave to care for a new child, while civilian federal employees get 12 weeks leave without pay. Civilian employees are paid during that 12-week period by using accrued annual or sick leave.

The change, if adopted, will mean that whenever a male federal worker qualifies for the benefit, he will almost always claim it. Currently, he is discouraged from taking time off because he must use annual leave or sick leave.

The good news is that there will be a lot fewer civilian federal workers on the job, which means that the federal bureaucracy will grind a bit more slowly when it does the things that it does to screw up the economy.

Come to think of it, all civilian federal workers should be given paid annual leave of 250 days (i.e., 50 weeks). That amount of paid leave, plus the two weeks’ worth of paid federal holidays, would allow the entire civilian federal work force to loaf full-time — but not at the office, where just going through the motions is damaging to the economy.

An even better idea is to abolish most of the civilian federal workforce and spend the money on defense. That would make us a lot better off, and more secure into the bargain.

Gillette and Me

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My first and last Gillette razor looked like this one:

It was a hand-me-down from my father, and I used it (and Gillette’s double-edged blades) for about a decade. I then — more than 50 years ago — switched to a  Schick injector razor. I went through a few of those before I found an off-brand razor-mirror combination for shaving in the shower. I’ve been using it for more than 30 years.

The blades that came with the shower-shaving razor were a knock-off of Gillette’s Trac II. I’ve bought nothing but similar knock-offs since then. So, apart from a pittance in licensing fees (and maybe not even that), Gillette hasn’t made a dime from me in more than 50 years.

That makes me glad because of Gillette’s toxic wokeness, about which Harry Stein writes in the Autumn 2019 issue of City Journal:

If, as we’re often told, corporations aren’t people, Gillette recently did a good job of impersonating one — specifically, an over-the-top campus feminist — with an ad declaring its customers’ defining trait, masculinity, “toxic.” Featuring bullies, sexual harassers, and sociopaths without porfolio, the ad flipped Gillette’s usual tagline to ask: “Is this the best a man can get?” And soon, a Facebook ad followed showing — wait for it — a dad helping his transgender teen shave for the first time.

I missed that because I don’t watch commercial TV, other than 5 minutes a day to catch the local weather forecast (which is a habit but certainly not a necessity these days). It’s a good thing I missed it, or I might have ruined a good TV set by throwing a brick at it.

The good news, according to Stein, is that because of the strongly negative reaction of Gillette’s customers to the “woke” ad campaign, Gillette’s parent company, Procter & Gamble, had written Gillette down by $8 billion this past summer. I would have been among the many consumers who boycotted Gillette products and caused the write-down. But I presciently abandoned Gillette more than 50 years ago.

Empty Desk, Empty Mind?

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That’s the implication of a quotation erroneously attributed to Einstein (as Bill Vallicella notes):

If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?

Clever, regardless of who said it, but too clever by half. A cluttered desk isn’t necessarily a sign of a cluttered mind; a person with an orderly mind may have a cluttered desk and still be able to quickly retrieve from the clutter whatever item he needs. An empty desk is a sign of a person who likes order (neatness, symmetry), which usually reflects an orderly mind.

Therefore:

A cluttered desk may be a sign of an orderly mind; an empty desk is almost surely a sign of an orderly mind.

Knot for Me

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I was amused by this photo of Jeff Bezos sporting a Full Windsor knot:

(A compensatory device, perhaps?)

When I first learned to tie a necktie, more than 60 years ago, I used what is properly called a Half Windsor Knot (though it is often called a Windsor Knot). The Half Windsor is neater and more elegant than the Full Windsor, which looks like a chin-cushion.

But when I began working in a professional setting, where necktie wearing was then (early 1960s) de rigeur, I adopted the Four-in-hand knot, which is faster and easier to tie than either of the Windsors. The article linked to in the preceding sentence alleges that the four-in-hand is “notably asymmetric”. But it isn’t if one is careful about pulling the knot up into the “notch” between collar points, and sticks to straight-collar shirts (which also lend a more professional appearance than spread collars and button-downs).

In fact, a properly tied four-in-hand is more elegant than its cumbersome Windsor rivals. For one thing, the four-in-hand knot doesn’t overwhelm the long part of the tie, which (if one has good taste in ties) is what one wants to show off.  In addition, the four-in-hand lends itself to a neat dimple, which can be achieved with the Half Windsor but not the Full Windsor.

The neat (centered) dimple says: “I am a fastidious person” — and I am.

Let the Punishment Deter the Crime

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While awaiting the return of my wife to our car in a grocery-store parking lot, I observed a few of the myriad instances of the thoughtlessness that is endemic in the public behavior of Americans. In particular, I noted the abject failure of drivers (usually women) to park parallel to the side-lines of a space and approximately midway between them. That behavior reminded me of other types of behavior that cause confusion and chaos on America’s highways and by-ways.

It seems to me that the problem would soon be cured by the swift and certain administration of justice; for example:

Failure to park as described above, even in a private parking lot: punishable by a fine of $1,000 for each violation.

Failure to move one’s automobile forward within a centisecond after a light turns green: punishable by a fine of $1,000 for each violation. If the driver of an automobile fails to move his car forward within the prescribed length of time, said driver is responsible for any damage to the rear of said automobile.

Failure to move forward into an intersection, without impeding oncoming traffic, when a light is green, and then completing one’s left turn when oncoming traffic has cleared: punishable by a fine of $1,000 for each violation.

Driving in a passing lane when one is not passing: punishable by 1 day in jail. The sentence rises by 1 day in jail for each successive violation. The guilty driver has no legal recourse if his automobile is rear-ended by another vehicle.

Passing on the right, except when the passing lane is blocked by a non-passing vehicle: punishable by 1 week in jail. The sentence rises by 1 week for each successive violation.

Running a red light: punishable by a year in jail. The sentence rises by a year for each successive violation.

In no instance will a guilty party be allowed bail,  time off for good behavior, or parole.

A Summing Up

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This post has been updated and moved to “Favorite Posts“.

Saving Trees

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Today, for the first time in almost 56 years, I no longer subscribe to a home-delivered daily newspaper. The Austin American-Statesman, to which I have subscribed for the past 15 years, recently raised its subscription rates by 25 percent. That was more than enough for me to do what has long made sense — cancel the Statesman.

The Statesman‘s international, national, and regional coverage is superfluous and out-dated — the same “news” is available online and via TV at zero marginal cost to me. Local news of value to me (of which there is little) is similarly available.

Not only have I reduced my living expenses by several hundred dollars a year, but I have also helped myself to a better night’s sleep. I no longer have to worry about getting up in time to see if the paper is wet and call for a replacement before the deadline for such calls. In fact, I no longer have to hike down and up a long, steep driveway to retrieve a practically worthless newspaper.

As for the “liberal” Statesman, the latest price hike undoubtedly marks another steep dive in its death-spiral. If it survives for much longer, it will be as a glorified version of a Pennysaver — advertising interspersed with syndicated features like recipes, car-buying tips, DIY advice, etc. Its increasingly young and increasingly incompetent newsroom will dwindle to a few wannabe-jock sports writers, who will enthuse about UT and high-school sports.

And I will have saved several thousand dollars. Bliss!

Related post: Cutting the Cord

Wall Wondering

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Democrats are for “the people”, right? So why did House Democrats reject pay for federal workers (many of them struggling to make ends meet), even as the shutdown continues?

For that matter, why are Democrats unwilling to put up $5.7 billion — a mere molecule of H2O in the vast sea of federal spending (more than $7 trillion per annum) — if government does such great things for “the people”? Think of all the “benefits” that are foregone because the Democrats oppose an expenditure that would add less than one-tenth of one percent to federal spending?

A border wall would help to protect Americans from an influx of criminals and welfare-spongers. Why don’t Democrats care about “the people” who are victimized by crime and higher taxes?

Why have so many Democrat politicians changed their tune about securing the southern border in just a few years? It must be something in the water they drink. The same thing happened with same-sex “marriage”, “medical” marijuana, and “rare” abortion. I guess that’s to be expected when their guiding principle is to irk people who remind them of their parents and teachers. (It’s called prolonged adolescent-rebellion syndrome.)

Is “the wall” the left’s Waterloo or the right’s Alamo? It could turn into Fort Sumter if Congress doesn’t fund it and the courts block emergency spending.

These are interesting times, to say the least. I hope to live long enough to see America restored to sanity, but I am not hopeful of that.

Related post: The Left and “the People”

The Renaming Mania Hits a New Low

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I live in Austin, Texas. That is to say, I am physically present in Austin most of the time, but spiritually distant from it. One of the reasons for my spiritual distance is evident in the recent suggestion by the city’s ethics office to rename Austin because its namesake, Stephen F. Austin, was “conflicted” about slavery. (Abraham Lincoln was un-conflicted in his disdain for blacks, but that somehow isn’t held against him.)

“Austin” is just a name, like “dung” and “rattlesnake”. The full name of its namesake rarely passes through the mind of an Austiner. (“Austinite” is preferred, but it seems pretentious to me, like “Manhattanite”. “Sodomite” has a certain ring, however.) Still less frequently will an Austiner give a thought to S.F. Austin’s “conflicted” views about slavery. Only in the fevered imagination of a left-wing Austiner (which is most of them), will the views of a man who died three years before Austin acquired its name be taken as a besmirchment of the upstanding city’s pure, virtue-signaling character. (It is hard to find a city away from the Left Coast whose denizens — that’s the word — are more puffed about their city and its mythical virtues. See this post and the list at the bottom of it.)

Anyway, back to the renaming mania.

With all of the disappeared statutes, street names, names of buildings and institutions — things formerly known as Davis, Jefferson, Jackson (Andy and Stonewall), Lee, etc. etc., etc. — why have Washington and Lincoln survived? Washington was a slave-owner; Lincoln, as I have intimated, held blacks in low esteem despite his (belated) anti-slavery views.

Mine is not to reason why, or why not. Mine is to suggest that all of this unpleasantness might be avoided if all persons, places, and things were assigned unique, randomly generated alphanumeric codes.

Or perhaps new unpleasantness would simply erupt because of objections if an alphanumeric code includes certain number sequences (666, for example) or letter sequences like RWR, GWB, or DJT.

You can please some of the people none of the time (i.e., leftists). They are just born to bitch.

Even More about Names

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In previous posts about first names, I addressed names that had shifted from male to female, presidents’ surnames used as first names, the changing popularity of my grandparents’ first names, and the changing popularity of my high-school classmates’ first names.

I was reminded of those older posts (published in 2006, 2008, and 2012) by an analysis of gender-fluidity in names, that is, names which are becoming more neutral rather than being given mainly to boys or girls. The author, one Nikhil Sonnad,

calculated a “genderedness score” for every American baby name—and for the country on the whole. The score goes from zero to one. A zero means a name is perfectly non-gendered. That is to say, exactly half of the babies with that name are boys, and the other half are girls. A one, meanwhile, means the name is used exclusively for one gender. So a lower score means a name is more gender-neutral, and less biased.

How is it “biased” to use a boy’s name for a boy and a girl’s name for a girl? That statement should be damned to PC hell, along with the idea that gender is “assigned” at birth. It’s not assigned, it just is, except in rare instances. And it’s immutable, regardless of what the PC witch-doctors profess to believe.

Anyway, Sonnad continues:

The overall genderedness score was 0.97 in 1920, meaning nearly every kid had a name that was used almost exclusively for just boys or just girls. The score is falling, though. It hit 0.946 in 2016, the most recent year the SSA has name data for.

I’m gratified to learn that the generedness score is still almost 1. I’m further gratified to note that the genderedness score has dropped in the past, and then rebounded:

Part of the apparent decline in genderedness may be due to the fact that the Social Security database used by the author covers only the top 1,000 names of each sex in each year. The variety of names grows with population, so the top 1,000 isn’t as inclusive now as it used to be (see below). And gendereless or ambiguous names are undoubtedly rising in popularity (for now) because baby-naming is a faddish thing, like transgenderism.

The variety of names grows not only because of population growth but also because of its changing composition. There are many more Spanish names and Hispanic babies than 10, 20, or 30 years ago — and vastly more than there were 100 years ago. Also, blacks have increasingly branched out into African, pseudo-African, and black-redneck names — names that are identifiably black, but not always identifiably male or female (by whites, at least).

So the real news isn’t the rise of gender-ambiguous names, but the growing variety of names, which I will show in two ways. First, using the same Social Security database as Sonnad, I constructed the following tables. They list the 10 most popular baby names (male and female) for equidistant 17-year intervals spanning the 136 years between the first year (1880) and most recent year (2016) included in the database. The tables also show the percentages of male and female babies given those names in each of the years. (Right click to view enlarged image in a new tab.)


Source: Go here and scroll to the search tool at the bottom of the page (on the left).

Note the general decline in the percentages. Being in the top 10 these days is almost meaningless compared with being in the top 10 through the 1940s or 1950s.  Note also the generally lower percentages for girls’ names than for boys’ names until 2016. Girls have long had a greater variety of names, though boys are finally catching up.

The following graphs (derived from the same source) illustrate the same points. They also highlight the relative stability in the number of names until the 1950s and 1960s, when the percentages of babies with names in the top 10, 100, and 1,000 really began to dive.

Returning to the lists of names, I note that many of the recent top-10 names are throwbacks; the 19th century is “in” again. There are some old top-10 names that have fallen from popularity for good reason — they are grating, if not ugly; for example, Frank (Frank is a wiener; Francis is okay), Henry (better as Henri or Enrico), George (fit only for a king), Walter (a plumber’s name), Donald (rhymes with Ronald, as in McDonald), Richard (you know the nickname), Minnie (little fish), Bertha (as in “Big Bertha”), Florence (with the pursed lips), Ethel (ditto), and Dorothy, Shirley, and Doris (so 1930s and 1940s).

Anyway, those are my prejudices. What are yours?

Recommended Reading

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Leftism, Political Correctness, and Other Lunacies (Dispatches from the Fifth Circle Book 1)

 

On Liberty: Impossible Dreams, Utopian Schemes (Dispatches from the Fifth Circle Book 2)

 

We the People and Other American Myths (Dispatches from the Fifth Circle Book 3)

 

Americana, Etc.: Language, Literature, Movies, Music, Sports, Nostalgia, Trivia, and a Dash of Humor (Dispatches from the Fifth Circle Book 4)