The Steer. 1942.
Annual agricultural show at the state experimental farm at Presque Isle, Maine. Prizewinning "baby beef", raised by a daughter of a Farm Security Administration client.
Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts
Lex Anteinternet: Bud Light, controversy, and why are you drinking that stuff anyway?
Lex Anteinternet: Bud Light, controversy, and why are you drinking t...:
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Bud Light, controversy, and why are you drinking that stuff anyway?
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Real beer, made locally.
In one of the absurd American corporate efforts to get on the cutting edge of a social trend, irrespective of whether it's temporary, existentially justified, or related to the product, Budweiser released an advertisement with Dylan Mulvaney, a man claiming to be transgendered and who affects a very girlish persona, badly, in a cartoonish fashion. Indeed, it's an example of how those who claim to be transgendered men sometime affect a much more girlish behavior than girls do, and it's accordingly more than a little cartoonish. It's a pretty extreme example, which raises its own questions.
Mulvaney is apparently an actor, and came to prominence in the play The Book Of Mormon. I haven't seen the play and don't care to. I'm obviously not a Mormon, but I don't like people poking fun of, or making a satire out of, religious beliefs in that fashion. Eye of the Tiber or The Babylon Bee are one thing, but they aren't actually hostile to religion, and indeed the Bee has come to be controversial as it has started being satirical about society in general, from a general Christian prospective. The three person team who are responsible for The Book Of Mormon, however, are out of South Park, which is an aggressively nasty cartoon, and one of them is a stated atheist and the other, a theist who declares religion itself to be silly, something that shows a massive intellectual deficit on his part. It's sort of like saying that you believe in cars but find transportation silly. They aren't coming out of a prospective of love, suffice it to say, and while I haven't seen The Book Of Mormon, South Park is of the National Lampoon brand of humor which is juvenile, self focused, and mean. I don't know if Book takes a mean spirited approach to Mormons, but what I tend to find is that for people who live outside the Rocky Mountain West, the LDS faith isn't understood in any context at all, and people tend to think of them as 1) some sort of Protestant evangelistic faith, maybe like the Baptists, or 2) something that Warren Jeffs defines, or 3) a tiny silly group. None of that would be correct, and in the Rocky Mountain West the LDS church is a major institution, not some sort of odd joke. From a Christian prospective, particularly in from a Catholic one, there are a lot of things that could be taken on, discussed and critiqued about the LDS, but making fun of them in a sophomoric fashion is disrespectful and reflects very poorly on the people doing it and a society that finds it amusing.
My overall view of mine is that if you wouldn't feel comfortable making analogous jokes about Islam, you probably flat out avoid doing it about any other faith. In other words, if you are going to do a Book of Mormon, you ought to follow it up with The Koran in the same fashion.
That's not going to happen, nor should it either, as The Book Of Mormon shouldn't have.
But I digress.
Mulvaney decided he would affect the appearance of a woman, sort of, at some point and has affected an Audrey Hepburn like style, which nobody in this current age does. Hepburn's style was unique to herself, but she was a genuine, lithe, woman, who genuinely defined grace in her own era, and to a large extent still does. She wasn't girlish, but rather very mature while young at the same time, and frankly rising up in popularity as a reaction to the Playboy influenced huge boob actresses of the time, something that would actually see further influence in the 60s while really being limited, however, to movies and television. Mulvaney on the other hand, if truth be told, looks like a really anemic guy trying to look like a girl, and failing at an attempt to affect an appearance of an actress of a prior era, something he's tried to do in a TikTok series apparently called Days of Girlhood. It's really creepy.
For some weird reason, Budweiser thought he'd make a good spokesman for Bud Light.
Bud Light is awful, as are most of the mass-produced light beers. I don't know why anyone drinks it, which brings me to this, something that has nothing really to do with transgenderism.
Light beer, or American Light Lager as beer aficionados like to call it, is so popular in the US that even small local breweries brew it. Small local breweries have gotten really good, and they tend to put out a better product than huge industrial alcohol concerns like AB InBev, which owns Budweiser.
I really don't think average companies have any place in social movements of any kind. I'll make an exception for companies particularly associated with some sort of institution. So, for example, a company that makes backpacking equipment being involved in conservation, etc., makes sense to me. But beer is just beer. If there was a cause associated with beer, it would be combating alcoholism, but a cause like that wouldn't exactly sell more beer.
Here the decision was blisteringly odd. Is AB InBev trying to show its hip cool and down with the times, in a Justice Kennedy type fashion? The beer market is saturated (no pun), and therefore the only real option left is to try to grab somebody else's market share, but do people who claim to be transgendered constitute a self-conscious body when they buy beer, or are they just people buying beer?
I'm guessing they're just people buying beer.
Obviously AB InBev thought there was some market share to grab there, while not losing some, but as market decisions go, it seems like a rather odd one.
Oh well, it's worth noting that this is the same beer brand that once sent out paintings of Custer's Last Stand, although they probably had their actual market right at that time.
Anyhow, just buy local. If a microbrewery is boosting a cause, it's probably a local one, or one that's more focused, and it probably doesn't involve a cynical marketing effort like this does.
And indeed, just this past week I went to a local microbrewery and bought two small growlers of their beer. It actually did have a beer that it had brewed boosting a cause. I didn't buy it, but I did buy two of their other beers, to go with the first grilling attempt of the season. The brots I bought were from a local butcher.
There are other options out there, and given that there are, why would a person, causes aside, go with a bad massed produced beer, ever?
Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, w...
Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, w...:
Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, part 3. Our lost connection with animals.
ICELANDIC MILKMAID ON HER MORNING ROUND
This is a fine, sturdy pony standing so stockily for his photograph, and he can make light of his burden of buxom beauty with her heavy can of milk. She cares not for saddle or stirrups, for most of these island people are born to horseback, and her everyday costume amply serves the purpose of a riding-habit for this strapping Viking's daughter, with her long tresses shining in the breeze.
(Original caption, of interest here I wouldn't call this young lady "buxom" or "strapping", but just healthy. This might say something about how standards have changed over time.)
The other day, I posted this in a footnote on a completely different topic.
Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, par...:
4. One of the odder examples of this, very widespread, is the change in our relationship with animals.Our species is one of those which has a symbiotic relationship with other ones. We like to think that this is unique to us, but it isn't. Many other examples of exist of birds, mammals and even fish that live in very close relationships with other species. When this occurred with us, we do not know, but we do know that its ancient. Dogs and modern wolves both evolved from a preexisting wolf species starting some 25,000 to 40,000 years ago, according to the best evidence we currently have. That likely means it was longer ago than that.Cats, in contrast, self domesticated some 7,000 or so years ago, according to our best estimates.Cat eating a shellfish, depiction from an Egyptian tomb.We have a proclivity for both domesticating animals, and accepting self domestication of animals, the truth being that such events are likely part and parcel of each other. Dogs descend from some opportunistic wolves that started hanging around us as we killed things they liked to eat. Cats from wildcats that came on as we're dirty. Both evolved thereafter in ways we like, becoming companions as well as servants. But not just them, horses, pigs, sheep, cattle. . .the list is long.As we've moved from the natural to the unnatural, we've forgotten that all domestic animals, no matter how cute and cuddly they are, are animals and were originally our servants. And as real children have become less common in WASP culture, the natural instinct to have an infant to take care of, or even adore, has transferred itself upon these unwilling subjects, making them "fur babies".It's interesting in this context to watch the difference between people who really work with animals, and those who do not. Just recently, for example, our four-year-old nephew stayed the night due to the snow, and was baffled why our hunting dog, who is a type of working dog but very much a companion, stayed the night indoors. The ranch dogs do not. . . ever. The ranch cats, friendly though they are, don't either.
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I started this thread back in February, when the entire news on "transgenderism" really hit the fan, so to speak. Since that time there's been the filing of the sorority lawsuit in Laramie, a host of transgender mass shooting, and an absolutely freakish campaign by Budweiser in which a guy trying to channel a girl of the 1960s is sponsoring Bud Light. Anyhow, this thread was to tie into it somehow, but now a lot of time has gone by, and working seven days out of seven, etc., I've really forgotten what my brilliant point here was to be, more or less.
But I'll go on anyhow.
This photograph shows a young woman at work, doing something that counted, and doing it in a way that was very close to nature.
So does this one:
Mid Week At Work: Mail Carrier, 1915, Los Angeles
And also this one:
And this one:
The point here?
Well this.
We've gotten to the point where we don't deal with animals as they really are, daily. We also are at the point where a large percentage of the original WASP demographic of the nation (more on this shortly) has lost most of the values it originally had, and replaced them with very weak tea instead. And we've so removed ourselves from a state of nature, that most people don't have a grasp on what nature really is.
It's hard not to know the reality of the world if you live in it.
This past week, the Wyoming Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case in Casper in which the plaintiffs claim they suffered emotional distress as their two pet dogs were caught in snares which they claim were improperly placed on public lands by a trapper. Apparently, in a companion criminal case, the trapper was exonerated. The state land is very close to the city, which is a problem, but it's still state land, and still unincorporated.
Losing dogs is a tragedy, but emotional distress? This has never been allowed in the common law, as the law always held that the law is, basically, for people. If you can claim emotional distress due to the loss of a pet, why not anything?
Now, that sounds cruel, and I understand grieving over the loss of an animal. I've done it myself. That is, in fact, one of the things about owning pets. Normally, you outlive them, and if you are normal, you'll miss them when they die.
It's a part of life.
But emotional distress has been reserved, in the common law, for the loss of humans, based, in the end, for what we feel with the loss of a loved human being. Not an animal, no matter how loved.
And of course, up until recently, there was no such concept as a legally recognized animal for "emotional support". Support they did provide, but the bond was in a naturalistic way, not one for which the law afforded protection.
Have we lost something here?
I think we have, and it's connected with real work and real animals.
We'll explore What's Wrong With The World more in this series of threads, but here's one. Being connected with animals in a real sense, and not in the sanitary removed from nature sense, helped keep us real.
We've lost that.
It's hard to be obsessively focused on yourself, including your reproductive self, if you're around animals as animals, particularly great big ones that can hurt you.
And I'll bet the thought "I'm a girl, but I want to be a boy" didn't much cross the minds of Icelandic pony riding milkmaids, Oklahoman girl cowpunchers, or Los Angeles mounted mail carriers.
Related Threads:
Lex Anteinternet: Bank collapses, The Economy, Modern Work. A meand...
Lex Anteinternet: Bank collapses, The Economy, Modern Work. A meand...:
Bank collapses, The Economy, Modern Work. A meandering trip through the punditsphere.
I haven't commented on the recent bank collapses at all here, as banking doesn't interest me much.
It should. Economics does. But banking doesn't. Given that, I tend to think this probably isn't as big of a crisis as it's being portrayed.
Indeed, I think it isn't.
Not that it isn't important.
A couple of observations, however, on the observations.
On This Week and Meet The Press, Elizabeth Warren was on, meaning she was doing a full court press over the weekend. Both of her interviews were nearly identical, as both interviewers let her backtrack on a question to give her full, long explanation of the history of this topic.
I have to say, her explanation was good. I don't know if it's correct, but it was good. And that's saying something, as I frankly can't stand Elizabeth Warren.
One thing she continually noted is how we weren't watching these big banks like we were "small local banks". I don't know if that's true either, but she was full of profuse praise for small local banks.
Hey, I'm a distributist and a localist, so I like small banks. Is there an argument here for keeping small local banks local?
Seems like there is, although with a modern economy you're going to need big financial institutions. She wasn't arguing otherwise. It's just an interesting aspect of this.
One member of the banking committee was asked if these banks were "too big to fail" and he flat out said yes, an interesting example of political honesty.
Of note, while the banks are sort of being "bailed out", those who are really emphasizing this right now seem to fail to appreciate that FDIC insurance is being used for this, which suggests that the insured face amount of $250,000 is really way too low. It probably ought to be more like $1,000,000 at this point.
Robert Reich, whose opinions I have a love/hate relationship with, used the opportunity, predictably, to hammer the rich, writing:
A while back I saw somebody commenting to one of Reich's Twitter feeds on this topic, which he's obsessed with, that Reich was rich himself. According to an online source he has a net worth of $4M, which would mean, quite frankly, that in contemporary terms, he really isn't. Shoot, half of that could be his house alone, depending upon where he lives, with the house not really being all that much.
Reich's article is an interesting one and basically amounts to an argument that post Reagan, the economy has been rigged to favor the upper 1%, more or less. That's not how he puts it, of course, but is basically what he believes. He notes that workers incomes haven't really gone up in 40 years.
All that is true, and from a Distributist point of view, is a nifty argument, the problem is however that the percentage of Americans who are "wealthy" has increased remarkably in the past 40 years. Indeed, some demographers worry that the American middle class is disappearing not because the middle class is sinking into poverty, but that the upper middle class is moving into wealth.
In real terms, almost nobody, save for people on the street, something that wasn't tolerated 40 years ago, is poor the way the poor were, say, in the 1960s. Prior to 1950, the middle class was mostly lower middle class and lived on the edge of poverty, That's just not true anymore. And poverty was by and large worse in real terms at that time, than now. It's easy to forget that as we have a 1) Norman Rockwell view of the past and 2) we always think our own times are worse than they really are.
Therefore, the Reich argument, the way it's made, really doesn't hold water.
Which gets us to the fact that the best arguments for addressing the modern economy actually have to do with Social issues, as in Social Justice in the classic Pieper sense, rather than economics.
What people like Reich, or Warren, edge up on is arguing that life was "nicer" when there was a big middle class. That's true. And many things that are unobtainable to even the upper middle class and the lower wealthy class were then, as there were very view super wealthy. But lib economist don't go there as they are, frankly, just a little left of center on the capitalist scale.
Put another way, the difference between liberal economist and conservative economists is very slight. Both main camps are fully vested in capitalism and are, beyond that, invested in the theory that a capitalist economy is its own good, rather than the distributist concept, which is another free market concept, that any economy only serves to serve people.
Hardly anyone is going to argue that in the lib or con economic camps, but it's true. The theory is always that we do this or that for the economy, and then this or that happens to people, rather than considering what do people want, and what kind of economy best serves that.
A really interesting example of this, I'd note, is that really left wing economist essentially join industrialist in concepts that really only serve industry. They seemingly don't know that.
For example, you'll see left wing economists, and politicians with strong interest in economic topics, argue that we need abortion so that women can work, or that we need government funded day care so that women can work.
This is really only liberal in that it takes the liberal view that pregnancy is some sort of freakish medical aberration that needs to be medicated into extermination or, if a person is so unfortunate that a child is born, it needs to be separated from the Dear Worker. Beyond that, it's pure industrialism.
The big achievement of industrialism early on is that it took men off of family farms and family workshops and sent them off all day long to work. In the 20th Century, it started to do the same for women. Abortion and birth control were big industrial successes, as they meant that there was a way to separate women from biology and all those problematic little people. Of course, it turned out that people had children anyhow, so daytime child concentration camps had to come about in order to address that.
This, really interestingly, is one area where the extreme left and industrialist have all come together. Communists, for example, boosted the "let's warehouse all these little problems so that the mothers can toil" approach to things, whereas quite a few modern businesses have put in day cares so that they can take the "time off to raise children: . . no, just bring the little urchins into the business day care".
Here's an area where Reich and company have a real wage point, but not in the manner that they might imagine. Part of the reason that wages have remained low over 40 years is that we've practically doubled the work force in relationship to the population. I.e., if where you had 200 adults and 100 workers 40 years ago, now you have 200 workers. More workers equal less pay.
Now, I'm not saying that women shouldn't work. I'm just saying that in our modern economy, they've been compelled to work. And one way or another, in the modern economy, employers have had to accommodate children in the workplace where they would have resisted even 20 years ago.
A lot of people are refusing to work now, it seems, or so the society wide rumor has it. And that does seem to have some merit.
Chuck Todd, on the Meet the Press, noted a labor shortage in his early part of the show this pasts weekend, attributing that to a "restrictive immigration policy".
Todd is apparently delusional.
The US has the most open immigration policy on the planet. What the country has been working on, not too successfully, is halting illegal immigration. That's what Todd really means. Clamping down on illegal immigration is creating a labor shortage, in Todd's mind.
Illegal immigration actually serves to depress wages for the same reason noted above. Illegal workers in the country means more workers, and that means lower wages. D'uh.
All of which suggests, on this topic, that addressing illegal workers would mean a rise in wages, which we have been seeing. Isn't that what we wanted? Well, it is inflationary, at least temporary, but having suppressed wages for years, some of that's going to occur until it levels out, which it ultimately will.
All of that gets back to this, what do people want out of the economy?
I suspect they want something of their own.
Lex Anteinternet: Evolutionary Biology and Resources. Mysteries tha...
Lex Anteinternet: Evolutionary Biology and Resources. Mysteries tha...: 
Evolutionary Biology and Resources. Mysteries that aren't.
The famous journal, The New Yorker notes:
During the coronavirus pandemic, pediatric endocrinologists saw a new surge of referrals for girls with early puberty—the number of these referrals doubled or even tripled during the lockdown periods of 2020, recent studies show.
So their conclusion?
Well, I don't know, as I couldn't get past the paywall. I think I know the answer, and I'll get to that in a moment.
Mostly I'm posting this, however, due to the stupid anti-scientific comments that followed the Twitter article.
Witness:
Nov 7
Replying to @NewYorker
Wonder how many were vaccinated- i think that's an honest and fair question no one is willing to ask
Mark Yerger@yerger224
Replying to @HoltonMusicMan and @NewYorker
its fair to ask anything. it is a fact that this all occurred during the Trump presidency! its fair to ask what his administrations involvement was in all this. yet he continues to evade this issue. I havent seen any denials or documents showing me otherwise.
Well played Yerger.
The same dipshittery appears in this comment:
BiancaD 🇺🇦🌻🤪❣🐷@rigbydan
Nov 8
Replying to @NewYorker
How many were vaccinated, since it was now confirmed that those of us who said the vaccine affected our cycles were proven correct?
Janice's Magic Wand@leighleighmw
Nov 8
Replying to @rigbydan and @NewYorker
There was no vaccine available to children under 12 in 2020.
Again, good, if obvious, comment there to the apparent memory impaired and scientifically bereft BiancaD.
And:
Nov 8
Replying to @NewYorker
One reason is the hormones in the milk. I always bought organic milk and my daughter did not have early puberty like some of her friends.
Lone Stranger@LoneStr06411351
Nov 9
Replying to @Persona49820853 and @NewYorker
You got taken for a ride, then. Pediatric associations have firmly established the actual reason in the vast majority of situations is abundant nutrition. Puberty is delayed in environments of food scarcity. Which predominated much of human history until the last 100 years.
And that is exactly it.
In reality, the onset of puberty ages for girls isn't getting depressed due to hormones in your GMO cheese or mystery chemicals in your Blue Bunny, it's because human beings, or at least girls (one poster raises the good point that these stories seem to omit boys) are genetically programmed for lower onset of puberty ages in times of:1) high nutrition and 2) low physical output.
What were people doing during the pandemic?
I submit to you, they were sitting at home, eating.
In a state of nature, if girls are sitting around eating, their genes think "wow, we're in a super abundant period right now. . . move her up on the reproduction scale".
Now, I'm not claiming that's a good thing, but I am claiming that it's obviously the opposite of this?
Nov 8
Replying to @NewYorker
Does that indicate our future ability to reproduce is questionable?
Lone Stranger @LoneStr06411351
Lone Stranger, did you skip biology class? Girls going to puberty earlier has the polar opposite effect.
Sheesh.
And that's why it's not a good thing.
What this is really evidence of is; 1) too much food, much of which is high calorie bad food, and 2) too little exercise.
Feed girls real food and get them involved in physical activity, the onset age will go up.
Better yet, get them out hunting and fishing, and learning how to produce their own food, and the onset age will go up, their health will improve, and the few who will be taken advantage of will decline in number.
Or, as noted:
Depends. In mammals at least the drift is to delay reproductive capability in times of stress or famine, so as to limit the population numbers straining already critical shortages.
When nutrition is abundant & ubiquitous is when sexual maturity manifests earlier.
Rage quitting this timeline@kesskessler401
Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXVI. Pets and Pope Francis, the man who can't get a break. Pangur Bán. Warped Hollywood. Ghislane? The return of Boston marriages. Khardasian Attention Disorder
Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXVI. Pets and P...:
Pope Francis commented on childless couples and pets.
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXVI. Pets and Pope Francis, the man who can't get a break. Pangur Bán. Warped Hollywood. Ghislane? The return of Boston marriages. Khardasian Attention Disorder
There's no such thing as "fur babies"
Before I go into that, I'm going to note that one of the things about Pope Francis is that he tends to be incredibly hard to pigeonhole, even though his fans and critics love to go around doing just that. And here we have just such an example. Only weeks away from making it pretty clear that the Latin Tridentine Mass needs to be a thing of the past, as far as he's concerned, and while he's the Bishop of Rome, he says something that's radically. . . traditional.
Here's what he said, in so far as I tell, as I can't find a full transcript of his remarks.
Today ... we see a form of selfishness. We see that some people do not want to have a child.
Sometimes they have one, and that's it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children.
This may make people laugh, but it is a reality.
[This] "is a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us, takes away our humanity", he added.
Oh you know where this is going to go. . .
Right away I saw predictable "I'm not selfish, it's my deep abiding love of the environment. . . "
Yeah, whatever.
Apparently there were a fair number of comments of that type, as a subsequent article on this topic found that, nope, most childless couples are childless as they don't want children, not because of their deep abiding concern about the environment.
Indeed, tropes like that are just that, tropes. People tend to excuse or justify conduct that they engage in that they are uncomfortable excusing for self-centered or materialistic reasons for more ennobled ones, or even for ones that just aren't attributed to something greater, in some sense.
Not everyone, mind you, you will find plenty of people who don't have children and justify that on that basis alone. Indeed, in the 70s through the mid 90s, I think that was basically what the justification was, to the extent that people felt they needed one. More recently that seems to have changed, although there are plenty of people who will simply state they don't want children as they're focused on what the personally want, rather than some other goal. Others, however, have to attribute it, for some reason to a cause du jour. In the 80s it was the fear of nuclear war, I recall. Now it's the environment, although it was somewhat then as well. I suppose for a tiny minority of people, that's actually true, but only a minority.
Whatever it is, the reaction to the Pope's statement will cause and is causing a minor firestorm. Oh, but it'll get better.
The same Pope has already made some Catholic conservatives mad by his comments equating destroying the environment with sin. And there's a certain section of the Trad and Rad Trad Catholic community that's unwilling to credit Pope Francis with anything, even though he says some extremely traditional things, particularly in this area.
A comment like this one, if it had been made by Pope Benedict, would have sparked commentary on the Catholic internet and podcasts for at least a time. There's no way that Patrick Coffin or Dr. Taylor Marshall wouldn't have commented on it, and run with it in that event.
Will they now?
Well, they ought to.
Am I going to?
No, not really.
I could be proven wrong, but I doubt I will be.
The Pope's point will be difficult for the childless to really grasp. I don't think I became fully adult until we had children, really. People who don't have children don't really know what its like to, I think. And I think that probably includes even those who grew up in large families.
At any rate, I have a bit of a different point, that being my ongoing one about the industrialization of female labor. In no small part, in my view, childless couples in general have come about as our modern industrialized society emphasizes that everyone's principal loyalty should be to their workplace or a career, without question. As put by Col. Saito in the epic The Bridge On The River Kwai, people are to be "happy in their work".
That means that they don't have time for children, they believe, and moreover the children are societal obstacles to the concept that the only thing that matters is career. It's the one place that ardent capitalist and ardent socialist come together. And, as its often noted, particularly by both working mothers and folks like Bernie Sanders, it's difficult to be both a mother and worker, with it being my guess that the more education that goes into a woman's career, the more this is the case. Society, and by that we mean every industrialized society, has no solutions to this, and there probably aren't any. About the only one that Sanders and his ilk can come up with is warehousing children sort of like chickens at the Tyson farms.
It's also a lie, of course. Careers, by and large, don't make people fulfilled or happy, for the most part, although there are certainly individual exceptions. Statistical data more than demonstrates that.
The Pope, by the way, is not against pets.
Messe ocus Pangur Bán,
cechtar nathar fria saindán;
bíth a menma-sam fri seilgg,
mu menma céin im saincheirdd
Caraim-se fos, ferr cach clú,
oc mu lebrán léir ingnu;
ní foirmtech frimm Pangur bán,
caraid cesin a maccdán.
Ó ru·biam — scél cen scís —
innar tegdais ar n-óendís,
táithiunn — díchríchide clius —
ní fris tarddam ar n-áthius.
Gnáth-húaraib ar gressaib gal
glenaid luch inna lín-sam;
os mé, du·fuit im lín chéin
dliged n-doraid cu n-dronchéill.
Fúachid-sem fri frega fál
a rosc anglése comlán;
fúachimm chéin fri fégi fis
mu rosc réil, cesu imdis,
Fáelid-sem cu n-déne dul
hi·n-glen luch inna gérchrub;
hi·tucu cheist n-doraid n-dil,
os mé chene am fáelid.
Cía beimmi amin nach ré,
ní·derban cách ar chéle.
Maith la cechtar nár a dán,
subaigthius a óenurán.
Hé fesin as choimsid dáu
in muid du·n-gní cach óenláu;
du thabairt doraid du glé
for mu mud céin am messe.I and Pangur Bán, each of us two at his special art:
his mind at hunting (mice), my own mind is in my special craft.
I love to rest—better than any fame—at my booklet with diligent science:
not envious of me is Pangur Bán: he himself loves his childish art.
When we are—tale without tedium—in our house, we two alone,
we have—unlimited (is) feat-sport—something to which to apply our acuteness.
It is customary at times by feat of valour, that a mouse sticks in his net,
and for me there falls into my net a difficult dictum with hard meaning.
His eye, this glancing full one, he points against the wall-fence:
I myself against the keenness of science point my clear eye, though it is very feeble.
He is joyous with speedy going where a mouse sticks in his sharp-claw:
I too am joyous, where I understand a difficult dear question.
Though we are thus always, neither hinders the other:
each of us two likes his art, amuses himself alone.
He himself is the master of the work which he does every day:
while I am at my own work, (which is) to bring difficulty to clearness.
I and Pangur Bán my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.
‘Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!
So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.
The Values candidates
Jeanette Rankin of Montana, who was a pacifist, and voted against delcaring war in 1917 and in 1941. She's a hero, as she stuck to her declared values.
While I’m at it, I'm developing a deep suspicion of conservative candidates and figures that express certain highly conservative social positions but don't quite seem to adhere to them in their own lives. This coming from somebody who is obviously highly socially conservative themselves.
This comes to mind in the context of "family values", "protecting the family" and the like. I see and read stuff like that from conservatives all the time. So if you are saying that you strongly value the family, and protecting the family, etc., why don't you have one?
Now, some people are no doubt deeply shocked by that question, but it's a legitimate one, and I'm not the first person to raise it. If a person might ask if I seriously expect people to answer the question, well I do.
Now, in complete fairness, all sorts of people don't have children for medical reasons. But more often than that, if a couple don't have them, they don't want them. That's what's up with that. And you really can't campaign on your deep love of the family if you are foreclosing that part of the family in your own lives, absent some really good reason. More often than not, the reason is money and career.
Recently I saw, for example, a statement that a person is deeply committed to family and loves spending time with their nieces. Well, everyone likes spending time, for the most part, with nieces and nephews. That's not even remotely similar to having children, however. Not at all.
I'll go one further on this and note this as I do.
The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.
Luke, 16:10.
I note this as some of the conservative value candidates, if you look into their backgrounds, have question marks that should give pause for the reason noted above. If a person doesn't keep to their principals in small things, or basic things, why would they keep them on anything else?
One conservative candidate that I'm aware of, when you look up that person's background, was born of an ethnicity that's overwhelmingly Catholic and went to Catholic schools growing up. That person was undoubtedly a Catholic. That didn't preclude, however, the candidate from getting divorced and remarried to another person who was divorced.
Now, that's quite common in our society, but it's completely contrary to the Catholic faith without some explanation. Maybe there is one. I don't know, but it's a fair question, just as it would be if a Jewish candidate grew up in an Orthodox household but operates a delicatessen featuring ham. That may seem odd, but if you are willing to compromise on small things, you'll get around to the big ones, if the small ones also express a deep principle.
If you won't compromise on small things, or things that are represented as elemental to your declared world view, you are dependable in a crisis. On the other hand, if you participated in a faith, and were educated by it, and okay with its elements, and it formed part of your worldview . . right up until you had to do something difficult and chose the easier path. . . well, there's no real reason to believe that haven gotten there once, you won't do it again.
The candidate, I'd note, has been stone-cold silent on the insurrection. From that, you can tell the candidate knows it was an insurrection, but is unwilling to say diddly.
The Primordal Connection
St. Jerome with lion. St. Jerome is supposesd to have taken a thorn out of a lion's paw, and the lion thereafter stayed with him. While some might doubt some aspects of this, St. Jerome's lion is also recounted as having caused fear in the monestary in which he lived, and having adopted the monestary's donkey as a friend.
Back to pets for a second, one added thing I think about them is that for a lot of people, they're the last sole remaining contact with nature they have.
There are lots of animal species that live in close contact with each other and depend on each other. We're one. We cooperated with wolves, and they became dogs as they helped us hunt. Cats took us in (not the other way around) as we're dirty, and we attract mice. We domesticated horses, camels and reindeer for transportation. And so on.
We miss them.
One more way that technology and modern industrialization has ruined things. Cats and dogs remind us of what we once were.
And could be, again.
Warped legacies
An awful lot of what the Pope is tapping into has to deal with the combined factors of moderns forgetting what, well, sex is for, and what its implications are, and that root morality and human nature remain unchanged. There are probably more generations between modern house cats and Pangur Bán than there are between your ancestors who were waking up each morning in the Piacenzian and you.
Which takes us to men, behaving badly, and everyone turning a blind eye.
And, of course, Sex and the City.
She is fiercely protective of Carrie Bradshaw and livid that she and everyone else at the show has been put into this position, It is not about the money, but rather her legacy. Carrie was all about helping women and now, under her watch, women are saying that they have been hurt.
Sarah Jessica Parker on the scandal involving James Noth.
M'eh.
A note from Wikipedia regarding the series:
When the series premiered, the character was praised by critics as a positive example of an independent woman in the vein of Mary Richards. However, retrospective analysis tends to place more emphasis on the character's repeated and often unrepentant infidelities, with many critics instead viewing her as narcissistic.
Carrie was about helping women? Well, excuse me if that was deluded.
Scary legacies
This news item came out the same day, I'd note, that Ghislane Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking. And by that we mean procuring underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein.
Eew, ick.
Connection? Well, none directly.
Or maybe. More narcissism and obsession with unrestrained desire, or lust.
It sort of seems that you can't unleash this without it oozing out as filth sooner or later.
On Maxwell, because I tend to get my news by reading, I'm left perplexed by how a person says her first name, Ghislaine. I have no idea. I heard it on the nightly news the other day, but the spelling is so odd, I immediately forgot how to pronounce it.
Boston Marriages
Some recent headlines from the ill historically informed press department:
What is a Platonic life partnership? These couples are breaking societal relationship norms
And:
Platonic Partnerships Are On The Rise, So I Spoke To These Friends Who Have Chosen To Live The Rest Of Their Lives Together
"I don't think our love and commitment together should pale in comparison to romantic love."
Oh my gosh! This means that people don't always default to acting like their characters in Sex In The City or Sex Lives of College Girls!
Could this be a new trend?!? Oh my oh my, what would it mean.
Well, maybe people are just defaulting back to normal, but we're unable to grasp that as we've been steeped in seventy years of Hugh Hefner pornification of absolutely everything. [1] This isn't new. Indeed, we've dealt with this here before in our Lex Anteinternet: The Overly Long Thread. Gender Trends of the Past...
post. Let's take a look:
But there is more to look at here.Another extremely orthodox cleric but one of an extremely intellectual bent, and who is therefore sometimes not very predictable, is Father Hugh Barbour, O. Pream. I note that as his comment on same gender attraction in women was mentioned earlier here and came out in a direction that most would not suspect in the context of a "Boston Marriage". Father Barbour did not license illicit sexual contact, i.e., sex outside of marriage, in any context either, but he did have a very nuanced view of attraction between women that's almost wholly unique in some ways. Like the discussion above, but in a more nuanced form, it gets into the idea that modern society is so bizarrely sexually focused that its converted the concept of attraction to absolute need, failing to grasp the nature of nearly everything, and sexualized conduct that need not be. Barbour issued an interesting opinion related to this back in 2013, at which time there had just been a huge demonstration in France regarding the redefinition of the nature of marriage.Katherine Coman and Katherine Lee Bates who lived together as female housemates for over twenty years in a "Wellesley Marriage", something basically akin to what's called a Boston Marriage today. Named for Wellesley College, due to its association with it, Wellesley Marriages were arrangements of such type between academic women, where as Boston Marriages more commonly features such arrangements between women of means. Barbour noted these types of arrangements in a basically approving fashion, noting that its only in modern society when these arrangements are seemingly nearly required to take on a sexual aspect, which of course he did not approve of.
Hmmm. . . .
Men and women who don't marry have always been unusual, but the sexualization of everything in the post Hefner world has made their situation considerably more difficult, really. Society has gone from an expectation that the young and single would abstain from sex until married to the position that there must be something wrong with them if they are not. This has gone so far as to almost require same gender roommates, past their college years, to engage in homosexual sex. I.e, two women or two men living together in their college years is no big deal, but if they're doing it by their 30s, they're assumed to be gay and pretty much pressured to act accordingly.
Truth be known, not everyone always matches the median on everything, as we will know. For some reason, this has been unacceptable in this are as society became more and more focused on sex.
At one time, the phenomenon of the lifelong bachelor or "spinster" wasn't that uncommon, and frankly it didn't bear the stigma that people now like to believe. It was harder for women than for men, however, without a doubt. People felt sorry for women that weren't married by their early 30s and often looked for ways to arrange a marriage for them, a fair number of such women ultimately agreeing to that status, with probably the majority of such societally arranged marriages working out. Some never did, however.
For men, it was probably more common, and it was just assumed that things hadn't worked out. After their early 30s a certain "lifelong bachelor" cache could attach to it, with the reality of it not tending to match the image, but giving societal approval to it. In certain societies it was particularly common, such as in the famed Garrison Keillor "Norwegian Bachelor Farmer" instance or in the instance of similar persons in Ireland, where it was very common for economic reasons.
People didn't tend to assume such people were homosexual, and they largely were not. Indeed, again contrary to what people now assume, except for deeply closeted people or people who had taken up certain occupations in order to hide it, people tended to know who actually was homosexual.
I can recall all of this being the case when I was a kid. My grandmother's neighbor was a bachelor his entire life who worked as an electrician. After he came home from a Japanese Prisoner of War camp following World War Two, he just wanted to keep to himself. A couple of my mother's aunts were lifelong single women and, at least in one case, one simply didn't want to marry as she didn't want children, and the other had lost a fiancé right after World War One and never went on to anyone else. Her secretary desk is now in my office. In none of these instances would anyone have accused these individuals of being homosexual.
Taking this one step further, some people in this category did desire the close daily contact of somebody they were deeply friends with, in love with if you will, but that need not be sexual. Love between women and love between men can and does exist without it having a sexual component. Interestingly, it is extremely common and expected when we are young and up into our 20s, but after that society operates against it. People form deep same gender relationships in schools, on sporting fields, in barracks and in class.
Some of those people won't marry, and there's no reason that their friendships shouldn't continue on in the post college roommate stage.
Well, society won't have it as everything needs to be about sex, all the time. Haven't you watched The Big Bang Theory?
Tatting for attention?
Like, enough already?
Apparently Salena Gomez has a bleeding rose tattoo. I don't get that either, but I'm sure that piles of ink will be spilled on it.
Footnotes:
It would be worth noting here that early on a female researching on Hefner's early publications noted how much of it was actually in the nature of barely disguised child pornography, with cartoons particularly depicting this. This lead to an investigation in Europe, and the magazine rapidly stopped it, but it's interesting in that the magazine was so debased that it not only portrayed women as stupid, sterile, top-heavy, and nymphomaniacs, but also underage.
The impact however had been created, and by the 1970s the full on sexual exploitation of child models was on. As debased as society has become, it's at least retreated from this.
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