Archive for June, 2016
24 Jun 2016

Hitler’s Opinion of the British EU Referendum

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24 Jun 2016

Brexit Vote: Normal People Voting Down Their Elites

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Brexit1

J. Duncan Barry, on Facebook, explains why the majority of the British people voted as they did.

This Canadian reaction typifies a mental and moral attitude which helps to explain the ‪#‎Brexit‬ victory:

    [MACLEANS:] “There is a growing realization in many corners of the U.K. that the EU referendum should never have been called in the first place. Unlike the national sovereignty debates of Scotland and even Quebec, which were largely dependent on a people’s sense of cultural identity, the question of EU membership and whether it truly benefits Britain is exceedingly complex, fantastically dull, hugely important, and exactly the sort of thing policy-makers are elected to decide so normal people don’t have to.”

It’s pretty simple, isn’t it? Normal people want a say in the unfolding of their own lives. At least normal English folk do. The whole approach to the living of one’s own life embodied by the EU is antithetical to the deepest roots of the Anglo experience.

Great Britain is not Europe. Duh. It’s called “diversity.” Not every culture has to be emulsified into one, huge, swirling Euro-mess. And I am already mourning the loss of regional European micro-cultures that are being swept up into the (vastly irrational) reasoning machine that Brussels pretends to be. And I’m quite confident that they’ll realize this sooner or later. The larger financial realities do not bode well for the Brussels contraption, so it will be interesting to see how long they endure the pain they inflict on themselves.

I would argue that as soon as *we* can find a constructive way to secede from America’s comparable tyranny of a controlling, élite minority, that we’ll find a similar, healthy detachment from a way of thinking and a way of life that goes against the grain of everything we gained from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence. And the sooner the better!

24 Jun 2016

Britain Votes For Independence

UnhappyAboutBrexit

Telegraph: Britain votes to leave the European Union.

23 Jun 2016

Trump is Paying Himself a Salary to Run for President (!)

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The Trump Campaign is almost broke, but apparently The Donald has been siphoning off roughly 20% of campaign expenses to his own businesses.

But that’s nothing. (See Below) Donald Trump actually has himself on the campaign payroll as a salaried employee!

Just imagine what he could do with the Executive Branch budget.

Marketwatch:

Donald Trump’s campaign is almost broke, and is paying an unusual amount of money to Trump-owned businesses. That’s according to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s FEC filing, details of which were released Monday night.

The report provided a number of rather shocking facts, including that his campaign raised just $3.1 million in May compared to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s $27 million.

In comparison, Mitt Romney’s campaign raised $86.5 million in May during the 2012 presidential race. And on Monday night alone, Clinton raised about $1.6 million at a celebrity-studded fundraiser in New York City.

Another eyebrow-raising tidbit: Of the $6.7 million the Trump campaign spent in May, nearly 20% went to Trump-owned businesses or family members.

Furthermore, the filing suggests that Trump himself is drawing a salary from the campaign, which would be highly unusual.

The campaign also spent $208,000 on hats.

The phrase “Crooked as a snake with appendicitis” comes to mind.

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23 Jun 2016

Bahubali (2015)

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One of those Facebook friends I don’t really know yesterday posted a video of some amazing battle scenes from a South Indian epic film called Bahubali (released last year in two parts), made in Telugu and Tamil. (When’s the last time you saw a Tamil-language film?) Bahubali became the highest grossing Indian film of all-time, understandably since the fight scenes are pretty spectacular.

I discovered quickly that the DVD of Part 1 with English subtitles can be ordered from Amazon. (Part 2: The Conclusion does not seem to be out yet.)

Bahubali: the Beginning

Bahubali: the Conclusion

23 Jun 2016

Don’t Be Taken in: Vote Yes!

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Brexit

23 Jun 2016

Canadian Lady Uses Mother Bear to Foil Wolf

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wolf

Stalked by a wolf while picking mushrooms near Fort Smith in Canada’s North West Territories, Joanne Barnaby was forced to retreat farther and farther from the highway and her vehicle. She finally foiled her pursuer by enlisting the aid of a larger predator.

CBC News

22 Jun 2016

Upending Literary Tradition at Yale

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ShakespeareBust
Shakespeare: Male, White, Christian, Married with Children, Get Over it.

Last month, 160 students in Yale’s (once first in the nation) English Department signed a petition demanding that the department “reevaluate the undergraduate curriculum, as well as reconsider the current core requirements and introductory courses… particularly .. the Major English Poets sequence, a longtime prerequisite for the major and “perhaps the most distinctive element of English at Yale.” The petition called for the removal of this prerequisite for the English major and for requirements “to refocus and include literature relating to gender, race and sexuality.” (Yale Daily News, May 26)

It appears that Yale’s current English Department Chairman, Langdon Hammer (a specialist in the likes of James Merrill and Hart Crane; Finalist, Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography, 2016; Larry Kramer Initiative for Gay and Lesbian Studies at Yale, 2003) intends to cave, while denying that that is what he is doing.

Professor Hammer (appropriately named like a character in a satirical novel by Evelyn Waugh) announced recently via the English Department news:

English 125/6 is a course that introduces students to a particular literary tradition, and the course itself has the status of a tradition. The thing about literary traditions is, they are always being upended and remade. That is the history of English poetry from Chaucer to Eliot (or to Hughes or Stein or Bishop or Walcott or Glück, who were all taught this spring in one or another section of this multi-section course). So it seems fitting for students and faculty to raise questions about the course and its role in the major.

The questions on my mind about English 125/6 are: How can this course be made better? What is its relationship to the rest of the English Department curriculum? What should and shouldn’t the faculty require of its majors? What does a strong education in the discipline of English look like today? And what should it look like tomorrow?

The English Department faculty is charged with asking those questions about all of our courses. We ask them in formal and informal ways every year, and we will again next year. We’ll be in conversation with our students, who have a range of views. And we’ll make decisions about what we teach and what we ask of students that seem appropriate to us.

The invertebrates in charge at Yale these days are always “having conversations” with the barbarians of the Left over insane and insolent demands delivered by the latter. These conversatione invariably amount to duplicitous attempts to save face and avoid the wrath of reactionary alumni by surrendering as little as possible to appease all the little Calibans they have intentionally admitted via extraordinary efforts and indulgences to the magic island. But there is always a surrender.

The sound you hear, in the distance, is all the great English professors of the past spinning in their graves as Langston Hughes replaces Milton and Dereck Walcott replaces Chaucer in Yale’s version of the canon.

22 Jun 2016

He Shot the Mascot!

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BrazilJaguar1

A jaguar is the mascot of Brazil’s Olympic Team in the upcoming Rio de Janiero Games, but a live jaguar which was included in the recent Olympic Torch Ceremony in Manaus came to a bad end.

Reuters:

A jaguar featured at an Olympic torch ceremony was shot dead by a soldier shortly after the event in the Brazilian Amazon city of Manaus as the animal escaped from its handlers, an army statement said.

The jaguar was killed on Monday at a zoo attached to a military training center when a soldier fired a single pistol shot after the animal, despite being tranquilized, approached the soldier, the army said.

“We made a mistake in permitting the Olympic torch, a symbol of peace and unity, to be exhibited alongside a chained wild animal. This image goes against our beliefs and our values,” the local organizing committee Rio 2016 said in a statement, adding: “We guarantee that there will be no more such incidents at Rio 2016.”

22 Jun 2016

Lioness versus Lion Hunting Styles

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21 Jun 2016

“It’s Rare That You See Someone Get Stupider”

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TrumpGenius

Mark Cuban was invited to comment on the campaign performance of his former friend The Donald on the ABC program “Shark Tank.”

When Renee asked Cuban about his former friend, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, he held nothing back. He said, “You know what? It’s rare that you see someone get stupider before your eyes, but he’s really working at it…You have to give him credit. It’s a difficult thing to do, but he’s accomplished it.”

21 Jun 2016

“I Think My Dog Must Be a Democrat”

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