F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fake News Disclaimer: There are apparently reasons to suspect that this is not actually the authentic text of a letter written a century ago by F. Scott Fitzgerald while quarantined in the South of France during the great Spanish Flu pandemic but a more recent composition by someone just pretending to be FSF. But good reading regardless.

Dearest Rosemary,

It was a limpid dreary day, hung as in a basket from a single dull star. I thank you for your letter. Outside, I perceive what may be a collection of fallen leaves tussling against a trash can. It rings like jazz to my ears. The streets are that empty. It seems as though the bulk of the city has retreated to their quarters, rightfully so. At this time, it seems very poignant to avoid all public spaces. Even the bars, as I told Hemingway, but to that he punched me in the stomach, to which I asked if he had washed his hands. He hadn’t. He is much the denier, that one. Why, he considers the virus to be just influenza. I’m curious of his sources.

The officials have alerted us to ensure we have a month’s worth of necessities. Zelda and I have stocked up on red wine, whiskey, rum, vermouth, absinthe, white wine, sherry, gin, and lord, if we need it, brandy. Please pray for us.

You should see the square, oh, it is terrible. I weep for the damned eventualities this future brings. The long afternoons rolling forward slowly on the ever-slick bottomless highball. Z. says it’s no excuse to drink, but I just can’t seem to steady my hand. In the distance, from my brooding perch, the shoreline is cloaked in a dull haze where I can discern an unremitting penance that has been heading this way for a long, long while. And yet, amongst the cracked cloudline of an evening’s cast, I focus on a single strain of light, calling me forth to believe in a better morrow.

HT: JWB.

HT: Henry Bernatonis.

Want your kid to grow up to be a doctor, or at least an orthodontist? Dominic Green gives an insider’s perspective on the Ashkenazi Jewish penchant for intellectual achievement.

There I was, watching my old VHS copy of The Boys from Brazil, idly reading the lab reports on the swabs I took from my gentile neighbor’s kids when he wasn’t looking, and revising the bassoon part of a concerto I’ve been working on, when I saw something alarming trending on Twitter. Not ‘eugenics’, but ‘Bret Stephens’.

‘What’s he done now?’ I asked in six languages, two of them not from the Indo-European language family.

In today’s New York Times, Bret Stephens discusses Norman Lebrecht’s excellent new history of the Jews in modern times. Lebrecht describes the unparalleled contributions of notorious underachievers like Marx, Freud, Heine, Disraeli, Herzl, Trotsky, Kafka, Wittgenstein and Einstein but, inexplicably, he fails to mention the contributions of members of the Green family — a lacuna that I, with my inherited Ashkenazi acumen, can already see him correcting in the paperback edition.

Lebrecht specifically does not attribute Jewish success to ‘Jewish DNA’. He attributes it to environmental factors: the Jewish tradition of Talmudic study, which produced near-universal adult literacy among Jewish males when most Europeans couldn’t even write ‘well-poisoner’ in blood; to the cultural imprint of intellectual labor even among secular Jews; to the Jewish emphasis on hard work, family and education; and to the perennial threat of violence, as nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of your neighbors burning you and your children alive in your home.

There is solid evidence for all these environmental factors, and plenty of evidence that similar factors apply to many other minorities. There is less solid evidence for genetic factors in Jewish achievement, and especially epigenetic factors (changes in gene expression in living organisms, presumably due to environmental factors). Bret Stephens summarizes all this by saying, ‘Jews are, or tend to be smart’.

This is not terribly smart. Perhaps it reflects the errors of compression that go into editing. The evidence that we have — and it would be interesting to have more — is that Jews aren’t much smarter than any other group. The difference is that they produce high-achieving intellectual outliers at a slightly higher rate. As in athletics, so in the life of the mind: the higher you get, the more marginal the advantages become.

Stephens also refers to a genetic study from 2005. This is an interesting study — you see, we read all the time. In particular, it challenges the ‘bottleneck theory’ (Ashkenazi genes were ‘bottlenecked’ in the early Middle Ages) and instead focuses on how ‘intelligence in heterozygotes’ are increased by the ‘well-known clusters of Ashkenazi genetic diseases, the sphingolipid cluster and the DNA repair cluster’. I want you to know that I understood that first time round, while making a pastrami sandwich. …

If you wish to avail yourself of the secrets of Jewish genius, there are two simple courses of action. One is to enlist your children at an early age in the study of the Talmud, and teach them the values of ethics, work and family, which are also the near-universal immigrant virtues. This will be demanding for both them and you: helping them with math homework will be a cinch by comparison.

The other option is to hire Jewish people who show marginal aptitude in their fields of specialization. This is the much less demanding course to take, and it is much more likely to lead to success in the long run. But it does mean refraining from chasing them out of the universities, the professions and the Democratic party. So, be smart like us.

RTWT

Babylon Bee

A sad day for the Democrats, Kirsten Gillibrand has dropped out of the Presidential Primary. I’m glad they never found out that she was the one I was really afraid of!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2019

Via Bob Golden:

An old rancher went to a town hall meeting. The local politician was there to talk about the latest Ag legislation he proposed. The politician talked about grazing, property rights, irrigation, and how the government could help the generational ranchers of the area.

After listening to the impassioned promises put forth by the politician, the old rancher raised his hand to ask a question.
Seeing that he had the attention of the weathered old rancher, and thinking he could score some points, the politician took the old man’s question….

Old man: “Senator, did you know that cows, horses and goats eat the same feed?”

Senator: “Yes sir, everybody knows that!”

Old man: “Then senator, can you tell me why cows poop patties, horses poop cubes, and goats poop pellets?”

Senator: “How would I know the reason for such a simple thing like poop?”

Old man: “Then senator, can you tell me how a man who doesn’t know shit, can help me run my ranch?”

Quint, the establishment journalist, describes a Donald Trump White House press conference. link

Donald Trump comes cruising in. The reporters form themselves into tight groups. You know it’s kind of like ol’ squares in a battle or like being roped together at a Hillary press conference. And the idea is if the Donald goes after one reporter and then that reporter would start hollerin’ and screamin’ and sometimes the Donald would go away.

Sometimes he wouldn’t go away.

Sometimes the Donald, he looks right into you. Right into the reporter’s eyes.

You know the thing about the Donald, he’s got… lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be a real politician. Until he bites into ya with those scathing remarks and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch complaining and the airways and Internet explode despite all the pounding and hollerin’ that the Donald isn’t a serious candidate. And that’s when the Donald comes in and rips ya to pieces.

I’ll never go into a press pool again.”

HT: Vanderleun.

(Via viral email from Hometown Friend):

FINALLY you can retire to Florida where…
1. You eat dinner at 3:15 in the afternoon.
2. All purchases include a coupon of some kind – even houses and cars.
3. Everyone can recommend an excellent cardiologist, dermatologist, proctologist, podiatrist, or orthopedist.
4. Road construction never ends anywhere in the state.
5. Cars in front of you often appear to be driven by headless people.

Brenda O’Malley is home making dinner, as usual, when Tim Finnegan arrives at her door.

“Well, Brenda, no. In fact, he got out three times to pee.”