Too soon?

 

Found on X:

Peter

Are our brightest and best no more than mollycoddled pet monkeys?

 

I was mind-boggled to read about two universities' preparations to "help" their students on Election Day.

Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy — a crucible for our nation’s next generation of elected officials and diplomats that runs a cool $61,200 per year to attend — has opened the “woke” apolitical cocoons to cater to students for whom political discourse is simply too overwhelming.

“In recognition of these stressful times, all McCourt community members are welcome to gather … in the 3rd floor Commons to take a much needed break, joining us for mindfulness activities and snacks throughout the day,” wrote Jaclyn Clevenger, the school’s director of student engagement, in an email to students and obtained by The Free Press.

Inside the suites, which will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday, students will be treated to goodies that wouldn’t be out of place at a child’s birthday party, including a Lego station, coloring books and even milk and cookies and hot chocolate — all at a comfortable remove from anything resembling debate.

At the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., pupils are also being given options for seeking refuge — not only on Election Day but all week long.

The students can pop into a campus lobby to enjoy some cupcakes before making their way to the campus rotunda to let their minds wander in a “walkable labyrinth” featuring “calming lighting and music.”

Those who still don’t feel they’ve received adequate succor can then partake in some relaxing arts and crafts activities including beading, canvas-bag decorating and painting. Snacks will be provided, natch.

For students who still haven’t shaken off the Election Day willies by Thursday, the school is offering a “post election processing space” where students can create collages, journal using self-care writing prompts and even nosh on some comfort food courtesy of a baked potato bar.

There's more at the link.

I could understand such activities for elementary school students, missing their Mommies and wanting reassurance against the big bad world out there . . . but university students?  High school graduates?  Preparing to become our next generation of leaders and executives?

Those universities have reduced their student population to a bunch of dependent, childish, self-obsessed, shallow-minded, frightened-of-their-own-shadows little baa lambs.  Or, perhaps more accurately, they've allowed them to attend university in that condition, and done nothing to help them break their conditioning and grow into adults.

I wonder if we could mandate that retired Marine Drill Instructors should head every such program, to instill a little esprit de corps - or Corps with a capital letter - into their charges?  "What is your major marshmallow malfunction, maggot???"

Peter

Stand by for a very precarious two and a half months

 

As I write these words, at about 4.30AM on Wednesday morning, it looks as if President Trump has won a second term in office.  He's won it pretty convincingly, too, with what looks to be better than a five million vote majority in the popular vote, as well as splitting the "blue wall" on which his opponent was depending for victory.  It's amusing that some of the very left-leaning mainstream media are still refusing to call some of the battleground states for him, despite the outstanding number of votes yet to be counted being insufficient to overcome his existing majority.  Despite their reluctance, of course, the result by now is inevitable.

So . . . what can we expect between now and Inauguration Day?  I predict the following:

1. Frenzied attempts by the Biden administration to implement as many of its progressive policies as possible by means of executive orders and hastily-compiled legislation, to make it as difficult as possible for Trump to undo them and/or implement his own policies.
2. Screams of outrage, anguish and rejection from the usual suspects, including a resurgence of Antifa, BLM and other such movements (or their replacements).  If they can make it appear that Trump will take office amid a wave of popular rejection of his election and policies, they'll do so - for their own sake, to make them feel better about themselves, and to demonstrate their contempt for and rejection of an electorate that didn't see things their way.  This may include attempts to assassinate President Trump and/or key members of his future administration.  (Elon Musk, I'm looking at you!)
3. Immediate moves by the "deep state" to shore up their control of the administration, to obfuscate, delay and water down every policy the incoming President tries to implement.  This will include slow-walking personnel appointments through bureaucratic logjams such as slow security clearances, refusal to hand over important documents (including many that will doubtless be "lost" or "mislaid"), and attempts to do what President Obama did and hide much of the evidence of his administration's malfeasance in his Presidential Library, where access to records can be restricted for decades.
4. An avalanche of last-minute migrant "arrivals", trying to get into America before President Trump slams the gate shut.  This may include increased violence on the borders as cartels try to maximize their income while there's still money to be made.

Meanwhile, President Trump will need to move very quickly, right out of the gate, to appoint his transition team and begin the laborious process of preparing to take the reins of power.  I can only hope and trust that he's learned his lessons from 2016, and will no longer appoint political patronage-seekers and RINO's, but will seek out those who will genuinely try to put the country and his policies ahead of themselves.  Sadly, there aren't that many of them to be found.

I hope Elon Musk is already selecting members of his government efficiency commission, or whatever it will be called.  Chopping 50% off the federal bureaucracy, including shutting down its more useless and empire-building departments and agencies, can do this country nothing but good.  (In particular, I hope he can assign all those who instigated, supported, funded, supplied and controlled the neocon wars of the previous administration to go and fight in what's left of them.  They're battlefield casualties we actually need!)

Sadly, we see yet again that we are a nation divided against itself.  We have two Americas, one pragmatic, one ideological;  one practical, one intellectual;  one with roots, one wafting wherever the prevailing wind(s) take it.  That's not going to change anytime soon, and it's going to make it very, very hard for us to come together to tackle the major issues threatening this nation.

"Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand."

That's us, my friends.  Unless we want to be "brought to desolation", we'd better find something or someone around which or whom we're prepared to reunite.  If we don't . . .

Peter

Food for thought - but perhaps not digestion?

 

I've been enjoying two articles at the Telegraph in London, UK over a transatlantic food fight.

First, Simon Parker wrote:  "My British mind boggles at American eating habits".  He discusses what he found on a cycling tour of the USA.

Legend has it that American soldiers stationed in Italy during the Second World War found the coffee so strong they diluted it. Then, when they returned home, the practice stuck. And these days, most American coffee remains so tasteless that cream, sugar and sweetener must be added by the gallon before it can be served in a plastic cup the size of a policeman’s helmet.

Outside a convenience store in Kansas, I got talking to a man eating a “Midwest breakfast”: egg and bacon pizza, accompanied by a 36-ounce soda (containing 120g of sugar) and a pint of “americano”.

. . .

Spend enough time in the USA and you start to notice an unapologetic American trend: bigger is always better. Even if that means diminishing a product’s quality in the process. 

Case in point: The all-you-can-eat restaurant, where piles of stodge drift between tables like UFOs fuelled by MSG. And guess what? Even though you’re doing all the leg- and handwork yourself, you’ll still be expected to leave a tip. Go figure. 

At one such establishment in Nebraska I departed feeling, not just stuffed, but somewhat guilty for mankind. The restaurant’s glutinous patrons (me included) had stacked their plates so high that dozens of wayward wontons and loose prawn crackers had been crunched into the carpet and resembled a fine savoury sand. 

. . .

A community’s main source of sustenance comes from the super-processed aisles of gas stations and dollar stores, where you’re as likely to stumble across a Ming vase as you are a lettuce leaf. 

Most nights I would study the shelves of these brightly lit prefab buildings, searching for products containing the fewest possible E numbers. A good meal would be instant noodles and a can of peas. A bad one might be a microwave burrito and a chocolate bar. And all while, smash-hit TV shows like The Bear portray an American restaurant scene of abundant flavour and freshness.

There's more at the link.

Not to be outdone, Sara Sherwood fired back with "My American mind boggles at British eating habits".

Cheap roadside food in Britain is hardly healthy: budget motorway hotels are uniform in serving fried bread, fried bacon, fried sausage, fried hash browns, fried mushrooms, and fried tomatoes. Sadly, a sideline of the Anglo-American Special Relationship is a kinship in the dedication to ultra-processed, unforgivably bland food.

. . .

If the baguette defines the French, and the hot dog Americans, surely the tinned bean is the ultimate culinary symbol of Britain. They have been named as favoured treats by the current Queen and the late Princess Diana, both of whom presumably had access to a wide range of alternatives. But if you have not been raised on these cloyingly sweet piles of mush, they’re a tough sell.

Although they come from New England, the British collectively consume two million tins of them a day – more than the rest of the world combined. These haricots swim in a tomato sauce laden with 10 per cent of a person’s daily sugar allowance, and 20 per cent of the salt they need. Yet they inspire as much national pride and unqualified praise as the country’s National Health Service. They are served at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and appear on regular rotation in schools for children, on top of jacket potatoes or sponge-like ultra-processed sliced bread (more sugar and salt).

. . .

One thing that makes it difficult to navigate the British dining scene for American visitors is that we may be in pursuit of a different goal. Recently an American cousin with fond memories of atmospheric London pubs in the 70s and 80s, wandered South Kensington, perused local reviews, and settled himself in for what turned out to be an astoundingly disappointing meal. He was served mushy fish and chips, decidedly un-mushy peas (hard as nails, he said), and the beer selection was poor (mainly in cans). “Who eats this stuff?” he asked me afterwards.

Had he asked me beforehand, I would have advised caution when choosing to eat in a pub. Take a recent review of a pub in North London, where the diner noted: “The food wasn’t the best.” Okay, this could be helpful, I thought. What made it bad? “We ordered a pizza and chips with gravy. Unfortunately, they forgot to cut the pizza, and the chips tasted undercooked.”

The mind, as Simon wrote about America, boggles: What would the successful delivery of pizza, chips and gravy look like?

Again, more at the link.

Perhaps I should contribute an article to the series, titled "My colonial-raised mind boggles at both diets"?

Peter

Making terrorism pay a handsome dividend

 

It seems that Houthi terrorists, backed by Iran, are making massive profits out of their blockade of the Bab-el-Mandeb and the sea areas surrounding it.

Intelligence cited by the Seahawk report confirms that the Houthis, in partnership with al-Shabaab and Somali pirates, have revitalised piracy operations along critical Red Sea and Indian Ocean shipping lanes.

“This strategic alliance allows the Houthis to exert control over shipping routes while financing their operations through illicit piracy proceeds and arms smuggling,” states the report.

“The expanding Houthi presence in Somalia signals a strategic escalation that poses immediate and long-term threats to regional stability and security,” warns the Seahawk report. “The alignment of Houthi, al-Shabaab, and Daesh interests underpins a coordinated front that is poised to disrupt maritime commerce, strengthen local militant capabilities and challenge international forces.”

The UN Panel’s investigation, meanwhile, revealed that the Houthis are using various networks of individuals and entities operating from multiple jurisdictions, including Djibouti, Iran, Iraq, Türkiye and Yemen, to finance their activities.

They employ various banks, shell companies, exchange companies, shipping companies and financial facilitators. The panel interviewed the officials of a few exchange and shipping companies and banks, who, requesting anonymity, confirmed the details of these operations.

The Houthi command even established a special committee to augment its military spending.

The panel’s sources conveyed that the Houthis allegedly collect illegal fees from “a few shipping agencies to allow their ships to sail through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden without being attacked”.

Sources further informed the panel that these shipping agencies coordinate with a company affiliated with a top-ranking Houthi leader and that the fees are deposited in various accounts in multiple jurisdictions through the hawala network and through adjustments involving trade-based money-laundering.

While the UN Panel has not been able to independently verify this information, the sources estimate the Houthis’ earnings from these illegal safe-transit fees to be about $180m per month.

There's more at the link.

As always, follow the money.  The Houthi leaders aren't ideologically pure, theologically motivated nationalists at all - they're just grifters, extortionists, chiselers par excellence, as many people have been in that part of the world for untold centuries.  Just as Hamas and Hezbollah leaders have made literally billions of dollars for themselves out of the suffering of their people, so the Houthi leaders are following their example.  Iran, meanwhile, is profiting not only from its cut of all that money, but also from the disruption caused to its opponents by its satellite allies in Yemen, Gaza and Lebanon.

I think we need to ask Elon Musk to find a decently inhospitable planet somewhere, and export the entire extremist population of that region to it, using suitably sized rockets.  Let them try to extort rocks from each other there, and leave the rest of us in peace!

Peter

A heartwarming animal saga

 

On a day when everybody's going to be blathering on about elections and voting and partisanship, I figured we could all do with something completely different.  Well, here it is!  From the Telegraph in London, UK:

Wrapped up against the gusting Scottish wind, a man is strolling slowly along the jagged shoreline with his lolloping puppy. Anyone passing on the road above would notice him bending over the water, pushing apart the thick brown fronds of rock weed – and then being taken aback to see the “pup” sinuously dive beneath the surface and emerge with a crab in its jaws.

“At a distance it’s easy to mistake Molly for a dog,” says Billy Mail. “Otters are so shy and elusive it just doesn’t seem plausible that one would be voluntarily going for a walk with a human in broad daylight.”

Implausible but obviously not impossible, which is why the remarkable relationship between Billy and Molly, the orphaned otter he rescued from certain death in the Shetland Islands, is so heartwarming.

. . .

Such is the emotional heft of the story that it caught the eye of an award-winning National Geographic photographer and cinematographer. The resulting documentary, Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story is set against the backdrop of wide skies, glittering sea and the austere, elemental beauty of the land.

. . .

“I was looking out the window and I saw this otter fishing in the sea,” says Billy. “I wondered how close I could get, so I hurried down to the pontoon while she was underwater, phone in hand, in case she came close enough. Then she popped up right in front of me and started to eat the crab she had caught. Then halfway through she turned and looked me straight in the eye.

“I immediately knew something was very badly wrong because there’s no way a healthy otter would remain so close. And then I saw how emaciated she was.”

Bedraggled and skinny, her bones jutting out, Molly was around nine months old and too young to fend for herself. It was clear she was orphaned – later the couple learned that a female otter had been found dead on the road some time earlier

Billy fed her fish, dropping haddock on the ground, which she seized and dragged away to eat. He made her a bed from coiled rope under an upturned boat, so she had somewhere dry to sleep.

There's more at the link.

I won't spoil the article by reproducing more of it here, but it goes into a lot more detail about how the bond was established between Billy and Molly, and how it's grown to where, today, he watches her raise her young, teaching them to play in the tiny house he built for her.  It's a heartwarming story.

I've embedded the documentary below.  If that doesn't work, or stops working, you can find it here on YouTube.

Much more entertaining than non-stop electioneering!

Peter

German raccoon sausage???

 

I was intrigued to learn that first, Germany is being overrun with raccoons brought over there from America a century ago:  and second, that a local butcher (with official permission) is making a range of consumer meat products out of them.

A butcher in northeast Germany has come up with what he believes is an innovative solution to the country’s growing raccoon problem: turning them into sausages and other meat products.

Michael Reiss, a hunter who set up a butcher’s shop in Kade, about 90 kilometers (60 miles) west of Berlin, in 2022, told CNN Wednesday that he developed the idea after trying to think of a standout product to take to the Green Week international food fair.

He realized that raccoons who are killed as pests are simply thrown in the bin, and decided to ask local officials if they could instead be processed and turned into food.

After receiving the green light, Reiss started making his “raccoon balls,” meatballs made from raccoon meat, which he said turned out to be a hit at the fair and with customers at his shop, which is called Wildererhütte.

Soon Reiss was selling online, and he now makes a total of seven raccoon meat products, including salami.

. . .

After being introduced to Germany for use in fur farms in the 1920s, raccoons were first released into the wild in 1934, according to the Nature And Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU).

Since then, the mammals, who are highly adaptable and can live in towns and cities as well as forests and grasslands, have bred swiftly.

There are now an estimated 2 million raccoons in Germany, reported German press agency DPA, citing researchers at the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt.

The animals, who are originally from North America, typically weigh around 10 kilograms (22 pounds), but large males can reach 20 kilograms (44 pounds).

They now represent a danger to domestic biodiversity, especially the reptiles and amphibians that they eat, according to Germany’s Senckenberg Nature Research Society.

There's more at the link.

Considering that large parts of North America (including our cities) are overrun with trash pandas (a local nickname for raccoons), we might have a new export market here!  I daresay any number of locals equipped with air or rimfire rifles could stack up a bountiful harvest to send to Germany.  Perhaps we could add possums, skunks and sundry other wildlife of similar size?

On second thought . . . skunks . . . perhaps not!  On the other hand, if we exported them to Ukraine, would they be a suitable biological weapon to unleash against Russian invaders?

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 234

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

I've never been into so-called "techno" electronic dance music, and I'm unfamiliar with most of the artists and hits in that genre.  Nevertheless, Pixy Misa caught my attention when she posted a "House and Techno Live Set" by Klangphonics to her blog.  I casually pressed "Play" while scrolling down through the rest of her content, and was surprised to be drawn into the music.  It reminds me a lot of earlier Mike Oldfield works such as Tubular Bells, with echoes of his later techno music such as Light + Shade.

I thought I'd give you the chance to see if you liked it too.

There's lots more music from Klangphonics on their YouTube channel.

Peter

No blogging today

 

We have to go down to the Metroplex (DFW), which is a five-hour return trip plus time spent down there.  It won't leave any time for blogging, so please amuse yourselves with the blogs listed in the sidebar.  They write good, too!

Peter