Sixteen Volts

I have to apologize that I let Ikky Kokk, my identical twin brother who came to visit us (that is, mooch off us) for a few weeks, attend the computer unsupervised so that he could write the post "I guess somebody forgot the rules of Project Mayhem" about the recent terrorist ring captured in Toronto. Ikky is pretty much my exact opposite in the sense that he is a leftist and profeminist self-hating man who supports anything that he feels somehow opposing middle class values, and he continuously uses his ability to tolerate ideas and phenomena that most people cannot tolerate as a way to demonstrate how enlightened he is. My bad, I won't let that happen again.

Anyway, two posts "Toronto anti-terrorism sweep: if the plot had nothing to do with Islam, why do all the suspects want Korans?" and "Women in burkas" at the "Dispatches from the Hogtown Front" (just like New York is called "Big Apple", Toronto is similarly known as "Hogtown") shed more light on the mystery of this diverse group of concerned activists who represent the broad strata of our community. The blog also links to the column "From isolation can come rage" by Toronto Star's own Rosie DiManno, who says it like it is.

In the post "The Sky is Falling on Black Men?? Pt.1 Drop Out Rates and Graduation Rates" about difficulties that black males face in life, I noticed the following rather strange paragraph:

I do think that when it comes to college we are in a crisis, when it comes to Black male enrollment and graduation, but I also think Latino/as are in an even worse crisis. I am not trying to distract from the problems related to Black men, but I have to wonder why the very poor academic performance Latino/as (men and women) is not as well publicized.

I have to wonder what the heck the poster means here, since many websites and blogs that I follow have certainly discussed this problem for a long time now and this way publicized it quite well. The mainstream media just has been a bit more reluctant to discuss this pressing issue. Perhaps if we thought about this for a minute, we might come up with an explanation for this reluctance...

John Derbyshire shows again why he is the best by dissecting the "right to life" movement in his review "A Frigid and Pitiless Dogma". Most people are pro-choice and reveal this with their choices when the situation necessitates, as explained in the news article "Babies with club feet aborted". By the way, a new edition of Derb Radio is up.

The phenomenon described in the news article "Many reluctantly choose private schools" might have something to do with something. I have to wonder the mental gymnastics it takes to say that you support something that you annually spend seventy grand to keep your family away from. I believe that it was Charles Murray who once proposed that the English language needs a new word that means somebody advocating a public policy based on some assumption of human nature or behaviour so that the said person knows that this assumption does not to apply to him. This sure would be a handy word. Perhaps some linguist could make a proposal?

David "BoBo" Brooks is best known for bringing bobos to our collective consciousness. A few years after him, Evangelical Outpost brings us "boorbos", as explained in his post "BoorBos in Purgatory: The Rise of the Boorish Bohemians". This post comes with a handy list of practical observable differences between bobos and boorbos. In this coordinate system I think that I would stand somewhere in between the pure forms, being perhaps 70% boorbo and 30% bobo.

As Tommi wrote recently, all forms of culture that are not published on the net so that anybody can access it for free is a rotting carcass that is already starting to reek, and that everything that was and happened before year 2000 is pretty much useless and at best belongs to a museum. I can't say that I disagree with this view. At least Arts and Letters Daily always links to good stuff. The essay "Dissecting Anti-Isms" by Joseph Joffe examines the nature of anti-Americanism.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, an observation once again validated by the fact that the infamous "definition of racism" page of the Seattle School System has been removed. You know, the one that said that non-collectivism and having a future time orientation are racism. Dennis Dale's post "Mos' Def'" links to the essay "Dumbing Down Racism" in Seattle's local lefty free rag that skewers this idiocy the way it should.

Mangan's post "One Million Sex Crimes" might cause some cognitive dissonance among those feminists who support unlimited immigration. Or it would, if they ever allowed themselves to think about the issue.

I don't like Vietnamese food, but I got nothing against the people there, and therefore hope that their small but gutsy country will rise to prosperity with the other Asian nations. The post "Vietnam: A Rising Economic Star" at "No Speed Bumps" gives us hope. The post "New Orleans - Why Rebuild the Ghetto?" wonders why the slums and ghettoes of New Orleans should be rebuilt. I haven't heard anything about that place for a long time now, and I can assume that common sense has won. Or maybe not.

San Francisco is another American city that is perhaps better as an abstract idea than what it is as a concrete object. "Gods of Commerce says in "North Beach is in a coma" that

I often describe San Francisco as a 92 year old once beautiful woman who spends two hours a day putting on her make-up. When she was young she was a commie and has never paid any attention to the world. She hates children and learns everything she knows from her hair dresser and manicurist.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Tuesday, June 06, 2006 at 9:53 AM