Puritans ... and Christmas

Douglas Wilson: Like an Out-of-Control Office Christmas Party -- this isn't news to me, but if it's news to Gentle Reader, please take it to heart.

Might that have some relationship ...

Kathy Shaidle:"As my (surviving) daily readers have noticed, ..."

Might that have some relationship to your continuous efforts to alienate your readers? Well, that and all the ads and ad-related shit that you throw at a potential reader's browser.

Yet another conundrum

Here is yet another conundrum for evolutionism --

Cornelius Hunter has a recent post concerning the "sixth sense" of magnetoreception that many animal possess, with a focus on how this ability relates to evolutionism Evolutionists Conclude Magnetoreception Evolved (After They Doubted its Very Existence) ... but then, they “conclude” that about everything, once they stop denying that it exists.

Hunter: -- “... It is also another example of the failure of evolutionary theory. Not only is there no scientific explanation for how such magneto reception, processing and decision-making could evolve, but the entire idea runs counter to evolution. Fifty years ago evolutionists ridiculed the idea that animals could detect such weak signals and use them in a sort of geographic information service. Now they claim it is all a result of blind evolution. As one evolutionist explained regarding the loggerhead turtles, “We think different areas along the migratory pathway are marked by unique magnetic signatures, and the turtles have evolved responses that are coupled to these signatures.” They think that not because the turtle’s magnetoreception appears to be a product of evolution, or that they have anything close to a scientific explanation for how it could have evolved. They think that because they believe evolution is true.

That is the extent of evolution’s contribution to this research.”

Here is the conundrum for evolutionism -

Supposedly - it’s (presently) Gospel in evolutionism -- the earth's magnetic field periodically collapses and reverses.

So, one must wonder, given Darwinsm/evolutionism, and give the periodic collapse and reversal of the earth’s marnet field, how do there happen to be species that rely upon magnetoreception to get to where they need to be when they need to be there (for instance, their breeding or spawning grounds)?


A collapse and reversal is supposed to happen on an average of 450,000 years. That hardly seems like time enough for magnetoreception to randomly evolve-and-fix. Or, even if it were enough time, about the time a species came to get good at it and to depend upon it, the magnetic field would collapse and reverse.

According to the Wickedpedia (no foe of evolutionism, that!) - " A geomagnetic reversal is a change in the Earth's magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south are interchanged. The Earth's field has alternated between periods of normal polarity, in which the direction of the field was the same as the present direction, and reverse polarity, in which the field was the opposite. These periods are called chrons. The time spans of chrons are randomly distributed with most being between 0.1 and 1 million years with an average of 450,000 years. Most reversals are estimated to take between 1,000 and 10,000 years. The latest one, the -BrunhesMatuyama reversal, occurred 780,000 years ago. A brief complete reversal, known as the Laschamp event, occurred only 41,000 years ago during the last glacial period. That reversal lasted only about 440 years with the actual change of polarity lasting around 250 years. During this change the strength of the magnetic field dropped to 5% of its present strength."

So, according to evolutionism, a mere 41,000 years ago, there was a brief (i.e. 440 years) complete reversal of earth’s magnetic field. Now, while 440 years (or 250 years) may be “brief” on geological time-scales, in the life-span of an organism which needs to be at the right places -- feeding grounds and/or breeding grounds -- at the right times, this span of time of being unable to rely upon its magnetoreception to get there equals species extinction.

Euler on 'Freethinkers'

Vox Day: quotes Leonhard Euler and adds comments --

As Aristotle did before him, in his Defense of the Divine Revelation against the Objections of the Freethinkers the brilliant mathematician Leonhard Euler observed that there are people who are simply incapable of being reached by reason:

"The freethinkers have yet to produce any objections that have not long been refuted most thoroughly. But since they are not motivated by the love of truth, and since they have an entirely different point of view, we should not be surprised that the best refutations count for nothing and that the weakest and most ridiculous reasoning, which has so often been shown to be baseless, is continuously repeated. If these people maintained the slightest rigor, the slightest taste for the truth, it would be quite easy to steer them away from their errors; but their tendency towards stubbornness makes this completely impossible."

It makes no difference if one calls them rabbits, r-selected, freethinkers, scientists, credentialists, or "people whom one cannot instruct". What they are, in their core, are the lovers of lies, the haters of truth, and they can never be convinced by any knowledge or logical argument because they will literally be damned before they will question, let alone abandon, the dogma instilled in them by their warren.

It is no surprise that the fact that Man's greatest geniuses anticipated them and described them with utter contempt doesn't even give them a moment's pause.

And, by the by, this same applies to most of my "critics" (such as one sees at Victor Reppert's blog (*) ... or a Panda's Thumb, when I still cared enough about "evolution" to criticize evolutionism) -- they are "lovers of lies [and] haters of truth" and they'll be damned if they are ever going to admit that I have reasoned soundly and said the truth.


==============
(*) Consider this, just from today --

Karl Grant:

llion, Have I ever criticized you for rudeness? I don't think so.

Ilíon:

Here ... if you wish, you can wade through the Google results to see whether you have "ever criticized [me] for rudeness" (*). I have more interesting ways to spend my time.

But recall: you spread false tales about me and on the basis of your false assertion about me, call me a hypocrite.

(*) My point has not been that some people have "criticized [me] for rudeness" (**), it is that some people lie about me (and about themselves) and the[n] criticize, in the sense of 'condemn', me on the basis of those lies.

(**) Here is someone merely criticizing me for "rudeness". His criticism is unfounded, it appears to be based on two misrepresentations:
1) that he didn't quite grasp in context what I'd written that he was immediately criticizing;
2) that he had background false knowledge about my "rudeness" based on the lies you people tell about me.

Here is my response to him ... quite opposite what someone who believed your (plural) lies about me would expect, and in fact, quite opposite how you liars would generally respond.

Karl Grant:

Well, somebody has a persecution complex. And no, I did not spread lies about you since you did advocate and defend the of destroying Mecca, a city full of innocent people in a country that is our ally, while at the same time labeling Bob an apologist for mass murder.

I've explained numerous times how it is that 'Bob' -- who calls me demonic *simply* for opposing the leftist slavery he desires to impose on you and me ... and to call that slavery 'Christianity' -- is, in fact, an apologist for mass-murder.

Also, isn't it just like this sort to accuse one of having a "persecution complex" when one objects to the lies they spread about one?

Ilíon:

liars almost always double-down: "Well, somebody has a persecution complex. And no, I did not spread lies about you since you did advocate and defend the of destroying Mecca, a city full of innocent people in a country that is our ally ..."

To quote a great thinker [Ilíon: that is, I'm quoting Karl Grant himself from just a few posts prior], one for the ages, "How stupid can you get?"

I did nothing of the sort, and Karl Grant is a liar.

Even in isolation, no honest person can take the post to which he links as me advocating or defending the nuclear destruction of Mecca.

Moreover, just six posts later in that thread, I said this "Who needs to nuke Mecca to destroy the Kaaba? A barrage of cruise missiles [w]ould do the trick."

And I further said this: "Nevertheless, dest[ro]ying the Kaaba would lead to tens of millions of deaths world-wide, as Moslems begin to slaughter one another."

Any sane, rational, honest person can see that Karl Grant is a liar.

Any sane, rational, honest person can see that while I believe that destroying the Kaaba would be the quickest way to destroy Islam as an existential threat to the West (and indeed to all cultures ... and to all human beings ... in the world), I also recognize and caution that destroying the Kaaba would lead to convulsions in the House of Submission and to the deaths of untold millions of human beings.

======
And, for the record, while Saudi Arabia may have signed treaties with the United States, they are never our allies; their treaties with us are simply taqiyya and hudna in action. And, by their own Moslem "reasoning" [I should have written 'Islamic', rather than 'Moslem'], no denizen of Mecca is innocent; for in rejecting Christianity (and in persecuting Christians) they actively wage war against God, and therefore Christians have the moral obligation to kill them whenever and however possible.

How fortunate for Moslems that Christianity is not Islam.

Karl Grant:

I rest my case.

In other words, it doesn't *matter* to him in the least that I've shown him not only to have been wrong in what he had asserted about me (a couple of years ago), but actively lying in asserting it yet again. For, after all, he does not love the truth.

Gauss .... and me

Question: what is the sum of the first 100 whole numbers?? how am i supposed to work this out efficiently? --

The question you asked relates back to a famous mathematician, Gauss. In elementary school in the late 1700’s, Gauss was asked to find the sum of the numbers from 1 to 100. The question was assigned as “busy work” by the teacher, but Gauss found the answer rather quickly by discovering a pattern. His observation was as follows:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + … + 98 + 99 + 100

Gauss noticed that if he was [sic] to split the numbers into two groups (1 to 50 and 51 to 100), he could add them together vertically to get a sum of 101.

      1 +    2 +   3 +    4 +    5 + … + 48 + 49 + 50
100 + 99 + 98 + 97 + 96 + … + 53 + 52 + 51

1 + 100 = 101
2 + 99 = 101
3 + 98 = 101
.
.
.
48 + 53 = 101
49 + 52 = 101
50 + 51 = 101

Gauss realized then that his final total would be 50(101) = 5050.

The sequence of numbers (1, 2, 3, … , 100) is arithmetic and when we are looking for the sum of a sequence, we call it a series. Thanks to Gauss, there is a special formula we can use to find the sum of a series:

S=n(n+1)/2

I had essentially worked out this pattern as a very young child, by third or fourth grade, using its principle to more easily sum rows of numbers. One of my sisters also has always used this arithmetic shortcut (we can't recall whether I taught it to her or she independently discovered it), and taught it to her daughters when they were kids.

When I was in eighth grade, our teacher told us all (both eighth and seventh grades shared a class room) to write down the numbers one through one hundred and then sum them. I started applying my habitual method for summing long rows of numbers (finding '5s' and '10s' in each column) ... and then realized that I could group entire rows by '100s'.

That is, whereas Johann Karl Friedrich "Gauss noticed that if he [were] to split the numbers into two groups (1 to 50 and 51 to 100), he could add them together vertically to get a sum of 101", I noticed that I could sum the numbers in this manner: 0+100 1+99 2+98 ... such that a formula to solve the problem was 50(100)+50. I spent more time double- and triple-checking my reasoning ("Is it really that simple?") than on working out the answer.

In for a penny, in for a pound

The Superversive: In for a penny, in for a pound -- The same pattern, if not yet the same ratio, is true of the US dollar.

Enough is Too Much

When my nephew was about four or five, he'd always mangle the saying, "enough is enough" to "enough is too much" (*) -- which, when you think about it, is really what one means by the phrase.


(*) If full, what he'd say was, "enough is too much ... for a boy", by which he meant that something or other was too much for him.

You Can't Tell Them Apart

You can't tell them (my sisters) apart, so don't even try!


In this photo, we're in birth-order, not the "proper order" as mentioned previously, left to right: Troy, Gary, Karen, Sharon. This is at our "Uncle B's" place, he being one of our father's older brothers. It's chilly and I am not smirking (as has been suggested), I'm squinting -- bright sunlight is painful! As you can see, Karen agrees.

I have no idea what our ages are, but I'd guess 8/9, 6/7, 4/5 (my sister thinks the lower number, or younger; she's probably right).

"Uncle B" is/was L B Miller -- those are not initials, that's his name. His kids (he and Aunt Lou (Benson) had 9 kids: 3 sons and 6 daughters) always thought it was funny that we called him "Uncle B." I suppose it sounds like "Uncle Bea." Blame our mother for that. Damn Yankees!

It's rather an accident that we four even exist! Dad had come North to visit "Uncle B" (who had come North for factory work) for two weeks. For whatever reason, he got himself a short-term job while visiting, and just never returned to his "hard-scrabble" land in Missouri -- 40 acres in the Ozarks that had never been logged, except for one tree, the "tree rustler" of which was caught in the act and sent to prison, before Dad bought the land when he was 16. Then he met and married our mother, and here we are.


This is at "Dice St," showing the house. We're older here -- this is clearly after I was well into my "growth spirt" and the different parts of my body were growing at different rates. I was in constant pain for a number of years (fortunately, it was a low-grade, rather than excruciating, pain).

To tell you the truth, I'm not sure I can tell my sisters apart in this photo. And well, the quality of the photo isn't all that great. But, you can tell that Dad took it -- there is his ever-present shadow in the foreground. But, I *think* Karen is on the left and Sharon the right; meaning, they're not the in "correct" order. Those gunny-sack looking dresses they're wearing proabably are ;-). No, they're made of regular fabric. I think. Whichever, Grandma Brown (Dad's mother) made the dresses.

That is Grandma Brown (née Eunice Jay [or J. or J, I really don't know] Price) with us. She was 65 when I was born, so add maybe 10 years to that to get her age in this photo. She used to pat me on the shoulders, beaming, saying something like, "Oh, your hair is turning so dark! I hope it gets jet-black, like your Grandfather's." It never did get that dark ... and I suppose she was purposely ignoring (because my mother was one of those damned Yankees!) that my mother also had very dark hair (our mother's father was said to be 1/2 Indian, though that probably really meant that his mother was part Indian and part white by ancestry, but was born to one of the few registered "Indian" families left in Indiana).

I ask you, does she not look like a squaw? I asked her once, when I was young, whether she was part Indian; she strenuously denied it (when she was growing up, it wasn't "cool" to be Indian). Years later, at my mother's funeral, I asked my "Uncle B" whether she was part Indian and he said, "Yes, her people were Indian" (which, understanding what he said does not mean he was saying she was "full-blood" Indian). I don't know which nation her people were descended from, but I'll take a wild guess at Choctaw (based on nothing more than where in Tennessee her people lived). It's also through Grandma Brown that we have Jewish ancestry.

That grandfather with the jet-black hair was also part Indian (1/4 according to the family) ... which would be where the jet-black hair comes from. He was 50 when our father was born, and died when Dad was nine, that is, about 21 years before I was born. His name was was Joseph (1877-1936); his father (said to be 1/2 Cherokee) was James. I have no idea when or where James was born, just that he was "old" when he married my great-grandmother, Margaret Elizabeth James (I've also seen her name as "Margaret Isabella Elizabeth James"), and died either before or soon after Joseph was born. I've never seen this image before, but this photo is of great-grandmother "Maggie James" and our grandfather Joseph's youngest sister, "Aunt Zubie" (Zuba Sesile Ward). [ another photo edit: this is the only photo of her I'd seen before today]

Dad is/was Samuel Jefferson Richard Joseph. Technically, he was "Baby Boy," because our grandfather was angry that the clerk wouldn't put all that on the birth certificate, and so told the clerk to just leave it as it was. Fortunately for Dad, the county courthouse burned down and took the records with it.

Our father had an older full-brother named Jackson (I don't know the rest of it), who died as a young child; apparently killed by rats (one always thinks of rats as an urban, rather than rural, problem). As I recall it, Jackson was about two years older than Dad and died at age four.

[Sharon says Jackson lived from August 2, 1925 to September 1929. She thinks he got into some moonshine, which killed him; I don't recall anything like that. As I recall it, the family found him dead one morning; there were bite-marks on his face and it was "all black"]

Our grandparents divorced when Dad was very young (they were going to remarry, and Grandpa had the license, but then died of pheumonia contracted putting out a fire burning down his cabin; he was working as a logger at the time). Dad was aware of seeing hs father only once, when he was four, and Joseph took him to visit his grandmother, "Maggie James." Every time Dad talked about that, he'd mention how enchanted he had been by her "beautiful white hair." So, most of his life, he didn't even know what his father looked like. But, when he was in his sixties, someone who had known his father (I think it was the younger man who had shared the cabin with Joseph) sent Dad a photocopy of a photograph of him. Personally, I think my brother Gary looks a bit like him (I take more after Mom's people).

---
Edit, and shocker (in that I never expected there to be *any* relationship, as 'Ward' is so common a name):

I was Googling, to try to verify that I had the birth-name of great-grandmother "Maggie James" correct -- and also so that I could link to an photo of her I once found on the internet. Anyway, I happened to come across this page, according to which we *are* related to Nancy Ward; though, in our case the relationship is by marriage rather than direct descent. Specifically, some of our cousins are descended from Nancy Ward's Scots-Irish husband, Bryant Ward. Our grandfather's step-father, Charles Rufus Ward, was a great-grandson of that man Bryant Ward.

---
Edit2:
Sharon just sent me this photo of Grandma Brown, at about age 88 or 89, to better show her Indian-like appearance; I think I may have been there (home from college) when that picture was snapped:


---
Edit 3:
Ah! These next two are more like what I had in mind for showing off "The Twins" (that's how my brother and I referred to our sisters, but there came a time when they *insisted* we use their names).

The date on this one is July 1963 -- that's when it was developed, not necessarily when it was taken. But, as the girls were born in January 1961, this date has to be fairly close to when it was taken. That may be the only time Dad got pictures developed in a timely manner. Still, are these not some cute, and happy, kids? Near to far: Gary, Karen, Sharon, Troy.


With this first/top one, as infants, I have to admit that to me they just look like babies (and almost all babies look identical to me); if I didn't already know they were my sisters, I'd not guess it. My sisters usually wore their hair long, but one year our aunt convinced them or Mom that a "Pixie cut" would be "so cute," so that's what's with the short hair in the outside photos. Sorry about my sister's rudeness in the center photo (girls!) -- you know, that is probably the *only* photo of Sharon in which her eyes both are open (instead, Karen's are closed)! Maybe this was one of those take-one-another's-place that twins like to do.

Speaking of twins trading places, they did that once in school, I think when they were in the second grade. As I recall the story, at the first break, the one dragged the other into the rest-room to insist they trade clothes and then go to their assigned classes, because the other's teacher was a right witch.

The World Was Younger Then -- Snowforts and Mortality

My brother and sisters and I made a number of snowforts over the years (we also once made a "rabbit warren" as our fort, and once an "ice cave"; and we also once set the back lot aflame to make a "prairie"); it think the fort in the accompanying photo, its remains, at any rate, may be the first. When I saw this photo the other day, the thought that came to me was, "The world was younger then;" and hence the title of this entry.


This photo was taken at "Dice Street," as we generally called the place to distinguish it from the other places we lived (if I recall correctly, the address was 20135 W Dice St). This was a one acre property out in the suburbs that our father had bought from the first friend he'd made after moving North, and for whom I am named. We lived there in two periods; the first from "whenever" until after the birth of my sisters (we moved back into the city before or around my fourth birthday in 1961), and again from when I was 6 until 11.

I think this photo may be from February or March of 1964; if so, I'd be 6 1/2 (that 1/2 is vitally important when you're that age!), my brother soon to turn 5, and my sisters recently turned 3. Yet, do those ages look right?

On the other hand, I don't think the photo can be from the winter of 64-65, when I'd have been 7 1/2. In my memory, that winter was snowier; more importantly, that's the winter I "discovered" my own mortality (and, thus, I'd not have been out in the cold air, unless this was taken just before that). And, were the photo from 65-66, I'd have been 8 1/2 and my sisters 5, which doesn't seem at all right.

So, the photo is probably from late winter/early spring of 1964, but may be from the next year; and we are seen sitting in the sad remains of our (very modest) snowfort, perhaps on the remains of our thrones. There didn't fall much snow that winter, so this fort never amounted to much. We had pretty much stripped the yard bare (as can be seen in the background) in rolling the snowballs of which we constructed it.

This picture is no exception to the general rule for pictures of us: there exist almost no photos of all four of us which do not reflect that Karen is "Gary's Twin" and Sharon is "Troy's Twin." That is, in all but the rarest of cases, Karen will be beside or in front of Gary, and Sharon will be beside or in front of me.

Ah, but those darling little girls were also very assertive of *their* ownership rights -- to Dad. In their minds, they jointly own him, and Gary and I had no rights to him without their express permission! And, budding little private property rights advocates they were, too: for, they discovered "the tragedy of the commons" all on their own. That is, they later realized that joint ownership of Dad caused for conflict when their interests diverged; so they "divided the assets" in a mutually agreeable manner: one claimed his head and the other his feet.

===
Even though we were born and raised in South Bend (Indiana), as was our mother, we apparently had a recognizably Southern accent in those days. Courtesy of Dad. One of my sisters has told me that when they were hospitalized for a tonsillectomy (need I mention that when we visited them, my brother and I were focused on the fact that they getting as much ice cream as they wanted!; I'd don't think I'd have been up for it, but I'd not be surprised if he had been willing to get in on such a sweet deal), a nurse asked them, “So, how long have you been up North?” and she, being a child, had no idea what she was being asked.

===
When I "discovered" my own mortality --

One winter afternoon when I was 7, I saw that Dad was pulling into the drive, and so I ran out to greet him (that is, jump all over him), as little kids do. After all, I hadn't seen him *all* day! But, the thing is, I ran out in jeans and tee shirt -- I mean, not only without putting on a coat, but also without putting on shoes.

I awoke in the middle of the night -- and woke the whole family -- unable to breathe. And I *knew* that I was dying. Now, I known about death for forever, and I understood that I, too, would die. But that knowledge had been conceptual, now it became visceral. I wasn't terrified, really; I just didn't want to leave right then.

In thrashing around in my discomfort, I managed to find a position in which I could finally get some oxygen -- with my head and upper body hanging over the side of the bed. So, that's how I was taken to the hospital; half lying on the car's back seat, half lying on the car's floor.

At the hospital, I was put in an oxygen tent (for the next three or four days), and was again able to breathe without standing on my head. The hospital's patient capacity was apparently on full, at least in the "children's ward;" I was initially placed in an alcove off a main corridor devoted either to adults in general or to just women (I don't recall seeing any men as patients).

The next day, I was better and rested, and able to pay some attention to the goings-on around me. Though, when you're only 7, there is only so much entertainment value to be extracted from watching old(er) women in hospital-gowns walk back and forth past the alcove in which one has been stowed. This day was the first time I heard someone (one of the patients to another) refer to me as "pretty" -- and I was outraged: "I'm not 'pretty!' I'm a boy!" And, as Gentle Reader can see from the photo, I'm not, and wasn't, pretty (yet I have been accused of it more than once; one of those mysteries of life, I guess).

I was later moved for a couple of days to the "children's ward." That was really boring, making me long for the alcove; for, the other kids were either too sick to care about anything outside their own discomfort, or they were "babies." That ward is where I *really* learned that friendly behavior does not indicate friend; I mean, I was also learning that from neighborhood kids, but here I learned it from an adult and the lesson really sunk in.

===
Speaking of snowforts and mortality, that "ice cave" I mentioned could have been the death of any number of us! Our *dogs* were smart enough to not want to go into it. The younger, larger one really put up a fight when we dragged her in with us. This was several years after the one in the photo, after we'd moved back into town; it was one of those winters with particularly heavy snow fall. After the snowplaws had been through, there was this too, too tempting pile of snow and ice ... and we burrowed tunnels into it. And, if it had collapsed, it surely would have killed someone.

But then, we used to jump off the roof! We were some wild kids! We weren't bratty, we were generally well-behaved and polite, we were just really serious out our playing.