From The Federalist Paper #2 by John Jay:
I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people – a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs.
Huh…
Why did we lose sight of this?
Bill Fay is an underappreciated English songwriter who recorded in the late 60s and early 70s.
“Methane River” is a gorgeous song, with strange but emotional lyrics, from Fay’s debut album Bill Fay (1970).
“Strangers in the Fields” is a short demo from “From the Bottom of An Old Grandfather Clock,” a 2004 compilation of demos from 1966-1970.
Drudge linked to this story about a wave of Americans retiring to Cuenca, Ecuador due to the way a dollar stretches down there, along with the generous public infrastructure and (apparently) heavily subsidized healthcare.
I love the irony of this passage:
But city officials say Cuenca is something of an accidental hotspot.
“Cuenca never wanted to attract retirees,” said Ana Paulina Crespo, the director of international relations for the municipality. “In fact, we’re facing lots of problems over how to deal with a phenomenon that we aren’t responsible for creating.”
The city is trying to combat local fears that the retirees are both driving up land prices and bleeding the public healthcare system, she said. And the language barrier has become a source of local irritation. Some restaurants and even neighborhoods seem like English-only spaces.
“Cuencanos are feeling like strangers in their own city,” she said.
Huh… sounds vaguely familiar…
More spin and grotesque condoning of separatism by the NYT. Oh, and “first generation” must be the new leftwing buzzword term for children of illegals.
Given the inherent philosophical trajectory of the Alt Right, I suppose factionalism and sniping is inevitable, but it’s depressing nonetheless.
… that the greatest album of all time, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), was released.
There is a massive, new re-release of the album:
May 26 release for the 50th Anniversary Edition of The Beatles’ groundbreaking album, includes 1CD, 2CD and crammed, 6-disc Super Deluxe box set variants.
Here is a wonderful recent interview with the Geoff Emerick, an engineer deeply involved with the making of Pepper.
And here is an interview with Richard Lush, another engineer quite involved with the album:
Originally demo-ed to the rest of The Beatles during the Get Back sessions, “Back Seat of My Car”, released on McCartney’s solo album Ram (1971), is an epic story compacted into 4:26.
MI5 reports that upwards of 23,000 jihadis are living in Britain.
That is the size of an army… in a region of approximately 65 million people.
It is shocking that an article this logically flawed is published in Science.
It’s opening and closing paragraphs are political, seeking to normalize the phenomenon of Syrian migrants into Western Europe. The opening:
When the first busloads of migrants from Syria and Iraq rolled into Germany 2 years ago, some small towns were overwhelmed. The village of Sumte, population 102, had to take in 750 asylum seekers. Most villagers swung into action, in keeping with Germany’s strong Willkommenskultur, or “welcome culture.” But one self-described neo-Nazi on the district council told The New York Times that by allowing the influx, the German people faced “the destruction of our genetic heritage” and risked becoming “a gray mishmash.”
In fact, the German people have no unique genetic heritage to protect. They—and all other Europeans—are already a mishmash, the children of repeated ancient migrations, according to scientists who study ancient human origins. New studies show that almost all indigenous Europeans descend from at least three major migrations in the past 15,000 years, including two from the Middle East. Those migrants swept across Europe, mingled with previous immigrants, and then remixed to create the peoples of today.
Regarding some new DNA techniques:
“We can falsify this notion that anyone is pure,” says population geneticist Lynn Jorde of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Instead, almost all modern humans “have this incredibly complex history of mixing and mating and migration.”
Basically, the piece’s polemics are against a straw man argument/caricature of a Nazi era, idealized sense of ‘racial purity’, which no one today believes, and which has never been the case within the modern HBD movement.
The lengthy piece’s closing paragraphs are more political propaganda:
Back in Sumte in the fall of 2015, the 750 refugees from Syria arrived on schedule. The adults mostly kept to themselves, learning German and taking occasional construction jobs. But their children sang “O Tannenbaum” in a local church at Christmas and their teens ventured out often, seeking cellphone signals in the quiet town.
In the following months, almost all the refugees dispersed to larger towns throughout Germany. In time, some of the young immigrants will contribute their DNA to the next generation of Germans, re-enacting on a small scale the process of migration and assimilation that once played out repeatedly on this same land—and far beyond.
Ah… isn’t that cute.
Normism: The Philosophy of Norm Macdonald, a short book I wrote about the late great comedian, is available on Amazon.
