J'accuse

"J'accuse"! Relax. I am not accusing you of anything. I just wanted to see how it felt to be one of those accusers. You know, the people who go online and accuse others of a  variety of currently trendy causes. At the moment it seems that every male in the universe has been accused by one or more females of "sexual assault". Sexual assault theses days is ambiguous term. It includes real physical sexual abuse but also "abuse" such as saying something that hurts the alleged victim's feelings. With the proliferation of communication devices (those stupid cell phones) the favorite tweet or social media post is "He assaulted me".

False accusations tend to blur real ones. And that might be a problem now. There is an almost Salem Witch trial sentiment to an accusation today, sexual or any other one. The "He or she is a racist" accusation a good example of today's accusation tyranny. When one person presents an argument with which you disagree, it is easier to call that person a racist than to debate rhetorically and factually. One thing social media does is dumb down conversation, and the dumbest people in the world seem to use social media the most. God! Bring back those cat videos and stop the accusers from assaulting us all with their excess.

There is a saying that the frantic revolution always becomes excessive and then eventually eats its own advocates. So get ready accusers. Your day will come, as you have set a play field to encourage others to also falsely accuse you of something as well. And there is a great likely hood that the accusation is so subjective and so flimsy that you will be as shocked to be accused as were those you previously accused.

In this country we have already damaged essential public institutions by so many false accusations. One example is the ludicrous accusation by people who imagine bigotry is that "police are hunting black people". Our PC media has promoted that one feverishly, with no data to support that allegation. As a result, many Americans now think the police are "racist". Police are now viewed skeptically by many and that crown reacts negatively to the police as a result. Accusations, both the real and merited accusation and the destructive false ones have stained other institutions including schools, churches, The Boy Scouts and other children's social groups, and even out lovable corrupt politicians. Hmmmm Even a politician deserves to not be falsely accused.

Good lucky clearing your name if you are publicly false accused of one of the trendy "abuses" now the rage. If the accusations are not true, the person is in a situation that is similar to being bullied. Once accused and now distrusted and under scrutiny, the sense of helplessness is overwhelming. But the other victims is the real victim abuse, those whose real tragic status is muddied by the false accusers. I suppose if we all unplugged those stupid phones and computers for a while the accuser crowd would go away in frustration. A performer needs an audience in order to perform. But that unplugging isn't possible.

What's more possible is if we resist the false accusers by ignoring their complaints. Better to let the legal system handle such complaints. It is far more capable of separating real abuse from the phony kind. I suspect this won't happen until we all finally say, "Enough"! When we tune them out and stop enabling them they will go on to another attention getting strategy less destructive than the false accusation. Well, I can dream it might happen.

Slugging The Teacher

There was an interesting news story the other day that may or may not reflect society's confusion about it's own identity. Might it show that society has no real identity, or at least no shared one. In Miami, Florida police have arrested a 7-year-old boy accused of hitting his teacher.  A police report stating Mercy Álvarez’s son (sonny boy's identity is not revealed to protect him due to his youth) was handcuffed last Thursday for hitting the teacher. The first-grader slugger was then hospitalized under the Florida Mental Health Act for a psychiatric evaluation for "evaluation". I thought little kids hitting anyone was somewhat a norm from time to time?

Slugger was later discharged. The initial reason the slugging child began punching the teacher was  that he was taken out of the cafeteria for playing with his food. (must have been broccoli day).  He then “attacked the teacher by repeatedly punching her on the back” until the two fell to the ground. Schools Police Chief Ian Moffett says the department's response was standard. But the slugger's mom is fighting mad (oh no!). Slugger Mom Álvarez says the incidents are “police abuse.” That's not a new one these days. Whenever police arrest someone who is not male and Caucasian the cry of police abuse will be toned by some.

It was the second time in less than three months that school authorities punished her son by calling the police for behavioral problems. It seems that two strikes and slugger is out, as far as police are concerned. Is this whole thing a bit idd and a bit overblown? Mom says that little slugger had a tantrum, for sure. But mom Álvarez considers arresting nd cuffing him was disproportionate and outrageous. “This is police abuse; a whim of the officer, because my son was calm when they came to look for him,” said  mom. “The principal, the counselor, and two other people tried to prevent that action and the officer took my child anyway.” Oh.... Police were also called on the child for throwing a tantrum several months ago.

Álvarez says that until she sees the evidence in a surveillance video, she does not believe that her child is capable of being strong enough to knock down the teacher. The family believes that the boy is being bullied and that is why behavior problems arise. Hmmm Now that sounds like a parent too in defense of a child who has misbehaved badly more than once. Slugger Mom even says that her son always dreamed of being a policeman, but these days “he told me he does not want to be because the police are bad.” Thank God for that! If Slugger grew up and became a police officer he might have a body count higher that a Muslim terrorist.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article197039799.html#storylink=cpy

As for the teacher, she is pressing charges against the little boy. That too seems to me to be over reach. But, as I wrote in the beginning, society is so confused right is wrong and wrong is right more often than not. It's because standards of behavior have been too often been replaced with relative ones. It all confuses me so much it makes me want to...well...punch a teacher.

Culturally Irrelevant

The news media, newspapers and the rest, are all aflutter about the 2018 Grammy Awards. I know nothing about of any of the artists, their music, or anything related to them. It's because I have long been done with today's popular culture. I pay no attention to it and only find refuge in the past. It's sad, but common culture today is not something I respect or like. I think the explosions of media connections today has dumbed done popular culture to the extent it is both uninteresting to me and irrelevant to real life.

In the past there was not the cultural generation gap that exists today. In short, there is now no common culture. The days of a family listening to the same music, reading the same books, dressing the same way etc... are bygone days. Rather there now are a series of sub cultures and one must navigate those to find in which he or she fits. Many are defined by the age of the person interested, but the sex, political persuasion, ethnicity and more of the things that divide humans rather than unite them are what steers us to the sub culture of choice.

As to which subculture dominates, it is clear that the economy of scale determines that. The one which has the biggest financial impact of society dominates that society. Thus, I see Grammy winners who produce what I would not even define as music, praised for their "genius". Art is relative, but there is usually a standard from which art must start, a platform. Forget that today.

Perhaps that is the normal life cycle of change for a culture. But surely it is now a rapidly evolving cycle. Our communication technology changes so fast we have little or now time to even evaluate what that technology tells is is desirable. But it does mean more and more people are left behind and must find solace in past culture. When they do so they lose power in the culture, as they are ignorant of what it is about. Oh well, I think I'll just listen to an old Beatle tune and forget those 2018 Grammy Award winners, whomever they are.

Camel Beauty Contest Scandal

Cheating in international sports has got to stop. We all know about the Russians and their nonstop cheating in international contests. They use drugs or bribery of judges to win contests. Everyone knows it, but then, we all expect a dictatorship as corrupt as the Russian one to cheat abroad. Cheating is the norm internally and in fact, some think it is a long held cultural in Russia right to cheat. It takes a culture a long time to disinfect the stains of communism. But now there is word of cheating by non Russians.

The biggest international camel beauty contest is now in the midst of a cheating scandal. That's right, rigged camel beauty contests are now a problem. It seems that at least 12 contestants in the 2017 Saudi Arabia beauty pageant have been disqualified because their owners injected their lips with Botox. I resist any urge to comment on the beauty or non beauty of Saudi women here, but relate to you that camels are considered very sexy things in the Mid East. Maybe its because the camel is uncovered while the Saudi woman is hiding among all those sheets of camouflage the men insist the ladies wear.

Camel looks are so important that at this contest the judges  hand out millions of dollars in cash prizes to the breeders of the most toothsome beasts. The camel teeth and fullness of the face are seen as the main standard of beauty. But the sexiest camels are supposed to be all natural ones, not Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenneger chemically enhanced ones. "They (the camel breeders) use Botox for the lips, the nose, the upper lips, the lower lips and even the jaw,” Ali al-Mazrouei, the son of a leading Emirati camel breeder. “It makes the head more inflated so when the camel comes, it’s like, ‘Oh, look at how big that head is,’ ” he said. “It has big lips, a big nose.”

Forget the steroid infused humans at the Olympics! The Camel festival in Saudi Arabia where the cheating has been unmasked  involves up to 30,000 camels and has so far attracted at least 300,000 visitors, organizers said. Camels also compete in races, with total prize money for the festival of $57 million; of that, $31.8 million is set aside for the beauty pageant. Wow!  For $57 you can botox me.
Botox injections and collagen fillers alter a camel’s appearance for months.

By the time a buyer finds out they’ve been had, it is usually too late for action against the seller. The camel competitions may ban camels for years but owners can continue to enter other camels. Anyway, the cheaters have been unmasked, so the offending camels, enhanced lips and all have been sent away from the contest and into the desert. In camel land, all natural is in and Hollywood botox is out.

To Climate Change Zealots- Shut Up And Cool Down!

Those idiots who throw "climate change" into my face just won't go away. They are armed with a smug  theory that humans have the power and are in control of nature. Yet the source of their belief is a slither of truth and a whole lot of speculation, based on false information turned into climate science truth. I wish they would shut up and let the earth and me alone. I challenge the source and the citations of "expert" analysis of this strange climate change religion.  Is it possible for science to know the truth about climate changes, whether they are a normal up and down variable or, is it as the climate change adherents say that climate is under control of humans.

Skepticism and uncertainty have always been the heart and soul of science, but irrational confidence and certainty is the  belief of the realm in much of today's public discourse about climate and most other things that are said to be "proven to be true by science". But this is anti science in mindset. Unquestioning confidence is deeply troubling for the scientific community because it is not the currency science uses, and it has led people in America and around the world to question scientific enterprise itself. We should all be troubled when science is treated as if it were an ideology rather than a discipline. I say that the hysterical belief in human control of temperature is insane. Too, the reaction to that belief is far more harmful to humans that would be the case if the climate religionists were right in their theory.

The point of science is not to produce doctrines that initiate policy, often costly and harmful in the name of the "truth" abusers of science push. Real science, not the pop science that climate changers cite too often, collects and test evidence that points toward conclusions. These then are used to create approaches, treatments and policies based on rigorous research. The amount of evidence produced ion the subject of climate change will fit on the head of a pin. Yet, climate change believers can't wait for truth. They instead create it. This is an insult to real science and real scientists who are afraid to challenge these narratives publicly, lest they be branded with the scarlet letter 'D' (for "climate denier").

Scientific investigation should be undertaken to question today's knowledge, to seek new evidence through research and experimentation. But that's not the way it works for climate change. Governments promote the theory as truth and punish those who disagree. They support the climate change religion with taxpayer funding and ;propaganda. And so it goes, and goes and goes on.  Today's sheepish culture of the endless annoying communication devices, with the help of stupid celebrities a shallow media as popular cultures love of the trendy versus the real, assist the climate change narrative as gospel.

Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930’s the media peddled a coming ice age. From the late 1920’s until the 1960’s they warned of global warming. From the 1950’s until the 1970’s they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming/climate changers the fourth estate's fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years. I wish they would just shut up and let science work. The media promotion of climate change, that there is scientific “consensus” of impending climatic doom is wrong and an insult to the scientific method.  After all, there was a so-called scientific “consensus” that there were nine planets in our solar system until Pluto was recently demoted.

The climate changers are as silly to me as those who insisted a thousand of year ago that the earth was flat, that this was a fact that was not up to debate. We should let science try to find the cleanest forms of energy possible, wait for it to be economcially feasilble for use and well.....just stop the nonsense about how humans are changing climate.

The Death Of Jazz

I grew up and lived most of my life in New Orleans, hearing jazz as a small boy I remember those sounds so well. There were old jazz clubs everywhere in the city and all little boys were taken to them from time to time. I liked that jazz...until  it was when in my 20's or so when old jazz, traditional jazz seemed to fade away into whatever old jazz is today. As far as some people are concerned, jazz, meaning old jazz, isn't just lost today. It's dead.  Few people pay attention to any kind of jazz anymore. Instead, musicians who play it present us with a strange aberration it is many find boring and without any "soul" at all. Modern Jazz seems like a McDonald's hamburger. It is full of sound and fury, signifying little.

What we have now is a commercialized idea of what old jazz was. But then, I am not a musician I am just an observer of culture and think that the death of Jazz is the same dying of culture that we have and are experiencing in the dawn of the computer chip and other technological assassins. When culture changes so rapidly we hardly realize what we lose it is a particularly bad form of change.

One can still visit the "museum" of old jazz at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, that music venue for those who want to remember the spirit and soul of a form of music that used to excite the listener, but which is less today even than elevator music. Beyond Preservation Hall, it's hard to find old jazz in New Orleans anymore. Instead we have that bubble gum of jazz everywhere there, Neo jazz. But then I am just a little informed person who remembers old jazz and laments what it becomes.

Too, I am inadequate in knowledge of the field and incapable of defining old jazz. Thus, I am only capable of lamenting its passing. I do know that something of great cultural value came quickly and has now evolved into something mush less. Perhaps too few others have that recognition. Here is a vintage clip of Mardi Gras scenes from the 40's and of an New Orleans old jazz tune, 'Eh La Bas', by Kid Thomas Valentine (a trombone phenom). Sadly, real jazz is hard to find anymore, even in modern  New Orleans. If you don't feel sad that this kind of jazz is gone then I have just been whistling an empty tune here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quyHJODhyvo&index=2&list=PLZryXP-J6HpNtVZgURyOIxm1TnNscn7Lw

National Pie Day

Did you know that January 23rd is National Pie Day? It is supposed to be a day for all to bake or cook, and of course to eat your favorite pie.  Uh, maybe eat one piece, not the whole pie. People who study pie history say that pies have been around a long time. The first pies appeared around 9500 BC in the Egyptian Neolithic period or New Stone Age. I doubt that first pie resembled in any way what people like to eat now. Pie is one of the most versatile foods, with endless filling possibilities, but Pie Day is supposed to be as much about remembering famous "pie" moments in our lives and trying to make new ones.

I think my first remembrance of home made pie was my grandmother making lemon pies. She was from County Cork Ireland and brought the local recipe which used lard in the crust. Today, lard is on the food police list of forbidden products. I just use butter or shortening in my pie crusts. This grandmother made an exquisite filling for her luscious lard crust. The recipe, which I have and use ( without lard) from time to time uses  more lemons than should be allowed. It produces a tart and deep filling.  No one refuses my lemon pie, especially since I eschew meringue and go for fresh lightly sweetened whip cream as the topping for the tart filling.

Maybe you have a pie memory too. Perhaps you hate pie, But you'll never top a pie baker known on Instagram as@ThePieous. Pieous makes pies with celebrity portraits baked into the top, so-called “pietraits”.  Ms. pietrait has created  pies with a David Bowie and Prince image. Those would be fine. But who would want to eat a Hillary Clinton pie? Not I!

One oddity about pie day is that every January 23rd is also 'Measure Your Feet Day'. I never measure my feet and am not sure why anyone would. But I refuse to research that. I don't want to be convinced that I need to measure my feet. Someone may be watching and that may be the final straw that sends me to the nursing home. Luckily, we can eat all the pie we want and eat it any day we want. No one will send us to the nursing home for doing so.