Archive for August, 2008

Sarah Palin

Friday, August 29th, 2008

I may eat these words, since no one knows much about her yet.  But what I hear, I like.  She has five kids, the last with Downs Syndrome so you know she means it when she says she’s pro-life.  She supported Pat Buchanan in 1996 and she had very positive things to say about Ron Paul earlier this year.  Her husband works for a living as a commercial fisherman, a former Army sniper with a Purple Heart.  Being a lady will siphon off many Hillary voters, those masses of working-class and lower-middle divorcees who aren’t really liberal but voted for Hillary because they think all men are like their ex-husband.  You couldn’t make up a better candidate and John McCain has shown himself to have a “will to live”.

Unlike Bob Dole or even George W., you get the feeling he actually wants to win this thing so he swallowed his pride and nominated a real conservative instead of his pal Joe Lieberman.

I may actually vote McCain.  I figure there’s a 10% chance he dies in his first term anyway, being 72; he’s overweight and an angry anxious type, the sort of person whose reaction to the stresses of the Presidency will wreak havoc on his cardiovascular system in short order. If McCain lives, he may only serve one term, and Palin is young and will have a leg up on the next time around.

And the Democrats look stupid enough to attack her for being “just” a mother (no mother of course is “just” a mother; she helped her husband with his home business) before entering full-time politics a few short years ago.  The Dems, of course, have always hated motherhood, especially the married taking-care-of-the-kids type.

10% odds of a good President is better than nothing, which is exactly the chance any third party has in this election.

Posted in Politics | 21 Comments »

Cutting Caffeine

Sunday, August 10th, 2008

I like caffeine so much that I know I would like nicotine, even though I’ve never had it.  That’s why I can never try it.

This last week I cut my caffeine intake by about four-fifths (my former intake was 1 cup of strong coffee and 1 coke, supplemented some days by another cup or iced tea).  It was painful, but worth it.  The way my mind works, somewhat nervous and anxious already, does not need additional stimulation.  God gave me my own internal caffeine that should not be enhanced.

Caffeine, I read, increases stress hormones among its effects.  Now, I find myself doing more to actually address sources of stress than feeling stress itself.  And fewer stress hormones also means better control over the appetite, which is stimulated by cortisol, adrenaline, and the like.

If you have a nervous or anxious personality, try to cut down the caffeine and see how you feel.

Posted in Business, Family & Kinship, Heritage & Culture, Homeschooling, Uncategorized | No Comments »

John Adams

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

We have been watching the HBO miniseries on John Adams.  So far, it accurately portrays Adams as a neurotic little man bent on expanding the federal government (and gutting the Bill of Rights to an extent not even seen in our day) while Jefferson and his allies look like prophets in predicting the abuses of our present day.

Nevertheless, Adams is a man, who despite his flaws, finishes well, most notably resisting the Federalists’ and Hamilton’s calls for war with France.

The series itself has some flaws.  There is the usual politically correct sophistry about slavery, though the movie unintentionally shows reality.  Whereas we’re supposed to hugely offended by the site of well-clothed and well-fed African-Americans blessed with productive work, this is contrasted in one scene against the backdrop of an urban white slum and the grinding, inhuman poverty among the poor white people of the North.  In a world of scarcity for the necessaries of life as it was back then, slavery was not the worst possible place to be even in America, not to mention if your next best alternative is the continual famines, pagan darkness and genocides of Africa.

The movie also slanders Tom Jefferson with the whole Sally Hemmings thing, which is quite unfortunate as well; Jefferson’s eccentric embrace of the atheistic French Revolution and its leveling ideology gives a bit of weight to the argument.  Since all of the pro-Hemmings scholarship has advanced in the post-rational age of Political Correctness, I give it very little weight, when for most of our history it remained political slander not worth of serious scholarship.

Overall, the series is something worth watching on DVD.

Aside: Personality-wise, Adams was a typical Northerner, it turns out.  Recent geographic personality studies confirm the clustering of neurotics in the New England and New York area:

Notice how agreeableness, a typical southern trait, pretty much stops at the Texas border.

Posted in Heritage & Culture | 9 Comments »

Stuff White People Like

Sunday, August 3rd, 2008

My wife and I are absolutely fascinated with this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Stuff-White-Peopl … 0812979915

Which is based on this blog:

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

The “white people” here are what the author describe as “the right kind of white people”, i.e. white urban liberals.  Many references are made to “the wrong kind of white people”, which definitely includes my family.

This writer is doing a brilliant job of exposing the rank hypocrisy of the Great White Status Game.  Steve Sailer says that he’s a regular reader of isteve.com.

The healthiest thing about reading the book and blog is that it helps deprogram some of the materialism and pressure in the status game.  It’s laugh-out-loud funny.

Posted in Heritage & Culture | 3 Comments »