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Code snippets

Code snippets on tumblr:

// This is an example of what code can look like in tumblr. // 3456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789 id name = @"World"; NSLog(@"Hello, %@!", name);

See here!

And that's all, folks.

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"But in the final minutes of [his Showtime election night] show, Mr. Colbert scrapped a prepared closing monologue about the importance of coming together after a polarizing election, and went off script. He was personal, and he discussed, bluntly, the searing divides in the country." Interesting how he was all about "coming together" until the golden girl actually lost. Typical of so many! NYTimes: How Stephen Colbert Finally Found His Elusive Groove

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Why evangelicals voted Trump

“In the years since Clinton, culturally conservative Christians have seen increasing, and increasingly intense, assaults on religious freedoms that had never before been seriously endangered. Christian florists and bakers fined or ostracized for declining to participate in same-sex weddings, the Little Sisters of the Poor ordered to provide contraceptives for their employees, ‘Dear Colleague’ letters from the Department of Education pressuring Christian colleges to accommodate transgender students — the list of conflicts between the Obama administration and Christians was long, and a Hillary Clinton administration would surely have perpetuated those tactics. Though Bill Clinton enthusiastically signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993, Hillary Clinton in 2016 said that ‘the concerted effort underway in a number of states to discriminate against LGBT people under the guise of protecting religious freedom is...insincere and insidious. And we shouldn't let it stand.’" “When Character No Longer Counts,” by Alan Jacobs, writing in National Affairs, Spring 2017.

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Interview with Lev Grossman

How do you think Dungeons & Dragons shaped the generation of writers that you belong to, and how did the game provide the "roots" of The Magicians?

"It's amazing, but sometimes you meet some of these very distinguished literary chaps, who've written some very fancy stuff, and scratch the surface and you find a real D&D nerd, you know, just underneath. A lot of writers that I know played when they were kids.

"It was especially important for me, just because, you know, I was really trying to translate some traditional fantasy narratives and tropes into the idiom of realism; to think really hard about how this would actually work if we were playing by real-world rules.

"And that's very much what they did in Dungeons and Dragons. I mean, they really took, you know, they took... No one ever... You know, there was no system to Gandalf's magic, for example, or the White Witch's magic. But they had to figure out—the Dungeons and Dragons guys—had to figure out, how to, you know, how to emulate it; and figure out on a very, very practical, mundane level how it would work.

"Are you tired after you cast a spell? How long before you can cast another one? What exactly do you need? How long does it take? All that stuff. They asked these questions that nobody ever asked before. And, when I was writing The Magicians I found myself asking the same questions. And it was really helpful to have, um, have that work.

"I just feel the Dungeons and Dragons rule books, which are... you know, I basically... are permanently engraved in my subconscious now—to have those to build on—it was really essential. It was really essential. I actually can't overstate how important it was to have that stuff to build on."

[Interview begins at 44m 13s.]

https://www.acast.com/geektown/geektownradio103-themagiciansauthorlevgrossman-uktvnews-uktvairdateinfo-?autoplay?autoplay

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“’So, er, where were all these women when Hillary Clinton was speaking to near-empty arenas, or on Election Day, when such a turnout actually mattered?’ all of you non-multiple-award-winning New York Times columnists are rightly wondering.

“Well, while I am as far from being a typical female as you are ever likely to encounter, I have just enough estrogen in my system to solve that ‘mystery.’

“Women don’t want their grievances fixed, you silly boys.

“They want them heard.” — “Thanks for Nothing, Bitches,” by Kathy Shaidle, writing in Taki’s Magazine, January 24, 2017

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War in 21st century America

"[H]ere’s what too few of those Americans appreciate, even today: war created [the] swamp in the first place. War empowers Washington. It centralizes. It provides a rationale for federal authorities to accumulate and exercise new powers. It makes government bigger and more intrusive. [...] When it comes to sustaining the swamp, nothing works better than war."

— “On Winning,” Andrew J. Basevich, in The American Conservative, 11/30/16

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Radical feminism and civilization

“What does seem to be clear, from the record so far, is that women do not have this capacity to innovate. They bring great talents to developing what Thomas Kuhn called ‘normal science,’ but they have no record of creating the ‘paradigm shifts’ that lead in new directions. It may be, of course, that as the feminists sometimes claim, this is because they were never encouraged to engage in these activities. But to need encouragement, to depend on models to follow, is precisely not to have a capacity to innovate.” — How civilizations fall, by Kenneth Minogue, The New Criterion, April 2001

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“Still nursing their wounds after last week’s thrashing, Democrats already are grappling with how to defend 10 senators up for reelection in 2018 in states that Donald Trump carried, some resoundingly.”  — “Reeling Democrats confront brutal 2018 Senate map,” November 17, 2016, in Politico.

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George Will on academic jargon: "[T]he point of such ludicrous prose is to signal membership in a closed clerisy that possesses a private language." http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442340/higher-education-descent-absurdity

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Politics and the Sacred

“The key to understanding tribal behavior is not money, it’s sacredness. The great trick that humans developed at some point in the last few hundred thousand years is the ability to circle around a tree, rock, ancestor, flag, book or god, and then treat that thing as sacred. People who worship the same idol can trust one another, work as a team and prevail over less cohesive groups. So if you want to understand politics, and especially our divisive culture wars, you must follow the sacredness.”

Jonathan Haidt, “Forget the money, follow the sacredness,” the New York Times, March 17, 2012 (Hat tip: Rod Dreher.)

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Weaponizing empathy

“[Liberals] politicize and weaponize empathy for identified victim classes as a way of gaining power over opponents. This has been going on for quite some time, and has been very effective. I’ve mentioned in this space before how shocked I was back in 1994 to have been having lunch at a DC restaurant with a friend and two of her female acquaintances, all three of them involved in Democratic politics. One of them brought up abortion, and said, hey, you’re a Catholic, what do you think about abortion? I told them I’m pro-life, but didn’t want to discuss it at lunch. That was just about the last word I got in. All three women dogpiled me rhetorically, telling me that I had no right to an opinion on it because I was a man, a religious bigot, et cetera. This is someone all three had just spent a pleasant morning with, walking around DC.

“After a few minutes, one of the women at the table folded her arms and looked frightened. Someone asked her what was wrong. She said, ‘I don’t feel safe with him at the table.’

“I stood up, threw down money to pay my bill, and walked out of the restaurant. And that was the end of me and them. I could not believe how pathetic that conversation was, and how childish and manipulative was that young woman who feigned fright as a way to marginalize me. Little did I know that she was ahead of her time.” — Rod Dreher, “Trump & Civic Empathy,” The American Conservative, November 16, 2016.

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“Untangling the Immigration Debate”

The New Yorker piece discusses the books of three different authors on the subject of immigration. One of the authors, George J. Borjas, an economics professor at Harvard's Kennedy School, argues that our immigration policies have hurt low-skilled American workers while enriching corporate America. Moreover, our policies tend to benefit the federal government while burdening state and local governments.

From the piece: "If we really wanted to 'make natives as rich as possible,' he writes, we would adopt a radical new policy: 'admit only high-skill immigrants,' because they do the most to make all of us more productive. But this is not what we do." http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/untangling-the-immigration-debate

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“The liberals and neocons, were essentially two sides of the same coin, or as Stephen Walt has written, neocons are ‘liberals on steroids’. They were both abstract, universal, internationalist, interventionist and Wilsonian; one rhetorically espousing humanitarianism and the other democracy promotion. Both were devoid of historical, structural and cultural contexts. In a way, these internationalists were qualitatively no different than the Marxists they opposed.” Reappraising Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilisations’

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I read the following line over at Taki's Magazine, the other day:

"A Trump victory would also lead to massive collective depression and rampant suicidal ideation in all the people that I genuinely hate. It would undermine their very sense of reality and shatter their self-image beyond repair."

I wouldn't go that far, but I can appreciate the sentiment.

http://takimag.com/article/smells_like_victory_jim_goad/print#ixzz4KwbkVXXZ

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“Once the idiot feminists got rid of exclusive, antique-y all-men clubs like my father used to belong to, you know what became big? STRIP CLUBS! It was the closest men could get to being around just men.” – Ann Coulter I said this to people back in the early ‘90s, and people looked at me like I was crazy. Glad to see someone else gets it. http://takimag.com/article/introducing_the_proud_boys_gavin_mcinnes#axzz4KNQpJ6bv

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“The chances of being killed by a mass shooter are lower than the chances of being struck by lightning or of dying from tuberculosis.” — “Making a Killing,” The New Yorker, June 27, 2016, page 45. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/after-orlando-examining-the-gun-business

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Comment: Sneering urban elites

Jonah R. says:

June 27, 2016 at 12:34 pm

The other night I went to a dinner party consisting of all upper-middle-class liberals in a major urban core, the kinds of people who follow politics superficially but believe they’re informed. At one point, someone found a reason to mock Antonin Scalia, including his appearance and his hair. Someone else said, “I’m not political, but…” and then expressed amusement and contempt for Trump over something he said. As someone who follows the news, I knew it was something he said six months ago–it was a stale and untimely comment, but no one else realized it. Then somehow an unusual subject came up: one couple thought it was hilarious and sad that they recently saw two people buying their wedding cake at the grocery store bakery counter. (“At least it wasn’t some size 24 person at Walmart!” replied another, to much laughter.)

Sociopolitically, the whole thing was fascinating. First, you had people who assumed that no one invited to a social gathering could [possibly] have different opinions. Those Morlocks couldn’t possibly be people they’d come into contact with. Second, you have people who think they’re informed about the news but are actually weeks or months behind on understanding the Trump phenomenon. Third, there was the total contempt for average people who lack middle-class pseudo-sophistication. (Fourth, I should add, these are people who consider themselves morally and intellectually superior to overweight Walmart shoppers, but most of the evening’s conversation was about which television shows they watch for hours at a time.)

When we got in the car, even my very liberal wife said she’d been put off by the sneering and contempt for non-liberals. I told her: this is why there’s a Trump, a Brexit, and whatever, God help us, is coming next. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/brexiteers-sociology/comment-page-1/