DANIEL S. writes:

I never much thought much about the negative social impact of the PBS children’s program Sesame Street, but Mark Steyn, in writing about Romney’s recent debate performance, states:

Unlike Mitt, I loathe Sesame Street. It bears primary responsibility for what the Canadian blogger Binky calls the de-monsterization of childhood – the idea that there are no evil monsters out there at the edges of the map, just shaggy creatures who look a little funny and can sometimes be a bit grouchy about it because people prejudge them until they learn to celebrate diversity and help Cranky the Friendly Monster go recycling. Read More »

A reader writes:

This is a billboard sign from McAlester, Oklahoma. As you can see it is a petite young woman on a rescue line. I thought you might find it interesting.

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AIDAN writes:

Hello, my name is Aidan and I am 18 years old. I recently started to read this blog and I must admit it’s amazing and relieving to have people to agree with and be open with. Most of the time, I would have to hold my tongue not only to be courteous but to keep from being hated/resented for what I think. I get this wonderful feeling when I read this blog. I have a few questions if that’s alright with you.

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JOHN PURDY writes:

An innovation in pizza technology: Pizza Cones! Very popular in Europe apparently and they’re available in Canada.

Laura writes:

There is no limit to the breathtaking creativity that pizza inspires. According to the product information:

Pizza cornetto margarita is an innovative product of Metora Food, patented on the Greek market and 28 other countries. It is the advanced version of Personal Pizza, offering clean eating, ease of consumption, easy business cooking of many pieces, it’s rich in energy and it’s prepared without preservatives. It’s packed in one or six pieces.

J. PHILIPPE RUSHTON, the Canadian professor of psychology who died last week, wrote a very succinct “Question and Answer” chapter to an abridged version of his well-known book Race, Evolution and Behavior, the book that made him the object of so much hatred and political pressure.

I highly recommend this chapter, as well as the entire, very short abridged book, especially to anyone who is new to the extensive evidence of race differences in physical traits and behavior, and to Rushton’s theory of why these developed over time. Many people say race is not a meaningful concept and is purely a social construct. Rushton answers this question. Here is an excerpt:

 Q: You write as if race is a valid biological concept. Aren’t you only repeating the stereotypes of 18th and 19th century Europeans?

 A: True, there is a 200-year history of “European” research on race. But similar descriptions were made by Arab and Turkish writers nearly 1,000 years earlier and some can even be traced back to the ancient Greeks. Today, new methods of genetic DNA analysis agree with the original classifications made by early European scientists based on their observations. Read More »

IN THIS recent entry, readers discussed anecdotal evidence that a baby boom has occurred in some affluent, predominantly liberal white communities. This may be true in certain areas, but recent census figures suggest the trend is not widespread. As Jesse Powell reported previously, in the ten wealthiest zip codes discussed by Charles Murray, author of Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010, fertility and family stability all declined between 2000 and 2010. In Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, a suburban town of multi-million dollar homes large enough to accommodate families of ten in style, the number of white children went from 859 to 788 and the proportion of white children living with both of their natural parents went from 91.7 to 87.9 percent. In Chappaqua, New York, another “Super Zip Code,” the number of white children went from 3,585 to 3,355 and the proportion of those living with their own parents declined from 93.6 to 92.5 percent.

Of course, the deterioration was far worse in communities farther down on the economic scale, as has been documented here many times. However, this class divide does not represent a true cultural divide; rather it is the reflection of disparities in intelligence and inherent levels of restraint.

Murray believes that at least some stability can be returned to places where single motherhood and divorce are now common if America’s ruling classes preach the values of marriage and stigmatize illegitimacy again. As I wrote in this previous entry,

[Murray’s] notion that there is a great American divide is problematic. America’s elite does not believe in sexual restraint. It does not believe in traditional sex roles any more than America’s working classes. The well-educated simply suffer less from the consequences of the cultural revolution. How could they possibly preach what they don’t themselves endorse?

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The Battle of Lepanto, H. Letter

VINCENT C. writes:

EXPANDING on his point that Romney has no plan to cut entitlement programs, Terry Morris writes:

Genuine, big-C Conservatism recognizes this for what it is, and seeks to destroy it before it destroys us. But for all intents and purposes it already has destroyed us, and we’re living on borrowed time. But a principled conservative approach to it will not admit of just “going along” regardless. We may be forced to watch it unfold, but we don’t have to be party to it.

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John William Waterhouse

LYDIA SHERMAN posts photographs of Victorian artists. She writes:

I am placing a painting [next to] the photograph of the artist to show the dignity of these artists and the subjects that they admired enough to paint. I like the contrasts of the women’s soft, feminine appearance, and the artists rugged, yet neat and orderly; dignified masculine demeanor.

I remember once seeing a photograph of Whistler and being struck by how elegantly dressed he was. Any good artist is an aristocrat, even when living in poverty.

ALAN writes:

Most people do not know that the UFO Myth was preceded half a century earlier by the Great Airship Myth.

In the late 1800s Americans were reading the stories of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and the idea of heavier-than-air flight was gaining credibility. It was in that cultural setting that people in California and Midwestern states reported seeing “mysterious airships” in the night sky in 1896-’97. Newspapers printed elaborate stories of airship sightings and daylight encounters with landed airships. A farmer in Kansas described how he watched his calf being kidnapped by the weird-looking occupants of an airship that hovered overhead.

Hotel visitors in St. Louis held a rooftop party to watch for the mysterious airship. “AIR SHIP SEEN: Thousands of St. Louisans Excited Over the Aerial Visitor,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in an article 30-column-inches long on April 13, 1897. Read More »

THE GREATEST narrative paintings of the nineteenth century are operas on canvas. The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche is a stunning example. Although Delaroche was French, he specialized in scenes from English history. Christopher Wood writes in Victorian Paintings that Delaroche and others helped launch a craze for narrative history among the Victorians.

These pictures all caused a sensation at the time, with their combination of accurate costumes, realistic settings and a strong sense of drama. The Execution of Lady Jane Grey could indeed represent the final scene of an opera. The success of these pictures sent English historical painters scurrying off to study their history books, consult costume experts and pore over books of old engravings… Victorian history paintings did for the nineteenth century what the epic film was to do for the twentieth.

These historical paintings were distinctive in that they tended to focus on intimate moments in the lives of the famous, rather than grand scenes, and were in accord with the Victorians’ love for what Thackeray called “a gentle sentiment.” What is most interesting in Delaroche’s painting of 1833 is the way he portrays a child-like quality of the blindfolded Jane Grey, who is illuminated by gold light and reaches out into the darkness with her hand as if to grasp at support or something solid, and the emotions of those who were with her. One feels as if one is viewing an intensely private moment.

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RANDY, a reader at VFR, has these comments about the presidential debate:

… Obama was confident and was not as inept as the conservative media wants to believe. They are delusional. I looked at a few snippets on the YouTube video. One thing that struck me is how there is no real difference between the two. In one part of the video Romney said that he agreed with Obama that the government will not take in less money as a result of his (Romney’s) tax proposals. What? Is he serious? Read More »

IN HER ongoing series of posts on the ugliness of modern life, Kidist Paulos Asrat wrote recently about a new French perfume:

The decadence of modern culture continues with the legendary perfume house Givenchy releasing a new scent clearly named after Elizabeth Short, the murdered and mutilated California woman who became known as the Black Dahlia. She got her moniker through malicious gossip in Hollywood, where the legend is that she wore a signiature black suit to attract men as a prostitute. She went to California to try her luck in acting while doing all kinds of odd jobs from modelling to waitressing. Some of the men she attracted, including a string of boyfriends, became suspects in her murder. Read More »

IN an interview with Glamour magazine, Obama spells out his views on the proper role of women. They should go to college (preferably with federal subsidies) and get well-paying jobs. The government has an obligation to keep them from having too many children so that they can achieve these goals. And, one can infer from his statements, women must unceasingly compare themselves to men and envy what men have. Compare Obama’s philosophy with that of Theodore Roosevelt, who said in 1905:

No piled-up wealth, no splendor of material growth, no brilliance of artistic development, will permanently avail any people unless its home life is healthy, unless the average man possesses honesty, courage, common sense, and decency, unless he works hard and is willing at need to fight hard; and unless the average woman is a good wife, a good mother, able and willing to perform the first and greatest duty of womanhood, able and willing to bear, and to bring up as they should be brought up, healthy children, sound in body, mind, and character, and numerous enough so that the race shall increase and not decrease.

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VINCENT C. writes:

I AM sure other commentators have remarked on the remarkable difference between the Romney and Obama families at the end of last night’s debate. The Obama daughters could not have been there because they were too young, but even if they were, it wouldn’t have made much difference. The Romneys swelled the stage, leaving the President and his wife with no choice but to be introduced to so many and blend into the crowd. On a national scale, the large family is an anomaly, but it now forms a significant and growing minority that will become more vocal with time. Almost all large families are found among white, religious minorities, including Mormons, Amish, Hasidic Jews, devout Protestants and traditional Catholics. [As a commenter points out below, this is not true. It is more accurate to say that a majority of those with large families of more than four children, families that are intact and possess a stable culture that prizes large, intact families, are among these distinct groups.]

For all their talk of collective harmony, liberals cannot produce, and will never produce, that most fundamental unit of group solidarity: the large family. [It is more accurate to say liberals cannot produce a culture that prizes and encourages large intact families.]

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THERE WERE moments during last night’s presidential debate when I felt like I was watching two insurance salesmen selling their policies, down to all the boring and technical minor clauses. When they were talking about health care, I wouldn’t have been surprised if one pulled out an X-ray and said, “You see, if you break a bone right there, you will get $4,000 for rehab.” That’s what the presidential election has become, a matter of who has the best deal.

I thought Romney was terrific, as far as that format goes. He was energetic, passionate and in total command of his material. But, except for a few brief moments, he was not inspiring. But then he couldn’t be inspiring, unless he possessed extraordinary courage. That would involve answering the questions, “Who are we? Are we a people?” These are questions entirely off limits in our Tower of Babel.

Most people don’t really care about money more than anything. Most people can even endure significant hardship for the sake of some greater good. But most people can easily be whipped up into an obsession with money by politicians who cannot sound themes of grandeur and collective destiny because that would involve addressing those vital questions, “Who are we? Are we a people?” That would involve answering the second of those questions in the affirmative. If we are not a people, there really isn’t much to say, is there? Might as well focus on those technicalities.

Neither of the two candidates dared to say that even people who are unemployed and undergoing terrible disappointment might have a reason for hope and courage because they are part of some greater good.

Here’s a relevant comment from Pilgrim’s Pride at The Americanist:

There was a time, not so very long ago, when “America” meant something more than grabbing as much money however you can.

It meant a people, united by blood, history and destiny, living together on this empty, dangerous continent so that they could live in Liberty to worship and glorify their God the best they could. Read More »

AT DoubleThinkNot, Thor Christopher writes of the recent torture and murder of a white car dealer in South Africa, one of the many vicious killings since apartheid that you will never read about in American newspapers. Remember all those campus protests against apartheid years ago? There are no protests against these heinous crimes. The killing of a family this July, in which a 12-year-old boy was drowned in a bathtub after hearing his mother raped and murdered in the next room and his father shot — oh, you didn’t hear about it, eh? I wonder why.