#comparing works of art in an uplifting way btw

[chestersbraincell]

“But children…grow up” is this fandom’s “despite everything, it’s still you” but obviously like the negative version of that, but STILL. It has the same gut wrenching angst potential and I REFUSE to hear any objections

[sepublic]

Something that I am curious about in the future is what made the Clawthorne sisters so hyper competitive with each other. Lilith always tries to start something with Eda and loses except for essentially the curse and Agony of a Witch. And I mean always loses. Usually you'd eventually stop for ones one self-esteem. There's a reason that Lilith's response to "I am better than you" is to reveal the curse. It's the only thing she'd ever gotten on Eda it seems But the dynamic is so aggressive its odd

This makes me wonder if part of the reason why Lilith deliberately held off on capturing Eda, aside from recognizing her own limits… Was also because she KNEW that as much as she’d want to one-up Eda in a traditional fight and not just wait for the curse to make it easier, I think Lilith also still felt guilty over the curse;

Specifically, her motives of wanting to be better than Eda! So instead of opting to keep trying to defeat her sister in outright combat, Lilith just LETS Eda have these victories, and opts to be patient… To not let her humiliation and shame motivate Lilith to hastily seeking out Eda in an attempt to capture her ASAP, just for her own pride because look what happened last time. But then we have Belos threaten to execute Lilith by the end of the day… And Lilith is in a LOT of stress and has been letting her losses get to her, even if she doesn’t want to let them…

…Which as you pointed out, culminates in her frustration as she desperately seizes ANY example from the past in which she could’ve felt better than Eda, because why is Eda lording this over her, doesn’t she see how hard Lilith is trying, to be mature?! To look out for her, doesn’t Eda realize that not everyone is born special or with talent, that some people have to WORK for what they have and they don’t have the privilege to just go off and do their own thing, knowing they could easily fight back retribution from Belos and the Emperor’s Coven!?

Doesn’t Eda love her sister, because to Lilith… She never asks Eda to join the Emperor’s Coven, simply on the revelation that Lilith will DIE if she doesn’t. It’s like Lilith is certain that Eda values her own freedom over Lilith’s life, which says a lot about how Lilith views their relationship and any potential jealousy towards Luz, a stranger Eda has known for only a few weeks at best.

And obviously it leaves the question, as you pose (and I LOVE your reblogs and asks btw, they’re brilliant and I’m sorry I can’t respond to all of them in time), WHY does Lilith feel the need to be better than Eda? Is it because being a protective older sibling is the one thing she felt good at in life, the one role Lilith felt content in while allowing Eda to be better at everything else… So when Eda jeopardizes this relationship by becoming her own independent person, Lilith feels resentful, because isn’t being better than her enough!? Does Eda really need to go out and become a Wild Witch and leave behind her own sister?!

After Agony of a Witch, we got a piece of art from Dana showing Lilith and Eda as kids…. And they’re just enjoying each other! They’re just loving each other in the moment, no strings or jealousy attached whatsoever! THIS is what she focuses on amidst the revelation of the curse, not any hidden darkness in Lilith’s heart, but love and attachment… And coupled with the caption, “Can’t go back”, and I have to wonder if this was Lilith’s way of keeping Eda close. Of keeping Eda stuck with her so she’d never leave, so that Eda wouldn’t become a wanted criminal and possibly executed for it!

I think Lilith had a LOT of motives that night, more than anyone could reasonably count. I don’t think she exactly had friends, because… She was a KID when she did this, a kid cursing her even littler sister! It already seems suspicious that she could cast a curse THAT powerful at such an age, and I have to wonder if an outside party influenced her… And similarly, were her and Eda’s parents not so great? Lilith parallels Amity, and HER parents… oof. We know they compare Amity to Emira and Edric. Lilith mentions coming from humble beginnings, so maybe the Clawthorne parents saw their kids as a means of uplifting their social status?

Or maybe… They didn’t even HAVE parents! And yes, I know Eda alluded to their existence, but it was as a joke while messing with Luz… Regardless, maybe the two sisters only had each other, which made Lilith’s dependency all the more worse! Amidst not really having anyone to uplift or praise Lilith besides Eda herself, who was already doing better than her… You get the idea.

We’ve seen how badly the system has broken people like Amity before. The show has been setting and building itself up, to the idea that it’s the system who sets people at each other’s throats. But Amity would never curse her own siblings, and amidst the discussion that The First Day brought up, about why kids feel compelled to do certain actions, that they don’t just occur within a void… I don’t think Lilith was a very happy person when she cast the curse. It doesn’t absolve her of any blame, but like with Amity and Willow… It’s important to consider why some kids feel the need to be better, or who they feel like they have to impress. That they have OTHER relationships… Or in this case, maybe this is the only one they have!

Looking back at previous episodes, and seeing how happy and excited Lilith is about the idea of being Eda… It’s clear that she’s doing this from more than a place of absolving her own guilt. So the question remains- WHY did she do it, when that love was so very strong and came from somewhere? If Eda and Lilith’s love for each other came from a place, then what was the origin of that resentment and jealousy?

[blue-mint-winter]

ST Voy s4e8 Year of Hell and s4e9 Year of Hell part II -  Voyager pulls off another time travel story and does it well. The crew is out through a real wringer and brought to almost complete destruction like in Kes’ vision, but details are much different, for example Janeway and B’Elanna don’t die and there’s Seven on board. I really liked how the bonds between the crew became even stronger in the hardship. Janeway became very extreme too, constantly taking risk on herself and making everyone worry (I mean myself too!). She also got a haircut. I really felt the stakes in this ep, the desperation they felt. Btw, Tuvok’s blind shaving with a big knife was extra too. I liked the symbolism of that pocket watch Chakotay gave to Janeway on her birthday. The main villain, Annorax, was detestable. The show tried to make us feel bad for him by comparing him with Voyager crew, but the key difference is that one was erasing other races from history as if that would bring back his family and other wasn’t. Chakotay almost buying into his way of thinking and methods seems to continue in line with his character’s tendency to get influenced by authority figures he encounters. Thankfully, Paris was there to say it how it was. I thought the ending solution to the problem was clever, how erasing his time manipulating ship from the timeline erased the reason his race got in trouble and Voyager was also restored back to normal. On the other hand it means the loss of memory for everyone, of the good ones too, but they still have the chance to make new memories, so they can make up for that.

s4e10 Random Thoughts - Voyager visits a peaceful planet of Mirians who are telepaths and B’Elanna get arrested for having a violent thought that caused one of them to commit an assault. The concept of this ep reminded me of that TNG ep with Wesley getting sentenced for trampling a lawn, but this ep’s story has much more finesse and complexity to it. It explores the idea of a society in which thought crimes are real and can be persecuted. Interestingly enough, it brings a dose of realism into something that at first glance was an utopia where everyone is nice and there’s no crime. Turns out outlawing something and memory purging isn’t going to make the problem gone, it just went underground. People will want the forbidden fruit and total control over thoughts is impossible. I liked that Tuvok once again took charge of investigation, it was cool to see him work. Though I do wonder since when Vulcans could speak telepathically like Betazoids? Btw, I like Seven’s friendship with Tuvok, they are both set apart from their human crewmates. I liked the moments with Seven questioning Janeway’s decisions to explore other planets instead of just going home as fast as possible.

s4e11 Concerning Flight - In this ep, I realized that the actor who played hologram of Leonardo da Vinci played Gimli in LOTR. Anyway, it was a fun ep. From the beginning, I thought that Janeway’s Leonardo holodeck program was a good idea and I liked those short scenes. It makes a lot of sense that she’d choose Leonardo da Vinci as her mentor and role model. He brings together two things - hard science she pursued in her career and arts which is something she struggles with. In this ep, Leonardo is part of an adventure to take back stolen main computer from the thieves. What makes this story worhtwhile is how thoughtful it gets, but still maintains the flow of action. It has a message about opening your mind, pursuing dreams - like Leonardo’s flying machine - even if others ridicule you for it. It’s just very hopeful and uplifting. Also, Janeway’s undercover clothes make her look like a working mom lol.

s4e12 Mortal Coil - In this ep, Neelix dies, but it’s okay because Seven knows how to bring him back. However as a result Neelix has an existential crisis because he didn’t see Talaxian afterlife he believed in. I think the episode was interesting in trying to explore Neelix’ problem, but it wasn’t done in a satisfactory way. They used Chakotay’s vision method, but it just made Neelix worse and he almost offed himself. I can’t expect a TV show to find an answer to the meaning of life, but Star Trek approached the topic of life and death and beliefs about what’s in the afterlife before with more thoughtfulness. Here, it was simplified and shallowed, everything just went away because Neelix was needed by the living so he decided not to kill himself. Idk, it just didn’t feel right after everything that happened with him. It was just a rushed ending.

[le-wendigogo]

Hey, I'm trying to get used to doing art again and was wondering if there were any methods of becoming more confident with what you create/ overcoming art block. Love your art btw!

Hey thanks! Actually, to be quite honest, i struggle with confidence as well. I don’t think there’s a single artist that doesn’t, even to a small degree. 

Now some people would say things like “don’t compare yourself to other artists” and, fact of the matter is, that’s impossible. BUT there is nothing really wrong with comparing yourself especially if you do what I try to do. I’ll compare my art to other fannibal artists for example and think “What is my art lacking? How can I fix the proportions? How can I get better at backgrounds? What can I do to make my line art better?” and I seek out the answers in other art that I like because that is how we grow as artists. I do not seek to replicate, but I want my style to evolve based off of what I’ve learned. There are still many things I need to work on, but compared to my earliest art on this blog I feel I have come a very long way.

I would recommend watching youtube tutorials. Not only are they informative, but they also give insight into another’s perspective and often times you’ll find someone who you can relate with. It showed me that there are others who share my issues with art and they’re about to show me ways to overcome and improve.

I wish I could find all the vids I have seen, but this vid is a part of a playlist and I found it to be very useful. It has a long intro, but even the intro was worth it because he breaks down some concepts verbally before actually showing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0ufz75UvHs&list=WL&index=5&t=61s

(Also, don’t seek out speedpaints hoping to learn from them because you won’t learn much. They’re good entertainment and that’s about it.)

As far as coming out of an art block goes, there’s no solid answer for that in my opinion because we’re all different. For me, Hannibal brought me out from my years-long art rut and now drawing is all i ever want to do above having a social life and all else.

Do some self-assessments. Ask yourself why you chose to create art in the first place? Was it for the simple fact that you love it? Do you do it to cope with something? Do you do it to seek out popularity? What was your muse before? Ask yourself these kinds of things because sometimes we get into art blocks because we lose sight of why we do what we do. 

We sometimes feel that our art is insignificant compared to others because it may not get all the attention we feel it deserves and so we sometimes ask ourselves, “What’s the point?” I ask myself that from time to time, but I just remind myself of positive things. I may not be popular with a huge base of fans like some other artists, but there are some people who like what I do and honestly that is good enough for me. It uplifts me knowing that even a couple of people like what I do. I have my set of insecurities I constantly battle with (my close mutuals can attest to that), but I just simply remind myself of the positives. 

If you’re ever asking yourself “why does no one care about my art no matter what I do?” Don’t give up so soon. Nothing happens over night with art. Go back to what I mentioned before. Look at the art from artists you look up to. Try and break down what you think they did to achieve it. Surround yourself with what inspires you whether it be other art, anime, music, movies, architecture, flowers, etc. I know it can be hard to find the motivation, but once you finally push yourself and say “I’M GOING TO DO THIS” and actually do the thing, then you’ll find it’s quite easy to get sucked into it.

Finally I just want to close this long ass post off to say that as long as you put your heart into it, then it isn’t bad art. Some people may be more proficient at certain techniques, but no artist is really better than another. If you ever feel discouraged, try and remind yourself of the positives. Sometimes ranting to a friend can help. Don’t have anyone to rant to? I’ll listen. Idk if this answer will help you at all, but I’m hoping that it at least somewhat points you in the right direction.

[melbynews-blog]

May Diary: The Forever War, The Diverse Army, And The Vanishing White Male, Etc., by John Derbyshire

Neuer Beitrag veröffentlicht bei https://melby.de/may-diary-the-forever-war-the-diverse-army-and-the-vanishing-white-male-etc-by-john-derbyshire/

May Diary: The Forever War, The Diverse Army, And The Vanishing White Male, Etc., by John Derbyshire

This month of course ended with Memorial Day, when we remember those who died serving in our country’s armed forces. The Derbs got a more forceful reminder at the very beginning of the month.

Around noon on Tuesday, May 1st my son Danny came into the study to tell me a soldier from his former unit had been killed in Afghanistan the previous day.

The fatality was Spc. Gabriel D. Conde, killed April 30th by small-arms fire in a district northeast of Kabul “while providing security for a U.S. Special Operations unit.” A second U.S. soldier was wounded in the same operation.

Spc. Conde was serving with the 3rd Battalion of the 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment. That was Danny’s unit too, until his four-year term ended last year. They were actually in the same company (though different platoons). Danny knew Spc. Conde quite well. The unit has since been deployed in Afghanistan.

Spc. Conde came from Loveland, Colorado. He was the second U.S. combat fatality in Afghanistan this year, the first having been Sgt. Mihail Golin of Fort Lee, NJ, killed on New Year’s Day while on patrol near Jalalabad in the far east of Afghanistan.

If military schedules had been different by a few months, that could have been Derb, Jr. under fire April 30th. As parents we have the obvious parental feelings about this. What his feelings are, I don’t know. He has maintained a proper soldierly reserve. In any case he mainly keeps his feelings to himself, like his Dad.

What Spc. Conde’s parents are feeling, I think I can imagine. Our heartfelt condolences to them in their grief, and to all who mourn loved ones on Memorial Day.

It’s hard to read of Spc. Conde’s death without feeling anger at our damn fool stupid brainless politicians.

Military.com ran a headline that tells it all: Gabriel Conde Was 5 When the War That Took His Life Began. It Shows No Signs of Ending. [By Richard Sisk, May 3, 2018] From the article:

Army Spc. Gabriel D. Conde’s short life spanned the history of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001, from the euphoria over the fleeting early successes to the current doubts about the new strategy to break what U.S. commanders routinely call a “stalemate.”

When Conde was six years old, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the Taliban had been defeated and the Afghan people were now free “to create a better future.”

[There follow eight more paragraphs of cheery uplifting talk about light at the end of the tunnel from Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.]

Last week, the Taliban announced the start of its 16th annual spring offensive.

Politicians are of course necessary to the functioning of an orderly nation. No doubt most of them are decent enough in their private lives. Some appear to be quite intelligent. Plenty of them are clearly trying to do the best for the country, each by his own lights.

There are times, though, there are times when the only thing you want to say about politicians is: God damn them all to Hell.

“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” I’m always ready, in a spirit of proper epistemic humility, to yield to Oliver Cromwell’s beseechment. So in that spirit I ask: Is it possible that I am wrong, that the war in Afghanistan is not a futile waste of American lives and money?

One approach here is to seek out commentators whose opinions you generally respect, to see if any of them makes a plausible case for the opposite of what you believe.

OK: here was Daniel Greenfield, who I agree with much more often than not, posting at FrontPageMag.com on Memorial Day. Title of the post: “How Can We Honor the Soldiers of an Endless War?.”

The era of wars that began and concluded neatly, with declarations, speeches, rules, objectives, deciding battles and signed peace accords, ended before the oldest active duty soldier serving today was born.

The men and women who fight and die, leaving their families never knowing if they will return, and in what form, serve not in wars, but endless police actions, peacekeeping missions, terrorist pursuits and nation building exercises …

The Islamic resurgence has placed us in a state of permanent war. We may debate over which fronts that war should be fought on, but only the left can deny that the conflict itself is inescapable. We may fight it in Iraq or in New York, in Syria or in Sweden, the front lines may shift, but the war won’t go away.

And yet, paradoxically, this form of fighting takes us back to the origins of our military.

The heritage of the US Army goes back to the provincial regiments that fought in colonial territorial disputes with the French and defended the colonies against Indian raids … If you think the Afghanistan and Iraq wars are endless, the Indian wars arguably went on for 300 years …

That’s not much of an argument. Those wars that “concluded neatly” did so because we applied massive and relentless force, to the point where the enemy knew they were thoroughly beaten. We don’t do that any more. Rubble doesn’t make trouble.

I’m obliged to Greenfield for permission to “debate over which fronts that war should be fought on.” Here’s my contribution to that debate.

Let’s stop all Muslim immigration and require all resident Muslim non-citizens to leave. We may still have issues with our own Muslim citizens, but I see no reason those issues couldn’t be handled by ordinary law-enforcement procedures under our Constitution.

ORDER IT NOW

As for “the Indian wars arguably went on for 300 years” Well, yes, arguably they did, because they were conflicts over the ownership of territory. Were North American lands to be settled and farmed by Europeans, or kept as the hunting and tribal-war preserves of the indigenes?

Are Americans clamoring to be allowed to settle and farm in Afghanistan and Iraq? First I’ve heard of it.

Daniel Greenfield is a smart guy who writes a lot of thought-provoking good sense. This piece, though, is a turkey.

Still on the military beat: Last month I commented on some recruiting pamphlets a friend had showed to me. He passes by a recruiting booth on his way to work every day, and, although much too old for service himself, has developed an interest in the esthetics of these brochures.

This month he passed on some more.

Exhibit A: LEADERS FOR LIFE: The Making of an Army Officer. This is a beautifully-produced sixty-page booklet showing on the cover a white female, an East Asian male, and a black male.[Abridged PDF here.]

To be fair, the interior illustrations aren’t as distorted as that. I counted an actual majority of white males, 65 to 43; and that is not counting the scattering of historical photographs from the World Wars. The two-page spread on Special Forces (pp. 46-47) shows nine soldiers, every one of them a white male.

There is some slight discounting needed for the care with which the booklet’s publisher lets us know, by showing uniform name patches, that some of the white guys are Hispanic (Alvarado, Martinez) or Arab (Farid).

Exhibit B: A 34-page U.S. Army Education Program Guide. On the cover, a female who I think is East Asian. Of the 48 people I could identify on a quick scan through, only twelve were white males. Females were an actual majority: fourteen white, twelve black.

Exhibit C: The Making of a Soldier, a light 24-page introduction to the Army. The cover shows a black male. White males are comparatively well-represented inside, though: I counted nineteen out of thirty.

My summary: While the interior illustrations to these publications are merely unbalanced, the cover art is flagrantly, unashamedly anti-white-male.

As with Mars, so also with Venus.

The Mrs and I had the idea to take a weekend break at one of those adults-only hotels in the Poconos. You know the kind of place: heart-shaped jacuzzi, view over a lake, a bowl of strawberries dipped in chocolate waiting in your room, that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s corny. We’re an old-fashioned couple; corny works for us.

I accordingly went on the internet and googled “romantic weekend getaway poconos.” There they were, a good choice of hotels. Heart-shaped jacuzzi, check: view of lake, check: chocolate-dipped strawberries, check.

The thing that struck my eye, though, in the promotional websites for these places, was the extraordinary numbers of photographs showing a black man with a white woman. I put together a montage without trying very hard at all. (Looking closer, I think one of the ladies there may be high yaller; but she’s still way paler than the guy.)

I have nothing against miscegenation — how could I have? — but do they really have to bang us over the head with it like this?

And perhaps I shouldn’t pick out the love hotels for special scrutiny. It’s like this all over. Audacious Epigone tweeted this the other day:

Taken from too far away and observation’s blasé but as I walked the dog tonight I did a census on the posters lining the outside of the Walgreens down the road from home:

4 black women 2 black men 2 white women 1 asian woman 1 hispanic woman 0 white men

City is 80% n-H white btw

Louis Farrakhan, tweeting on May 27th, called for an end to white men. It looks like the people who prepare advertising and promotional displays are way ahead of him.

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As mentioned in Radio Derb’s royal wedding coverage, I have been reading Ed West’s book 1215 and All That. It’s great fun; a sort of grown-up version, with a good bibliography, of the Horrible Histories my kids used to enjoy.

West is very good on how boozed-up the Later Middle Ages were. Writing about the reign of King John (1199-1216), he tells us that:

As a basic rule, everyone in medieval Europe was drunk most of the time, with the typical English peasant consuming on average eight pints of beer per day. There was often no clean water to drink in cities, and it was not until the seventeenth century that coffee and tea brought alternatives to slowly getting off one’s face all day long. Besides which, few people had jobs that required intellect and sobriety and life was pretty awful when sober.

The actual process of getting drunk eight hundred years ago doesn’t sound like much fun.

Beer at the time would have been absolutely disgusting, close to the texture of porridge as it wasn’t until the fourteenth century that hops were introduced from the Low Countries … Not even the most daring hipster has ever tried to recreate thirteenth-century ale as a statement of irony or quirkiness.

The upper classes at least had wine to drink, though, right? Well:

Peter of Blois wrote of the wine at Henry II’s court that “it turned sour and moldy, thick, greasy, stale, flat and smacking of pitch … I have sometimes seen great lords served with wine so muddy that a man must need [to] close his eyes and clench his teeth, wry-mouthed and shuddering …”

Hoo boy. It would of course be annoyingly Pinkerish of me to observe that we are very fortunate to be living in 2018 rather than 1918, or 1618, or 1218.

And possibly, on the gripe homeostasis principle, the general level of human dissatisfaction with life has not varied much through history.

Possibly. I can report, though, that after reading Ed West’s book my dinner-time glass (all right, glasses) of supermarket Pinot Grigio seemed strangely to taste better than before.

Our thirteenth-century ancestors may have endured wretched lives in a drunken stupor, but surely they had the consolations of faith, didn’t they?

Not all of them. Ed West:

Peter of Cornwall, prior of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, complained in 1200: “There are many people who do not believe that God exists, nor do they think that the human soul lives on after the death of the body. They consider that the universe has always been as it is now and is ruled by chance rather than providence.”

King John was likely one of those people.

He apparently did not take Holy Communion after childhood, nor did he receive it at his coronation, which was considered shocking for the time. He openly ate meat on Fridays and hunted on feast days, blatantly breaking religious rules. Like his father, he found attending church unbelievably boring and he didn’t even pretend to make an effort.

I have nursed a mild personal resentment against King John since my schooldays. It seemed unfair that the only English King with whom I shared a name was such an unprincipled rogue, which indeed he was. We all knew A.A. Milne’s lines:

King John was not a good man — He had his little ways. And sometimes no one spoke to him For days and days and days.

Subsequent Johns in the British royal line haven’t fared well. There have been very few Johns in line of succession to the throne since the thirteenth century. John of Gaunt (1340-99) was the only really noteworthy one. He never made it to the throne, but he begat the Lancastrian line of kings that provided Shakespeare with so much material.

In recent centuries there have been few royal Johns. The present queen’s father had a brother John, but he was an epileptic and died aged 13. The Windsors seem otherwise to have shunned the name John.

The New York Times may be vexed by John supremacy but royalty-wise, we Johns are an under-represented minority.

Say what you like about medieval life, there was plenty for everyone to do.

Medieval Europeans were traditionally placed in one of three classes: those who fought, those who prayed, and those who worked. The lords and knights didn’t go fighting every day, and not many of us would think of praying as work. Women mostly minded the house and raised children. Only peasants and artisans did work-work — work as we nowadays understand it.

Here’s a new book that poses the interesting question: How much of the work we do today actually has any point?

Some of it does, of course. Cops, surgeons, farmers, and plumbers do things that need doing. David Graeber, however, the author of Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, thinks a great deal of today’s work is pointless. Graeber[Email him] is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.

From the Amazon blurb:

There are millions of people — HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers — whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs.

I haven’t read Graeber’s book, but I read the summary in the May 20th New York Post and didn’t find much to disagree with. Here are the top seven bullshit jobs according to that summary:

Compliance workers in banking and finance.

Student-paper writers. “Writing essays and term papers for college students is now a huge industry in the United States, with agencies employing thousands of paper writers.” Really? I honestly did not know this.

Telemarketers. “I don’t know if I’ve ever met a single call-center worker who didn’t both hate their job and felt everyone would be better off if no one had to do it.” This I believe.

Middle management. “Most middle managers secretly feel they might as well be digging holes and then filling them in again all day.” Never been one but I’ve reported to several, and … yep.

Corporate lawyers. Only corporate ones?

Movie executives. Huh?

Academic administrative staff. “There are hosts of new provosts, vice chancellors, deans and deanlets and even more, who all now have to be provided with tiny armies of assistants to make them feel important.”

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The only surprise to me in that list is that college administrators are at number seven. If there is any place in our society where the sheer density of bullshit jobs is high enough to warp spacetime, it surely has to be the administrative buildings of an average college.

Is there any institution of higher education anywhere in the U.S.A. today that does not have a Dean of Diversity and Inclusion with a raft of Associate Deans, Sub-Deans, Directors, Assistant Directors, Administrative Assistants, and Deputy Administrative Assistants to keep the place flawlessly diverse and inclusive?

I’d argue in fact that the contribution these jobs make to the gross national well-being is not merely null — you could say that of a lot of jobs; if you wanted to be unkind, you might even say it of mine — but actually negative. If they were all laid off tomorrow, we’d be a better country.

In last month’s diary I included a segment titled “Heard around the house,” in which I played back some idioms and catch-phrases I heard from my parents’ generation when I was a child.

Here’s one I missed. It came up in the news this month. An English gent, name of Jim Booth, 96 years old and a veteran of D-Day, was attacked by an intruder.

Joseph Isaacs, 40, knocked on Jim Booth’s door and offered him a good rate on roof repairs on November 22 last year.

When Mr Booth refused, Isaacs launched his attack, hitting the veteran with a claw hammer on his head and arms while shouting “money, money, money.”

The reason it’s just now in the news is that Isaacs was sentenced on May 25th: twenty years for attempted murder.

What got my attention was Jim Booth’s philosophical attitude to the attack: “Worse things happen at sea,” he told reporters.

That was my mother’s stock reaction to minor household calamities: burst pipes, broken glassware, childhood scrapes and bruises: “Worse things happen at sea.”

I’ve used it around my own household. For some reason my daughter, born 1993, took a strong dislike to it.

Thump! or Crash! as someone or something fell or broke.

Me: “Never mind, honey. Worse things happen at sea.”

She: “Da-ad! Don’t say that!

Is this a generational thing, I wonder? Are we geezers better attuned to the fact that life includes an irreducible portion of small misfortunes? Do youngsters, on the other hand, derive some kind of psychic nourishment from indignation or resentment at the world’s imperfections?

Do they? It might be so.

The Daily Mail frequently posts a brainteaser. Most are trivial; this one is comparatively challenging.

On the coast there are three lighthouses.

The first light shines for 3 seconds, then is off for 3 seconds.

The second light shines for 4 seconds, then is off for 4 seconds.

The third light shines for 5 seconds, then is off for 5 seconds.

All three lights have just come on together.

When is the first time that all three of the lights will be off together?

When is the next time that all three lights will come on at exactly the same moment?

John Derbyshire [email him] writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him. ) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He has had two books published by VDARE.com com:FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013.

The Unz Review: John Derbyshire Quelle

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