I still can’t wrap my head around the “canceling” of David Shor. Shor is the progressive data analyst who tweeted a link to a research paper written by Omar Wasow of Princeton that showed that peaceful protest moves public opinion toward protesters, while rioting moves opinion in the opposite direction.

Progressphiles kicked Shor off its LISTSERV and released a statement that said, in part:

Not even a ripple.

There are a lot of numbers to support the idea that we hit the Herd Immunity Threshold, and COVID is dying for lack of new hosts to infect.

Thomas Sowell wrote A Conflict of Visions thirty-five years ago. It seems even more insightful now than when he wrote it. He dissected the difference between the “unconstrained” view about the supposed perfectibility of human beings and their surroundings versus the “constrained” view that imperfect reality and imperfect human nature present imperfect choices. The former viewpoint is given to utopian schemes which often have spectacular downsides. The latter is all about making the best of perceived trade-offs. 

The expectation of perfection in the unconstrained view means that the status quo is always damnable. It is why revolutionaries who come to power often wind up being executed for betraying the ideals of the revolution which were never achieved or simply changed. Those who had voiced support for the rights of women and homosexuals are now pilloried for alleged insensitivity to transgender issues. Whatever the issue of the moment, the unconstrained view forbids gratitude, acceptance and affirmation of what exists and how it came to be.

Because no matter many times I Google it, no matter how many different ways I phrase the question, I cannot find out how many people watched the president’s speech at Mt. Rushmore. Which leads me to believe the ratings must have been incredible.

I went into a state of numbness this morning. I do it so infrequently that I had to ask myself what was going on. I came to realize that I was succumbing to the pain of those around me, and protecting myself in this primitive way:

I received a forwarded text from a friend who had met regularly with me and our friend Earl (whom some of you may remember); we studied together for an hour every week for many months, until Earl, 88 years old, passed away. Today my friend forwarded a text from Earl’s daughter, thanking us for the time we had spent with him and how much he loved it, and how much she missed him. I miss him, too.

So that his name would live forever, Herostratus burned down the Temple of Artemis, which Greeks considered to be the most beautiful building in the world. Destruction as a path to fame is easy, creation is hard. As Paul Graham once said:

Graffiti happens at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want to make their mark on the world but have no other way to do it than literally making a mark on the world.

Source: I think it is pretty self-explanatory.

Musician, composer, and soundtrack master Ennio Morricone died Monday at the age of 91 in his beloved hometown of Rome. He was in the hospital to treat a broken femur and passed away during the night.

After years spent in Italian radio and TV, Morricone introduced himself to the wider world with his iconic soundtracks for Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. The low-budget flicks didn’t have the budget for a full orchestra, so Morricone employed whipcracks, gunshots, whistling, the newfangled electric guitar.

Check out the patriotic cover of Time Magazine for this Independence Day weekend. Headline: “America Must Change.” Powerful cover art. Lots of featured authors who apparently all think the same thing. Just in case there’s anyone out there who isn’t sure why all this chaos is happening right now – intentional economic shutdowns, riots in the streets permitted by Democrat mayors, cancel culture demanding complete submission to their demands of the day. Why now? Because “America Must Change.” And that change begins at the top, don’t you know.

Between now and November, the violence and unrest are only going to get worse. Because it must. The left understands that the only way to get Trump out of office is to make Americans hurt, make them blame themselves somehow for these assaults on their culture, and to make them seek to make all this go away by voting for new leadership. That’s all this is. It’s just the left’s approach to politics. Especially when they’re desperate. And the overwhelming success of President Trump so far makes them desperate. So they run every play in their playbook. It looks violent and nasty. But it’s just politics.