Way back in the olden thymes, it used to be said that a man was defined by his views on abortion and Israel. The former was all about IQ. Understanding the downstream ramifications of widespread use of abortion as a means of birth control requires a supple mind, something rare amongst abortion advocates. The latter issue was all about morality. Israel is about understanding the moral difference between a man that shoves an old women in the way of bus and a man that shoves an old women out of the way of bus. If you think both are men that shove old women, you side with the Arabs.

These days, the issue that separates the the wheat from the chaff is homosexual marriage. The moral side is easy to see, but it is different from the Israel question. Liberal fanatics use the issue to segregate themselves from normal people. It is a crude, simplistic morality, but that’s how it goes with religious cults. Everything boils down to which side of the hive wall on which you fall. I’ve yet to hear a liberal friend explain why they are are for changing the definition of marriage. They just are and if you’re not then you’re a bad person with a head full of crimethink.

The IQ side of the coin is not so obvious, mostly because we have conflated morality and intelligence in modern times. The fake nerd culture has made intelligence a mark of moral goodness. Bad people breath through their mouth while watching UFC. Good people talk about the latest Malcolm Gladwell book they did not read, while watching Cosmos on Netflix. Despite that, there is a moral component and like abortion is has to do with the downstream consequences. That’s hard and bumps into icky subjects so it is not permitted in public. Instead we get tantrums and the spewing of buzzwords like in this ridiculous Atlantic story.

Last week, the Supreme Court declined to hear a collection of marriage-equality decisions and deferred for another term what seems now an inevitable ruling for marriage equality. The very next day, the Ninth Circuit handed down an opinion, Latta v. Otter, striking down a number of same-sex-marriage bans.

In doing so, the appeals court provided the first of what will surely be many such decisions from which the Court can choose when the justices consider what cases they might hear in the future—and so offers potential rationales by which they might make marriage equality the law of the land. The Ninth Circuit’s majority opinion rejects same-sex-marriage bans because they violate the Equal Protection Clause by discriminating based on sexual orientation, which is a standard reason courts have struck down these bans.

But there is a twist: According to one judge, this is about sexism, too. In her concurrence, Judge Marsha Berzon argues that same-sex-marriage bans also constitute sex discrimination and therefore violate Equal Protection on additional grounds.

In some respects, Berzon’s concurrence was nothing new. Since the beginning of the fight for marriage equality, advocates have argued that a failure to allow same-sex couples to wed amounts to sex discrimination. This argument has, with a couple of notable exceptions, failed in courts. The Hawaii Supreme Court used this logic in 1994 when it issued the first decision in the U.S. for marriage equality (later nullified by a state constitutional amendment), and the argument has only succeeded in a Utah federal district court since then.

The formalist argument is that such bans classify on the basis of sex in a very basic way: In states where a man cannot marry a man, he is deprived of this right by virtue of his sex. That is, were the man a woman, he would have the right to marry his mate.

Let’s take the highlighted portions in order. The phrase “marriage-equality” is a marketing term intended to shift the focus away from the lack of an affirmative argument in favor of homosexual marriage. The fact that homosexual marriage is irrational, as a matter of former logic, is the reason. Similarly, same-sex-marriage bans are nonsensical since you cannot ban something that cannot and does not exist. It is akin to claiming there is a unicorn ban.

The third highlighted portion is why untethering yourself from objective reality leads to trouble. Humans come in one of two sexes, male and female. These are biological facts as axiomatic as gravity. Implying that people who act in ways contrary to the biology have created a third sex category should be grounds for commitment in the local asylum. The reason the state cannot issue a marriage license to two males is the same reason they don’t issue driver’s licenses to leprechauns.

The final bit it emblematic of most self-described advocates. They never bother to learn why things are as they are and they never learn the opposing arguments. The mind of the fanatic knows only that which supports the object of his fanaticism. Those who oppose these changes to the legal definition of marriage do so in defense of an institution that has served Western people well since the Franks first imposed it in the fifth century. Turning it into a roommate agreement, something that already exists, is nothing but a veiled attempt to destroy another pillar of civilization.

I’m tempted to say that these fanatics rally to homosexual marriage because they get caught up in the emotion of joining a mass movement. But, that’s just not the case. The two lesbians who wrote that Atlantic piece are incapable of reasoning through any of this, which is why they latch onto buzzwords and jargon. It let’s someone else do their thinking.

It used to be that you needed permission to record someone. Most states required both parties of a telephone call, for instance, to consent to it being recorded. You could not film someone and use it without their permission. The general principal being that you own your body and your words. You could, therefore, ban people from bringing cameras into your business or into your show if you were a performer. In the olden times, I recall seeing people dragged out of concerts because they smuggled in a camera.

But, things have become complicated. Everyone has a mobile phone and they almost always have cameras. They also have audio recorders. Every election a dozen or so pols get caught in a controversy over someone surreptitiously recording them saying bad things. Mitt Romney’s “47%” bit maybe cost him the election. Obama’s “Bibles and boomsticks” line still haunts him. Donald Sterling was tossed from the NBA because his whore recorded him saying bad things. In many cases this is illegal, but no one ever gets charged.

Anyway, this story about the Marriot getting fined for blocking cell phones got me thinking about some of the looming puzzles resulting from the spread of cheap radios. People don’t think of their cell phone as a radio, but that’s what it is. Those drones available on Amazon are possible because of cheap and effective radios. The amount of data we can send and receive through the air is what’s changing the physical space of human existence. The whole mobile computing revolution is the consequence of cheap radios.

If a business cannot prevent you from transmitting radio signals from their property, they can’t stop you from recording them or transmitting images of their business via radio. In a weird way, eavesdropping and wiretapping have become legal. Eventually, they become ubiquitous. Because of the explosion of false rape charges, males are now recording their sexual adventures just in case this app does not prove convincing. Citizens are routinely recording cops, so much so that cops are being equipped with full time body cameras.

We’re at the point where no one owns their voice or image. You can’t have an expectation of privacy because everywhere cameras and recorders are rolling or at least assumed to be rolling. The only place that is yours and yours alone is the pace between your ears and that’s not going to be for long. Facial recognition apps will soon be cheap and everywhere.There’s a reason sci-fi writers imagined a future where the sentient beings no longer had facial expressions, I guess. The only defense of that private space will be studied lying and deception. Humans trust will fall to zero as a consequence.

Maybe Ebola is our Vegan choriomeningitis.

There’s an old joke about the NY Times (or any liberal broadsheet for that matter) goes something like this. A meteor is found to be headed to earth. it is big enough to wipe out all life on the planet. The NY Times runs a headline “Meteor To Destroy Earth” and a subhead of “Blacks and Women to be Harmed the Most.” I recall hearing that at least 30 years ago, maybe longer. The only thing that has changed is the transmission method. By way of example, I offer this gen form CNN.

The tragedy of Ebola is not just its staggering toll. It’s also the implicit racism that the deadly virus has spawned. The anecdotes are sickening, particularly a Reuters report this week that children of African immigrants in Dallas — little ones with no connection to Thomas Duncan, the Liberian Ebola patient who died Wednesday in a local hospital — have been branded “Ebola kids” simply because of their heritage or skin color.

In both the United States and Europe, Ebola is increasing racial profiling and reviving imagery of the “Dark Continent.” The disease is persistently portrayed as West African, or African, or from countries in a part of the world that is racially black, even though nothing medically differentiates the vulnerability of any race to Ebola.

 In both the United States and Europe, Ebola is increasing racial profiling and reviving imagery of the “Dark Continent.” The disease is persistently portrayed as West African, or African, or from countries in a part of the world that is racially black, even though nothing medically differentiates the vulnerability of any race to Ebola.

A Newsweek cover last month showed a picture of a chimpanzee with the headline: “A Back Door for Ebola: Smuggled Bushmeat Could Spark a U.S. Epidemic.” Whatever the intent, the picture was wrong.

Turns out the story was probably wrong, too, as a Washington Post investigation revealed. The new Ebola outbreak “likely had nothing to do with bushmeat consumption,” the Post reported, and there is no conclusive evidence that Ebola has been passed from animals to humans. A theory on animal-to-human transmission with some limited traction centers on dead fruit bats, not chimps.

“There is virtually no chance that ‘bushmeat’ smuggling could bring Ebola to America,” the Post concluded.

But the damage has been done. And as panic deepens, the danger is that racism — on planes and public transportation, in lines, on streets, in glances — deepens further, too.

Ebola is a human tragedy, just like enterovirus D68, which causes sudden muscle weakness and severe respiratory problems, particularly among children. It has shown up in almost all the 50 states, with about 500 Americans infected so far, far more than ever. And it has begun to kill, beginning with a 4-year-old boy in New Jersey. Five new cases were reported in New Jersey alone on Tuesday. And there are no antiviral vaccines or cures. Yet enterovirus D68 is known by a scientific name and number. (Unfortunately for Africans, the Ebola virus was named after the Congolese river where the first outbreak was detected).

The saga of Thomas Duncan reflects racial perceptions. His girlfriend, Louise, whom he had reportedly been visiting in Dallas, had publicly begged for him to be given the same experimental ZMapp medication given to two (white) American missionaries who were infected in Africa and recently flown back to the United States.

“I’m just asking God and asking the American government for the same medicine they’re giving people that come from Liberia,” she said during an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “Please, please, please, please, help me save his life. …Talk to doctors. They’ll find means to get a medicine to cure him. He’s so young.”

Louise refused to allow her last name to be used for fear of repercussions. Unfortunately, doctors and the pharmaceutical developer said there was no longer any ZMapp left for Duncan or any other victim. But the imagery that accompanied his plight lingers: Whites can be flown to the United States or Europe at any expense, while Africans are left to die unattended on the streets of Liberia or Sierra Leone. Or now, without ZMapp, in Dallas.

“It’s easy for the world — the powerful world, who are largely non-African, non-people of color — to ignore the suffering of poor, black people,” Harvard Medical School professor Joia Mukherjee said on PRI’s “The World” last month. It’s easy, she said, to “other-ize” the Ebola crisis.

Fear too often contorts morality and humanity.

It is easy to write off this nut as just another lunatic, but there’s no reason to think she is out of step with the rest of the Cult of Modern Liberalism. It is tempting to think it is just an act. The creepy meta-language is unsettling to the normal ear. Most of us never hear anyone say “other-ize” on purpose. This thing reads like a piece in the Onion so it is tempting to think it a spoof.

But, it’s not. This is how the pod people think.

Jim Geraghty is one of the many RNC hod carriers who posts at NRO. He has a special place on the site, which suggests a quid pro quo of some sort. His blog is lightly read and rarely commented upon so I can’t believe they are paying him. But, someone is paying him, unless he married a rich women. He has been banging the drum for conservatives to stop “sulking” and come out to support the various bowls of mush GOP Inc. is offering up this November. He’s been peddling the old lines from the 70’s like the “Buckley Rule” which dates back to the 60’s.

William F. Buckley was asked, in 1967, whom he would support in 1968 for U.S. president. Buckley responded with what would late be called the ‘Buckley Rule” for primary voting: “The wisest choice would be the one who would win. No sense running Mona Lisa in a beauty contest. I’d be for the most right, viable candidate who could win. If you could convince me that Barry Goldwater could win, I’d vote for him.”

You’ll note his aphorism is about the primaries. I’ll note that no one bothered to quote this line until the Bush years. That’s when GOP Inc started labeling their bowls of mush “Bill Buckley Approved” and repeating this line, omitting the bit about the primary. Buckley never advocated merely voting for the least liberal option in the general. I have no recollection of him addressing it. If one party offered up a rapist who is a communist and the other party offered up a child molester who was a libertarian, I doubt Bill Buckley would have argued you had a duty to support the child molester.

Anyway, Jim seems to have figured out these old lines about voting for the least awful option were not convincing anyone. He has been given new instructions. Now, not voting means the terrorists have won.

Take your pick; there’s no shortage of things to be outraged about. Hundreds of millions wasted on state insurance exchanges that don’t work. The IRS abuses. Lois Lerner, refusing to answer questions from Congress. No one at the State Department getting fired over the security decisions leading up to Benghazi. Assurances about Ebola that don’t pan out.

Republicans are ‘blah’ about the midterms because they’ve lost faith that winning them will make a difference. Obama’s contempt for Congress, and lack of interest in working with it on his true priorities, is obvious. He’s pledged to unilaterally rewrite immigration enforcement to suit his needs. Large chunks of Obamacare are adjusted, nullified, improvised, and revised on the fly with no change to the written law. The president begins wars without waiting for any authorization for the use of military force. The U.S. attorney general is held in contempt of Congress with no real consequence.

No one can blame conservatives for being frustrated to the point of fury. But if American rank-and-file conservatives and Republicans conclude that the game is rigged, that it’s not worth playing, and withdraw from political life . . . then that will be the ultimate triumph of this president.

Got that? if you accept reality for what it is, the bad guys win. Therefore, the only moral choice is to keep marching off to support a political party that despises you and wants you dead. The only thing missing in these missives is “or else” thrown in to make the point.

I’ll grant that Jim is never going to bite the hand that feeds him. He makes his living carrying water for the GOP. But, there comes a point when the sales pitch is not working and further attempts crass into insult. This post is insulting. The GOP’s troubles are the fault of the GOP, not Obama or the system. Even Mike Huckleberry has lost patience with his party and he is probably going to run for the nomination.

Meanwhile over in England UKIP keeps gaining ground…

I’m not the only person to notice the fake nerd cult, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only guy calling it “fake nerdism.” The reason I call it that is the people into are fakers, frauds, posers, phonies. They also have no science. The ones on television are almost always liberal arts majors who spent their working careers play acting on TV, radio or the Interwebs. Sports has a lot of these “stats geeks” who borrow the language of statistics, but they have no idea what any of it means. The whole shebang, from Niel deGrasse Tyson to The Big Bang Theory is aimed at flattering people, who fashion themselves the smartest people in the room.

There is a cult like quality to some of it. A lot of these people, particularly the young ones, think they are part of a movement that will make this world like the imaginary one in sci-fi movies. The web site Tech Crunch seems to be one of their propaganda organs. It looks like they are also organizing a hajj for their followers this fall.

Haven’t gotten your tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt Europe yet? The hottest tech conference of the year is coming to London this October, and to celebrate we’re giving away another free pair of tickets to the main event. All you have to do is enter to win. We’ll randomly select the winning entry, and the winner will be notified by email.

About TechCrunch Disrupt:

• Disrupt is one of the most anticipated technology conferences of the year.
• We start each day with panels and one-on-one chats featuring our writers, special guest speakers, leading VCs, and fascinating entrepreneurs.
• Each afternoon, we host the Startup Battlefield competition which culminates in six finalists taking the stage at the end of the event for a shot at winning the Disrupt Cup.
• The event takes place from October 20 and 21 at Old Billingsgate, London, UK.

The word “disrupt” is a buzzword borrowed from economics that is very popular in the fake nerd world. Every startup begging for money peppers its prospectus with this word. The reader is supposed to think the new company is a part of the glorious future where we all live in gleaming cities run on rainbow dust, where everyone is happy and there are no poor people. The future for these people is a sanitized San Francisco without the gays.

I’ll note the picture they use. You have two sexless people who possess that innocent, Eloi quality so popular with the fake nerd crowd. The one on the left is slightly Oriental, while the one of the right is Occidental. Maybe they are boys or maybe they are girls. We’re not supposed to know. If someone used this picture for a NAMBLA campaign, no one would be surprised. That’s the creepy part of the glorious future. It’s primary appeal seems to be to men who really like boys.

Tyler Cowen like to pretend the world started doing interesting stuff when he started noticing it, but human relations have not changed much forever. I saw this on his site. I think he called in average is over in dating or something equally stupid.

A new dating app called Luxy matches wealthy singles…to wealthy singles. It describes itself as “Tinder, minus the poor people.” The app’s iTunes page claims members are CEOs, investors, millionaires, and fitness models. So far, there are 3,000 users, and the average male user’s income is $200,000, company spokesman Darren Shuster told Vice. Shuster also told CNN that Luxy’s rich clientele is self-regulating and the app does not (yet) enforce salary verification. “If you show up in a 20-year-old VW Bug, and request to meet at McDonald’s, you won’t last very long on LUXY,” Shuster said. “It doesn’t take long to weed out those who belong on a different kind of dating site.” The app is so controversial that the CEO’s identity is kept anonymous. “With the rise of high-speed digital dating, it’s about time somebody introduced a filter to weed out low-income prospects by neighborhood,” wrote the app’s nameless CEO in a release.

Elites have been dating within their group since we have had elites, which is to forever. The commoner marrying the prince is a fairy tale for a reason. Marrying outside your class has always been a good way to get ostracized. A lot of it is controlled by women. Females born into the elite seek out the high status males in their class. They can be quite ruthless about it, but they also have the toolset to out compete commoners.

That said, I can see this app turning into a call girl service quickly. If you’re a rich guy and can’t find a woman, you have other issues. There’s a reason for $5,000 a night hookers exist. Outside of the US, super high end “escorts” and brothels exist for wealthy clients. I recall Ben Affleck getting caught in a Vancouver brothel when he first hit it big. It was a $1,000 a throw, if I recall correctly. Maybe it was some other douche bag actor, but I’m pretty sure it was him. This app will probably turn into a a way for lonely rich guys to score a hooker without leaving their condos.

On fairly regular basis cops shoot black guys. Most of the time it is justified. Sometimes not, but hardly anyone bothers to notice. In big election years, however, the Pod people take note as it is is a good way to gin up the black vote. Ferguson was a good example of one such shooting wrapped in a campaign commercial. Now, just in time for the election we have another and right next door in St. Louis!

The fatal shooting of an 18-year-old black man in south St. Louis by an off-duty police officer sparked a night of unrest in a city still reeling from the August slaying of an unarmed man in nearby Ferguson.

Wednesday’s shooting happened at about 7:30 p.m. in the city’s Shaw Neighborhood, and involved an officer working a department-approved secondary job for a private security company, Police Chief Sam Dotson said at an early-morning news conference.

The officer approached a group of men. One of the men took off running, Dotson said, so the officer pursued. Dotson said the suspect approached the officer in an “aggressive” manner, with a physical altercation occurring. The man then turned and fired three rounds at the officer before his gun jammed, Dotson said.

The officer, who was not injured, returned fire, shooting 17 times and fatally wounding the man, Dotson said..

(AP Photo)

A gun was recovered at the scene. The officer was placed on administrative leave, as per department policy, police said.

Police have not identified the officer or the man he killed.

The incident comes nearly two months to the day after the police shooting of Michael Brown, 18, in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, located about 20 miles away. Brown’s shooting sparked weeks of protests and spawned national discourse about police use of force.

Some of the people protesting recently in Ferguson were seen in St. Louis after Wednesday’s shooting, Dotson said.

“Tensions in the region are very high,” Dotson said. “Any police officer use of force certainly will draw attention.”

St. Louis Alderman Antonio French, who documented the turmoil in Ferguson after Brown’s Aug. 9 shooting death, reflected on the region’s renewed anguish.

“At the scene of yet another young man’s death,” he wrote on Twitter. “This happens too often in our city. It’s a crisis that we should all be concerned about.”

Activists took to the streets of St. Louis overnight, marching and chanting, seeking answers.

Some police vehicles were damaged during the protests, with windows smashed, Dotson said.

People also shared their frustration on social media, with #shawshooting the most popular national trending topic on Twitter.

One of my recurring themes is the suicidal nature of Rousseau-ist cults. The double helix of the fanatic is composed of a desire to obliterate their self by swapping their identity with that of the group. The other side is the desire to get to the promised land by destroying the present, which is seen as the cage that holds the followers from reaching their goal. The nucleotides are the various fads that we see bubbling up from time time like racism, minoritism, various economic lunacies and so forth. The result is a movement that seeks to pull the roof down on human civilization.

That, paradoxically, makes it reactionary. The modern Progressive looks out at the world for that which is embraced by civilization and attacks it. They also embrace those who attack these things. Homosexuals, for example, are despised by Progressives, but they make a useful weapon against those pesky recalcitrant Christians in the hinterlands. Similarly, blacks have been a useful weapon in the assault on traditional Anglo-Saxon organizational traditions.

Islam, the mirror of Liberalism, is another useful lever to use on the foundation stones of civilization. Progressives have a tough time with it, because Muslims have a habit of beheading people and posting the videos on-line. So, the hunt for the moderate Muslim has been a recurring motif. This story is a good example of how the natural impulse of the Left is to embrace anything that is at war with Western Culture.

The U.S. State Department endorsed on Wednesday a controversial anti-terror handbook published by Canada’s Muslim community that refers to jihad as “noble” and urges law enforcement to avoid using terms such as “Islamic extremism.”

The handbook, published earlier this month by two Canadian Muslim community organizations, was so controversial that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) flatly rejected the manual and ordered its officers not to use it.

Yet the State Department’s official anti-terrorism Twitter feed, called Think Again Turn Away, appeared to endorse the controversial handbook on Twitter and linked to a positive article about it.

The handbook, titled United Against Terrorism, has become a contentious issue for the RCMP since its release. Several sections of the guide instruct Muslim community members not to cooperate with police while others claim jihad “is a noble concept.”

The RCMP ultimately decided to reject the book, citing its “adversarial tone.”

“After a final review of the handbook, the RCMP could not support the adversarial tone set by elements of the booklet and therefore directed RCMP Manitoba not to proceed with this initiative,” the police force said in a statement posted on its website.

The handbook itself recommends that “intelligence and law enforcement officials” should “avoid terms such as ‘Islamist terrorism’, ‘Islamicism’, and ‘Islamic extremism’ in favor of more accurate terms such as ‘al Qaeda inspired extremist,’” according to one section of the handbook, which still bears RCMP’s official logo.

Law enforcement officials also are told to “discontinue any inappropriate information gathering techniques including (but not limited to) showing up at workplaces, intimidating newcomers, questioning individuals religiosity, and discouraging legal representation,” according to the handbook.

The term “jihad” also is not appropriate to use, according to the handbook, a copy of which was first published by Canada’s CBC News.

“Do not refer to terrorists as ‘jihadis,’” the manual states. “This only emboldens them and gives them a legitimate status in the eyes of the vulnerable. Terrorism is not jihad. Jihad is a noble concept in Islam.”

Other sections tell the Muslim community that they are under no obligation to speak to the police about individuals who may be suspected of having extremist ties.

“The  tweet you are referring to features a repost of information from a Globe and Mail report on a new booklet produced by the RCMP and two Islamic groups,” said State Department spokeswoman Carolyn Glassman. “CSCC was simply sharing information about a new product related to counterterrorism. Our reposting does not connote an endorsement.”

The State Department’s endorsement of the guidebook struck some Twitter users as curious. This is not the first time that the State Department has run into trouble as a result of it tweets.

The department’s Counterterrorism Bureau (CT Bureau) was forced to issue multiple apologies earlier this year after it endorsed on Twitter a radical Muslim cleric who backed a fatwa calling for the murder of U.S. troops.

Terrorism analyst and reporter Patrick Poole said that the State Department’s tweet of the controversial handbook is a sign of what he called its disjointed policies.

“This is a testament to how absurd this administration’s counter-terrorism policies have become—promoting a publication the Canadian government has publicly rejected because they realized this booklet would do more to radicalize than to actually deradicalize,” he said.

“From letting members of designated terrorist groups into the White House, backing the Muslim Brotherhood in the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, responding to demands of Islamic groups to purge counter-terror training materials, to endorsing extremist Islamic clerics like Sheikh Bin Bayyah only then to have to apologize, and now this,” he said. “To describe it as a series of missteps is a gross understatement. This is a coordinated campaign of counter-terror catastrophe.”

I’ve never been a regular TV consumer. When I grew up we had a crappy black and white console TV that got five channels. Two were UHF, which means they were not network affiliates. For my younger readers, there was a time when TV signals were sent over the air to people’s homes. That meant everyone had a big antenna on the roof and that meant family men were good at using a ladder to get on the roof so they could adjust the antenna for the football game. And that meant men had no time for hair gel or half thongs, but that’s a topic for another day.

Anyway, the point is I never developed the habit in my youth because the options were not very good. As much as old farts like me like to romanticize the past, things like TV are way better today than in my day. For a long time, I did not own a TV. I had plenty of ways to fill my free time, mostly involving liquor and women. A woman I was romancing talked me into buying a TV, which I did, thinking it may help the cause. (It did, in case you’re wondering.) Still, I have no beef with television, even though I’m an infrequent consumer.

Most of what is on TV is crap. It is harmless crap, but it is crap. I cut the cord primarily because I got tired of paying for crap I was never going to watch. So many nights I flipped on the set only to find nothing worth watching. I have pretty low standards and it was still tough to find anything worth my time. The few series worth watching, required me to plan for their airing and that’s not an investment I’m in the habit of making. Recording shows is fine, but that too requires planning and I’m just not that interested in it.

That 267 word intro is what is called a statement of interest, by the way. Now you know where I stand on TV and why. My biases are declared and I can now move onto the meat of this post.

So, the miracle of BitTorrent allows me to watch popular series when I want and as much as I want. If I have a few hours to kill one evening, I can watch a season of some show that is/was popular. Living in the world, getting asked about my TV viewing habits on a regular basis, means I feel the need to watch the more popular series, at least the big hits. Otherwise, I risk being a weirdo. Most of anyone’s social interactions are meaningless small talk anyway so keeping tabs on pop culture helps me grease the gears like a normal person and avoid saying in public the sorts of things I post here.

So, I’ve been binge watching some of the hit series of the last few years. I watched all of Breaking Bad in about two weeks time. I can see why people were devoted to it. It was very well done. Good writers and sensible actors can make for a very entertaining television. Binge watching changes things a bit, but if I had started watching it when it was current, I would not have tried to keep up with it. I’m just not willing to make that sort of commitment to a television show. Watching five episodes in a row, however, is a great way to do these long form serials.

I’m now watching Sons of Anarchy, which I think is still going, but maybe not. I could look it up but then you get the spoilers and that takes away some of the fun. I just finished season three and I have enjoyed it. I know a fair bit about motorcycle clubs, but even so, I’m still enjoying it. That’s the thing with TV. You have to accept that it is not going to stick too close to reality. The club they portray in the show is ridiculous, but that’s not the point. That’s just a vehicle for the drama. Al Qaeda has not killed as many people as the Sons of Anarchy in just two plus seasons.

This is most obvious in the case of the series Vikings. I’ve read a lot about the Vikings, their culture and history. Given their impact on Europe, it is a requirement for history buffs. Plus, they make for fun reading. The show is taking poetic license to a whole new level, but it is OK. They get the big stuff right enough to make the story work. The writers appear to have decided to skimp on accuracy in order to entertain and I cannot fault them for it. The whole point is to entertain, after all.

One of the things that seems to pop up in the popular series is the idea of fraternity. In all of these shows, the ways in which men bond with one another is an essential part of the story. The first long form cable drama to make it big was the Sopranos, a story about men in a criminal organization. The Wire relied on similar themes, just with different races and different types of crimes. The three shows I mentioned above are pretty much all about fraternity. That’s probably part of the appeal. In modern times, men no longer belong to clubs and fraternal organizations so maybe these shows tap into something there.

Similarly, these shows are populated with manly men. Movies and network TV have gone the other way. Action heroes are now 100 pound pixies in Lycra body suits. The stars of TV comedies are feminine beta males. These cable shows go the other way from the rest of the culture. In fact, they track more closely to the portrayal of men in movies during the 40’s and 50’s. The stars are gritty and working class. The willingness to do violence is not wrapped up in self-doubt and guilt. That’s the point of Breaking Bad. The main character becomes a man at the point when he realizes he enjoys being the bad guy.

The other thing that I see a lot of in these shows is the importance of family. The Sopranos was about the main character juggling the demands of two families. Breaking Bad is all about the main character trying to take care of his family after he is gone. Sons of Anarchy is a motorcycle version of Hamlet with a healthy does of Oedipus thrown in. Kevin Williamson had a nice take on it a while back. Maybe the emphasis on family as a themes in these shows taps into the general angst over the break down of the traditional family. Maybe it is just an easy way to write a drama. Sometimes, the simple answer is the right one, but my gut says there’s something going on there.

I installed some analysis tools to see how much traffic was coming to the blog and which sites were sending me traffic. You can break out your users by geography so I was looking at that and spotted something weird. I’m getting hits from Monomoy Island. I thought that was deserted or just used for research, so I looked it up.

Despite its remoteness Monomoy was home to its own community as early as 1710. A tavern for sailors was opened up in the location of today’s Hospital Pond, known then as Wreck Cove.

During the early 19th century a deep natural harbor at Monomoy’s inner shore, known as the Powder Hole, attracted a sizeable fishing settlement. In its prime Whitewash Village housed about 200 residents, a tavern inn called Monomoit House, and Public School #13, which at one time boasted 16 students. Cod and mackerel brought in to the Monomoy port were dried and packed for markets in Boston and New York. Lobsters were also plentiful, providing both food and income for the villagers, who peddled them to mainlanders at about two cents apiece.

The village was abandoned after its harbor was washed away by a hurricane around 1860. It remained uninhabited until 1863 when it was reconstructed and reinhabited until 1876. The new township of Whitewash Village thrived as a fishing town until a series of brutal murders and unsolved homicides sent villagers fleeing for the more frequently policed mainland. A storm in the spring of 1958 carved a wide shallow channel between Morris Island and Monomoy, separating it from the mainland. The Blizzard of 1978 further divided the island into North Monomoy and South Monomoy. A storm during the winter of 2006-2007 once again reconnected South Monomoy to the mainland, although North Monomoy remains an island. The island was designated in 1970 a Federal Wildlife Refuge, serving as an important stop on the migratory routes of 285 species of birds. Since gaining Federal protection in 1972, Gray seals have become a common sight on Monomoy and nearby Chatham’s South Beach island.

Monomoy has no human residents, no electricity, no paved roads; today, in fact, the only reminder of Monomoy’s habitation is the Monomoy Point Light, which guided ships from 1828 to 1923. The wooden lightkeeper’s quarters, the cast iron light tower, and the brick generator house are alone on the desolate point of the South Island.

It was taken over by the US government just before World War II. The island was home to the Monomoy Island Gunnery Range until 1944 when the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge was established.

I’m thinking the analysis software needs some tweeking or I’m popular with gray seals.