“Flowers has consistently been the one dragging along his band mates. While they want time off after their typically lengthy world tours, he’s always keen to go higher, further, longer. So he fills the hiatuses with solo projects. This despite the fact that he’s the one with most family — Flowers has three young sons, and talks of ‘maybe one more. But it’s totally up to my wife. I would have ten kids,’ he beams, and that is a precept of his religious faith.” (link)

Tell it, Brother B.

Possibly the greatest title for a medical journal article I’ve seen. You might think with a title like that, the article can’t help but be a dud. However, it delivers the promised payload. The charts especially blew me away.

1. All American children used to grow up hearing the story of how little George Washington cut down a cherry tree, then confessed to the deed by saying, “I cannot tell a lie.”

2. It is generally agreed among historians, even those not disposed to tear down the reputations of the Founding Fathers, that the cherry tree story was an invention of Parson Weems.

3. Therefore, George Washington almost certainly did not exist, and we need to stop hurting people by making such a fetish of honesty based on fairy tales like these.

Q.E.D.

The Independent reports on a detailed genetic study of the British population. Many historic and prehistoric demographic events show up, but some don’t:

“Other major events in history, such as the Roman invasion and occupation between 43AD and 410AD, the large-scale invasion by the Viking Danes in 865AD and the subsequent establishment of Danelaw, as well as the Norman invasion of 1066, cannot be seen in the genetic profiles of Britons today.

“This probably reflects the fact that often major cultural shifts are carried out by relatively few people within an elite who do not leave their genetic mark on the conquered masses, said Sir Walter Bodmer, the veteran population geneticist who first had the idea of the study.”

Something worth remembering the next time DNA and the Book of Mormon comes up.

His Majesty was wearing a sour face when he came out to breakfast this morning.

(more…)

Our current political debates are a conflict of unrealities. The leftist unreality is that consequences do not exist. The conservative unreality is to act as though the Left does not exist.

How else to explain this?  (more…)

“A driver exited his vehicle with a knife and charged another man, who was critical of his driving, police said. The man who didn’t like the driving pulled a gun and shot the man who had the knife.” (link)

A former stake president explained once that in his calling he was supposed to recommend potential mission presidents to his leaders. Mission presidents needed to be under 60, or up to 65 in cases of exceptionally robust health and vigor.

When the ages for young missionaries were lowered, and thousands more made themselves available for service, and dozens of new missions opened, that required finding more mission presidents than before. One of those tasked was Stephen Hansen, 71 at the time of his call to preside the Utah Salt Lake City Mission. Wednesday, Sister Carol Hansen, his 69-year-old wife died quite unexpectedly, though naturally. It seems likely that President Hansen will be released early.

A few nights ago, in the sleepy haze that follows nightly prayer but precedes full unconsciousness, Mrs. MC and I discussed how we discipline our kids, what we might change, etc. Nowadays, no right-thinking parent ever defends corporal punishment, even if they sometimes practice it. It’s time outs, privileges withheld, that’s it.  (more…)

“An Alabama middle school principal wants to stockpile cans of corn and peas in classrooms for students to hurl at possible intruders as a last resort defense.”

“‘The canned food item will give the students a sense of empowerment to protect themselves and will make them feel secure in case an intruder enters their classroom.'” (link) I hope the kids get to practice chucking the cans during PE.

“Now Jason’s getting married in the blink of an eye. / I got an invitation but I didn’t reply. / Tell your little brother that we put down the gloves. / And give him all of my love.”

(more…)

Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, no witch has power to charm,
So hallow’d and gracious is the time. –Hamlet

John C. Wright is in rare form.

Decades from now, when only old men and women can dimly recall when somebody told a friend of mine about a dancing human spaceman that can read my mind when we got the radio on, there may be 9-year-olds that sing together “Joel, the Lump of Coal.”

(more…)

Nine years ago, Edmonton writer Colby Cosh was considering in the National Post the potential H5N1 flu epidemic: “One daily warned us on Wednesday that a flu pandemic could ‘thrust the planet into unprecedented social and economic chaos.’ But what, I ask you, was the Spanish flu if not a precedent?” He continued with the lessons he had acquired from an acquaintance with microfilm rolls of early 20th Century Canadian prairie newspapers he had poured through for other research. (link)

This week in Maclean’s, Cosh turns similar attention to recent bouts of freelance terrorism: “It has become a pastime of mine to pick major royal or ministerial figures from 19th-century continental Europe and look up the little-known assassination attempts against them.” (link)

From Harpo Marx’s autobiography, regarding his New York City pals:

They had changed along with the times. Seven or eight years ago we would have wound up an all-night party in Aleck’s apartment arguing about croquet or the stock market, or making up wild puns and nasty menus. Now we wound up talking (they did, I mean—I still listened) about the NRA, the CCC, FDR’s last Fireside Chat, and Fiorello La Guardia, the new mayor of New York. Sooner or later Adolf Hitler entered every conversation, which killed it, and everybody went home wrapped up in his own depressing thoughts.