When is it okay to discriminate against someone based on race, gender, religion, national origin, or sexual preferences? Is it ever to be tolerated? After all, we've recently seen that Christian businesses can be severely punished by the State, saddled with exorbitant fines well in excess of any potential profits from catering gay weddings, and literally run out of business for refusing to provide service to certain individuals, even when the Christians claim that being forced to participate in such an event violates their religious beliefs. Religious freedoms don't matter anymore, according to the State. Discrimination must not be tolerated under ANY circumstances... Which will make it interesting to see how the following story unfolds -- an event planner in Texas has not only refused to serve customers of another race, she posted the following message on the Facebook account for her business as an explanation for her reaction (emphasis is original): DON’T CALL MY BLACK-OWNED BUSINESS ASKING ME TO PLAN YOUR PLANTATION WEDDING. Apparently the wedding planner in question, Ms. Jordan Maney, was terribly offended by the fact the location where the wedding was to take place was named Kendall Plantation and turned down the bride's business, even though the venue was never a real plantation where slaves had been held and forced into labor. This is in spite of the fact that Kendall Plantation was not built until 2011, and then specifically for the purpose of holding wedding ceremonies. Slaves were never forced into labor at a place called"Kendall Plantation." So why … [Read more...]
The polymath Emanuel Swedenborg
Emanuel Swedenborg didn’t simply use microscopes and telescopes in his pursuit of scientific knowledge; he made his own. He even ground his own lens. A true polymath comparable to Leonardo Da Vinci and Sir Isaac Newton, Swedenborg devoured virtually every resource about the known sciences he could find. He created new fields of study as he compiled, organized and then documented and published the information he gleaned from the books he read. Not content to be a jack of all trades, Swedenborg became expert in practically any skill, craft or scientific endeavor he undertook. Astronomer, inventor, scientist, philosopher and mystic, Swedenborg spoke nine languages fluently. He even learned Hebrew in order to personally translate the ancient texts of the Bible. By his early fifties, Swedenborg had mastered every known branch of science and invented or designed a number of innovative devices well ahead of his time, including the first fire extinguisher, submarine, airplane, air gun, home heater, and a music machine. He designed what was at the time the world’s largest dry dock, then supervised the movement of a fleet of warships over a mountain range that resulted in a huge naval victory for Sweden. He bound books, made watches, cabinets, and as previously mentioned, even built his own scientific instruments. No published reports have been discovered suggesting that he was able to leap small buildings with a single bound, however. Swedenborg studied geology, anatomy, mechanics, physiology. He was one of the first people to study and began to understand the nervous … [Read more...]
Have you heard the one about the college professor?
When someone gets on a roll telling jokes, sometimes you'll hear one like "Have you heard the one about the Darwin award winner who put a JATO (Jet Assisted Take Off) unit normally attached to solid rockets on his car?" What normally follows is some disturbing story about a lethal lapse in judgment that culminated in the death of some poor fool, apparently so that others might be entertained. Fortunately, more often than not, these stories turn out to be nothing more than myths and urban legends, or plot filler for a movie that nobody watched. Okay, so have you heard the one about the gay college professor recorded by a student, lecturing her class on human sexuality that President Donald Trump was a white supremacist whose election was an act of terrorism and the potential start of a new civil war? The student who taped and released the video has been suspended for the remainder of the semester, ordered to apologize to the professor and write an essay explaining how sharing the video had damaged the students, faculty, and staff of Orange Coast College. Well, okay...but what's the punch line? That her comments were way off topic for a college course on human sexuality? That such a college course even exists in the first place, when the purpose of college is supposed to be acquiring tools and skills that might help the student find a job after graduation? On the other hand, the pornography industry is big business in California, so maybe that's not so crazy. Or was the punch line to ask whether the class was part of the core curriculum or an elective, … [Read more...]
The problem with higher education
According to Matthew W. Hughey, sociology professor at the University of Connecticut, Donald Trump won the recent presidential election because of rampant white supremacy among Americans. In his interview with Tucker Carlson, Professor Hughey claimed that a "huge factor" in Donald Trump's win was because of "a social, political, and economic commitment to white supremacy", which he somewhat redundantly defined as "a social, political, and economic commitment to the promotion of people who pass as white." To be fair, Professor Hughey sounds quite intelligent. He casually throws around phrases and words such as "gender dynamics" and "heteronormativity" while attempting to justify his claims that white supremacy played a significant role in the recent election, reminding me of something my late father used to say: if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with B.S. Naturally, Dad used the more colorful word in lieu of the abbreviation. Carlson pointed out one of the more obvious flaws in Hughey's claim. He cited the statistical fact that during the last 50 years, 60 million immigrants have settled in the United States. Only 12 percent of those immigrants came from "white" European countries. And Professor Hughey's response was: "your point makes sense if you don't think about it." That seemed both evasive and unnecessarily rude. Hughey went on to explain that he believes what is happening today is no different than forced immigration and slavery. Now personally believing something so preposterous is one thing, but please remember that … [Read more...]
