Month: December 2020

Courtesy of Reddit’s “Today I Learned” group:

Today I learned: Max McGee, the first player to score a touchdown in a Super Bowl, did so hungover and getting barely any sleep the night before. He was a backup who didn’t expect to play, and when the starting receiver got injured, he had to grab a lineman’s helmet because he didn’t have his on hand. Also, that first touchdown was a one-handed grab, and he went on to have two touchdowns that game for 138 yards.

Happy new year, everyone!… Read the rest

Did a black woman invent the COVID vaccine? Nope, it was a team, and she was on it, and she was apparently a valid, valuable, legitimate member of the team.

But that’s about it.

The first draft of history, however, has been trying hard to build her up as the COVID Heroine.

My anti-Semitic Jewish man, David Cole, ain’t havin’ it. The piece has one of the funniest lines of 2020, reproduced below:

“Dr. Fauci wants people to know that one of the lead scientists who developed the Covid-19 vaccine is a Black woman,” screamed CNN. “Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett—Why You Should Know Her Name” read the Yahoo News headline. “History books will celebrate the name and achievements of Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, the Black Woman who was the leader in developing the COVID-19 vaccine,” bleated Barbara Arnwine, president of a tumorous waste of space known as the Transformative Justice Coalition. And the National Newspaper Publishers Association wire service proclaimed, “A Black woman, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, developed the scientific approach to the Coronavirus vaccine.”

Yes, she developed the “scientific approach.” Prior to her, the lab was filled with white men banging pots and pans together yelling, “Die, virus!”

It all reminds me of the female Vanderbilt kicker who everyone praised for her awful kick to open the second half against Missouri (the Left: “It was a squib kick”; Everyone Who Watches Football: “Nobody does a squib kick to start the second half and, besides, it wasn’t a squib kick. It was simply awful.”) And when their real kicker returned, Vanderbilt kept her on the team to kick the extra points, making her very similar to the special need kids who the other team lets score a touchdown.

The Left has become … Read the rest

“A Farthing Newspaper,” the very first of George Orwell’s articles to appear in England, was published on December 29, 1928, in G.K.’s Weekly. [Michael Shelden, Orwell, London, 1991, p. 127]… Read the rest

What are the most God-forsaken ares on earth?

I’m talking about barren areas. Relatively barren of natural beauty, of a beautiful cultural history, and of a beautiful contemporary culture.

And menacing: in its vastness, perhaps, or its brokenness.

There are plenty of contenders (western Australia, western China, northeastern Russia, Detroit in January), but one place always comes to mind first: the Steppes.

That vast area of central Asia from eastern Turkey to Mongolia, home to the Five Stans: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The region’s toughness repeatedly breed the toughest soldiers, who would occasionally slam into eastern Europe (Huns, Magyars, etc.). It never seemed to have enough historical continuity to develop a rich cultural history, always being invaded or doing the invading. Its Christian patrimony was largely destroyed by the Muslims. In the early 20th century, its entire patrimony and future and very soul were sucked out of it by the Soviet Union, leaving the region an economic wasteland.

If it weren’t for Borat, many Americans wouldn’t even know the region existed.

But the region is attempting to make something of itself. It has shifted to a market economy and things are looking better.

Of course, with the market economy, comes all those human foibles, from greed to self-promotion and public flagellation, like the pan-sexual bodybuilder who courted and married his sex doll in one of the stupidest PR stunts of 2020.

Fortunately, his bride is now broken (leaving ribald pundits to speculate why). PG-13 link. The whole thing is so preposterous, I am a little embarrassed to post about it, but there are no doubt woke folks out there who applaud his alleged affection. Those folks can’t be mocked too often. … Read the rest

G.K. Chesterton was a leading character, and a surprisingly true-to-life one, in DC’s award-winning comic book, The Sandman, numbers 10 through 16 (November, 1989—June, 1990). The character returned to The Sandman in issue 39 (July, 1992); and showed again for brief third and a fourth turns in numbers 63 and 65 (September and December, 1994).

The Gilbert character’s later appearances were brief, unexciting, and devoid of apparent significance. The third ended with his violent, grisly, unfunny comic-book death. Gilbert’s final appearance came in the August, 1995 issue, as he indignantly refused to permit Morpheus (the Sandman) to raise him from the dead! DC Comics ended publication of The Sandman with issue number 75.… Read the rest

“He rules the world with truth and grace.” —Isaac Watts ++ “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” —Charles Dickens ++ “The Incarnation…illuminates and orders all other phenomena, explains both our laughter and our logic, our fear of the dead and our knowledge that it is somehow good to die, and which at one stroke covers what multitudes of separate theories will hardly cover for us if this is rejected.” —C.S. Lewis ++ “Regarding not the day, let us give God thanks for the gift of His dear Son… If it be possible to honor Christ in the giving of gifts, I cannot see how while the gift, giver and recipient are all in the spirit of the world… [B]ut we have a Christ gift the entire year.” —Charles Spurgeon ++ “Holiday and Holy Day, Christmas is more than a yule log, holly or tree. It is more than natural good cheer and the giving of gifts. Christmas is even more than the feast of the home and of children, the feast of love and friendship. It is more than all of these together. Christmas is Christ, the Christ of justice and charity, of freedom and peace.” —Francis Cardinal Spellman ++ “The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic; it was not a place of myths allegorized or dissected or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true.” —G.K. Chesterton… Read the rest