Steve Sailer makes a great observation about one of the things it takes to achieve success in music:

To become a superstar, you have to embody some of the inner fixations of either the male or female publics. And in popular music in recent decades, the biggest names have had largely feminine audiences because male tastes have fragmented into multitudinous narrow genres, such as, say, Melodic Death Metal.

This is also important well below the superstar level; it's true that quite a few guys really like a specific subgenre of music but virulently despise everything else, including some closely related subgenres. Women tend to be less extremist in their stylistic preferences. It can be pretty difficult for a band working in a genre with a mostly-male audience to build a following.

Economically speaking, there is really not much sense in playing very guy-oriented music. As I've already alluded, if your band attracts women to its gigs then plenty of guys will show up to hit on them anyway, even guys who don't think all that much of your band.

When Frank asked if America's revolutionary spirit is gone, I couldn't help thinking that the problem is not that it's gone but that with time it became even worse and more progressive. I was reminded of one of Mencius Moldbug's posts from a while ago which summarized the American revolution from a reactionary point of view. Here are a few choice bits.

And the American Revolution was, in my own personal opinion, more or less, basically, a criminal outrage of the mob - led by leaders who were either unscrupulous, deluded, or both.

. . . the rebels in the American Revolution were motivated by an ideology that was utterly deluded, that amounted to no more than a wacky conspiracy theory. The point is not even slightly arguable. Their interpretation of British politics simply had no basis in reality.

Since this delusional interpretation was the linchpin of their argument for rebellion, and since their reliance on street violence and paramilitary formations is indisputable, they can fairly be classed as unscrupulous or deluded mob leaders - regardless of any classification in the scruples department, a historical task which often verges on the impossible.

. . . In other words, our Founding Fathers were more or less the Troofers of their day. Or, to put it differently, America obtained its independence because of a war that was started by people who were genuinely terrified of the 18th-century equivalent of black helicopters.

. . . Britain was not on a path to a weird, 1984-like future with gold braids and epaulets, crushed under the iron heel of the King, the Church of England and the Lords. Rather, the power of throne and altar and fief in Britain had been dwindling almost monotonically since Mary Tudor - a process which of course has continued to this day.

If you want to understand why he holds this somewhat unpopular opinion, I'm afraid you'll have to read the whole thing which is in Moldbug's consistently long-winded style. If you are wondering what the hell all this is about but can't deal with his writing style, last year I condensed the whole of the Moldbuggian worldview into a single post.

To all our American readers we wish a happy Fourth of July. Hopefully a few of you will get sufficiently drunk at your parties to start spouting anti-revolutionary and anti-democratic rhetoric. Throw in a little secessionism, too. That should be fun.

Just how sexy is confidence? Just about everyone from feminists to pickup artists agrees that it is of utmost importance. Roissy writes that you should be more confident even if you have no objective reason for it:

Be irrationally self-confident

No matter what your station in life, stride through the world without apology or excuse. It does not matter if objectively you are not the best man a woman can get; what matters is that you think and act like you are. Women have a dog’s instinct for uncovering weakness in men; don’t make it easy for them. Self-confidence, warranted or not, triggers submissive emotional responses in women.

All right, let's test that hypothesis. What if a guy who is not all that bad looking but has a very uninteresting personality convinced himself to the inmost depths of his soul that he is extremely sexy and irresistible to women? Would they actually desire him, or at least be less repelled? Here is a good test case, and the answer is "hell fucking no", but if you are still not convinced there is further data available.

Bubbles are bursting and financial institutions running out of money in places which don't much resemble Wall Street.

"People wanted bigger weddings, newer carriages," Mr. Lehman says. "They were buying things they didn't need." Mr. Lehman spent several hundred dollars on a model-train and truck hobby, and about $4,000 on annual family vacations, he says. This year, there will be no vacation.

It became common practice for families to leave their carriages home and take taxis on shopping trips and to dinners out.

Some Amish families had bought second homes on the west coast of Florida and expensive Dutch Harness Horses, with their distinctive, prancing gait. Others lined their carriages in dark velvet and illuminated them with battery-powered LED lighting.

Yup, living above your means and spending money you might not have to pimp out your ride will have negative consequences when the cash stops flowing. It won't make a lick of difference that the ride you've been pimping is a horse-drawn buggy and your trousers don't have zippers. Trying to live according to the old ways won't prevent the kind of unplesantness which has been happening to countless fools and unfortunates ranging from peasants to kings for thousands of years. Who knew?

HT: Dealbreaker

A week ago I was at a bar with some friends, celebrating a milestone birthday, at a typically trendy yet historic area of Boston. Many of these bars were frequented by the likes of Paul Revere and Samuel Adams. As I was facing my friend, I looked up at the wall above his head and saw a picture of Revolutionary War-era patriots with tricorne hats...drinking, scheming, thinking of ways to not only break away from the tyranny of the British empire but also thinking of ways to convince their fellow working-class Colonial citizens to do the same.

Then I looked around the bar. The band was decent for a bar band but they didn't seem to know any songs past 1996. The women were dressed with glittery dresses, with friends or boyfriends, and the men were baseball cap-wearing zombies with little to offer except their outward appearance - ripped jeans, maybe an ironically trendy label on a shabby t-shirt.

This is a far cry from the brave leaders who saw America for what it could be instead of what it had been. However America turned out, those first hundred years or so saw men who risked their lives to set up a form of government which worked when the elite were allowed to rule and liberties protected to keep the ideas of revolution fresh in the minds of the citizenry (and perhaps to discourage those thoughts at the same time?). I like to think of them as the most famous leaders who saw themselves as mostly replaceable. Whether they felt such a society could last before caving in on itself within a few hundred years, we'll never know.

Today, our Founders are not revered but looked at as hypocrites by the same people that frequent these silly bars without giving a thought to these pictures what they mean, not knowing what hard times truly are, laughed at by illegal immigrant factions who can't believe how easy it is to steal their tax money and how little these Americans know of reality. These same people are the ones who rail on about how the Founders were slave owners and rich land owners. Well, of course they were...did you really think a peasant class alone could have achieved victory? Smart, capable men like General George Washington helped destroy a huge British infantry, not just farmers with pitchforks, despite what Hollywood would have us believe.

Most people can't imagine a life without cell phones, Macintosh computers, or their MySpace page. I find it hard to imagine a country based on the kind of values espoused in The Constitution and Declaration of Independence inhabited primarily by nitwits who can barely read the printed matter on these documents - let alone translate that into solid leadership.

I love the world for its inherent humour. So does Alfred, who recently mocked English students failing to understand the words “despotic tyranny” for their history A-level exam. These students have started up a Facebook group ("'Despotic Tyranny' ruined my life") where they whine about this. Of course, Corrupt was there.

Among all the hilarity one could pull out, I like what Kirsty Marion Wallace-Herbert wrote:

Kirsty Marion Wallace-Herbert (Farnborough Sixth Form College) wrote
at 16:52 yesterday
basicallyyyyyyyy anyone with half a brain cell should have known what despotic tyranny meant. the exam was good. go read the dictionary.

Paris Hart (Havering Sixth Form College) wrote
at 17:09 yesterday
you read the dictionary? go get a life :)
i would recommend reading a thesauras though, because we've heard those words a million times.

Kayleigh Smirk (Barton Peveril) wrote
at 03:03
Kirsty, you're the one demonstrating being an immature childish twat by commenting on a page that
A) so many have done before
and
B) joining a group just to bash the people in it
How much of a loser are you? lolz

Wait, so the reply is essentially "WUT, U POINT OUT OUR FAULTZ, ELITIST"? Impressive, even for English students. More from the UK Commentators blog:

...in our wider reading which I assure you myself and other students at my sixth form completed, the focus was not on Hitler as a despot but on how the system of government impacted everyday life and how it operated.

How much imagination does it take to apply your knowledge of "how the system of government impacted everyday life and how it operated" to "Hitler as a despot"? Apparently, too much. No great authors or philosophers from this generation of students, either. Oh well, life goes on, and we all get a laugh from those who haven't figured this out.

Tonight, let's look at some of the problems a modern civilization faces.

East

When looking at empires in decline, Russia is a prime example, mirroring many of the European problems with demographic collapse, economic crisis and invasion by radical forces. Sometimes, factors in a societal equation become apparent first when the problems have already grown too big:

— Russian authorities seized 2.4 metric tons of heroin in 2006, about three times the seizures in 2002, according to United Nations figures. That's a small fraction of the estimated 60 metric tons that are thought to arrive in Russia from Afghanistan each year.

Russian officials publicly blame America for the plague because almost all the heroin comes from U.S.-dominated Afghanistan , but they won't discuss in detail how drugs move through their country. They've yet to devise a comprehensive plan to address the issue. Trials of high-level traffickers are conducted in secret. Even midlevel police officials usually don't talk, and when they do, it's privately and away from their workplaces.

In Russia , it's much easier to blame a U.S. conspiracy than to bring up the subject of corrupt officials, the Russian mafia and their involvement in the drug trade.

As with most, if not all critical problems that can cause a civilization to collapse, the Russian health crisis is influenced by external factors like drug import, but really boils down to a decaying social culture and government/mafia-sponsored corruption. Not all health problems are related to corruption though; the good old vodka remains the miracle of Caucasus:

A new study by an international team of public health researchers documents the devastating impact of alcohol abuse on Russia — showing that drinking caused more than half of deaths among Russians aged 15 to 54 in the turbulent era following the Soviet collapse.

The 52 percent figure compares to estimates that less than 4 percent of deaths worldwide are caused by alcohol abuse, according to the study by Russian, British and French researchers published in Friday's edition of the British medical journal The Lancet.

Professor David Zaridze, head of the Russian Cancer Research Center and lead author of the study, estimated that the increase in alcohol consumption since 1987, the year when then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's restrictions on alcohol sales collapsed, cost the lives of 3 million Russians who would otherwise be alive today. "This loss is similar to that of a war," Zaridze said.

Alcohol took the natural place a Soviet-dominated culture once had in the hearts of the Russian public; Putin may accordingly be right that the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the great catastrophes of the 21st Century, but hardly for geopolitical reasons alone. As an interesting sidenote, the article actually suggests moderate drinking of alcohol has got a lot of positive health effects, including protection against stroke, Alzheimer's disease and dementia, and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. So, enjoy drinking in healthy amounts.

Yet, of course, corruption and post-Soviet totalitarianism remain key problems in modern day Russia. As a soon-to-be journalist, I would hesitate to migrate to Russia, unless I wanted my immediate death to be announced and then having it dismissed as an accident:

A local corruption reporter in Russia died of head injuries on Monday in what police said Tuesday was a drunken fall. Colleagues, on the other hand, are sure it was a revenge attack for muckraking journalism.

"I have no doubt that the attack was directly connected to Yaroshenko's writing and is payback for his journalistic work," said Sergei Slepzov, a close friend and colleague of Yaroshenko.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has called for an investigation, suggesting that Yaroshenko was targeted because he had written about corruption in the local law enforcement agencies, government office and the prosecutor's office.

Of course, the police is not interested in continuing the investigation; that could reveal some nasty inside work. So why is this a civilization problem? Well, when the tentacles of government secretly order the death of oppositional and inconvenient critics, it's rendering itself godlike and indisputable. At that point, loyalty to government becomes more important than loyalty to community, culture and truth. And so we breed a nasty Nanny State á la Europe, where we're free to have sex on television but not point out that Europeans are being replaced by third world immigrants to finance out-of-control government spending.

Therefore, let's look at some of the issues the European Nanny State believes are important to handle:

West

Teachers at St Sidwells Primary school, Exeter, Devon, have told parents of pupils goggles can now only be worn by children who have an 'adverse reaction to chemicals in water'.

"Wet plastic is very slippery and frequent, incorrect or unnecessary adjustment or removal of them, by pulling them away from the eyes instead of sliding them over the forehead, can lead to them slipping from the pupil's grasp with the hard plastic causing severe injury."

The school said in a statement: "In the present culture we need to make sure we are legally covered in the event of a problem or injury.

In this cute little story we see two main factors at work:

• The government is blindly dedicated to securing the safety of the public, to the point where it doesn't trust the judgement of its citizens anymore and wants to take responsibility that otherwise would be individual by nature. This means we all have to pay for morons to feel safe from moronic things most of us would otherwise learn to cope with. Sure, some kids may actually hurt themselves with these googles, but instead of letting them learn a lesson from that and move on, we end up nannying everyone at the expense of those who just want to control their own lives. In fact, the more the government nannies people, the more impotent and stupid they get (Sweden, anyone?!).
• There's a second part to this story, which is cleverly revealed in the statement issued by the school: "In the present culture we need to make sure we are legally covered in the event of a problem or injury." Translation: We're trying to avoid getting sued thanks to bureaucratic safety regulations that wouldn't allow a fly to scare a child, so we're taking the safe path and banning all that is possibly horrible, scary, dangerous and uncertain. A nice recipe to doom, because the government in all Nanny States end up regulating more and controling more. At the end of it, we're all robots serving a system we no longer control.

Here's another pack of gems from Nanny Europe:

Banning welcome mats…

Families living in a flat block have been told to remove welcome mats from their porches because they are a health and safety risk.

…and implementing Castro-style block watches

In partnership with regional chapters of the charity group Crimestoppers U.K., multiple local police forces have launched a program called “Too Much Bling? Give Us a Ring.” The object of the program is to encourage people who suspect that a neighbor or acquaintance is living off the proceeds of crime to anonymously provide information about that person to the police…

Not very surprising; I'm sure we'll have to ban pets, stairs, cars, tobacco and kitchen knives soon, because they all cause harm to a lot of people who behave like idiots. A better way would of course be to let people take some individual responsibility and then face the consequences of their actions, to learn what works and what doesn't. But wait, that's offensive, because then who are we going to nanny to feel good? The public are the incentive behind nannying, because they cry out for safety. Don't listen to them, or you end up with a civilization in decline and crowdism as culture.

London, UK - Test results in the UK could show huge progress for the first time in decades, according to the encouraging reaction of students after their A-levels this summer.

Exam results are not published for almost two months, but the early evidence is promising; almost every student has failed.

A large number of the unintelligent students left the exam disorientated. Later turning indignant, they then logged onto Facebook, creating a group to discuss their collective failure at not being able to understand words.

One comment left says: “I spent every day reading literally dozens of sources learning how the Nazis were tyrants. But nowhere did it mention how the Nazis were specifically ‘despotic’ tyrants. Alarmed and antagonised by this completely unexpected phrase, I then wept into my paper for the rest of the ninety minutes.”

Subsequently, leading universities have been quick to praise the tougher, more intuitive testing.

Admissions officer for Christ Church at Oxford University spoke earlier: "No longer will we have to so rigorously weed out any uncultured morons that manage to slip through into our interview process. This is fantastic news."

The students who performed well were also content. According to one: “I didn’t exactly know what ‘despot’ meant, but I inferred it from the context. That’s why I’m not a complete dunce and why I’m studying law at Kings College London next year. Thank God the examiners will be marking on a bell curve!”

A charity in the Saudi capital Riyadh has come up with a novel incentive to encourage young men to quit smoking - an all-expenses-paid wedding.

This incentive in the form of a prize draw targeted exclusively at young men has inspired cries of sexism. Yes, these cries are raised even in Saudi Arabia.

One reason men are specifically targeted here lies in a probability that they smoke more than women in contrast to more progressive countries where women are threatening to outstrip men in their smoking habits. The relatively progressive Arab culture I personally experience is not health conscious: most of the women are smokers and there are more of them than the men. Here's a fun statement to consider: equality kills!

Another reason given for this sexist healthcare intervention is that men are expected to pay for weddings:

In much of the Arab world, the groom alone bears the cost of a wedding.
[...]
The high expense for a wedding means that Arab men often put off marriage until they have saved enough money to take a bride.

Let me make one aside to comment on the 'take a bride' phrasing. I don't believe that phrase is usually used in the context of marriages in the Western world, as reported by the BBC. There's a whole raft of commentary on Saudi gender issues in those three words. Anyway, enough of that indulgence, and back to the topic at hand.

This seems a rather wonderful incentive for quitting smoking overall within the context of the society it is introduced in. It eliminates both the problem of smoking and supports the institution of marriage, reinforcing the message that starting a family is about giving up on your former lifestyle and realigning your priorities.

However, it has seemed to result in the adverse effect of people taking up smoking, in order to quit and qualify for the free wedding prize. Perhaps that didn't quite work out as well as one might hope.

An article over at Amerika.org made me think recently about how important perspective is in parenting. These days, it seems many parents are either leaving their children in the care of others, or when they are in the care of their parents, the parents are hauling the kid around to Mommy and Daddy's activities and trying to force-fit a child's life into the same structure used by parents during their working (read: waking) hours. Brett Stevens explains an important reason for this disconnect that we often disregard:

Humanity has slipped into its own world, a world ruled by social devices and the avoidance of conflict, and as a result, cannot face reality.

Kids see this, because it’s new to them and they’re very afraid of these adult things they see coming down the pipe.

So now adults and kids not only exist in two different realities, but are heading toward different polarized political views, one of which is liberal and one of which is reactionary.

Brett hits the nail on the head. Parenting isn't about social trends or fitting into a lifestyle. It's about your children, and what you do as a parent to help them succeed in life while also giving them critical thinking capabilities so that they can become better versions of you while also having to make tough choices on their own during crucial points in their development into adulthood.

It reminds me of something I was told by an education major when I was in college. He was student teaching and children in his class had to draw their perception of a Japanese classroom after hearing about it from their teachers with no visual aids. One student drew an environment where comformity was king: the students were identical robots and the teachers were more evil, sinister looking robots. The teacher in this class forced the child to erase the drawing and start again, but my friend, the student teacher, gently encouraged him that it was okay to think what he wanted (outside of earshot, of course, to preserve his job).

And therein lies the problem, highlighted by Brett above: even if you raise a child to think critically and absorb the information given to him (important to note as Brett did in his entry that children may have a more honest view of the world around them but it is still centered around them only), independent thinking is not rewarded even in what we like to think are free, liberalized classrooms of "free" thinking teachers and administrators. And we wonder why this generation gap persists?

In the next few years between birth and schooling, my wife and I will think very hard about education options for our child. Home schooling and Montessori both seem preferable to even the "great" education system we have in Massachusetts, but we still have to think of developing those all important social skills, without giving in to egomaniacal trends that run rampant in our society.

Some research is pointing out the possible health benefits of being fatter than average. Razib Khan mentions a paper about obesity and tuberculosis survival, while HalfSigma tries to get attention by pretending to draw conclusions he knows are dead wrong from data on the survival rates of the overweight.

Having been very lean, then fairly fat and now lean again I gotta say that being fatter does have health benefits. It's great when you've got food poisoning or a bad cold and can't eat very much - you don't feel anywhere near as weak and lethargic as when lean. As a piece of anectdotal evidence, a few years ago I spent two weeks unable to hold down very much food and lost four kilograms without feeling weak, lethargic or otherwise affected. It really wasn't at all unpleasant except for those moments I was trying to eat or actually vomiting. I was even able to set personal bests on some lifts in the gym during that period. I'm sure the convenient energy storage of fat is beneficial when it comes to dealing with other health problems, too, as you don't have to start breaking down muscle tissue and other organs just to get the calories to operate. Of course there's a point of diminising returns - having too much fat, especially visceral fat, is strongly linked to some serious health problems.

Muscle mass is great to have but probably matters little; mostly it just means you need to eat more and increases your quality of life but probably not the quantity. Yeah, it's occasionally useful for avoiding injury - a thick neck can save your life in a car crash - but intuitively I doubt things like that happen often enough to have much impact on longevity. I would expect more muscle mass correlates with longer life but not because it helps survive but because if you can grow above-average amounts of muscle you're probably not too sickly in the first place.

If you still need more reasons to be big, Dave Tate provides a list of 27. That should motivate you to eat more.

The news reports in the aftermath of the Iranian elections indicate we may well be reaching the beginning of the end of Western diplomacy with Iran. With this in mind, let's see how the doubtless stormy rhetoric is heating up:

Britain reacted angrily yesterday to the arrest of at least eight Iranians working for the British Embassy in Tehran, calling the move unacceptable “harassment and intimidation”.

...

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said: “These are hard-working diplomatic staff and the idea that the British Embassy is somehow behind the demonstrations and protests that have been taking place in Tehran in recent weeks is wholly without foundation.”

...

Last week Ahmed Khatami, a hardline cleric close to the regime, used a nationally televised sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran to attack Britain: “In this unrest, Britons have behaved very mischievously and it is fair to add the slogan of ‘Down with England’ to the slogan of ‘Down with USA’.”

"Down with England"? Is he eight years old? Being a hardline Iranian, this guy probably denies the holocaust, so it was fair for me to expect something a little more offensive.

I suppose it's better than our suggestions that Iranian suspicions are "wholly without foundation" and "unacceptable". That must have cut deep, in a country where convicted robbers have their hands cut off (probably). Considering that the next recourse seems to be war of some manner, our politicians could be accused of diluting the potency of the banter somewhat.

What happens when you decide to blame a symbolic group for all the evils in the world? You become your own worst enemy. Ladies who identify themselves as feminists should take a good look at this gender study within the theatre business:

For the second study, Ms. Sands sent identical scripts to artistic directors and literary managers around the country. The only difference was that half named a man as the writer (for example, Michael Walker), while half named a woman (i.e., Mary Walker). It turned out that Mary’s scripts received significantly worse ratings in terms of quality, economic prospects and audience response than Michael’s. The biggest surprise? “These results are driven exclusively by the responses of female artistic directors and literary managers,” Ms. Sands said.

Amid the gasps from the audience, an incredulous voice called out, “Say that again?”

Ms. Sands put it another way: “Men rate men and women playwrights exactly the same.”

Here we see two immediate facts being revealed that most feminists would rather not listen to:

1. Women typically dislike other successful women, especially when they stand in a direct power relationship to each other (example: employer-worker). Women are by nature less competitive than men, and so when a certain group of women try to compete in career fields, other women feel threatened by that behavior and react defensively. Remember Gail Trimble?

2. Men appear "hostile" toward women precisely because they do not discriminate against women. They treat them just like they'd treat men, e.g. they bully, harass and challenge them at whim. That women respond so negatively to this reveals that men and women interpret the situation differently. In this case, men didn't seem to discern between male and female playwrights, maybe because it's a situation where the male radar doesn't alert real competitiveness, but the more sensitive female radar does.

Conclusion: The organized male patriarchy may not be the biggest enemy of feminist revolution, after all.

HT: 2Blowhards

I earlier talked about Lydia McGrew's conjecture about Conservative parties, and how to win the cultural war against Western leftism. But why is it that Conservatives either feel the need to radicalize or water down their beliefs? What is the mechanism behind McGrew's conjecture? The answer, I think, is simple, and can be described in one word: Opposition. Which brings me to...

Alex Birch maxim no 1: All political groups without real power who identify themselves as an opposition to the established order will emphasize ideology over practicality and therefore radicalize their views.

The Far Right and Left best signify this group, in that they are not willing to compromise on ideology to help them achieve their goals, and in many cases use violent and militant opposition as ways of getting their message across. They are very careful not to agree with any of the official policies of the establishment, and this is what perpetuates the process of radicalization, until they finally become extremists. This is the far end of McGrew's conjecture.

The other end is of course populism, which is what happens to most of these groups whenever they miraculously increase their public support and realize they have a chance of getting some of their policies through. At this point they will eventually get sucked up into the process of compromise and pragmatism that defines the established parties of the Western democracies today. Liberals use Conservative policies, Conservatives borrow liberal policies etc. - all to enhance their power and popularity. Even once radical parties will here be willing to soften images, loosen up on ideology and compromise, or else they will lose out on the game.

That game is liberal democracy and this is the process by which it operates. Conservatives need to face it and try to avoid negative populism by softening their image instead of softening policies. If they, adding to this, can avoid radicalization by emphasizing common ground with oppositional groups and not view themselves as alienated from public discourse, we might be able to see a Conservative revolution in the foreseeable future.

When killing hobos gets old, and even forcing your employees to help you bury dead strippers no longer gives you a thrill, what can you do? Fortunately some Russian entrepeneurs have a solution involving some more lively targets. It'll cost you a pretty penny, though. Don't you sometimes envy those who can still enjoy something as pedestrian as killing a few kittens?

So I noticed today when cleaning the bathroom that running tap water barely moved in the basin. "Of course, no one bothered to clean the drain pipes before I moved in here," I thought to myself, and began twisting screws underneath the basin to release the water that was standing there.

When I released the plastic bottom underneath the container, it was filled with old dirt. It all spilled down unto the bathroom floor and made it look as if an animal had just been taking a shower. I began releasing the rest of the drain pipes and cleaned them with the shower handle. When it was all clean, I screwed it all back together again and cleaned the mess up.

Back home, my dad would fix every practical problem. In 99 out of 100 times, he solved whatever the problem was. What I've learned from him is that it doesn't always matter if you don't know what you're doing. Just do it. He never knew anything about televisions or CD players. Yet he fixed my portable CD player twice, my stereo, my radio, my doors, my bed, my lamps--he's fixed it all. Once he even repaired a sofa from IKEA that lacked some of the original parts. "Shut up, give me that machine, and stand back." 10 minutes later we'd sit in it and have a beer.

I thought of this when looking over broken things in the apartment today. I haven't looked at half of these things before, simply because they've always worked. Yet, few things are rarely so complicated that you cannot use common sense and some raw muscle power to fix it. It's the long-standing male ideal of someone who takes the matters in his own hands, doesn't rely upon anyone else, and takes joy in fixing his own things when they're broke. He's an everyday highwayman.

As Frank notes, parents who care about their children don't nanny them to protect them from danger and difficulties. They teach them to be self-sufficient and live on their own according to the best of their abilities. I'm no plumber, but I sure damn know how to fix a clogged drain pipe when I see it.

Seoul, South Korea - Kim Jong-Un, son of North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-Il, was criticised by the international community today after tying up several kittens into a bag and throwing them as far as he could into the Pacific Ocean.

The carefully managed political stunt, captured by the official state press for propaganda purposes, was soon leaked onto the internet and caused sycophantic outrage throughout the west, easily beating Neda's latest attempt to the coveted spot of number one viral video.

The televised murder of the kittens proved to be a spectacular domestic media coup for the secretive son, who was recently designated by father Kim Jong-Il as his successor.

The official propaganda piece invites North Koreans to compare the killing to Barack Obama's casual swatting of a fly during an interview last week: "Obama can manage one puny fly; son of our Dear Leader defies the western bourgeoisie by drowning kittens by the bagful!"

Inevitably, North Korea's latest illegal throwing of kittens into Japanese waters was again successful in provoking western condemnation.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced soon after: "North Korea was wilfully engaging in provocation. The launching of cute and lovely kittens is strictly prohibited under international law. The US President swatted his fly under standard international protocol."

Understandably, dogs and mice worldwide have been celebrating the news.

When a band's career takes them from playing bars in their region to playing national tours, a strange transformation happens. When you're a bar band, a key part of your success is the youth and attractiveness of the women who come to your gigs. After all one attractive girl who drinks two overpriced mojitos that some guy buys her means more profit to the bar than three guys who drink three beers each. On a national tour, though, this is no longer all that important, and what starts to matter instead is the youth and attractiveness of the women in the band, which promoters previously couldn't give less of a crap about.

Why does it seem that all my music-related observations involve young women, anyway?

Although we are living in an age of impotent egoism where people can't lift a finger for anyone else unless they're promised money or fame, there's plenty of evidence that suggests people are strengthening ties within their communities and families. How about these German senior citizens who got tired of being robbed on savings during the recession and hit back:

A group of well-to-do German senior citizens, who lost their savings in the credit crunch, staged a revenge attack and held their terrified financial advisor to ransom, according to several published reports Wednesday.

The alleged kidnapping is the latest example of what is being dubbed “silver crime” — the violent backlash of pensioners who feel cheated by the world, the Daily Telegraph said.

“As I was letting myself into my front door I was assaulted from behind and hit hard,” the financial adviser James Amburn, a 56-year-old German-American, told the Telegraph. “Then they bound me with masking tape until I looked like a mummy. I thought I was a dead man.”

I guess no financial advisors and speculators thought of this: The Nanny State may bail your companies out, but who is going to save your sorry asses from the angry public? But it's not just soft crooks like financial players who get caught up in trouble. Real criminals like the Japanese Yakuza are starting to feel the wrath of organized communities:

Having one Japanese gang headquartered in their neighborhood was bad enough. When a rival mob tried to move in, the neighbors did something that was once almost unthinkable.

They organized, called the cops, went to court to evict the newcomers, and won.

"Civil action is growing across the country," said Yasushi Murakami, a lawyer for 160 residents of Tokyo's Akasaka district who, after a months-long battle, won a court-mediated settlement in April to keep out the 4,800-member Inagawa-kai syndicate. "People are refusing to tolerate gangsters."

While the Yakuza might be pleasant on the movie screen, it's a serious problem in Japanese society. The public have figured it out though: If they don't give in to intimidation and threats, they can overpower those hoodlums and secure the safety of their communities. This is moral courage in action, folks. Learn from it and repeat at home.

Lydia McGrew, Conservative blogger over at What’s Wrong with the World, presents an analytic dilemma for Conservative parties trying to score points in modern elections:

Every political party that at time t is conservative and not loony will eventually either cease to be conservative or become loony at some time t+.

The dynamic she's trying to get at is interesting, and very much real: Western leftism is using the liberal shut-up argument to silence Conservative opposition in all debates. So Conservative parties either face demonization or go populist to circumvent attack. Thus we have a case where Conservatives either become alienated radicals or flamboyant populists.

The dilemma is real, so what do we do about it? My suggestion has been to strive towards a new Conservatism that imitates the moral appeal and hipness of modern leftism. The Far Right is picking populist points in Europe because it's starting to recognize it can cash in on leftist failure. Even in Israel nationalism and Conservatism are growing, because Western-oriented people are tired of being conned by impotent intellectuals who place half-baked theory before reality.

This means right-wing parties need to point out consequences of leftist dogma in society and then suggest we can solve most of these problems with typical Conservative methods: Cutting back on government, decentralize power, and support traditional cultural values for a sound middle class. The problem so far has been that, although the right-wing intellectuals have the brains to understand this, they have been entrenched in other intellectual drivel (Ron Paul, anyone?!) around 9/11 conspiracies and Zionist occupation mumbling; the kind of stuff that will eventually ruin your populist appeal anyhow. This is how the Left in Sweden lost its voting platform after it got involved in the Palestinian issue.

The European Right is currently playing its cards well, pointing out that:

• Expanded government and more taxation have led to a crippled industry run by morons in office who spend tax payers' money on more government and more taxation.
• Refusing to admit that native culture must guide any multicultural policy is idiocy and leads to ethnic and cultural mayhem.
• Following leftist anti-Americanism has led to an increase in anti-Semitism, and in extension, severe pressure on Israel.
• We need more discipline and new leadership in education, business and government.
• Most leftist dogmas about family, gender and culture have demonstrably backfired and are destroying the foundation to the Western civilization.

This is controversial to say, but not so much so if it's supported by pointing out the failures of leftist policies, which is what the public want to hear. This is how the Far Right in Europe won seats in the recent European election, and they will continue to progress, but they need tougher leadership to keep radicals and scandals away from their camp. That includes not focusing too much on Islam but targeting pluralism more broadly, avoiding collaboration with neo-Nazi groups, and keeping Berlusconi’s hands full with things other than slutty women who go to the press.

The problem is essentially that of leadership within the Conservative movement, but I expect an improvement can be harnessed over time. So, while I accept Lydia's conjecture, I believe we can circumvent its worst extremes by promoting intelligent but socially attractive candidates to power and emphasizing the failures of the leftist opposition instead of trying to sell home reactionary radicalism.

As Westerners keep getting richer and fatter, some people are getting worried and want governments to intervene in order to reduce their ability to buy certain kinds of food. John Hawks summarizes their thinking:

Ooohh, those evil corporations. Making food taste good so that we want more of it! Those FIENDS! Why can't they make bad food so that we'll want less?

This kind of mentality leads to nothing good, as Don Boudreaux points out using the example of television instead of food:

Mr. Hill's attitude is the seed of totalitarianism: unable to distinguish what he does voluntarily from what he is coerced into doing, he wants to use force to save himself from the annoyance of fleetingly encountering disagreeable ideas as he flips his channel changer - and to use force to hamper other persons' access to those ideas.

Now, I can afford to laugh at all this because with my fast metabolism, high physical activity level and taste for meat it takes me an enormous amount of effort to gain any fat. Perhaps evolution will weed out the unsexy lardasses. The future may well belong to my descendants who are easily able to remain lean and healthy in an age of plenty. For at least the near future, though, other people do have a problem. It's not a problem government's going to solve, though. Can government make people "eat bad food so they'll want less"? George Orwell wrote about the uselessness of this in The Road To Wigan Pier:

The miner’s family spend only tenpence a week on green vegetables and tenpence half-penny on milk (remember that one of them is a child less than three years old), and nothing on fruit; but they spend one and nine on sugar (about eight pounds of sugar, that is) and a shilling on tea. The half-crown spent on meat might represent a small joint and the materials for a stew; probably as often as not it would represent four or five tins of bully beef. The basis of their diet, therefore, is white bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea, and potatoes—an appalling diet. Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the P.A.C. level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don’t nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the English-man’s opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread.

Sounds pretty damn hopeless. You're not the government, though, so you can do something. Become a better cook and make some food for your relatives or friends once in a while. Even if you can't really compete with McDonald's it will make a positive difference, especially if you inspire someone to imitate your ways. Cooking may have made us human once before, after all.

Here's a specific example: Texan grilling methods are vastly superior to those popular in Eastern Europe, perhaps because we just haven't had grills long enough and few know what they're doing. If you lived in Texas long enough that you can make a proper barbecue sauce and know how to use it, you will not only gain popularity but you will also teach people something. Even if they don't actually ask you for advice, just seeing you baste meat will be a valuable learning experience for someone you know. Sure, they may still eat fast food burgers more often than they grill their own, but they'll fire up the grill a little more often once they know how to make their burgers consistently juicy. That makes the world a slightly better place.

The dead Iranian protestor Neda Agha Soltan is becoming a saint in the democratic West. The public go nuts over stories like these, because they link emotions to a great political event, which can easily be used to morally justify our own POV: The Iranian election is not following a Western model and protestors are being shot dead by thug police, so it's our divine duty as supporters of Freedom to spread more Liberty and Democracy in the world.

I don't really care if anyone here thinks America should bomb Iran (Neocons), establish peaceful diplomacy (Democrats), or join the international community in denouncing its election (Republicans). The only thing I ask of my readers is to recognize the truth: This is obviously not about supporting freedom in Iran, but to destabilize the regime and silently overthrow it. Since the end of WWII, America has supported both tyranny and freedom abroad, according to its own interests. What does that tell you?

As I mentioned yesterday, it's obvious that Iran is not a democracy in the Western sense. In fact, we may not want to call it a democracy at all. The non-interventionists who claim this is not our issue, although they've got their facts straight, are missing the point. The CIA is not infiltrating the regime and Iranian media because it believes in democratic freedom for everyone on the planet. It's there because it's expanding the US empire and building a network of international collaborators dependent upon Western force. Pax Americana may indeed be a naive dream, but whether we like it or not, the West has got Roman-style ambitions and will never give them up until it falls. At that point, someone else will lead the way, most likely the Chinese.

Remember: It's not about freedom, it's about power.

Racism in the West is generally a phenomenon associated with the ill-bred, ill-educated and ill-mannered lower strata of white society. But fear not, low-class racists! Thanks to immigrants from East Asia, white Americans who are better than you are now joining you among the ranks of the openly, blatantly racist.

As a parent with kids in a top prep school on an Ivy league trajectory, I must say I see this fear and loathing of Asian students among parents every day. “They’re taking all the top spots in the schools! My kid can’t compete, they are drones that work all the time!” You have probably heard many of the same things. I hear folks who would never be caught dead uttering anything derogatory about African Americans say the most unbelievable stuff about Asians.

Throughout history, waves of hard working immigrants have always touched off fear and racism among folks who were already here. The one difference is that past fears were generally a working class phenomenon — whether it be against Irish immigrants in the mid-19th century or African Americans post Civil War or against Mexicans today. What is new today is that, for the first time I know of, a group of recent immigrants is perceived as a competitive threat by the middle and upper class.

Don't forget to thank your Ivy-League-educated, Brooks-Brothers-wearing betters for making racism respectable again!

Writing about the totalitarian tendencies of modernism a few weeks ago, Donald Pittenger observed:

...it might be almost a given that bright people with well-articulated worldviews and idea systems have a greater than average tendency to want to see to it that the rest of the world buys into their positions. I have to conclude that it's one more aspect of human nature...

I think there's more to it than that. A lot of highly intelligent people with big ideas want the world follow those ideas only because they are wrong. Take a guy with high intelligence and good reasoning ability but poor social skills. He thinks he's smarter than most other people and therefore understands the world better than them. He's right about the first part but dead wrong about the second - he's terrible at observing what happens in the interactions between other people and so he has little clue about how society actually works. He takes his crappy observational data and processes it in his mighty brain. The result is, of course, garbage in and garbage out.

Now we have an intelligent guy with a set of completely wrong ideas about the world. Regular folk - both those of lower intelligence and the intelligent people who spend their time doing more useful things - don't much care for what he has to say. The nerd gets more and more frustrated and eventually "discovers" that the problem with the world is that it's run by people who aren't lacking in social skills and don't much care for the opinions of nerds. Some of these people are every bit as smart as him, but luckily for our nerd he can still declare them "shallow", "soulless", "superficial" or perhaps even "sinister" and feel he is better than them. This belief that the world should be ruled by intelligent people with poor social skills doesn't have an official name, but we can call it nerdocracy.

This is the process and spirit behind all sorts of idiocy from rightist dorks who like to dress up like medieval warriors and hit each other with swords while complaining about how the modern world isn't violent enough and doesn't allow them to "settle scores like men" to left-wing modernist architects who still haven't given up on the idea of enlightening and improving humanity by avoiding decoration.

We know what integrity means in the arts, but what exactly is this thing we call "selling out"? Donald Pittenger points to an interesting post by David Apatoff. Donald especially likes the passage about Monet's pathological refusal to compromise, but what struck me was these paragraphs:

Many people are quick to accuse commercial artists of selling out. True artists, we are told, never compromise their artistic integrity for mere money. Personally, I've never been very impressed by such claims. For one thing, charges of "selling out" are rarely leveled by people who have made meaningful contributions to the arts. Instead, it more often comes from gawkers and spectators with little understanding of survival in the market.

For another thing, "selling out" comes in all shapes and sizes but very few of them are irreversible. I've never yet seen Mephistopheles assume the form of a client or art director and offer to buy a young artist's immortal soul. Illustrator Bob Heindel had a far wiser and more practical view of how young artists can still redeem themselves after making bad trade offs:

We all got screwed around at the beginning. That’s how you learn. But you learn to protect yourself, and mostly, if you care about it you learn to protect your work. [An artist has to be] protective of his ability.... he [should] always want... the opportunities to do his very best.

Selling out, like many things in art, isn't what outsiders tend to think it is - a maximization of income from art. It is, instead, the maximization of short-term income at the expense of harm to your reputation and status (which, in turn, often reduces the artist's long-term earnings). Sometimes it really is the best available choice, but more often than not it's a mistake that you should learn from. It's just one of life's many decisions, but definitely far from conversion to Satanism, no matter if some people treat it that way.

Martin earlier spelled out an argument for why we should let lazy and stupid people in Western societies vote: They constitute the group most affected by work force immigration from non-Western countries. On second thought, however, this argument may not hold water, given that not only low-class workers are affected by competition from immigrants. The CEO of an Indian outsourcing tech company explains:

The official wanted to know why HCL, a $2.5 billion (revenue) company with more than 3,000 people across 21 offices in 15 states, wasn't hiring more people in his state. Vineet's short answer: because most American college grads are "unemployable."

Many American grads looking to enter the tech field are preoccupied with getting rich, Vineet said. They're far less inclined than students from developing countries like India, China, Brazil, South Africa, and Ireland to spend their time learning the "boring" details of tech process, methodology, and tools--ITIL, Six Sigma, and the like.

As a result, Vineet said, most Americans are just too expensive to train--despite the Indian IT industry's reputation for having the most exhaustive boot camps in the world. To some extent, he said, students from other highly developed countries fall into the same rut.

Turns out American college graduates may find themselves in tough competition with immigrant workers, because they've been educated in high Western style not to take shit from anyone and only to aim for dreams that come with six figures. Their immigrant counterparts, in turn, come from developing economies and would gladly perform tons of boring overwork for less pay, simply to sustain their families.

Martin, does this mean we should let smart and lazy people vote, too?

The chaos in Iran is far from over. Protestors are continuing to mobilize against a possibly rigged election that came out in favor of Ahmadinejad. American Conservatives are complaining that Obama isn't doing more to support the "pursuit of freedom" for which protesters are sacrificing their lives. What do they mean by this? Always insightful, Brett Stevens over at Amerika.org elaborates:

Americans, and others who have followed the path of individual desire to democracy, consumerism and the nanny state, have no idea why they are loathed.

I’d suggest it’s from the reasons we interfere. Because our society is based in the revolutions of 1789 and 1968, we [see] a dichotomy between “free” and “not-free” with no shades of gray.

Even more, it seems as if we’re trying to draw them into our system of civilization — even with its vast problems — so that they cannot have a competing style of government that might prove better. If this modernity thing is going to kill us, we want everyone else to go down, too, or someone [might get] ahead and — and that’s unfair!

We're ahead of the game, so we assume all other nations will bow down before us to satisfy out imperial interests. People who get lost in dogma forget the obvious: America is really reacting to the Irani situation not because it's playing universal citizen, but because it’s trying to maintain its empire status in an age where it's currently losing power to other empires. That Israel happens to be caught up in this war makes the whole thing even more complex and demanding: It wants to render Iran impotent without blowing itself up in the process.

But voters don't see reality, only emotions and rhetoric. Let's spell out three simple facts about the Iranian election that everyone needs to be aware of before they start bloviating:

1. We've been here before: Engaging in a US-supported revolution, disguised as "freedom" for the people, to overthrow an Evil dictator (e.g. someone who doesn't play along with our empire rules, especially if we helped him into power in the first place).

2. The CIA is doing it again: Attempting to destabilize the Iranian regime, while the whole West accuses Iran of rigged elections and totalitarian measures.

3. Mousavi is a reformist, not a revolutionary. He's not pro-West simply because his opponent is a critic of the West.

Okay, so the election is clearly not following the rule of law as in the West and the results, whatever they may be, are obviously influenced by both totalitarian bias and Western intervention. Many people are reacting to the protesters shot to death by thug police.

Very unpleasant indeed, but maybe we need to consider what Brett Stevens is trying to say: This is not our election following our democratic model. It's a country trying to maintain its independence from Western-led foreign politics--something it has been doing for the last 20 years. We can cry over dead protestors, but when we claim we support "freedom," we only prove to our Empire-leaders that we really are the moron voters they take us for.

Amsterdam, Holland - A Dutch court has ruled in favour of a group of 4 alleged Satanists, who were charged with the premeditated murder of an unborn foetus in the context of a ritual sacrifice. The Satan-worshippers were discovered in April in the crypt of an Amersfoort cemetery while performing the ‘rite’. Although they don’t deny that the abortion was performed in the context of a ritual baby-sacrifice, they didn’t break any laws, was argued in their defence. They were found not-guilty on the grounds that the cemetery is on public land, that all persons present were willing participants, and that it is “not nor ever will it be dictated by law what a woman must do with her own body. [...] As long as the sacrifice is performed according to medical standards of practice and doesn’t violate any other laws, there can be no legal objection. This is a court of law, not a church.”

The defending attorney closed with these bold remarks:
“The growing population of Satanists is swiftly approaching that of other minority religions in this country. We have to take their rights seriously, even if their practices seem to us archaic, insensitive, and dare I say, un-Western. To deny them the right of child sacrifice – as practiced in accordance with existing laws – would be like denying a Christian the right to hold mass. This is blatant discrimination. You wouldn’t ask a wolf, however politely, to become a vegetarian. [...] Birth and death are very often given a religious context. It doesn’t matter what that context is, so long as the law is upheld.”

The “doctor” in the incident (a retired surgeon) may still be charged separately with medical malpractice, as he was operating with an expired license. He plans to defend himself on the grounds that the state did not make sufficient provisions for the practise of his religion, which drove him to conceal his actions. The law does provide for medical procedures to be performed outside of a hospital, but this usually applies to emergencies. However, the religious context of the procedure “puts this case in a whole new playing field,” as one commentator observed. He says this was the first time he had participated in this kind of sacrificial rite, but that it is “much more common than people think. I’m not some kind of extremist.” He also plans to file a counter-suit for libel.

By all accounts, my entire world will change sometime in late August when I see my newborn for the first time. So it helps to not only listen, but observe how others have handled having children and how they prioritize. Some people use their children as convenient excuses to not do anything, not see anyone, and bury themselves in only work and family - which can create too much dullness and doesn't help the children in developing important social skills. Some parents can be a bit too social post-baby and end up allowing relatives or babysitters to spend a bit too much time with their children. Obviously, balance is key.

For instance, staying in shape should be near the top of everyone's list, parent or not. Some say, "are you kidding; you won't have time to work out!" I'm not there yet, so I can't say. Seeing posts like this one from Dad's House only inspire me to continue the trend of working out and getting into better shape even after the baby is born:

I was wrong. She kicked my ass on a 4.5-mile run.

Turns out my old man body recovers more quickly from a long run than her teenage body. On day two, the tables were turned. I kicked her ass running 5 miles.

Don’t worry, I didn’t gloat. And it didn’t hurt her self-esteem. By day three, we were running again, side by side, a father and his teenage daughter working out, finishing our run in tandem.

Who wouldn't want to be that Dad in 17 years time; going on 5 mile runs with your track star son or daugther? My comment on that post applauded Mr. Mott for encouraging a healthy lifestyle, continuing to work out with his children as often as possible, and generally promoting some good outside time and fresh air. A family's behavioral patterns are reflected in how the parents handle the responsibility of parenting. If they treat it as just one more piece of personal melodrama to overcome, that kid will have no guidance and will generally have a poor upbringing. Involving children and engaging them in healthy activity by example and contribution is the way to win them over.

Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen

It’s like a silly fairy-tale, unreal, and containing characters without natural emotions. At least that seems to be how most people who are not Jane Austen geeks usually describe "Pride and Prejudice". Fair enough; we’re surrounded by the English countryside by the turn of the 18th century, soaked in polite conversations and tea-drinking. And at a distance, the plot is not all that exciting: A Mrs. Bennet wants all of her five daughters married to (preferably) wealthy and good-natured men. At a ball the family encounters a few specimens, one of which is Fitzwilliam Darcy, whose pride repels them all despite even his wealth and fine heritage. Darcy, in turn, is disgusted by the low status of the Bennets. They get off on the wrong foot, to say the least – and things get worse. Soon, however, Elizabeth Bennet, the smartest of the daughters, catches glimpses of the true nature of Darcy ...

Well, that sounds predictable enough, as the worn point of this novel – even from its title – is for us too look beyond what we see first-hand. From here Austen’s satire of social classes makes most critics revel in a rather tiresome anti-hierarchical interpretation – and pretty much stop at that. But this story is so much deeper and can easily be seen from a different point of view: It’s not opposing shallow prejudice in the "because-we-are-all-equal-inside" kind of way – Austen is brainier than that. Intelligent people, like Elizabeth and Darcy, may get dismayed by how most people are scheming actors of foul character or simply incompetent rabble, and so they become more suspicious of their fellow men. But Austen declares we shouldn’t give up: we may find the most excellent rare gems underneath that pile of drivel – if you’re brilliant enough yourself, that is.

It’s also very easy for us to hate successful people these days, when all we see is superficial morons on top. This is where Austen gives us some hope to hang on to: In order to overcome the mistake of despising anything that might make us jealous, Austen uses her sly sense of humour, imaginative dialogue and beautiful use of words in a way that makes us love these qualities in any person and shows that while it’s not "OK" to suck, truly great people can be victorious without any hard feelings. All you need is appreciation of beauty – and beautiful is what this love story is, quite contradicting the on-going revenge of the ugly and the dumb of today.

So fairy-tale or not, humanity needs this book. Not only because it’s what I would call first-class sophisticated entertainment. After turning the last page we are left with an immense heart-warming feeling. For once, this is not because the underdogs won. Austen teaches us to have loving hearts yet critical, discriminating eyes. With her help we can – without feeling cruel – easily justify our happiness when the unselfish and strong characters that deserve it the most win each other.