Magic Statistics

If you believe that headline, maybe you need to read what Samuel Marchbanks had to say away back in 1947.  This is his diary entry for Sunday of the nineteenth week, which by my calculations would have been 4 May.

Went cheerfully through the whole day without realizing that the usual haphazard tinkering with the clocks was in progress, and that I should have been enjoying the benefits of Daylight Saving Time. I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.

Since that was written, those Philistines in Ottawa have pushed the beginning of Daylight Saving Time back a further month, so that it now commences at 2:00 am on the first Sunday of April. 

That would be tomorrow morning! Thanks for reminding me, Binks; it had completely slipped my mind.

Source of quotation: Robertson Davies, The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks, Part 1: The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (Don Mills: Collins Press, 1985 [1947]), pp. 75-76.

Here are some photos from last weekend’s so-called Great March in Los Angeles, held in opposition to proposed immigration reforms in the US intended to reduce illegal immigration.

It seems to me that these protestors make some grandiose statements.  I’m sorry, but a bunch of Californians carrying signs laying claim to the entire continent of North America isn’t going to play too well with indigenous peoples living north of the 49th parallel.

I have a question. The placard on the right in the first photo says: “All Europeans are illegal on this continent since 1492”.  OK.  But, then, why do you speak Spanish? Isn’t that a European language?

Aboriginal peoples that I know of up here in the frozen North are making an effort to speak their indigenous languages.  Aboriginal communities and educational systems devote considerable resources to preserving their original languages, of which there are ten in Yukon.  In fact, the territory of Nunavut has four official languages: Inuinaqtun, Inuktitut, English, and French.  Check it out here.

In what sense are you “indigenous” if neither you nor anyone in your family or community speaks an indigenous language?

Just asking.

Photos from this page at the Mexica Movement via little green footballs.

A Dutch Labour Party (PvDA) parliamentarian has proposed that educated women who do not seek paid employment should be forced to repay the costs of their education.

MP Sharon Dijksma, deputy chairperson of the PvdA's parliamentary party, believes the punitive measure is needed to stimulate more women to join the workforce. She outlined her ideas in 'Forum', a magazine published by employers' group VNO-NCW.

"A highly-educated woman who chooses to stay at home and not to work - that is destruction of capital," Dijksma said. "If you receive the benefit of an expensive education at the cost of society, you should not be allowed to throw away that knowledge unpunished."

It is common among leftist politicians to use existing government programs as justification for state encroachments into areas of private choice.  In this case, Ms Dijksma sees the fact that the government finances public education as grounds for controlling actions taken by graduates.  If you avail yourself of the state’s largesse, she says, “society” has the right to second-guess your decisions for the rest of your life.

She forthrightly says as much herself:

On her weblog Dijksma explains that her proposal is a logical consequence of the Dutch system of subsidizing students. Society finances their studies with government scholarships, hence it is only normal that they pursue a professional career or repay. “If someone chooses not to work, then there should be a substantial repayment,” she said.

Superintending individual decisions of state-educated citizens is a “logical consequence of the Dutch system of subsidizing students”.  Yeah, right!  This is the same logic that some Canadian politicians have followed in arguing that state provision of medical care validates laws restricting smoking and mandating use of seat belts.

In response to biting criticism directed at Ms Dijksma and her plan, her political party has come out in strong support.

The PvdA website has come to the rescue of the beleaguered politician, repeating the stance that those who study at the taxpayers’ expense and do not join the workforce are guilty of “destruction of capital.”

If Dutch politicians really believe that appropriating funds from taxpayers to pay for state education bestows the right to control the lives of those same taxpayers, one might wonder whether the Dutch government should be in the business of education.  If I were a Dutch taxpayer, I’d want to say, “Let me keep the money you take from me to pay for education, and I’ll take care of my family’s education myself, thank you very much.”

HBO’s new TV show Big Love attempts to “whitewash” polygamy, says Rebecca Bynum, who was raised a Mormon and has many polygamists among her ancestors.  She recalls stories from her youth about the history of the Latter-Day Saints, especially the enmity and persecution they faced from virtually everyone who heard of them—neighbours all the way up to the state capital.  In the early years of their movement, the Mormons were forced to flee from Ohio to Missouri to Illinois and finally to Utah; and all because non-Mormons considered polygamy intolerable.

Polygamy was officially ended in the Mormon Church in 1890, but persists to this day among Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS).  Ms Bynum finds many salient commonalities between polygamy among Mormons and polygamy among Muslims.

Everything from the prevalence of child brides to incest to the problem of excess males, which is not as severe a problem among Muslims due to their unique jihad mandate, to the systematic bilking of the welfare state, to high rates of genetic disease due to inbreeding.  In the UK the Pakistani community accounts for 30 per cent of all births with recessive disorders, despite representing 3.4 per cent of the birth rate nationwide, due to the prevalence of first cousin marriages.  In the FLDS community a rare genetic malfunction called fumarase deficiency is causing severe mental retardation among other congenital complications and a high incidence of domestic abuse is present in both populations.

Both FLDS and Islam require individuals to relinquish all power of free choice and enforce obedience through fear and duress.  The practice of polygamy compels women to become virtual slaves.

The individual will of women over their most basic life choices is utterly coerced. Young girls are often incestuously abused by male family members and then married off to much older men, who must (one would imagine) enjoy the thrill of coercing young women into strict obedience in every particular. And along with polygamy comes arranged marriage in both Muslim and Mormon polygamous populations.

From the perspective of real-life polygamy, Big Love is pure propaganda.

Read the whole thing.