August Afternoon


The Dragon Baby, on the lookout for squirrels

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Milo, the Heathers, and the New Sheriff in Town

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Back at the end of January, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and Dave Rubin got together on Dave’s Rubin Report to talk about how popular they all were.


Okay, that’s not the title of the episode. It is “Frontline of Free Speech.” And, to be fair, it has had almost 3.4 million views to date. So you could justifiably say that our three free speech heroes have every right to be a bit...ahem...proud of themselves.

Except. After spending a good hour and half congratulating themselves for being on the frontline of free speech, they started taking questions from the Super Chat audience.

Here was one of the first ones that Dave read (at 1:33.20): “Quick one for Ben. I think we’ve already hit this, but any chance of a future discussion with Milo?”

Ben’s response was utterly predictable for those who know how ritualized this question has become:
No. Waste of time [reaches for his water glass]. I’d rather talk with people who have something say. Jordan’s response was somewhat more interesting. He l…
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The Face of God

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Let’s try a little test. Which of these faces looks most like God’s?

a) Milo


b) The Mona Lisa

c) Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait

d) Our Lady of Guadalupe

According to Joshua Conrad Jackson, Neil Hester, and Kurt Gray, in their recently published study “The faces of God in America: Revealing religious diversity across people and politics” (PLOS One June 11, 2018), most Americans would answer a) Milo.
Okay, they don’t say Milo as such. But look at the description that they do give:
What does God generally look like to American Christians? Participants saw God’s face as more masculine, Caucasian, attractive, intelligent, and loving compared to His anti-face, ts > 7.53, ps < 001 (see S1 Table for full statistics). See Fig 3. God’s face was also rated as significantly younger than the alternative composite, t = 31.83, p < .001, and as no more powerful, t = .47, p = .64, consistent with a general tendency for Americans to believe in a God who is more loving than stern. Importantly, t…
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Attack of the Killer Nouns

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Milo and I were watching the livestream of the Heterodox Academy “Open Mind Conference” last week, and at one point he simply started shaking his head.

“It’s all throat-clearing, isn’t it?,” he asked me. “[Quoting] ‘Yes, I think that question about identity and expression is an important one, and one we should really focus on...’ WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN.”

Indeed.

Everyone knows that academics have a peculiar way of speaking that makes it difficult for Random Laypersons to understand.

I myself have been accused by family members of using “big words” to no purpose, back in the day when I was just learning academese. I think the culprit in that particular conversation was “Christology,” but it could have been “exegesis.” I don’t think I knew the word “hermeneutics” at that point.

“But,” I defended myself, “it is a technical term. I am writing for other scholars who would know what it means.”

“But don’t you want people to read your work?” my sister countered.

I spluttered. What …
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Why Jordan Peterson Lost That Bout to Cathy Newman

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It should have been a great victory.

There he was, holding his own against a ferocious assault by a committed feminist.

“So you’re saying,” she would attack.

“No, I’m not,” he would calmly respond. “I’m not saying that at all!”

Over and over and over again, to the delight of his fans and the horror of her followers. Would this male chauvinist pig never crack?!

She tried every move she had against him, and nothing could get through.

It was a woman’s worst nightmare, a man she could not ruffle.

You can hear it in her voice as the interview proceeds.

Her voice gets shriller and shriller, her questions more pointed, her mouth harder, her smile colder.

And then a moment comes. She has challenged him about his refusal to use the newly-invented pronouns now mandated for use in Canada by the passage of Bill C16.

She attacks: “Why should your right to freedom of speech trump a transperson’s right not to be offended?”

He parries: “Because in order to be able to think you have to risk being offe…
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