A cartoon from 1233.

I'm fascinated by the school lesson material at the U.K. National Archive site. That cartoon is from one titled "A Medieval Mystery" that asks students to "decode the dark secrets of this cartoon" and offers tips on things to look for (e.g., devils) and prompts with questions like "How has the cartoonist shown that the man and the woman are Jewish?"

Why are gun-death statistics inflated with gun-suicide numbers?

"I thought we had a right to die...."

Obviously, one reason is: to get bigger numbers. But I think the people that lump gun deaths together believe (or want others to believe) that guns are really dangerous. When it comes to suicide, there are 2 ways to think about the deadly effectiveness of guns: 1. For those who really want to kill themselves, guns are a sensible choice, or 2. The scary deadliness of a gun tempts weak/impulsive persons to go ahead and do something that wouldn't happen otherwise.

You can easily see that those 2 ways to think represent the mindsets that lead to libertarian or authoritarian answers to all sorts of questions. #1 would allow the individual to make his own decisions and to take care of himself, and #2 thinks the individual — call her Julia — needs to be helped and protected (even from herself).

Sorry to go all gender-y, but I'm interested in talking about suicide and attitudes about guns in the context of gender difference, because 4x as many men as women commit suicide and 56% of male suicides use firearms compared to only 30% of female suicides. Those statistics are skewed by the fact that guns are an effective method. It might be that the gender disproportion is because men choose the method that leaves fewer survivors of attempts at suicide. I note that 40% of female suicides use "poisoning" (presumably, that includes drug overdosing). What's the proportion of females attempting suicide by poisoning to females succeeding in killing themselves with poison?

If you have a fantasy of rescuing those who are in the process of committing suicide, you might think taking guns away will give you a better shot.

ADDED: It occurred to me, after the Sandy Hook murders, that blaming guns is a secular substitute for blaming the devil. People find it too challenging to figure out why a human being would do this terrible thing and they latch on to the idea that the gun made it happen. Suicide presents a similar challenge, and one way to fathom it is to say: It was the gun. Isn't it like saying the devil made him do it? The gun/the devil is a great go-to answer, freeing you from wracking your brain about the workings of the human mind.

"I haven't been a black conservative since 1995..."

Glenn Loury talks about people he's known for 40 years who won't say hello, who won't look him in the eye because he USED TO BE a black conservative. USED TO BE! John McWhorter talks about those who think "it would be wrong to even print my name. They think of me as Satan. And that's just how it's been."



Much later in the diavlog, Loury and McWhorter weigh in on the affirmative action case that's pending in the Supreme Court. "Would you think it was a good thing if the Supreme Court outlawed racial preferences as we knew them?" McWhorter takes the "not nuanced" position that racial preferences should be proclaimed "obsolete." (Loury disagrees.)

Mark-of-the-beast tag for school kids.

"Plaintiff's objection to wearing the Smart ID badge without a chip is clearly a secular choice, rather than a religious concern."

Dancing with the Devil... for Christmas...

... in simpler times:



"I'm not completely convinced that your intentions are honorable."

Only 23% of likely voters think the killing of Christopher Stevens was a "spontaneous reactions to an anti-Islamic video."

57% say it was "planned in advance." And 85% "believe it is likely that terrorists were involved."

Younger voters are far less convinced than their elders that the protests at U.S. embassies in the Middle East have been planned in advance. Female voters are not as sure of that as male voters are.

I'm guessing that the more you like President Obama, the more you've been influenced by the administration's propaganda about the "Innocence of Muslims" video.

The government last week spent $70,000 in Pakistan to run a television ad featuring President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denouncing the video in hopes of limiting protests there.

They don't have to run that ad in the United States, where the mainstream media carries their message free of charge. Here's what they showed in Pakistan:



What's that red flag with the pentagram behind her? It seems kind of Satanic. Is it this:



What's going on there? And, more importantly, should we fly into a rage and take to the streets?

Goodbye to Sherman Hemsley.

Here's an obituary. I was looking for a great "All in the Family" or "Jeffersons" clip, but I found this "Twilight Zone" performance — "I of Newton" — where he plays a math professor who gets involved with selling his soul to the Devil:



(Notice how the saying on the Devil's T-shirt keeps changing.)

Is theft of a "Vote Satan" sign a hate crime?

"We are Satanists… Satanists," said Luigi Bellaviste.

Luigi and Angie Bellaviste belong to the Church of Satan. They even have a Satanic Bible in their home....

“Everybody that sees that sign says, ‘What is going on with those people?,’” said neighbor Mary Morasco.

The couple’s home and yard are decorated with items like a Christmas tree that has been painted black, skulls and the number 666....

“I feel like we’re being treated unfairly because it’s not a so-called mainstream religion,” said Luigi.

“I know of many people who have the Virgin Mary and tons of Jesus memorabilia ‘I Love Jesus’ and what is the difference?” said Angie.

There's your question: What is the difference?

When Satan set his sights on America, the place were he was "most successful and first successful was in academia."

Said Rick Santorum in that 2008 speech at Ava Maria University. I've lived in that purported stronghold of Satan for the last quarter century, so that caught my attention.

He understood the pride of smart people. He attacked them at their weakest, that they were, in fact, smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different. Pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it because they're smart. And so academia, a long time ago, fell.

And you say "what could be the impact of academia falling?" Well, I would have the argument that the other structures that I'm going to talk about here had root of their destruction because of academia. Because what academia does is educate the elites in our society, educates the leaders in our society, particularly at the college level. And they were the first to fall.

And so what we saw this domino effect, once the colleges fell and those who were being educated in our institutions, the next was the church.

Interesting that he said "domino effect" while speaking at Ave Maria University and saying that Satan has reached into academia and the church. Ave Maria University was founded with the fortune that Tom Monaghan made selling Domino Pizza. Exactly how deep does this Satanic plot go? All the way back to Ypsilanti in 1960 when Tom and his brother bought that small pizza store. I have lived in Ypsilanti. I know Ypsilanti. I have seen the mark of the devil in Ypsilanti. The Domino's Pizza logo has 3 dots. They were going to add dots for each store that they opened, but they stopped at 3, the number of stores they had in 1969, when the logo was designed. The company headquarters is in Ann Arbor, the location of the University of Michigan, where I arrived in 1969. Was the Devil digging his hoofs into academia, beginning right there and then? I'm no expert at numerology, but I can't help noticing that if you take the 1 in 1969, grip it tightly, and knock the two 9s over, you get 666.

But here's where my blood ran cold. I said "Oh, Lord!" out loud. (Causing Meade to say: "Lord? The Dark Lord?!") I was reading on in the above-linked Wikipedia article on Domino's Pizza, and I came to this:

In 1998, after 38 years of ownership, Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan announced his retirement and sold 93 percent of the company to Bain Capital, Inc. for about $1 billion and ceased being involved in day-to-day operations of the company.

Bain Capital! The bane of our existence!

To say that something or someone is "the bane of my existence" means that the person or thing is a constant irritant or source of misery. As a cliché, "bane of my existence" has lost its edge to a large degree over the years...

But "bane" was once a very serious word.  The Old English "bana" meant literally "slayer" in the sense we now use "killer" or "murderer."  Early on, the English "bane" was also used in the more general sense of "cause of death," and by the 14th century "bane" was used in the specialized sense of "poison," a sense which lives on in the names of various poisonous plants such as "henbane" and "wolfbane."

Connect the dots, people! The dots. Not just the 3 dots in the Domino's Pizza logo. There were many more dots, but they withheld them from the logo. They didn't want you to see that many dots. You must struggle to see the dots before you can even hope to connect them. Bain/Bane Capital is reaching everywhere, into our pizza, into our university. It was Bain's billion that built Ave Maria University where Santorum came to deliver his warning about Satan in academia. And now we have the 2 men left standing. Santorum, who is warning us, and Romney — r omney/r money/our money — who is the Bain/Bane of our existence. We've lost Cain — Cain ≠ Bain — a man — her man — who rose like Ave Maria, out of pizza. But it was Godfather Pizza. God the Father's pizza, not the Satanic 3-dots pizza.

Connect the dots! Find all the dots and connect them, lest Satan's already successful plot further succeed, perhaps vaulting the baneful Romney to the Presidency! But, oh, you say, Althouse is herself an academic. She is swollen with the pride of smart people, and therefore vulnerable to Satan's depredations, pleased to offer up something new and different, tantalizing us with new truths, denying the existence of truth, playing with truth because she's so smart.

Close the box — that 3-dot box — on the melted cheesy atrocity. Move along, smart people. There's nothing see here. Look, over there. It's Mitt, that terribly handsome man. Hail, President Romney!

Satanorum, can we ignore 'im?

Everybody's talking about Satan, Satan and Santorum. I tried to ignore 'em. Back in 2008, Santorum said:

"This is a spiritual war. And the father of lies has his sights on what you would think the father of lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country — the United States of America... If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age?"

Satan?!!



Now, Santorum's saying pay no attention to that Ruler of Demons, that Prince of the Power of the Air, that Spirit That Now Worketh in the Children of Unbelief, that Dragon, that Tempter, that Beelzebub.

"You know, I'm a person of faith. I believe in good and evil," he told reporters following a rally here. "I think if somehow or another because you're a person of faith you believe in good and evil is a disqualifier for president we're going to have a very small pool of candidates who can run for president."...

"If they want to dig up old speeches of me talking to religious groups, they can go ahead and do so, but I'm going to stay on message and I'm going to talk about things that Americans want to talk about which is creating jobs, making our country more secure, and yeah, taking on the forces around his [sic] world who want to do harm to America, and you bet I will take them on"....

Oddly enough, if I were Satan — and it's Santorum who pushed me into this flight of fancy — that's exactly what I would tell my followers to say if they were challenged about whether I'd set my sights on America. I'd say any references to me are merely colorful ways of expressing the abstraction of evil, and now, let's get back to what everyone really wants to talk about: how to get more jobs, more wealth and material goods, for the the people of America.

ADDED: "... taking on the forces around his world..." Is that a typo or did he say "his"? And if he said "his," who is he? 

James Taranto has a question and a prediction about social conservatism.

The question:

If liberal baby boomers stubbornly refuse to see the damage that their idea of "progress" has wrought, what about younger generations, for whom the sexual revolution was an inheritance, not a choice, and therefore perhaps not an essential component of personal identity, even among those on the left?

The prediction:

Even if Rick Santorum is not the next president, and even if Barack Obama crushes him in the general election (the latter, though not the former, is a big if), social conservatism will continue to grow in size and importance over the next couple of decades. That is to say, if Santorum loses, it will be in part because he is ahead of his time.

And speaking of James Taranto, I don't think he gets enough appreciation for the diligent work he (or some assistant) does cranking out comedy, day after day, based on headlines. So let me give him some. This made me laugh out loud:

Unappreciated Comic Book Heroes

"Tenant Allegedly Tapes Super Sodomizing Dog"--headline, Journal News (White Plains, N.Y.), Feb. 18

Isn't comedy like that inconsistent with social conservatism?  I don't know. I'm a baby boomer and a social liberal. I am Taranto's demons. And speaking of demons, it's time for me to do my post about Santorum and Satan. I'm calling it: Satanorum, can we ignore 'im?

11/11/11!

What will you do with all the eleventosity today?

Something special at 11 a.m. and 11 p.m.?

Are you going to keep talking about turning it up to 11 or are you going to get annoyed at people who are debasing the sublime by continually making the same aged rock-music reference?

For variety: Here's the Grateful Dead playing "The Eleven" in 1968.

But who's into variety, when the whole point is sameness? You've got those ones all lined up. Is that exciting? Are you the kind of person who finds lined up numbers exciting... like 999? Or 666?

If you think 11/11/11 is exciting, imagine how folks wet their pants over November 11, 1111, the most digitally lined-up day in the entire history of the world. Mankind will have to survive — and maintain its numerical system — until 11/11/11111 for there to be another day like that.

Did anything happen on 11/11/1111? Not according to Wikipedia's compendium of things that have happened on November 11ths. Perhaps the most interesting — for us Americans, anyway — event that took place on history's thousands of 11/11s is The Mayflower Compact, in 1620. And in 1930:

1930 – Patent number US1781541 is awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator.

Albert Einstein invented the refrigerator?!

Speaking of cold, there's only one 11/11/11 event on that list. 11/11/1911, and the event is just that it was a very cold day in the Midwest. Well, it's 30° here in Madison, Wisconsin, and it's supposed to hit 41° at 11 when we reach maximum elevenosity. I think we can handle that.

ADDED: I'm getting justly slaughtered in the comments for not recognizing Veterans Day:



AND: I'm getting cold-shouldered in the comments for minimizing the weather event of 1911. From today's Wisconsin State Journal:

The freakishly warm and humid weather that sunny Saturday set the stage for Rock County's worst weather disaster....

Shortly before 2 p.m., it was 74 degrees. Then, in a matter of minutes, the temperature plummeted 10 degrees in downtown Janesville. By that night, it had fallen to zero.

A massive cold front had slammed into the warm air, unleashing a rash of storms and tornadoes throughout the Midwest.

Satan sandwich!

That's another meme... another phrase that will stick with us as we stumble forward into 2012:

A fantastic bit of rhetoric from an enraged leftist Democrat in the House, responding to the outlines of the budget deal: Emanuel Cleaver, a pastor from Missouri, described it as a “sugar-coated Satan sandwich.” And indeed it is. There are no good options for liberal/Left Democrats in the House. If they vote against the bill en masse, they will make Obama look as though he has betrayed his own core principles, and indeed, they may lead to the deal’s collapse if a few more Republicans than agreed to the Boehner bill yesterday decide to vote no. Should that happen, they will destroy the Obama presidency. But if they agree, they are eating that sandwich. 

Obviously, the expression is shit sandwich. You can't say that (yet) in Congress and in mainstream political debate. But how do you substitute Satan for "shit"? Shit has no evil intentions. It's not even conscious. It makes a nasty sandwich filling, but only the eater is laid low. By contrast, eating Satan would destroy him. If Satan were trapped between 2 slices of bread — confined to a sandwich — anyone whoever ate that sandwich would bestow great benefits on all mankind.

"Where is the 9,000-foot cow?"/"What do you think about Satan?"/"What did James Madison think about video games?"

Justice Ginsburg lists the strangest questions asked last term at oral argument.

"From the foregoing samples, you may better understand why the court does not plan to permit televising oral arguments any time soon."

Are you kidding? This is why it should be on television?

You know, the fabulous 7th Circuit judge Richard A. Posner wrote a great chapter titled "What Am I? A Potted Plant?"

And I just saw a potted plant on television.

Now, the potted plant was scintillating compared to the live — that is, barely animated — speech by President Obama that preceded it. But the point is: We want the Supreme Court on TV!

Bring on the 9,000 cows! We're dying out here in TV-land!

"UW-Madison has been shackled by the UW System from the time it was merged with the UW System."

Says one UW professor at the faculty senate meeting yesterday. In the end, there was a vote in favor of the plan.

Although Gov. Scott Walker put the measure in his budget, leaders in the state Legislature say it is unlikely to remain there in its current form.

Under the plan, UW-Madison would get a 21-member board of trustees and more autonomy from the state to raise tuition, set salaries, build facilities and make purchases.

But the UW Board of Regents and other chancellors in the UW System oppose the split, arguing that all of the campuses in the System need more freedom from regulation.

ADDED: WisPolitics reports on an interview with Scott Walker:

He said the flexibility that would come with moving UW-Madison to a public authority model would help preserve it as a world-class institution in the face of cuts to state aide and that he supports offering other campuses more flexibility, as well.

This is a good time for me to post a picture of a sign Meade acquired in the Capitol rotunda during the protests:



Note the blue painter's tape, carefully preserved by Meade to establish the provenance of his acquisition.

"I checked with my Lord and Savior - Satan - and he told me that he doesn't want Matt to win."

Ha ha.

"I’ve been near God, but I’ve also been near the devil."

"God won."

"Whores. Whores! Whores! Look around you. Look around you. Do you see what's happening?"

"In our town. In our very homes! You know who I'm talking about. You know! You know what's going on in that house! Vice! Perversions! Shamelessness! Cavorting... with that... devil!"

A quote from:

A. Somebody talking to Jerry Brown, who responded "Well, I'm going to use that."

B. David Axelrod, denouncing Christine O'Donnell.

C. Veronica Cartwright, attempting to warn people about what Jack Nicholson is doing.

Today's Drudgedy... Drudge comedy.

Eyes... bucks... Not sure what Drudge is driving at here. Some strange coded message to Ohio? And why show the front and not the back of the dollar bill?

"We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party."

The Democrats are trying to figure out the best way to scare the bejeezus out of you.

Really, where did the Tea Party come from? Suddenly, it's everywhere. It's all these people congregating at rallies. No leaders. Just spontaneous comings-together. How could that happen? Then, the leaders emerge. Who are these people? They came out of nowhere. And one of them... is a witch!