Octopodial Chrome

As part of my ongoing series covering the imminent death of Western civilisation, I bring you the chemical-free chemistry set. I think this is the inevitable result of a few of the trends in our society, partly the War on Some Drugs but also the infantilisation of childhood.

Guess what, parents—your kids won’t grow up if you don’t let them! When I was a boy Mom & Dad bought us these great chemistry sets with all sorts of poisonous and caustic chemicals, and yet we didn’t kill ourselves or anyone else (no, not even with the cobalt or the cyanide). And I was playing with that stuff at the age of 8 or maybe even younger. By the time one is 10, one is definitely old enough to use real, potentially nasty chemicals—or suffer the consequences. But this set is absurd. Growing crystals is for kindergarteners; slime and gook and bubbles are for toddlers.

Worried about your kids hurting themselves? Here’s a radical idea: supervise them! Or here’s another radical idea: tell them what not to do, and why not to do it, and expect to be obeyed. If they’ve not learnt obedience by the age of ten, their lives are in for some pain anyway.

We are doomed, all of us: doomed.

Max Barry speaketh truth:

The difference between people and human resources is that people have brains. People don’t need a company policy on how to ascend stairs (stay left, hold the handrail at all times, look straight ahead). People can figure that out for themselves. Human resources, on the other hand, are dumb as a box of hammers. They need everything spelled out.

Human resources are basically office equipment with legs. They’re talking furniture.

No company which treats its employees as human resources can innovate: innovation is the product of men, not of resources.

I am a free man, not a human resource!

Every one of us is created and fashioned in the image of God, and every one of us in like a damaged icon.

But consider this: if we were given an icon damaged by time, damaged by circumstances, or desecrated by human hatred, we would treat it with reverence, with tenderness, with broken-heartedness. We would not pay attention primarily to the fact that it was damaged, but to the tragedy of its being damaged. We would concentrate on what is left of its beauty, and not on what is lost of its beauty.

And this is what we must learn to do with regard to each person as an individual, but also—and this is not always easy—with regard to groups of people, whether it be a parish, or a denomination, or a nation. We must learn to look, and to look until we have seen the underlying beauty of the person or of a group of people. Only then can we even begin to do something to call out all the beauty that is there.

Listen to other people, and whenever you discern something, which sounds true, which is a revelation of harmony and beauty, emphasize it and help it to flower. Strengthen it and encourage it to live.

—Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom), of blessed memory

From the wife of a Seabee, here’s a (quite serious, not funny) things one shouldn’t say to a military wife. Spare a thought for these married single moms who have to move every few years and put up with stresses most (but not, of course, all) can’t even imagine.

When he was 18, a fellow went off to Alaska to become a trapper. He learnt a few lessons about overwinter survival the hard way—and thanks to his notes, we can learn those same lessons the easy way. Some good insights into the nitty-gritty details of living a primitive life.

Back in the Bad Old Days, it was the custom in India to burn widows alive. Eventually the British conquered the subcontinent and outlawed the practise. When a delegation of Hindus took General Sir Charles Napier to task for this interference, he replied with these immortal words:

You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows.You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.

That’s my kind of multiculturalism!

I found this illuminating graphic of how long the net worth of various people could power the federal government’s borrowing. If we confiscated every last penny of Bill Gates’s fortune (not his income—his fortune), it would only finance 12 days and 8 hours of borrowing. If we were to confiscate the fortunes of the 400 richest people in the country, it wouldn’t even cover a year of what we’re borrowing.

That’s…concerning.