Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist who murdered and wounded dozens of people at Fort Hood, was a Muslim fanatic who wrote Internet postings praising Islamic suicide bombers and was in touch with the former radical leader of a Virginia mosque who had associations with the 9/11 hijackers.

The Army knew Hassan was a supporter of the Islamic jihad against the west; he had been under investigation for six months. Yet he remained an Army Major, with access to military intelligence and lethal weaponry. Why? Because the Army was afraid that if it dealt with Hassan it would violate the principle of “diversity.”

I am Blue/White
Take The Magic Dual Colour Test – Beta today!
Created with Rum and Monkey’s Personality Test Generator.

There may have been much backslapping and jubilation at Nasa mission control but millions of people watching it live on the internet must have felt slightly short changed.

The much anticipated ‘bombing’ of the Moon to find water did not even muster a whimper far less a bang. Great television it was not.

Apart from the Moon and its craters getting slowly bigger, and the occasional radio exchange between control room staff, nothing happened.

Where was the much anticipated explosion? Where was the splash of ice and water? Where was the 6.2 mile high spray of lunar dust?

If we hadn’t been told the two spacecraft had crashed landed, we would never have known.

Even the commentators seemed perplexed – and not a little embarrassed.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the mission is a failure. It could still find water, in fact the lack of fireworks could be a good sign.

The spacecraft may have landed in a lake, or an ice sheeet or been engulfed in gloopy mud – all of which would be incredibly interesting.

Whatever the reason for the lack of fireworks, Nasa should still have learnt a great deal from the LCROSS mission.

Unfortunatelty we will just have to take their word for it.

Well it seems the moon hasn’t exploded, at least not yet. That’s a good thing, because then there would be nothing to regulate women, or make people insane, or cause werewolf transformations.

You know, it is sometimes disconcerting to see how people find my blog through Google. If you only had the search engine list to go on, you might get a very odd idea about what my blog content consisted of…

Google Search terms:

Which American accent do you have?

Neutral

You`re not Northern, Southern, or Western, you`re just plain -American-. Your national identity is more important than your local identity, because you don`t really have a local identity. You might be from the region in that map, which is defined by this kind of accent, but you could easily not be. Or maybe you just moved around a lot growing up.

I really like these, although I get varying results from them. Apparantly I talk like someone from Missouri! So take that, Josh. I don’t speak “bayou” after all.

Take the test yourself.

Tell me what you get.

So I go to Walmart yesterday to get myself some more razor cartridges for my Mach 3. The price was rediculous! I don’t remember them being quite so high. Did I miss something or did they just seriously bump the price? It was like $20 for eight of them. I go through one of those blades about every week or so. Doing the math, it seems rediculous. Then I stumbled on this article…

My new favorite shaving guru, Mantic59, pointed out a UK article about the insane markup on disposable blade cartridges. We all know these 3, 4 and now 6 blade cartridges are expensive ($2-$3 or more in the states), but did you know how much they cost to produce? Here’s the price in British Pounds, which isn’t far off the US Dollar equivalent:

_{Courtesy DailyMail.co.uk}

The article says it costs just 5p (around 8-10 cents) per cartridge to produce, but Proctor & Gamble (who now owns Gillette) urged its retailers not to lower the price of the cartridges. It seems the retailers complied due to the large profit they reap on the sale.

That’s why I’m trying out wet shaving with a traditional double-edge safety razor, where the razors cost just 20-50 cents each (depending on quality and bulk pricing).

This article got me thinking…maybe I should try a more traditional razor? It’s something I need to look into. You see, I have a very thick beard, so the cheap throwaway razors won’t work for me–they tear my face apart. And so do the electric razors. A little calculation shows that a double-edge razor is much cheaper, especially since you can buy 100 razor blades for $17! After a little looking around, I think I am going to go with this one here:

It’s only $27, which is barely more than I would pay for a pack of Mach 3 cartridges. Throw in a bit of soap and a brush and I will be shaving in style:

I have a heck of a time finding shoes, mostly because I have big feet. A couple weeks ago I went to JC Penny’s and other department stores to look for a pair of shoes, but I couldn’t find a single pair in my size, 13 wide. I ended up getting a pair of oxfords from Walmart for $15. I figured even if they proved to be junk, I wouldn’t be out too much.

Well, I have worn the shoes twice and they are starting to look worn already. I polished them up, but there is still noticable wear on the front of the outsole. I just discovered a new website that I think I am going to try, called shoebuy.com. I can simply look at all the shoes that are in my size and read reviews from others who tried them out. Seems to make the process much easier. They offer free shipping both ways (in case you need to return them), and have a full money-back guarantee. Also, they seem to have some decent shoes in my size in the $60 range. I am not a fancy person, I simply want a decent pair of shoes to wear with slacks for school and church. Hopefully this website will alleviate the problem.

I polished my shoes today.

It was the first time I have polished shoes since I was discharged from the army. In the nine years spanning from that day I have never picked up a can of kiwi, never sat rythmically brushing my shoes, never smelled the acrid-sweet smell of the polish.

No, since I left the army I have rarely tucked in my shirt or checked to see if my button hem created a straight line with my zipper flap. Last week I ironed my shirts for the first time since the army, carefully creating a crease in the front just as I did so many nights back when I was stationed in California. I shave now when I wake up in the morning rather than once a week, as was previously the case.

I polished my shoes today, and my friends want to know why.

I could certainly easily make their case for them. After all, I am an old hand at it. It is a case that I have made all my life. Clothes are, after all, only material objects, are they not? They serve to cover the body, nothing more. They serve a utiltarian purpose. Yet, all of us know that this isn’t completely true. I mean, it isn’t as though even the most slovenly of us take absolutely no thought in what we wear. But still, it might be argued that clothing is superficial, and that it is foolish vanity to put very much thought into it. In the end, I once would have said, there are more important things to worry about.

I polished my shoes today.

I could have spent that time reading philosophy or thinking about something deep. I could have practiced viola or studied latin. I could have just relaxed and taken in some recreation. But I didn’t. And I suppose I should explain why. Is it strange that I have to explain myself in such matters? Perhaps. But one thing I have learned as an observer of human nature is that change threatens people. Especially one’s friends. They spend a number of years getting to know you, learning your habits. This makes them feel comfortable around you because you are predicatable. And if one of your friends suddenly moves from wearing dirty old t-shirts to tucking in oxford shirts and polishing their shoes, it creates some alarm. There is also the issue of dressing nice. In the United States, if a man dresses nice and he isn’t on his way to work or church, he immediately falls under suspicion. That has to do with a whole different issue of the leveling egalitarian philosophy that is now current. It is the same reason people would prefer to call their professor “man” than to give him his title. But I digress.

Let me start off by listing incorrect reasons that people might think are my own. These are not the purpose of my change:

1. To be fashionable. As Oscar Wilde has said, “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” I couldn’t agree more. In fact, a simple look at what is actually fashionable would be a great way to see what I would never wear. I despise fashion so much that it would consume this entire post if I got into it. So let us leave it at that.
2. To look important. I am not interested in appearing what I am not. In fact, I am very much interested in appearing what I am. I am an English graduate student who stains decks for a living. That is what I tell anyone who asks. I am not trying to pretend to look like something, nor am I trying to simulate the illusion of having money. It is a bizzare modern mentality that one must be wealthy to concern oneself with one’s appearance. When I was a grunt in the army I probably spent a few hours every day looking after my appearance, and believe me, an E-2 is not rich
3. Meticulous attention to appearance is effeminate. Okay, this isn’t so much a mistaken reason as it is a criticism. What one must realize is that this is one of the most insidious, anti-traditional, bourgeois notion that I have ever heard. This is the rhetoric of the mass man, of the democratic man, of the leveler. He resents the judge for his robes, the academic for his hood, and the soldier for his uniform. It just isn’t fair, the mass man says, for one to have such distinctions or honors. After all, aren’t we all created equal? So in order to attack such distinctions, he resorts to name calling. And it isn’t just against clothing either. Literature, fine art, poetry, nice clothing–anything civilized, cultured or refined is attacked. Attacked not by the Leftist, but by the “conservative” bourgeois mass man. Hell, they even attacked drinking cappuccinos and lattes as effeminate and uppity until they decided they liked them. But I digress. Returning to the subject of appearance, let me give you a few examples to demonstrate that it is far from effeminate.

Herodotus tells us that as the 300 Spartans were preparing to face the forces of Xerxes at the Hot Gates, they took great care to comb and arrange their hair before facing death. I hardly think that the Spartans can be regarded as effeminate. In many ways they have been considered a hyper-masculine society. The attention to tradition and discipline is carried forward in even today’s military:

The Army is a uniformed service where discipline is judged, in part, by the manner in which a soldier wears a prescribed uniform, as well as by the individual’s personal appearance. Therefore, a neat and well-groomed appearance by all soldiers is fundamental to the Army and contributes to building the pride and esprit essential to an effective military force. A vital ingredient of the Army’s strength and military effectiveness is the pride and selfdiscipline that American soldiers bring to their Service through a conservative military image.

Part of the reason that this standard has remained is because a warrior partakes in the metaphysical. This isn’t something I want to overly belabor here, but suffice to say that a soldier is one who, ideally, is willing to die for an idea, for the good. There is a certain parallel here with the complex dress of an Orthodox priest. A priest does not simply walk into church a perform liturgy in blue jeans. In fact, he is always dressed in a distinct way. Just as a soldier in uniform is immediately recognizable, so too is a priest.

This is a subject that I intend to continue on, so consider this an opening volley.

As any reader of mine will know, I often talk about the collapse of Western civilization into the myopic morass of nominalism and materialism. Assuming you have come thus far with me, you may rightly ask, “Okay, fine. The world has gone to the toilet. Where do we go from here? What is one to do about all this?”

I have heard many people propose solutions to this problem. Some advocate that the “conservatives” need to take the country back. Others just sit despondently and wait for the end. These, plus many other alternatives have been proposed. Some look to me. Some wonder how, knowing what I do, I remain relatively cheerful, continue my studies, and pursue my goals as the walls of Rome fall about me. Since it is not my wish to be a Micheal Savage–one who only delivers worse and worse news with an attitude of hopelessness and despair while occasionally inserting fits of rage at the absurdity of the entire system–since indeed, I do not wish to simply be a doomsayer, I have decided to address this.

While I still intend to discuss what is wrong with the West (for how can someone understand what is good without seeing the error that surrounds them?), I would like to begin a new vein of discourse on the subject of what one can do in such circumstances. I do not intend these to be materialistic or practical. In other words, I am not going to discuss the best methods of storing food in the event of a collapse or recommend rifles for survival purposes. Rather, my thoughts are going to tend toward the here and now. For what we are experiencing is not new. The history of man ever turns and the fool always falls into the same pit. Despite this, one’s life is not determined by transitory events, not where one’s life truly matters.

For the most part, we are all men  among the ruins, to borrow Evola’s phrase. And he was right. He also used the metaphor of having a tiger by its ears. What can one do in such a situation? To let go is death, yet to hold on only perpetuates the problem. There is but one answer: to ride the tiger. It was the topic addressed by homonymous book, Ride the Tiger. Yet even there, the perspicacious Evola spent much more time in pointing out the heteroclite zeitgeist of modernity rather than considering the best course of action.

While having no presumptions of being wise, I hope to share with you my thoughts on how to proceed in such a time as this. I will call to my aid those sages that have given the West its rich philosophic tradition, while showing where I think other prominent thinkers have led us astray. I will have to create a new category for such posts. Hopefully it will serve to ameliorate the outlook some might have on the situation.

Robotics sure have come a long way. The question is, what are we going to do with them?