On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:56:52 AM UTC-7, Robert Carnegie wrote:

> If someone complains about it in 2023 then it's hard
> to tell whether A. they don't like it being sympathetic
> to Black people, or B. they don't like what Black people
> are /called/ in it, or C. pretending B but actually A.
> So I always assume that it's C.

That makes sense if Tucker Carlson is objecting to it.

But I would suspect that omitting Huckleberry Finn from
schools these days, at least in some parts of the country
really is B. They _know_ it's a good book that teaches a
good lesson, but children are immature, and tend to draw
the wrong lessons from things, and it's just too much work
to try and defend that book in today's climate.

John Savard

On 2023-02-23, Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@usually.sessile.org> wrote:
> On 23 Feb 2023 at 17:56:49 GMT, "Robert Carnegie"
><rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thursday, 23 February 2023 at 14:01:53 UTC, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> I expect to see 'Huckleberry Finn' pop up on the 'woke radar' any day. Or is it just so
>>> far beyond the Pale that no school will admit it exists?
>>
>> It's been controversial since it was published - at least.
>> If someone complains about it in 2023 then it's hard
>> to tell whether A. they don't like it being sympathetic
>> to Black people, or B. they don't like what Black people
>> are /called/ in it, or C. pretending B but actually A.
>> So I always assume that it's C.
>
> It is indeed always C. Early controversy was A directly.
> Cheers - Jaimie

Do I detect a bit of prejudice from someone who reads a lot?
https://www.marshall.edu/library/bannedbooks/the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn/

I suspect you don't know what you're talking about here.

Chris

On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 9:01:53 AM UTC-5, pete wrote:

> I expect to see 'Huckleberry Finn' pop up on the 'woke radar' any day. Or is it just so
> far beyond the Pale that no school will admit it exists?
>
> pt

Not exactly.

In 1982, libertarian Nat Hentoff wrote the YA novel "The Day They Came to Arrest the Book" - based on the HF controversy.

See here, if you like:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/nat-hentoff/the-day-they-came-to-arrest-the-book/

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/859385

But, to my knowledge, HF is still taught in schools - and it's used to show how even an uneducated (and brainwashed) white kid like Huck can and did learn to do the right thing, just by seeing/experiencing what he and Jim have in common.

On the other hand...despite the fact that "Gone With the Wind" won the Pulitzer Prize, I doubt anyone complains about the fact that the book is likely NOT required reading in most schools.

(I mean, even if Margaret Mitchell had somehow communicated to her readers, in the novel, that slavery was wrong even though both Scarlett AND Melanie didn't think so, it would still be a shallow novel full of stock characters - and I would happily bet that it would never have won the same prize after the 1960s or so.)

Of course, not requiring students to read GWTW is not the same as BANNING it - and yes, that has happened over the decades. See here:

https://bbark.deepforestproductions.com/column/2013/04/07/banned-books-awareness-gone-with-the-wind/

On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 11:14:10 AM UTC-6, Paul S Person wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Feb 2023 10:56:29 -0800 (PST), Johnny1A
> <johnny1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Sunday, February 19, 2023 at 9:07:52 PM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
> >> On Friday, February 17, 2023 at 10:40:09 PM UTC-7, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> >> > a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been cut and Jane
> >> > Austen added.
> >> Ouch.
> >>
> >> From CBC, a more liberal source,
> >> https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/roald-dahl-censorship-allegations-1.6753828
> >>
> >> I learned two additional facts:
> >> 1) Salman Rushdie is on record as calling these changes absurd censorship; and
> >> 2) Roald Dahl, during his life, was a "virulent anti-Semite".
> >>
> >> Ouch.
> >>
> >> In any case, though, while I would be outraged if we were talking about these changes
> >> being made to a critical edition of the works of Roald Dahl to be used by college students
> >> writing essays about his life and work... this isn't it. Rather, it's an edition that will go into
> >> the hands of actual _children_.
> >>
> >> Thus, whatever else one might think, this effort is at least well-intentioned.
> >
> >No, it isn't.
> >
> >This crap always starts with a pretext that someone can pretend is for the good. "It's for the children." It never stops there, and the good intention is just that, pretext.
> >
> >It's still an attempt to rewrite reality, to rewrite the past, for the sake of whatever ideology motivates the person mutilating the work.
> >
> I watched the DVD /Daffy Duck: Frustrated Fowl/ last night.
>
> It starts by showing (for an excessively long time) a statement about
> how the cartoons were done /then/ and do not meet the standards of
> /today/.
>
> It also states that to change them would be the same as saying that
> the offensive material had never been used.

For now. It's the same pattern over and over, "All we want is 'x', which in fact turns out to be just the beginning. X turns into y, z, and then metastasizes.

A few years ago, we were assured by All The Serious People that the only thing they wanted to remove was _confederate_ flags and monuments to _confederate_ soldiers and leaders. But of course that was never true, as more than a few people predicted. Fast forward a few years and we're currently seeing efforts to cancel Lincoln and Grant as racists, to undercut the Founders. It's not the confederacy they hated, it's _American_, and Western, history, the confederacy was just the pretext (at least in the USA). They hated the confederacy because it was part of America's history, racism is the excuse. The same pattern plays out in other Western countries, though the details vary. Witness the recent laughable (except that it really isn't funny) leaked documents reporting that the UK 'anti-radicalism' task force considers Shakespeare to be a dangerous author. If you go looking for it you can find this trend in Germany, in Canada, all over the West. The elite classes have begun to despise their own heritage and history and to resist the idea that they are who they are. There's a genuine malevolence in play.

If you have a movie you love, or an old TV show, don't trust on-line storage. That's trivially easy to rewrite or erase. Get it in physical medium and make sure it's something you can play forward. Because this is not an isolated thing.

>
> So WB, at least, would agree with you.
> --
> "In this connexion, unquestionably the most significant
> development was the disintegration, under Christian
> influence, of classical conceptions of the family and
> of family right."

On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 12:43:54 PM UTC-6, Andrew McDowell wrote:
> On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:12:26 AM UTC, Robert Carnegie wrote:
> > On Wednesday, 22 February 2023 at 20:34:12 UTC, Andrew McDowell wrote:
> > > We know what happens to children that read a lot of Roald Dahl -
> > > they are grown up now, and they didn't by and large turn out
> > > Nazis or anti-semites.
> > Let's not deny that some of them have. After all, they come
> > from /somewhere/.
> >
> > However, I'll confidently claim, without looking for evidence,
> > that most people who read a lot don't grow up prejudiced.
> > Unless they read a lot of a particular thing, perhaps.
> > But otherwise, hatred is the opiate of the illiterate. But I'll
> > also make an exception again of people who make a career
> > of being prejudiced, who do it to make their living.
> > The organizers that I mentioned. And the writers and the
> > public speakers. I'm asserting that they know they're in the
> > wrong and they do it on purpose anyway. To get money.
> > To get power.
> It has long been the claim of those selling education that it will also make people more civilised, and long been the case that educators have been disappointed with the people they have educated. One result of widespread literacy was the popular press. I think that educators would be better off merely claiming to teach people testable skills, i

Amen.

One of the conceits of the post-Enlightenment Western elite classes, esp. academia, is that knowledge and understanding=morality. In fact they are tangential to each other. Knowledge and understanding are powerful, but power is as the powerful do, and those motivations track independently of education. The same science and reason and knowledge that can empower good and just as readily empower evil, as we saw in World War I (a shock the Western educated class has yet to fully process or recover from). Chemistry can be used to make quinine or sarin. A mass murderer can quote Cicero as readily as a wise lawgiver.

We would be doing ourselves, _and_ the academic world, a favor by downgrading their overinflated social status and aims toward something realistic.

On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 11:50:38 PM UTC-7, Johnny1A wrote:

> One of the conceits of the post-Enlightenment Western elite classes, esp.
> academia, is that knowledge and understanding=morality. In fact they are
> tangential to each other. Knowledge and understanding are powerful, but
> power is as the powerful do, and those motivations track independently
> of education.

Education helps you get a better job, and just as it is the _hungry_ lions that
are likely to attack you, it is _poor_ people who might try to steal from you.

So that is the reason that people have come to the mistaken conclusion that
education improves moral character. But even if it doesn't improve moral
character, since it gives people better opportunities to make a living by
honest work, it removes some temptations.

The vices of the uneducated tend to have more visible consequences, at least.

In any case, given the horribly disastrous consequences of the Trump presidency
in worsening the COVID-19 pandemic, this seems to be hardly the time to be
arguing against "elite" control; it would seem, instead, that we need to have control
of society by the "elites" made stronger and firmer to prevent any chance of Trump
or someone similar winning in 2024.

If the Republican Party were to be reformed, so that it would offer a candidate like,
say, Dwight D. Eisenhower for President, instead of Trump or a Trump wannabe,
of course, _then_ a Republican victory would not be a catastrophe for America and
the world. The last I looked, the only possible similar candidate, Colin Powell,
gave up on the Republican Party in disgust... and this was long before it plunged
into its current desuetude.

The late John McCain, of course, while also an excellent candidate in most respects,
basically threw the 2008 electioin to Obama when, after the stock market crashed,
he told the American people that their economy was "fundamentally sound". After a
stock market crash, the last thing the American people want to hear from their leaders
is them channeling Herbert Hoover. G. W. Bush knew better, and realized that a
stock market crash was a serious crisis that needed to be dealt with immediately...
and, as a senator, McCain even obstructed that until he got more gravy for his state.

That failure on his part, of course, led the way for the kooks and crazies to take over
the Republican Party. Although, since he had one of them as his running mate, the
process was already far advanced by then before his misstep.

John Savard

On Thu, 23 Feb 2023 22:45:47 -0800 (PST), Johnny1A
<johnny1a.again@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 11:14:10?AM UTC-6, Paul S Person wrote:
>> On Wed, 22 Feb 2023 10:56:29 -0800 (PST), Johnny1A
>> <johnny1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Sunday, February 19, 2023 at 9:07:52 PM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
>> >> On Friday, February 17, 2023 at 10:40:09 PM UTC-7, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
>> >> > a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been cut and Jane
>> >> > Austen added.
>> >> Ouch.
>> >>
>> >> From CBC, a more liberal source,
>> >> https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/roald-dahl-censorship-allegations-1..6753828
>> >>
>> >> I learned two additional facts:
>> >> 1) Salman Rushdie is on record as calling these changes absurd censorship; and
>> >> 2) Roald Dahl, during his life, was a "virulent anti-Semite".
>> >>
>> >> Ouch.
>> >>
>> >> In any case, though, while I would be outraged if we were talking about these changes
>> >> being made to a critical edition of the works of Roald Dahl to be used by college students
>> >> writing essays about his life and work... this isn't it. Rather, it's an edition that will go into
>> >> the hands of actual _children_.
>> >>
>> >> Thus, whatever else one might think, this effort is at least well-intentioned.
>> >
>> >No, it isn't.
>> >
>> >This crap always starts with a pretext that someone can pretend is for the good. "It's for the children." It never stops there, and the good intention is just that, pretext.
>> >
>> >It's still an attempt to rewrite reality, to rewrite the past, for the sake of whatever ideology motivates the person mutilating the work.
>> >
>> I watched the DVD /Daffy Duck: Frustrated Fowl/ last night.
>>
>> It starts by showing (for an excessively long time) a statement about
>> how the cartoons were done /then/ and do not meet the standards of
>> /today/.
>>
>> It also states that to change them would be the same as saying that
>> the offensive material had never been used.
>
>For now. It's the same pattern over and over, "All we want is 'x', which in fact turns out to be just the beginning. X turns into y, z, and then metastasizes.

Apparently, you missed the point: they were presenting the cartoons
/as originally made and shown in theaters/. They did /not/ change them
because, as noted above, to do so would be the same as saying the
offensiveness had never existed.

I suggest a course in Remedial Reading Comprehension.

<snip attempt to blame sane persons for the insanity of others>
<alternately, snip paranoid screed pretending there is a single
guiding force behind movements he doesn't like>
<that said, the "slippery slope" argument does apply to the original
topic; WB's insistence on keeping the offensive content /in/, however,
is not an example>
--
"In this connexion, unquestionably the most significant
development was the disintegration, under Christian
influence, of classical conceptions of the family and
of family right."

On Thu, 23 Feb 2023 10:43:51 -0800 (PST), Andrew McDowell
<mcdowell_ag@sky.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:12:26?AM UTC, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 22 February 2023 at 20:34:12 UTC, Andrew McDowell wrote:
>> > We know what happens to children that read a lot of Roald Dahl -
>> > they are grown up now, and they didn't by and large turn out
>> > Nazis or anti-semites.
>> Let's not deny that some of them have. After all, they come
>> from /somewhere/.
>>
>> However, I'll confidently claim, without looking for evidence,
>> that most people who read a lot don't grow up prejudiced.
>> Unless they read a lot of a particular thing, perhaps.
>> But otherwise, hatred is the opiate of the illiterate. But I'll
>> also make an exception again of people who make a career
>> of being prejudiced, who do it to make their living.
>> The organizers that I mentioned. And the writers and the
>> public speakers. I'm asserting that they know they're in the
>> wrong and they do it on purpose anyway. To get money.
>> To get power.
>It has long been the claim of those selling education that it will also make people more civilised, and long been the case that educators have been disappointed with the people they have educated. One result of widespread literacy was the popular press. I think that educators would be better off merely claiming to teach people testable skills, if only for the reason that it is much easier to try different ways of imparting these skills, measure the results, and see which is best.

When HTML first came out, the educators were up in arms because it did
not insert a second space after stops.

That says everything there is to say about the intellectual state of
educators.
--
"In this connexion, unquestionably the most significant
development was the disintegration, under Christian
influence, of classical conceptions of the family and
of family right."

On Thu, 23 Feb 2023 22:50:35 -0800 (PST), Johnny1A
<johnny1a.again@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 12:43:54?PM UTC-6, Andrew McDowell wrote:
>> On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:12:26?AM UTC, Robert Carnegie wrote:
>> > On Wednesday, 22 February 2023 at 20:34:12 UTC, Andrew McDowell wrote:
>> > > We know what happens to children that read a lot of Roald Dahl -
>> > > they are grown up now, and they didn't by and large turn out
>> > > Nazis or anti-semites.
>> > Let's not deny that some of them have. After all, they come
>> > from /somewhere/.
>> >
>> > However, I'll confidently claim, without looking for evidence,
>> > that most people who read a lot don't grow up prejudiced.
>> > Unless they read a lot of a particular thing, perhaps.
>> > But otherwise, hatred is the opiate of the illiterate. But I'll
>> > also make an exception again of people who make a career
>> > of being prejudiced, who do it to make their living.
>> > The organizers that I mentioned. And the writers and the
>> > public speakers. I'm asserting that they know they're in the
>> > wrong and they do it on purpose anyway. To get money.
>> > To get power.
>> It has long been the claim of those selling education that it will also make people more civilised, and long been the case that educators have been disappointed with the people they have educated. One result of widespread literacy was the popular press. I think that educators would be better off merely claiming to teach people testable skills, i
>
>Amen.
>
>One of the conceits of the post-Enlightenment Western elite classes, esp. academia, is that knowledge and understanding=morality. In fact they are tangential to each other. Knowledge and understanding are powerful, but power is as the powerful do, and those motivations track independently of education. The same science and reason and knowledge that can empower good and just as readily empower evil, as we saw in World War I (a shock the Western educated class has yet to fully process or recover from). Chemistry can be used to make quinine or sarin. A mass murderer can quote Cicero as readily as a wise lawgiver.

This is a consequence of secularism. They reject religion, but still
want people to behave properly. Fortunately, most do, however
well-educated they may be.

>We would be doing ourselves, _and_ the academic world, a favor by downgrading their overinflated social status and aims toward something realistic.
--
"In this connexion, unquestionably the most significant
development was the disintegration, under Christian
influence, of classical conceptions of the family and
of family right."

On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 5:35:17 PM UTC-5, Quadibloc wrote:
> Oh, incidentally.
>
> I didn't immediately recognize the old Soviet joke, about how the
> victory of Communism was historically inevitable,

GM Sosonko has written several books of biographical essays of
chess players (mostly soviet). One (excellent) book is entitled

"The Reliable Past"

I rather think you'd like it.

William Hyde

On Friday, February 24, 2023 at 12:45:50 AM UTC-6, Johnny1A wrote:
> On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 11:14:10 AM UTC-6, Paul S Person wrote:
> > On Wed, 22 Feb 2023 10:56:29 -0800 (PST), Johnny1A
> > <johnny1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >On Sunday, February 19, 2023 at 9:07:52 PM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
> > >> On Friday, February 17, 2023 at 10:40:09 PM UTC-7, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> > >> > a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been cut and Jane
> > >> > Austen added.
> > >> Ouch.
> > >>
> > >> From CBC, a more liberal source,
> > >> https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/roald-dahl-censorship-allegations-1.6753828
> > >>
> > >> I learned two additional facts:
> > >> 1) Salman Rushdie is on record as calling these changes absurd censorship; and
> > >> 2) Roald Dahl, during his life, was a "virulent anti-Semite".
> > >>
> > >> Ouch.
> > >>
> > >> In any case, though, while I would be outraged if we were talking about these changes
> > >> being made to a critical edition of the works of Roald Dahl to be used by college students
> > >> writing essays about his life and work... this isn't it. Rather, it's an edition that will go into
> > >> the hands of actual _children_.
> > >>
> > >> Thus, whatever else one might think, this effort is at least well-intentioned.
> > >
> > >No, it isn't.
> > >
> > >This crap always starts with a pretext that someone can pretend is for the good. "It's for the children." It never stops there, and the good intention is just that, pretext.
> > >
> > >It's still an attempt to rewrite reality, to rewrite the past, for the sake of whatever ideology motivates the person mutilating the work.
> > >
> > I watched the DVD /Daffy Duck: Frustrated Fowl/ last night.
> >
> > It starts by showing (for an excessively long time) a statement about
> > how the cartoons were done /then/ and do not meet the standards of
> > /today/.
> >
> > It also states that to change them would be the same as saying that
> > the offensive material had never been used.
> For now. It's the same pattern over and over, "All we want is 'x', which in fact turns out to be just the beginning. X turns into y, z, and then metastasizes.
>
> A few years ago, we were assured by All The Serious People that the only thing they wanted to remove was _confederate_ flags and monuments to _confederate_ soldiers and leaders. But of course that was never true, as more than a few people predicted. Fast forward a few years and we're currently seeing efforts to cancel Lincoln and Grant as racists, to undercut the Founders. It's not the confederacy they hated, it's _American_, and Western, history, the confederacy was just the pretext (at least in the USA). They hated the confederacy because it was part of America's history, racism is the excuse. The same pattern plays out in other Western countries, though the details vary. Witness the recent laughable (except that it really isn't funny) leaked documents reporting that the UK 'anti-radicalism' task force considers Shakespeare to be a dangerous author. If you go looking for it you can find this trend in Germany, in Canada, all over the West. The elite classes have begun to despise their own heritage and history and to resist the idea that they are who they are. There's a genuine malevolence in play.
>
> If you have a movie you love, or an old TV show, don't trust on-line storage. That's trivially easy to rewrite or erase. Get it in physical medium and make sure it's something you can play forward. Because this is not an isolated thing.

And in the "I would rather have been wrong" department: now word is that the Fleming James Bond novels are to be 'updated'. Also, word is that many people with digital versions of Dahl's work have discovered that they have been remote-rewritten, non-optionally, to the 'improved' version, as part of the regular system updates.

Anything you have stored in a format or medium that is susceptible to remote-rewrite needs to be looked with distrust. If 'your' copy of your favorite movie is cloud-stored, you need to get something harder if you don't want to risk it being suddenly changed or evaporating.

A semi-related example of this sort of thing is the ongoing process of forcing Windows users to switch to Edge, using override updates that are very difficult to undo, if you want for some reason to keep using IE Explorer. Granted there are good reasons _not_ to do that, but it's still borderline Orwellian, and the same sort of thing that permits that permits remote rewrites of movies, novels, non-fiction, etc.

Parts of various governments, and the big tech companies, want total control of your data. Other companies are following in that direction, i.e. the 'right to repair' debate that is emerging.

On Friday, February 24, 2023 at 11:09:54 AM UTC-6, Paul S Person wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Feb 2023 22:45:47 -0800 (PST), Johnny1A
> <johnny1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 11:14:10?AM UTC-6, Paul S Person wrote:
> >> On Wed, 22 Feb 2023 10:56:29 -0800 (PST), Johnny1A
> >> <johnny1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >On Sunday, February 19, 2023 at 9:07:52 PM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
> >> >> On Friday, February 17, 2023 at 10:40:09 PM UTC-7, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> >> >> > a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been cut and Jane
> >> >> > Austen added.
> >> >> Ouch.
> >> >>
> >> >> From CBC, a more liberal source,
> >> >> https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/roald-dahl-censorship-allegations-1.6753828
> >> >>
> >> >> I learned two additional facts:
> >> >> 1) Salman Rushdie is on record as calling these changes absurd censorship; and
> >> >> 2) Roald Dahl, during his life, was a "virulent anti-Semite".
> >> >>
> >> >> Ouch.
> >> >>
> >> >> In any case, though, while I would be outraged if we were talking about these changes
> >> >> being made to a critical edition of the works of Roald Dahl to be used by college students
> >> >> writing essays about his life and work... this isn't it. Rather, it's an edition that will go into
> >> >> the hands of actual _children_.
> >> >>
> >> >> Thus, whatever else one might think, this effort is at least well-intentioned.
> >> >
> >> >No, it isn't.
> >> >
> >> >This crap always starts with a pretext that someone can pretend is for the good. "It's for the children." It never stops there, and the good intention is just that, pretext.
> >> >
> >> >It's still an attempt to rewrite reality, to rewrite the past, for the sake of whatever ideology motivates the person mutilating the work.
> >> >
> >> I watched the DVD /Daffy Duck: Frustrated Fowl/ last night.
> >>
> >> It starts by showing (for an excessively long time) a statement about
> >> how the cartoons were done /then/ and do not meet the standards of
> >> /today/.
> >>
> >> It also states that to change them would be the same as saying that
> >> the offensive material had never been used.
> >
> >For now. It's the same pattern over and over, "All we want is 'x', which in fact turns out to be just the beginning. X turns into y, z, and then metastasizes.
> Apparently, you missed the point: they were presenting the cartoons
> /as originally made and shown in theaters/. They did /not/ change them
> because, as noted above, to do so would be the same as saying the
> offensiveness had never existed.
>
> I suggest a course in Remedial Reading Comprehension.

As I said, 'for now'. I know what they're doing. But there's no need for a warning, it's a silly idea, and the very fact that they think some kind of warning is needed is a tell on their thinking. As I said, it starts incrementally.

On Friday, February 24, 2023 at 9:03:27 AM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 11:50:38 PM UTC-7, Johnny1A wrote:
>
> > One of the conceits of the post-Enlightenment Western elite classes, esp.
> > academia, is that knowledge and understanding=morality. In fact they are
> > tangential to each other. Knowledge and understanding are powerful, but
> > power is as the powerful do, and those motivations track independently
> > of education.
> Education helps you get a better job, and just as it is the _hungry_ lions that
> are likely to attack you, it is _poor_ people who might try to steal from you.

Highly questionable. It's often asserted, but there's very little evidence that the poor are more likely to steal than the rich, _per se_. There are lots of poor people and not very many rich, so of course there are far more poor criminals than rich ones.

Now granted, there are special cases, a starving man is more likely to steal food than a rich one, for ex. Well-off criminals are more likely to engage in different _sorts_ of crime than the poor, granted.

But as a general thing, the idea that poverty correlates with criminality is at best unestablished.

>
> So that is the reason that people have come to the mistaken conclusion that
> education improves moral character. But even if it doesn't improve moral
> character, since it gives people better opportunities to make a living by
> honest work, it removes some temptations.
>
> The vices of the uneducated tend to have more visible consequences, at least.
>
> In any case, given the horribly disastrous consequences of the Trump presidency
> in worsening the COVID-19 pandemic, this seems to be hardly the time to be
> arguing against "elite" control; it would seem, instead, that we need to have control
> of society by the "elites" made stronger and firmer to prevent any chance of Trump
> or someone similar winning in 2024.

Trump did not worsen the covid 'crisis'. That entire episode was politicized, mostly by Trump's opponents in the establishment, from day one. Granted, if Trump had not been President, if it had been a Democrat or an 'acceptable' Republican, the hysterical overreaction from the CDC and the media and the governments (Federal, State, and local) would probably not have happened.

>
> The late John McCain, of course, while also an excellent candidate in most respects,
> basically threw the 2008 electioin to Obama when, after the stock market crashed,
> he told the American people that their economy was "fundamentally sound".

John McCain had lost the 2008 election already on the day he was nominated. Absolutely his _only_ hope was that Obama and Dems would somehow self-destruct. That could have happened, but it didn't, and on his own McCain had no realistic chance, because long before the election even started, a big swath of the GOP voting base had come to detest him.

There were various reasons for that, going back to 2000. The biggest reason was his endless efforts to ram an immigration amnesty through, but there were other reasons. He had come to be seen as the epitome of the GOP corporate establishment. He shared all of GWB's perceived weaknesses and none of his strengths. It was probably already too late for him to correct it by the time he received the nomination (more or less by default).

In 2006, when the GOP lost Congress, the power establishment within the Party immediately started pushing the line that there only 3 possible candidates for '08 election: Giuliani, Romney, and McCain. All totally acceptable to the business wing, all social liberals in practice (whatever their mouthings at election time), all open borders men. The trouble was that the GOP voting base knew all that, and immediately started pushing back, you started seeing pins and bumber stickers with the name 'Rudy McRomney' on it and a slash through the name.

Given their choice, the power players would have run Giuliani in 2008. The theory was that: 'Yeah, he's a liberal, but he's tough and cool, he cleaned up NYC and remember 911! The base'll turn out for him anyway!" His own theory, as I heard him say in a radio interview at the time, was that yes, he would lose primaries in the traditional GOP States but make up for it by being competitive in the Dem heartlands.

He flamed out in the 2008 primaries. The base would not turn out for a known social liberal, period. The Dems would not cross over because they loathed the business agenda (among other reasons). Of course if he had won the nomination, pretty much any Dem would have annihilated him in November as the GOP base stayed home.

In a choice between Romney and McCain, the establishment reluctantly backed McCain, partly because they didn't like his Mormonism. Contrary to what the media spread at the time, Romney's religion was much less of a problem for the base than it was for establishment, they wanted someone as secular as they could get.

So we got McCain, who theoretically had 'crossover appeal'. That was based on his isolated successes in Dem States in 2000, and was nonsense because he was getting crossover vote in those instances precisely because they saw it as a way to undercut GWB in 2000 and help Gore. On his own, McCain had no crossover appeal.

Of course, McCain ran an incompetent campaign, that much is true. He 'suspended his campaign' at one point hoping for credit, Obama kept right on campaigning. His staff thought they might get somewhere with PUMAs. That stood for 'Party Unity My Ass', and supposedly referred to tons of angry Dem women who were mad Obama took the nomination that Hillary was entitled to. They turned out for Obama readily.

And one of McCain's big issues was that apparently he really, seriously thought the news media as a whole would be on his side! Apparently he didn't realize that all that positive coverage, the 'Maverick McCain' schtick, was because he was acting _against_ the GOP. Once he was actually running for President, the tone changed to "Why are you running against the wonderful Mr. Obama?!" Every time he tried to deploy an attack that might actually draw blood, his 'friends' in the media began to chant 'racist'.

McCain had something in common with Hillary, politically. He wanted to win, but he wanted to win _his way_. Hillary wanted to be 'the first woman President' and at heart wanted to compaign that way, even when it didn't work well. McCain's preferred line was 'vote for me because I'm a war hero and I can work with the Democrats'. Well, the war hero vote was already part of the GOP base, people primarily motivated by that we're already there, and 'work with Democrats' was just precisely what his base _did not want_, because they knew in McCain's case it would mean trading social issues for corporate goals, and above all else, open borders.

When it was over McCain's staff tried to blame Palin for the problem, and the media helped because they hate her too, but she was by far the more popular of the two of them with GOP voters. Without Palin on the ticket, McCain would likely have lost by _more_.

> That failure on his part, of course, led the way for the kooks and crazies to take over
> the Republican Party. Although, since he had one of them as his running mate, the
> process was already far advanced by then before his misstep.
>
> John Savard

As I noted, having Palin on the ticket probably turned a landslide loss into simply a defeat. Elections are usually decided primarily on turnout. You have to hold and motivate your base, and then add to it from the undecided. If your base is soft or angry, you're rarely if ever going to be able to pull in enough from others to make up for it. As one old machine boss observed, 'you win by addition'.

The problem for the GOP, ever since 1988, is that the dominant business wing despises the GOP voting base, and wants to replace them. But they can't.. The only Dem group remotely amenable to crossing over is the working class labor vote, the 'Reagan Democrats'. But the business wing doesn't like them either. They'd really like to win over the educated upper class women (i.e. McCain's PUMAs), but they just can't. Dole tried it. McCain tried it. But they just can't get them (Or at least they couldn't, prior to the current educational wars, that might finally be making a dent, as we saw in the Virginia gubernatorial race.)

The business elite try to tell themselves the reason is abortion, but the groups they want to win over detest the business agenda, too (except for open borders).

But even if they could, the voters the establishment disdains are the heart and soul of the Party's voting strength. Lose the SoCons and you lose the election. Lose the national sovereignty voters (who overlap with the SoCons) and you lose the election. There just aren't enough libertarians and business wingers to make a viable electoral coalition.

We just saw Mitch Daniels float a trial balloon about running for Senate. It got popped in a day or three as people remembered his talk of 'a truce on the social issues' a decade ago. The voters just aren't there for the business agenda.

In article <9844d023-9a18-4a4e-a836-2753ceb5dbaen@googlegroups.com>,
Johnny1A <johnny1a.again@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Friday, February 24, 2023 at 12:45:50 AM UTC-6, Johnny1A wrote:
>> On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 11:14:10 AM UTC-6, Paul S Person wrote:
>> > On Wed, 22 Feb 2023 10:56:29 -0800 (PST), Johnny1A
>> > <johnny1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > >On Sunday, February 19, 2023 at 9:07:52 PM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
>> > >> On Friday, February 17, 2023 at 10:40:09 PM UTC-7, Ted Nolan
><tednolan> wrote:
>> > >> > a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been cut and Jane
>> > >> > Austen added.
>> > >> Ouch.
>> > >>
>> > >> From CBC, a more liberal source,
>> > >>
>https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/roald-dahl-censorship-allegations-1.6753828
>> > >>
>> > >> I learned two additional facts:
>> > >> 1) Salman Rushdie is on record as calling these changes absurd
>censorship; and
>> > >> 2) Roald Dahl, during his life, was a "virulent anti-Semite".
>> > >>
>> > >> Ouch.
>> > >>
>> > >> In any case, though, while I would be outraged if we were talking
>about these changes
>> > >> being made to a critical edition of the works of Roald Dahl to be
>used by college students
>> > >> writing essays about his life and work... this isn't it. Rather,
>it's an edition that will go into
>> > >> the hands of actual _children_.
>> > >>
>> > >> Thus, whatever else one might think, this effort is at least
>well-intentioned.
>> > >
>> > >No, it isn't.
>> > >
>> > >This crap always starts with a pretext that someone can pretend is
>for the good. "It's for the children." It never stops there, and the
>good intention is just that, pretext.
>> > >
>> > >It's still an attempt to rewrite reality, to rewrite the past, for
>the sake of whatever ideology motivates the person mutilating the work.
>> > >
>> > I watched the DVD /Daffy Duck: Frustrated Fowl/ last night.
>> >
>> > It starts by showing (for an excessively long time) a statement about
>> > how the cartoons were done /then/ and do not meet the standards of
>> > /today/.
>> >
>> > It also states that to change them would be the same as saying that
>> > the offensive material had never been used.
>> For now. It's the same pattern over and over, "All we want is 'x',
>which in fact turns out to be just the beginning. X turns into y, z, and
>then metastasizes.
>>
>> A few years ago, we were assured by All The Serious People that the
>only thing they wanted to remove was _confederate_ flags and monuments
>to _confederate_ soldiers and leaders. But of course that was never
>true, as more than a few people predicted. Fast forward a few years and
>we're currently seeing efforts to cancel Lincoln and Grant as racists,
>to undercut the Founders. It's not the confederacy they hated, it's
>_American_, and Western, history, the confederacy was just the pretext
>(at least in the USA). They hated the confederacy because it was part of
>America's history, racism is the excuse. The same pattern plays out in
>other Western countries, though the details vary. Witness the recent
>laughable (except that it really isn't funny) leaked documents reporting
>that the UK 'anti-radicalism' task force considers Shakespeare to be a
>dangerous author. If you go looking for it you can find this trend in
>Germany, in Canada, all over the West. The elite classes have begun to
>despise their own heritage and history and to resist the idea that they
>are who they are. There's a genuine malevolence in play.
>>
>> If you have a movie you love, or an old TV show, don't trust on-line
>storage. That's trivially easy to rewrite or erase. Get it in physical
>medium and make sure it's something you can play forward. Because this
>is not an isolated thing.
>
>And in the "I would rather have been wrong" department: now word is
>that the Fleming James Bond novels are to be 'updated'. Also, word is
>that many people with digital versions of Dahl's work have discovered
>that they have been remote-rewritten, non-optionally, to the 'improved'
>version, as part of the regular system updates.
>
>Anything you have stored in a format or medium that is susceptible to
>remote-rewrite needs to be looked with distrust. If 'your' copy of your
>favorite movie is cloud-stored, you need to get something harder if you
>don't want to risk it being suddenly changed or evaporating.
>
>A semi-related example of this sort of thing is the ongoing process of
>forcing Windows users to switch to Edge, using override updates that are
>very difficult to undo, if you want for some reason to keep using IE
>Explorer. Granted there are good reasons _not_ to do that, but it's
>still borderline Orwellian, and the same sort of thing that permits that
>permits remote rewrites of movies, novels, non-fiction, etc.
>
>Parts of various governments, and the big tech companies, want total
>control of your data. Other companies are following in that direction,
>i.e. the 'right to repair' debate that is emerging.

https://archive.is/KAJlT#selection-829.0-829.71

Roald Dahl ebooks 'force censored versions on readers' despite backlash

Owners of Roald Dahl ebooks are having their libraries
automatically updated with the new censored versions
containing hundreds of changes to language related to weight,
mental health, violence, gender and race.

Calibre with DeDrm Tools is your friend:

https://calibre-ebook.com/

https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

On Saturday, February 18, 2023 at 12:40:09 AM UTC-5, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/17/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-offensive-matilda-witches-twits/
>
> "Words matter," begins the discreet notice, which sits at
> the bottom of the copyright page of Puffin's latest editions
> of Roald Dahl's books. "The wonderful words of Roald Dahl
> can transport you to different worlds and introduce you to
> the most marvellous characters. This book was written many
> years ago, and so we regularly review the language to ensure
> that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today."
>
> Put simply: these may not be the words Dahl wrote. The
> publishers have given themselves licence to edit the writer
> as they see fit, chopping, altering and adding where necessary
> to bring his books in line with contemporary sensibilities.
> By comparing the latest editions with earlier versions of
> the texts, The Telegraph has found hundreds of changes to
> Dahl's stories.
>
> Language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender
> and race has been cut and rewritten. Remember the Cloud-Men
> in James and the Giant Peach? They are now the Cloud-People.
> The Small Foxes in Fantastic Mr Fox are now female. In
> Matilda, a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been cut and Jane
> Austen added. It's Roald Dahl, but different.
>
> I have some sympathy for an author electing to revise a work when
> times change. Someone who bought the copyrights to a dead author's
> work not so much.

A belated memory has surfaced, of a similar story in the 1970s.

Apparently the Hardy boys books were heavily revised at the time. One of the
authors who wrote under the Dixon name was unhappy with the result. At first,
he said, he welcomed the changes, assuming that they simply were updating
cultural references, but when he saw the new books he felt that they had gutted the
(already not particularly controversial) books of anything they deemed not suitable for
a ten year old.

As an author-for-hire he had no say in this, of course.

Having stumbled across these books far too late to like them I have no idea how
serious the changes were. Nor did the article, IIRC, discuss which other
children's books were undergoing similar revision. If any.

The story made the Kitchener-Waterloo record back pages, so perhaps a
twelve year old James read it

William Hyde

In article <8d898680-4c6e-460e-8dc2-bb1dbf59d567n@googlegroups.com>,
William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Saturday, February 18, 2023 at 12:40:09 AM UTC-5, Ted Nolan
><tednolan> wrote:
>>
>https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/17/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-offensive-matilda-witches-twits/
>>
>> "Words matter," begins the discreet notice, which sits at
>> the bottom of the copyright page of Puffin's latest editions
>> of Roald Dahl's books. "The wonderful words of Roald Dahl
>> can transport you to different worlds and introduce you to
>> the most marvellous characters. This book was written many
>> years ago, and so we regularly review the language to ensure
>> that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today."
>>
>> Put simply: these may not be the words Dahl wrote. The
>> publishers have given themselves licence to edit the writer
>> as they see fit, chopping, altering and adding where necessary
>> to bring his books in line with contemporary sensibilities.
>> By comparing the latest editions with earlier versions of
>> the texts, The Telegraph has found hundreds of changes to
>> Dahl's stories.
>>
>> Language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender
>> and race has been cut and rewritten. Remember the Cloud-Men
>> in James and the Giant Peach? They are now the Cloud-People.
>> The Small Foxes in Fantastic Mr Fox are now female. In
>> Matilda, a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been cut and Jane
>> Austen added. It's Roald Dahl, but different.
>>
>> I have some sympathy for an author electing to revise a work when
>> times change. Someone who bought the copyrights to a dead author's
>> work not so much.
>
>A belated memory has surfaced, of a similar story in the 1970s.
>
>Apparently the Hardy boys books were heavily revised at the time. One of the
>authors who wrote under the Dixon name was unhappy with the result. At first,
>he said, he welcomed the changes, assuming that they simply were updating
>cultural references, but when he saw the new books he felt that they had
>gutted the
>(already not particularly controversial) books of anything they deemed
>not suitable for
>a ten year old.
>
>As an author-for-hire he had no say in this, of course.
>
>Having stumbled across these books far too late to like them I have no idea how
>serious the changes were. Nor did the article, IIRC, discuss which other
>children's books were undergoing similar revision. If any.
>
>The story made the Kitchener-Waterloo record back pages, so perhaps a
>twelve year old James read it
>
>William Hyde

The changes were pretty extensive as I recall. The same thing was done
to Nancy Drew. I think in many cases most of the original plot itself
was jettisoned just leaving the title as a hook. You can look at the
old books vs the new ones and see that the new ones are about half the
length.

The Tom Swift franchaise avoided this by first moving on to TNG
for the second series, and then just completely abandoning any
hint at franchaise history.
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

On Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 10:45:08 AM UTC-7, Johnny1A wrote:

> But as a general thing, the idea that poverty correlates with criminality is at best unestablished.

Oh, there can be wealthy men who practice large-scale dishonesty.

But the poverty of the residents of a given *neighborhood* correlates
very well with how safe that neighborhood is to walk around in.

John Savard

In article <8d898680-4c6e-460e-8dc2-bb1dbf59d567n@googlegroups.com>,
William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:

Re the comprehensive Hardy Boys rewrite

>The story made the Kitchener-Waterloo record back pages, so perhaps a
>twelve year old James read it

I encountered HB in 1972 and 1973 so after the rewrite? About the
only thing I remember about them is they were so short and
unchallenging I could read one over lunch hour.

--
My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

On Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 10:49:24 AM UTC-7, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:

> https://archive.is/KAJlT#selection-829.0-829.71
>
> Roald Dahl ebooks 'force censored versions on readers' despite backlash
>
> Owners of Roald Dahl ebooks are having their libraries
> automatically updated with the new censored versions
> containing hundreds of changes to language related to weight,
> mental health, violence, gender and race.

Now you've got something that I am unequivocally against.

John Savard

On Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 2:56:18 PM UTC-5, James Nicoll wrote:
> In article <8d898680-4c6e-460e...@googlegroups.com>,
> William Hyde <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Re the comprehensive Hardy Boys rewrite
> >The story made the Kitchener-Waterloo record back pages, so perhaps a
> >twelve year old James read it
> I encountered HB in 1972 and 1973 so after the rewrite? About the
> only thing I remember about them is they were so short and
> unchallenging I could read one over lunch hour.

I was in KW in 76-78 so you were getting the original.

William Hyde

Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> schrieb:
> On Friday, February 17, 2023 at 10:40:09 PM UTC-7, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
>> a mention of Rudyard Kipling has been cut and Jane
>> Austen added.
>
> Ouch.
>
> From CBC, a more liberal source,
> https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/roald-dahl-censorship-allegations-1.6753828
>
> I learned two additional facts:
> 1) Salman Rushdie is on record as calling these changes absurd censorship; and
> 2) Roald Dahl, during his life, was a "virulent anti-Semite".

So was Karl Marx.

On Sunday, March 5, 2023 at 2:02:14 AM UTC-7, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> schrieb:

> > 2) Roald Dahl, during his life, was a "virulent anti-Semite".

> So was Karl Marx.

Although that's odd, given that he was Jewish himself, unlike Roald Dahl,
he hardly needs to be discredited any more than he already is.

John Savard

On Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 1:48:46 PM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 10:45:08 AM UTC-7, Johnny1A wrote:
>
> > But as a general thing, the idea that poverty correlates with criminality is at best unestablished.
> Oh, there can be wealthy men who practice large-scale dishonesty.
>
> But the poverty of the residents of a given *neighborhood* correlates
> very well with how safe that neighborhood is to walk around in.

Not entirely. It's true that poor neighborhoods are more likely to be dangerous than wealthy ones, but it's also true that the majority or poor neighborhoods are also fairly safe. It's _specific_ poor neighborhoods that tend to be dangerous. The reasons can be multifold, but the correlation with poverty as a _primary_ cause is very weak. It might (probably is) an enabling factor, but other factors are primary.

On Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 1:59:08 PM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at 10:49:24 AM UTC-7, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
>
> > https://archive.is/KAJlT#selection-829.0-829.71
> >
> > Roald Dahl ebooks 'force censored versions on readers' despite backlash
> >
> > Owners of Roald Dahl ebooks are having their libraries
> > automatically updated with the new censored versions
> > containing hundreds of changes to language related to weight,
> > mental health, violence, gender and race.
> Now you've got something that I am unequivocally against.
>
> John Savard

Then take a good look at anything you're storing on-line, or in any storage format that is susceptible to remote rewrite, and ask yourself if you really want it left untouched. If so, take steps to protect it, because there are a _lot_ of things that TPTB would like to do this stuff to if they thought they could get away with it.