Because You Deserve No Less

Of course, it will be we elderly who are here at closing time left with all the youthful, yet somehow unpaid, bar tabs.
I’ve always said this place needs a wiser, more mature, more seasoned clientele.
[ Hangs large, illuminated “No Skateboards” sign. ]

I’ll dim the lighting around the elderly.
As if the in-and-out weak wifi back here by the Gents isn’t bad enough.

In my business I work with startup founders who are seeking investors. As a matter of course such investments require “term sheets” detailing ownership, rights, governance, and several other, mostly boilerplate, items.
Experience has taught me to caution entrepreneurs to confine their lawyers to strictly legal aspects, and to keep the lawyers away from business issues. If this is not done, both sides end up exceeding their legal budgets, for no benefit to anyone except a law firms top line.
“Bleak House” should be mandatory study in High schools.

[Checks “No Skateboards” sign]
Won’t be needing this then.

The problem is, there is so much overlap among multiple professions, e.g. law
Yes. But this is the problem. The more laws we have the more the law encroaches on every other profession, every other aspect of life. Laws have accumulated to the point beyond the ability of anyone to keep track of them. And thus they cannot all be enforced as there’s nowhere near enough resources. Consequently, selective enforcement cannot be avoided. It eventually turns into a big power game and we will shortly have legislated ourselves into anarchy.

I’ll waive my customary fee (Macallan) if we can get Helen Mirren and Judi Dench to participate.
I’m drawing a blank on the “Cathy Newman” casting, though.

Look, let’s take a page from the creators of “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome”.
In the casting meeting someone is supposed to have said “what we want is someone wild and intense. You know, like Tina Turner.”
To which the obvious (and actual) response was “Well, let’s call Tina Turner.”

That wonky fourth leg makes it quite uncomfortable.
It’s purely coincidental that one drinks’ coaster isn’t enough to fix the wobble and two, too many.

You have me, how much more wisdom do you need?

For the seniors among us. We’ll be standing in the corner, long black coats and sunglasses on, being completely indifferent to your existence.

Then, it’s resolved. We have a roundtable with you, Fred IV & I exercising plenary authority to dispose of these issues as we see fit.
I’m in. But don’t count on that Judi Dench showing her, uh, face. She owes me money. I had no idea she was going to spend it on a tattoo.
As for the seniors among us, I did like the cover version as well.

I thought the elderly came in to eat at 4:30 PM and left by 5:30.
Of course.
But that’s so we can save ourselves for the truly rollicking stuff later on in the evening. You know. People reciting various classical aphorisms to a Barry White soundtrack with a Barry White voice: “Veni, Vidi, Vici, Baby.”
Plus, those flaming shooters aren’t going to down themselves.
Young people are pikers.

Dench owes you?
Damn. I owe her for her last stint (lovely word, that) as GM.
I suppose it’s to much to hope that someone here owes me, right? Net of my bar tab, of course.
Hey, anyone wanna buy a duplicate of the key to the upstairs hottub?

5 … 4 …3 …2…AVERT YOUR EYES!

Years ago a thread on here took a turn into explaining how intelligent people (generally on the left) can look at the world and get things so wrong. I would love to read it again it was genuinely illuminating.
. . . which one?
—If you can remember any particular phrases, that might give you some search terms to work with . . .

Years ago a thread on here took a turn into explaining how intelligent people (generally on the left) can look at the world and get things so wrong.
you’d have to narrow it down, at least somewhat
Obviously, I don’t know which ones in particular, but these two both seem likely candidates:
It Pays To Be Unobvious
From which comes this extract from a post by Professor Jere Surber:

In many arts subjects, especially those tethered only loosely to evidence, logic or practical verification, there’s often pressure to avoid the obvious and prosaic, even when the obvious and prosaic is true. The obligation to be unobvious, if only for the benefit of one’s academic peers, may help explain the more fanciful assertions from some practitioners of the liberal arts.

And this from a review of Thomas Sowell’s Intellectuals and Society by Theodore Dalrymple:

Intellectuals, like everyone else, live and work in a marketplace. In order to get noticed they must say things which have not been said before, or at least say them in a different manner. No one is likely to obtain many plaudits for the rather obvious, indeed self-evident, thought that a street robber cannot commit street robberies while he is in prison. But an intellectual who first demonstrates that the cause of an increase in street robbery is the increase in the amount of property that law-abiding pedestrians have on them as they walk in the streets is likely to be hailed, at least until the next idea comes along. Thus, while there are no penalties for being foolish, there are severe penalties (at least in career terms) for being obvious.

And speaking of Thomas Sowell:
Consequential knowledge
In which David remarks (amongst other things):

Oddly enough – or not oddly at all – Marx was also fond of apocalyptic scenarios. (“I will wander godlike and victorious through the ruins of the world,” etc.)

In the same general vein, I can highly recommend the following work by Daniel Kalder known in Europe as Dictator Literature: A History of Despots Through Their Writing and in North America as The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy
I should mention that the author is a friend of mine, it’s true, and I was a reader for several early drafts as it was in development, but I hope that does not put anyone off – I think it’s a fascinating read.

Dear God, I’ve been doing this forever.
Have you always been a blogger/commentator/writer? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to – I’m just curious.

Meanwhile, back to the issue of too many men riding bicycles, we find that roads are killing women cyclists.

Xavier Brice, at Sustrans, believes city planners are to blame. “Fifty-one per cent of the UK population is female, yet most of our cities are failing to design roads and streets for women to cycle,” he says. It cannot help that women remain under-represented among the transport planners and engineers who design our streets.

I am still wondering how, exactly, a road designed for women cyclists would be different than one “designed for men”, as this bozo apparently thinks is now the case. It would obviously by misogynistic/paternalistic/colonialist/etc for me to suggest that perhaps the women are just crappy cyclists.

Meanwhile, at Netflix studios, don’t look at me !
At least not for more than five seconds, you, you, masher.

Netflix film crews ‘banned from looking at each other for longer than five seconds’ in #metoo crackdown
Given that filmmakers are full-time professional peoplewatchers, that rule could cramp their style if taken literally, or with the awareness that somebody could take it literally against you. Not that I feel sorry for filmmakers.
It pays to be unobvious
Clever Sillies

The over-use of abstract reasoning may be most obvious in the social domain, where normal humans are richly equipped with evolved psychological mechanisms both for here-and-now interactions (e.g. rapidly reading emotions from facial expression, gesture and posture, and speech intonation) and for ‘strategic’ modelling of social interactions to understand predict and manipulate the behaviour of others. Social strategies deploy inferred knowledge about the dispositions, motivations and intentions of others. When the most intelligent people over-ride the social intelligence systems and apply generic, abstract and systematic reasoning of the kind which is enhanced among higher IQ people, they are ignoring an ‘expert system’ in favour of a non-expert system.
… My hunch is that it is this kind of IQ-advertisement which has led to the most intelligent people in modern societies having ideas about social phenomena that are not just randomly incorrect (due to inappropriately misapplying abstract analysis) but are systematically wrong. I am talking of the phenomenon known as political correctness (PC) in which foolish and false ideas have become moralistically-enforced among the ruling intellectual elite. And these ideas have invaded academic, political and social discourse. Because while the stereotypical nutty professor in the hard sciences is a brilliant scientist but silly about everything else; the stereotypical nutty professor social scientist or humanities professor is not just silly about ‘everything else’, but also silly in their professional work.

Bollocks!

But the Close Encounters essay is particularly awful…

The final encounter also condemns linear communications, rational thought, and independent science, as fascists usually do.

Wait a minute, “…condemns linear communications, rational thought, and independent science…” ? That describes the Clown Quarter and SJWs in general, so this guy is saying they really are the fascists ?

A handy wildlife guide: A Survey Of British Mammals

Before that… We’ll be here all day.
Heh. Not what I expected – I had you down as a dissident and disaffected academic.

Okay, I take it back! *slinks off to a dark corner of the bar and tries to look small and insignificant*

Breaking news from the Berkeley (CA) City Council: There are too many humans so we need to find a way to “humanely” depopulate the earth to save “God’s Creation”
Excuse me for showing my white male privilege, but I thought humankind was God’s Creation. Guess not.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/13/berkeley-declares-climate-emergency-worse-than-world-war-ii-demands-humane-population-control.html

Leftist academia versus hardcore fisking.
On the bright side, every hour that Phil Magness spent putting together his spreadsheet documenting MacLean’s dishonesty was an hour he didn’t spend updating Wikipedia pages. So at least Mayor Khan’t should be happy.

did anyone here besides myself waste several hours of their lives with Gore Vidal’s Kalki?
No, though I did once struggle through Myra Breckinridge. So far as I could tell, it was not a great literary experience.

I did once struggle through Myra Breckinridge. So far as I could tell, it was not a great literary experience.

Heh. Never had the, uh, pleasure. However I did slog through a bit of…can’t remember which one, Sexus?, Nexus?, Plexus? ..up to the point that I decided I wanted to drown all the characters in their own urine. Which was kinda the indication it was time to abandon it.

It was made into a movie which had Raquel Welsh strutting around in various states of dishabille,
Because I’m a giver.

But the Close Encounters essay is particularly awful and often factually wrong, though typically of its type, in that it repeatedly ignores the obvious intended effect, and the stated motives of the director and composer
The SF author David Brin once wrote a lengthy screed on how superior Star Trek was to Star Wars, based largely on utter fabrications about the latter and outright wishful thinking about the scientific accuracy of the former.
As if which blend of moralizing space fantasy you prefer to rot your brain with is a very important issue.

Ooh! I’ll get my Pogs!
Yes, but do you have AAFES Pogs ?

The PX/BX system for OIF/OEF used these gems instead of change to save on the weight of shipping change into theatre. Best part was making the PX/BX take them when you got back. Note that Elvis got both a 5 and a ten cent Pog, but the presidents who had been in the military, just a dime. There may be a hidden meaning there.

Breaking news from the Berkeley (CA) City Council:
Meh.
Local sourcing of information does help.
One just isn’t going to be too worried when—italics added—,

Councilmember Cheryl Davila introduced both items and was then appointed chair of the newly formed climate emergency subcommittee. She expressed her frustration with the council for not prioritizing climate action.
“It’s disconcerting that these are the last items on the agenda and people have been waiting all night to speak on this issue,” Davila said during the meeting.

If there was any genuine council interest other than hers, she’d be sharing the “subcommittee” . . . .