Not only are you cripplingly ignorant...

...but you whine about it, too.

(100 Puuchuu points if you know what that's from.)

I needed to do another post like my "Reality Check" earlier—I do not suffer fools gladly, and the rest of the human race seems to be doing its damnedest to teach me just how much pain there is in living.

• So some conservative student group (YAF?) went around asking college kids if they'd like their good grades redistributed to students who weren't doing as well, in the manner of the welfare state. And of course, the students were none too pleased by the prospect. But they still insisted that it was okay to do the same with money. The comparison's not perfect (college is not a necessity of life), but it does rather nicely show up the inherent flaw of Socialism.
  
  But suppose I went around asking students if they'd like it if there were far fewer than enough textbooks for everyone, and the students had to scramble madly for them. And the students that didn't get the books had to borrow from those who did.
  
  And suppose those students who were borrowing, only got to keep a small minority of their gradepoints, the rest going to those who own the textbooks?
  
  That's capitalism, dude. Not looking much better, now is it?


• Why do people badmouth the Middle Ages, compared to the two eras after it? What mostly got reborn in the Renaissance was torture (copying the Roman legal system—medieval torture was much less nasty), and the main thing that got lit in the Enlightenment, was witches (fun fact: of the forty thousand people killed in all witch-trials ever, the vast, vast, vast majority were after the Reformation).
  
  The Middle Ages had much stricter rules on warfare than the Renaissance, let alone the Reformation/Enlightenment—conquest, without the excuse of wrongdoing on the opponent's part, was completely unthinkable in the Medieval world. Don't believe me? Then why, child, is the Bayeux tapestry so preoccupied with establishing that Harold and William were friends, and that Harold swore to give William the crown when Edward died? If conquest was the rule, why was William so concerned to establish his legal justification?
  
  The medieval economic system (or rather, three concurrent systems) were designed to maximize wealth and growth for everyone in a given industry, since they didn't need competition as a barrier to entry. Also their art and architecture were original, and they made several improvements in technology over Rome (the pointed arch, the water-wheel, even the glider (look it up)).
  
  The Middle Ages were an era of progress, and the Renaissance was a throwback to the Ancient world. The Enlightenment, though, wasnt even a throwback; nobody'd ever been that stupid before.
  


• Veganism. Just...Veganism. Two issues. One, doing it for ethical reasons? Really? Kingdomist. Have the testicular fortitude to only eat fruit, leaves, partial stocks, and seeds, like Buddhists (eating a whole plant is taking life). Ahimsa vegetarianism makes sense, and is as eminently respectable as someone taking the trouble to keep kosher; ethical Veganism is, pure and simple, stupid.
  
  As for nutrition...um, Kemosabe, humans are primates, and primates are omnivores. Most Vegans would be the first to argue for embracing our animal nature in matters of sexuality—well, why not diet? Your appendix is as small as it is because you're not evolved for digesting cellulose. Humans would never have gotten to where we are today if we were herbivores; meat's just the most efficient means of getting nutrients, because some other animal does most of the work.


• So I been reading up on Proto-Indo-European, and apparently the Kurgan hypothesis holds the field regarding its Urheimat (original territory, in this case probably Ukraine). I got no beef with the theory itself, since it seems to be best-supported by the evidence, but the lady who come up with it, Marija Gimbutas, was just a waste of nutrients. Mercifully the other scientists have jettisoned most of her crap from the hypothesis, as she had...no evidence for it, but why did anyone listen in the first place?!
  
  See, Gimbutas' interpretation was that the Indo-Europeans replaced a peaceable, matriarchal, goddess-worshiping people. Her evidence? They had a lot of female figures in their art. This is stupid, let me count the ways:
  1. Lord knows the Playboy mansion's got a lot of female figures in the art; ain't exactly a monument to the matriarchy.
  2. We don't know that the figures were goddesses; could've been Barbies, they're certainly distorted to conform to an ideal. Real Matriarchy-approved, Barbies, right?
  3. Even if they were goddesses, goddess-worship is not necessarily matriarchal; the Gorkhas worship Kali, but they're not matriarchal in the slightest.
  4. The Gorkhas and their goddess-worship sorta put to rest the myth of peaceful "people of the goddess," don't they?
  5. Even if they were matriarchal (and they'd actually have to be completely unique to be matriarchal, since there are no known matriarchies in the world), that doesn't mean they were peaceful. Aside from the fact we've got their fortifications, weapons, and yes, traumatized corpses, so we know they weren't peaceful, Golda Meir wasn't a Mensch and Margaret Thatcher wasn't a bloke, now was she?
  
  Now, admittedly, we have found that those (probably) pre-Indo-European Europeans were buried together according to enate (matrilineal) kinship, but that just means they were matrilineal, perhaps matrilocal. The Apaches and Navajo are, too—tell me, are they peaceful matriarchies? (answer: Good God, no!)