Ditch Doc

I’ve never understood why the heroes of sexual licence are so blind to its essential tendency to suicide. Ideas are passed on in the home. Contraception, abortion and homosexual acts drastically limit the number of children raised in homes where these things are accepted. Stable, sexually continent couples have more children every year, and then their children have more children. Arithmetic has no moral concerns, and condemns the hedonistic view without pausing to consider its truth or falsehood. Its champions should not abandon it for this reason, but they should stop writing paeans to the new world order and study the age-old art of the lament for a doomed glory. They sing like Romans marching through the gates of Carthage, the defenders either in hiding or already atop the pyre. But were they only to look up, they would recognize those walls for the cliffs of Thermopylae, and the men before them for the band of Leonidas. In a thousand years, they will be remembered not as the conquering army of Scipio, but the routed horde of Xerxes, who dared to flog the Hellespont.

It seems as though every Remembrance Day someone trots out the little trope that we remember our fathers’ sacrifices so that we won’t have to repeat them. I’m surprised it took me so long to realize the obvious error of this sentiment. We remember their sacrifices first of all to pray for their eternal rest, and second to honour those who remain. Of course these acts should affect our own disposition as well, the goal being to give us courage to follow in their footsteps. The only certain thing about freedom is that it will always require the blood of the free. Remembrance Day reminds us to offer it. When we finally decide “never again,” and act on it, we will have decided to live as slaves.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them, lest we forget.

Well, it’s been a depressing week, but it looks like Americans aren’t ready to give up their country yet.

The other day, I saw an ad for a sleek looking bathroom faucet, the chief boast of which was its revolutionary water-saving design. How does it work? Well, (and listen carefully, it’s complicated), it appears that it runs at a mind-bending 1.7 gallons per minute, trouncing the industry standard 2.3. That’s right. It makes the water run slower. So while the rest of you neanderthals are doing the same thing by cranking your dinosaur taps a quarter turn less, I’ll be getting water from my boldly yet reservedly styled, almost sentient cosmosoteriofaucet, like the rest of the enlightened. If only there were more of us. Sigh.

Check out this new winery. Only a year old, and producing wines that my untrained palate finds just delightful. Especially consider the Pinot Noir and the late harvest Kerner. If you can figure out how to order it. I can’t.

From a study investigating risk factors for retained foreign bodies after surgery:

“The increased risk associated with increased body-mass index probably reflects the amount of room there is in a patient in which to lose a sponge or instrument.”

Ezra Levant to the Alberta Human Rights Commission:

“Make my day.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5dwUqCGJeE&feature=related

It’s worth watching.

(For my non-Canuck friends, the HRCs are quasi-judicial bodies that have assigned themselves the role of offensiveness police. Yes, in Canada, we take niceness so seriously that you can be financially ruined for being mean.) 

You’ve just been diagnosed with a subtype of hypersensitivity pneumonitis. So what’s the good news? Well, chances are you have a disease with one of the strangest names ever concocted. The following is far from an exhaustive list of the possibilities. Going from the most mundane to the most exotic, you could have:

New Guinea Lung
Dry Rot Lung

Furrier’s Lung

Malt Worker’s Lung
Mushroom Worker’s Lung
Wood Pulp Worker’s Lung

Dog House Disease
Fishmeal Worker’s Lung
Hard Metal Disease
Wheat Weevil Lung
Pauli’s Reagent Lung
Vineyard Sprayer’s Lung

Rat Handler’s Lung

Washing Powder Lung

Sauna Taker’s Disease

Pituitary Snuff Taker’s Disease
Sewage Sludge Disease

Cheese Washer’s Lung
Paprika Splitter’s Lung
Maple Bark Stripper’s Disease

There. Don’t you feel better?

From the choir loft during Mass today, I noticed a young boy, about eight years old, leaving his pew and walking down the aisle. Four rows out, he realized he’d forgotten something and went back. He reached the end of his pew, put his hand on it, genuflected, and now satisfied, turned again and traipsed out to the vestibule without looking back.

Here’s an interesting paradox: The idea that species can be changed by the pressure to reproduce in an unfriendly world is a moderate one, backed up by a fair bit of evidence. It’s also new. The unreasonable extrapolation of this idea leads some to conclude that chance is a sufficient explanation of all life. But THAT idea was already ancient before the Beagle had her keel laid. “We were born by mere chance,” say the ungodly men in the book of Wisdom, “…and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our hearts.” In the last century before Christ, Lucretius explained in painstaking detail how everything from dirt to the human soul started with random swerving amongst an endless rain of primordial particles. Materialism doesn’t wait for scientific evidence, but goes right ahead and promises to explain everything very soon. We’d all be a bit less gullible if we kept in mind how old that promise is.