It Is A Pity That Nobody Expects the Holy Inquisition

http://www.catholic.com/blog/karl-keating/nobody-expects-the-modern-inquisition

89 total members, most of whom are probably not solely dedicated to the task at hand, a task so large as to defy Imagination!
My Lord, as a Protestant---a Quaker for heaven's sake---I find this appalling.  Far more resources need to be applied to the suppression of heresy within the Catholic church.  As a bonus, when you dig up heretics, you're likely to find a bunch of other miscreants in the same holes, like child molesters, embezzlers, and the like.  Lots of people are good for nothing, but almost nobody is BAD for nothing.

Does the Inquisition accept direct donations?  Could reactionaries endow, say, a few holy techies and dbas, and the like to make the perceived massive intelligence network and all seeing Eye of the Inquisition closer to a reality?  Or at least something we could believe exists and take comfort in rather than something that exists only in the fevered dreams of the far Left?

A Somewhat Surprising But Encouraging Development

I've talked before about the profound differences between the way the neurotypical and the most common non-neurotypical 'diplomatic models' work.  In short, the neurotypical likes you more the more favors he does for you.  The non-neurotypical likes you better the more favors you do for him.  Those who want to be somewhat deprecating would say that the non-neurotypical is selfish and the neurotypical in ungrateful.

But I'm not in the mood to deprecate anyone today.  Today let's consider how you, as a charity, might solicit contributions for a worthy cause from both of these populations.  The neurotypical, protest as he might, generally likes it when you 'over-communicate', and send him lots of solicitations.  The more often he writes you a check, the more likely he is to write you more of them in the future.  It's quite funny really watching neurotypicals CLAIM that they have a non-neurotypical diplomatic model but then demonstrate through their actions time and time again that their model is in fact bog standard.  Ever wonder why the typical modes of sales and solicitation are as they are?  It's because they work really well on this 95% of the population.

But let's say you want to solicit the non-neurotypical.  The more often you have to trouble them for a favor, the less they'll come to like you.  The dead giveaway is when you as the charity are getting autopay checks on a monthly or quarterly basis.  The more neurotypical a person is, the more they're likely to enjoy the act of writing you a check and mailing it to you, or better yet, giving it to you in person---assuming of course that they value your organization and its work.  The non-neurotypical is precisely the opposite.  To stay the sort of 'cheerful giver' that God loves, they pretty much have to automate it, and automate it they do.

Now the encouraging development is this---I was recently called by one of the charities my wife and I regularly support.  But the instant they recognized that we auto-pay them every month (they called on my name and we autopay with my wife's name), they immediately apologized for bothering us and thanked us for our support.  This tells me that at least some charities get it, and have developed a model that has at least adequate resolution on this topic.

Sometimes I'm Convinced I Have a Vast And Effective Counterintelligence Network

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/02/high-school-student-disarms-gunman-gets-suspended/

A network dedicated to my goal of the separation of School and State, unless, of course, counter-revolutionaries like myself control the state.  This incident is pretty seriously over the top, and exactly the kind of outrage I'd have my CI assets perform, if I had any such assets, which to the best of my knowledge, I do not.  There have been a bunch of similar gun-related outrages at schools lately.  Increasing the anger of the population is good.  Promoting more homeschooling is even better.  Forward the counter-revolution.

Perhaps The Outgoing Pope Did More To Clean Up The Catholic Church Than We Realized

http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/World.php?id=7089

Not being intimately familiar with the actual, as opposed to theoretical Catholic hierarchy, I'm not certain how big a deal removing 2-3 bishops a month is by modern standards, but I wager it represents a good fraction of the Pope's energies over an extended period of time.  I think most of us are going to miss Benedict when he resigns this week.

Administrivia: Comments

I've had a user or two report difficulties with embedded comments.  Accordingly, I'm going to try using full page comments instead.  Apparently blogger has issues with some browsers with embedded comments.

Philanthropy Actually Worthy Of The Name

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/20/breakthrough-prize-silicon-valley-entrepreneurs

Curing diseases and extending human life has always been something that Christians have worked towards.  It's nice to see some philanthropy actually going towards that purpose as opposed to primarily being employed to dispossess the demographic hegemony of me and mine.  Life extension research is pretty seriously undersubscribed from a societal point of view.  It needs a higher fraction of talent, preferably drained from the FIRE sector.

The Hunger of the Blood

My oldest of late has started nearly incessantly asking me for stories about one of his great-great-grandmothers.  I find this interesting because I've never terribly encouraged this, having only mentioned her obliquely a few times in his presence, and he doesn't know my mother all that well, having seen her only a few times given her geographic separation from him.  His knowledge of my mother's mother is even more tenuous, having seen her only once, and the great-great-grandmother passed away more than a decade before he was born.

But the hunger is there for stories and to feel some sort of connection to his ancestors.  I'd say the ancestor story is up there with the Bible story in terms of his favorite types.  From my experience with other little ones around his age---make no mistake, it appears that pregnancy is contagious within social circles as much or more so than is divorce---this doesn't seem all that unusual.  The stories don't have to be terribly unusual, or even funny, or heaven forbid, heroic to delight the little ones.  I suspect that there's a lot of 'blood and soil' built into every new child---even to the extent of a fairly strong attachment to the old house we brought him home to after he was born, from which we've moved so as to have adequate space for children to play and for his second little sister to arrive.  I am coming to believe this is at least part of the human 'firmware' which our present diseased society is trying like Hell to beat out of us.  Hopefully it won't succeed.  I don't think it will--I'm betting this impulse is at the root of ancestor worship and that's pretty perennial.