Quick Roundup 23

Kinda Neat

Probably the post which draws more hits to this blog than any other, my review of Sam Harris's The End of Faith, has just been listed at complete-review.com.

Venti This

Myrhaf writes a scene based on one of my pet peeves: The pidgin Starbucks tries to force its customers to use just to order coffee. Did you know they even have a guide out at their stores (and on the web)? At one point, it explains, for those of us who insist on using such gauche terms as "small", "medium", and "large", that:

[I]f we call your drink back in a way that's different from what you told us, we're not correcting you. We're just translating your order into "barista-speak" -- the standard way our baristas call out orders. This language gives baristas the info they need in the order they need it so they can make your drink as quickly and efficiently as possible.

That sounds almost plausible, if you can get past the fact that the first thing Starbucks does is unnecessarily rename their drink sizes from terms that are perfectly unambiguous to begin with. And then there's the breezy, informal usage in their explanation, which is obviously intended to sound trendy, like they hope their silly size names will. It's merchandizing plain and simple. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I wish they'd just admit it.

Call me a curmudgeon. Call me clueless if you must. But I standardized on the Queen's English long ago and I'm not going to use a made-up word like "venti" to order over-priced, over-roasted, astringent coffee when I'm desperate for caffeine.

A few things

... slipped my mind during last week, which was very busy for me.

Curtis Weeks hit the big 3-5 last week.

Robert Tracy, who was on hiatus, is back in the blogging game. I particularly liked the image in this post on Ken Davies, who uses a technique called trompe l'oeil.

When I made my template change last week, Eric Ryle's submarine news blog, The Sub Report, which I had listed as a news resource, ended up no longer on my blog's front page. I have added it to the blogroll.

The Undercurrent is seeking submissions for its sixth issue. These are due by March 1. (HT: Diana Hsieh, who also passes along an excellent marketing suggestion from Zach Oakes.)

Feeling Plucky?

Jason Roberts contemplates the motto I adopted as my own back in high school, Carpe diem.

This focus on production is the key distinction between the more unspecified, often hedonistic "Seize the day!" and the specified, hard working "Pluck the day!" It might sound better, however, to say "Produce today!" Nevertheless, this once inspiring phrase should have a more dear meaning to all Americans. That famous Yankee Ingenuity is in fact the same thing as "Carpe Diem!". And just like the Romans, it is now the Americans who dominate the world; not because of Imperial might, but because of Productive Ability. To put it more simply, Americans are just damn good pluckers.

And when you're done with that, go to his main page and see what else Jason, always a good read, has been up to lately.

The Sanction of the Victim

Is the real "nuclear bomb" in the current war against the West. As I said in a previous post:

Unless we all stand up to these brutes, we will be given a choice of death or "life" by their permission (in other words, living death). The former is preferable, and must be risked in order to have what they wish to deprive us of: our free lives (but I repeat myself).

These "men" are cowards. This is why they make threats against us in the hopes that we will simply do as they say, which is to give up our freedom, to die bloodlessly. The only solution is to stand up to them, to make them come after us and suffer the consequences of doing so, or to leave us alone.

Amit Ghate, who has been all over the Islamic war against freedom of speech (aka the cartoon jihad), provides an example, from Italy, of a particularly hideous "bloodless death": that of the Italian Reform Minister who started off defiantly wearing tee shirts with caricatures of Mohammed on them (buy similar here, HT: Alex Nunez) only to resign from office (apparently under pressure) after another round of riots, in Libya.

In a trend that I suspect will be accelerating, foreign Muslims have succeeded in ousting a politician for espousing legal views. Italian minister Roberto Calderoli has resigned due to protests in Libya! Islamists are learning that they don't even have to wage a war to subjugate the West, simply pointing to their own irrational feelings will be enough. It's just incredibly sad that those of us lucky enough to live in free countries don't seem to value that privilege one little bit....

I agree with Amit, except on one point: The Islamists have "succeeded" at nothing but screaming like spoiled children at indulgent parents. This Islamist "victory", like almost everything else they have "won" in this war, came from the West. As I said about their hotel attacks in Jordan not too long ago.

We already know that what the terrorists want is for us to submit to Islam, dhimmitude, or death. Every demand articulated by terrorists tends to be some tired variant of this theme, usually framed in such a way as to elicit guilt among consumers of the Western media for having "oppressed" the Islamic world for so long. This last is merely a rhetorical tactic designed to sap the will of the various Western electorates to continue fighting. Since we all know what the Islamists want already and reporting their demands as if they are new(s) with every fresh attack merely aids the enemy, our media should, from now on, refrain from discussing terrorist demands as a matter of policy.

By contrast, the barbarism of the terrorists, who know by observing the West that a more civilized way of living exists, and yet choose otherwise, is grossly underreported. Take their parasitism. Without the superior achievements of the civilization they say they despise and hope to eradicate, the terrorists would not: be able to synchronize their explosions, have the entire world know of them almost instantaneously, be able to broadcast the latest lame excuse for what has become merely the last in a long line of similar acts, have explosives in the first place, or have nice, modern hotels as targets. But our news media take the great achievements of the West for granted, making the terrorists seem much more than they really are: Impotent without the aid of Western technology.

One wonders how much more resolve our nation would have were the news media not so busily presenting the demands of terrorists to the voting Western public as if they -- delivered with threats -- were worthy of attention. One wonders how much more forcefully (and quickly) our war could be won were bad reporting not constantly undercutting the moral distinctions between the terrorists and the civilization they would enslave or destroy. One wonders how appealing terrorism would be to disaffected youths in the West if it were presented as the parasitic, unmanly activity it really is.

The key to winning this war is first and foremost to defend freedom of speech, which entails and will further enable the spread of better ideas than those that currently hold sway in the West. This war is solely about Western will. Islam has no power save as the animating force behind an army of zombies, which we can easily defeat.

But we must remember why our civilization is great. Andy Clarkson quotes Leonard Peikoff on this matter:

Civilization depends on reason; freedom means the freedom to think, then act accordingly; the rights of free speech and a free press implement the sovereignty of reason over brute force. If civilized existence is to be possible, the right of the individual to exercise his rational faculty must be inviolable.

The ultimate target of the Ayatollah, as of all mystics, is not a particular "blasphemy," but reason itself, along with its cultural and political expressions: science, the Industrial Revolution, the American Revolution. If the assault succeeds, the result will be an Age of Unreason -- a new Dark Ages.

The Islamists are currently winning with the help of the West, specifically with the help of their active sympatizers in the media and with the silence and inaction of those who will not stand up to them either because of fear or from a failure to appreciate the gravity of the situation. It will be up to the better elements of the West, those of us who see what is at stake and have the courage to make a stand, to carry the day.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added announcements on The Undercurrent and The Sub Report. Added note on my review of The End of Faith.