Got a business? Ever get a (maybe undeserved) bad review? The owner of a diner in St. Pete got a little revenge – albeit after he closed it down:
I remember a bar where the owner used to try insulting everyone that walked in the door. Made him semi-famous and very popular. Maybe a little fire with fire is the way to combat the bad reviews. One notes from the TBT story that everyone loves a good review.
If you’re in Greenville, SC, drop by and see the Pipers – down by the river, kind of in between the hotels and the trolls under the bridge (which, in retrospect, might have been ducks…). Fantastic art and! with even the smallest purchase, you get a glass of Chardonnay from the proprietor. At least I did; it really helped me through a hot afternoon of shopping and duck dodging.
Five Stars!
meredithpiper.com
I also recommend Smoke on the Water – just down Main from artist’s row. The brisket with potato ball thing.
Those are your free gifts de jour. Happy Father’s Day!
It’s not your imagination. People are really getting dumber.
Over the weekend I started a draft on a similar subject, something I noticed. Here and now, I finish it with a few changes. Those were brought about by several stories which surfaced yesterday, which largely validated what I was suspecting all along.
Young people’s IQ scores have started to deteriorate after climbing steadily since Wold War Two, a new study has found.
The fall, which equates to about seven points per generation, is believed to have begun with those born in 1975, according to the first authoritative study of the phenomenon.
“Wold” War Two is likely a plain, old error and not an example of the point…
It’s true. But it’s not technology causing the trend. It’s not the fish or lack thereof. And it is not some nebulous social “force.” There are three causes:
1) Smarter people are having fewer children, passing on fewer genes. This has particularly dire consequences for the West. This works in conjunction with the other two.
2) Lower-IQ peoples are increasing in number, passing on their genes.
3) Modern Western immigration is geared toward the importation of non-Western peoples from countries with populations known to correspond with number two, immediately above.
What prompted my drafting earlier is immaterial. Last fall I reported on the various national IQs and the world average (86). Then, I wrote:
“I’m a little surprised the USA came in as high as it did. I would not be surprised if that number (and the global average) slips a little with each coming decade and/or generation. …”
Back then I had it in my head that the US was somewhere in the mid-90’s, I’d have settled for 95 (and this wasn’t via random guessing). 98 is just too high. More likely, it’s around 94.5. It’s not that big of a difference but, as its a point on a downward trend, it’s especially troublesome.
Last year I quipped: “98 will have trouble returning to the moon. 86 will not go the first time. 72 might have trouble finding the thing with a telescope.” This principle applies to all areas of society. Space travel is one thing. Running water, indoor plumbing, electricity, gasoline refinement, and relative judicial stability are others.
It’s become a vicious cycle – and yes, 1975 would be about the time it should have started manifesting itself. A crazed and deteriorating culture drives brighter people to work longer and harder while embracing the selfish and the trivial and delaying or foregoing starting families. They pay taxes to support the others, who keep having children. This is, obviously, not sustainable. Those on the right tail of the curve are increasingly squeezed by those in the shifting middle.
And, societally, it’s the middle, the average that really counts. If you’re reading this and understanding it, you’re above average. Surely you have noticed the decline of late during your interactions with the masses. It’s real. And it’s a real problem.
Others have noticed as well. Vox Day on the subject yesterday:
Vox Day/Youtube.
By the way – related good news here: Youtube assigns “related” channels to a particular creator. How? I’m not exactly sure. Regardless, I now have three related channels:
Vox appeared last night. It’s an honor to be algorithmically included in his and Stefan’s company. Banshee Moon was a prepper-esque channel. Now it’s more a bikini lifestyle channel – which I am also proud to associate with…
Note: the decline in the schools does not really factor into the general lowering. It fits with the general decline, however. Children with less base intelligence have less need for real education.
A California high school valedictorian was abruptly cut off when she tried to speak about sexual assault during her graduation speech, according to reports.
“I felt like I was worthless,” recent Petaluma High School grad Lulabel Seitz told CNN about the incident.
The 17-year-old began her speech on June 2 recalling the students’ first days as freshmen, then went on to talk about devastating wildfires, teacher strikes and her own family’s struggles.
But when it seemed like she was about to bring up her own sexual assault, which allegedly happened on school grounds — her mic was cut off.
In a video of the incident, the teen is visibly upset as she yells inaudible words to someone off camera.
Moments later, her peers and people in the crowd started chanting, “Let her speak! Let her speak!”
After nearly a minute of silence, she returns to her seat.
Seitz — a member of student government who played trumpet in jazz band and maintained a GPA of over 4.0 — said administrators warned her not to “speak against them” in her speech.
But the night before commencement, as she watched Martin Luther King Jr. speeches, she was inspired to speak out.
“When they cut my mic, I was appalled at them,” Seitz told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. “I thought this is a public school with freedom of speech.”
Seitz, who is heading to Stanford in the fall, decided to post the uncensored version of her speech on YouTube.
That speech contains the line: “Even learning on a campus where some people defend perpetrators of sexual assault and silence their victims, we didn’t let that drag us down.”
The teen said she reported her assault, but that the school did nothing about it.
The definitional best student at this “school” was assaulted (I’ll just take her word) and the school did nothing (for her). They did do something against her, shutting her speech down following intimidation. Double abuse. This case is reminiscent of an episode in Florida wherein a middle school girl as abused on campus. Her school did nothing. Frustrated, she reached out to local talk radio for support and help. The school responded – by suspending her.
Our valedictorian by no means should feel worthless. That sentiment is rightfully reserved for her failed school. Thank God she’s moved beyond their reach. Of course, they did nothing about the abuse! They’re in the same business themselves.
She now surely knows that public “schools” and freedom, of speech and otherwise, do not go together. She’s going to be fine. She’s one of those high IQ students who simply cannot be held down, no matter who tries. She’ll do well at Stanford. She’ll be a success.
The “school” won’t. It isn’t. It cannot claim any responsibility for the success of those who happen to excel despite the torment. I don’t even need to consult with one of those services that tell just how bad the schools are; I know this one is failed. Abolish it. Now!
I’m sure they did warn her not to “speak against them.” Her disregard speaks to her fortitude. I’ll also speak against them. Damn you morons to hell! Stop harming children. How’s that?
This is pathetic. It is also the norm these days. As these are our children, can we really continue to tolerate this? I think not.
And, by fiction, for once I don’t mean a goofy political poem. A short, short story:
It was as delightful a late-October afternoon as anyone could want, cooler and quieter than most. Wendell “Dell” Hubbard looked out the office window as the leaves shimmered in a breeze, their autumnal transformation slowly proceeding. It was a great afternoon, a great Friday afternoon. So far as Wendell knew he was the last man in the building. Friday’s usually meant leaving a little early. And now it was a little late – five past five. ‘No rush,’ he thought as his gaze returned to the stack of files on his desk. His blushing bride and her sister were held up at the family beach house for the weekend. He could afford to take it easy. Stay a little longer. Get a little more done. Later, perhaps, a cigar and a little Scotch was in order.
Last week’s TPC column on high schools and its predecessor generated heavy readership and commentary. The people, some of them having direct experience in the government prison schools, raised a myriad of issues even I hadn’t thought of – from expenses to parent disinterest to fidget spinners. All seemed willing to explore options in search of real education.
Of course many parents choose homeschooling as a means of protecting their children from federal education “reforms” such as Common Core. Other parents are motivated by a desire to protect their children from the cultural Marxism that has infiltrated many schools.
The spread of cultural Marxism has contributed to the dumbing down of public education. Too many government schools are more concerned with promoting political correctness than ensuring that students receive a good education. Even if cultural Marxism did not dumb down education, concerns that government schools are indoctrinating children with beliefs that conflict with parents’ political, social, and even religious beliefs would motivate many families to homeschool.
Even when government schools are not intentionally promoting cultural Marxism or other left-wing ideologies, they are still implicitly biased toward big government. For example, how many government schools teach the Austrian economics explanation for the Great Depression — much less question the wisdom of central banking — or critically examine the justifications for America’s hyper-interventionist foreign policy?
…
Another installment of TPC cometh tomorrow – and of a totally different make than the usual. Stay tuned.
At ceremonies coast to coast these meanings serve a justifiable purpose. The valedictorian speaks first to bid the class farewell to the sheltered academic lives the members have known. The salutatorian then speaks to the promise of the coming years. Or, something like that.
Those acquainted with the works of John Taylor Gatto or who have children of school age, surely understand the decline of quality in American public education. Gatto was formerly New York’s teacher of the year (State and City). His distinguished career spanned decades. Now he speaks and writes of the critical need for drastic school reform. His writing is frequently published at lewrockwell.com. He is the author of The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling (2000).
Gatto has related the American model of public education to Soviet-era brainwashing:
After a gunman opened fire on students in Parkland, Florida, the phones started ringing at the Texas Home School Coalition, and they haven’t stopped yet.
The Lubbock-based organization has been swamped with inquiries for months from parents seeking safer options for their kids in the aftermath of this year’s deadly school massacres, first in Parkland and then in Santa Fe, Texas.
“When the Parkland shooting happened, our phone calls and emails exploded,” said coalition president Tim Lambert. “In the last couple of months, our numbers have doubled. We’re dealing with probably between 1,200 and 1,400 calls and emails per month, and prior to that it was 600 to 700.”
Demands to restrict firearms and beef up school security have dominated the debate following the shootings, but flying under the radar is the surge of interest in homeschooling as parents lose faith in the ability of public schools to protect students from harm.
That’s violent physical harm, the risk of which is actually, statistically lower than it was 20 years ago. The greater danger, outside an immediate, isolated incident, is the admitted harm the schools do by graduating students who can’t read or calculate.
I was with a friend at a South Carolina Publix last year. We walked in, she looked around, and then asked someone where the scale was? They didn’t have one. Turns out that’s a strictly FLA affair:
The scales have actually been there since Publix founder George Jenkins opened his first “food palace” Publix in 1940. At the time, the only opportunity to weigh yourself was at the doctor, or maybe by finding a coin-operated scale. Jenkins offered it as a free service, and it stuck.
That original Publix scale still works. It now sits in the late founder’s old corporate office, where new associates see it when they take tours.
The model No. 2830 people weigher found in a new Publix today is identical to the ones the old Toledo Scale company started manufacturing in Ohio around 1950. Mettler Toledo, a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Switzerland, now makes industrial equipment, precision lab instruments and high-tech scale components. But for decades, they kept manufacturing the low-tech, but reliable, people weighers for Publix, essentially the only company that wanted them.
…
In a 1988 feature in the Orlando Sentinel, writer Donna Bouffard, with the help of store employees in Winter Park, identified seven recurring categories of scale users, including “pickpockets,” who set aside keys, change and wallets,” “bashfuls,” who go to great lengths to make sure nobody is looking, “hoppers,” who leap on in a single bound, and “mechanics,” who insist this thing must be broken.
Now you know, if you ever wanted to. I thought it was a So. Tampa thing as just about all the customers are in shape and would want to confirm that metrologically. Maybe it’s all just as well. At that one SC store, there would be a lot of scale mechanics…
Usually right up front. Martha Asencio Rhine/ TB Times.
Last for I celebrated Memorial Day at an aquarium and attached museum. Not a fish fancier, I did delight in a cigar box.
This year I loafed at the gym and then enjoyed a cigar. I think that’s about all for the day.
Wait, later I need to wrap up the TPC article for Wednesday. I just read a little reinforcement in this month’s copy of American Consequences, which you might want to inspect.
PERRIN LOVETT 
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