Charlie Kirk Was Stupid

"When people stop talking, that's when you get violence, that's when civil war happens."

Charlie Kirk was not only stupid, he was dangerously wrong.

He suffered under the delusion, a feminist delusion, that if we all just sat around a campfire and talked things out, then everything would work out and violence could be avoided.

This is nonsense. Once you have made your position absolutely crystal clear, once your opposition has absolutely no illusions about where you stand, then to the extent that your position contravenes his on a position of central importance, he has no choice. One of you will be fired, be removed. One of you will die. 

The Socratic dialogues is the story of a man who spent a lot of time trying to be as crystal clear as possible. The state executed him. President John Kennedy publicly pleaded, quoting Isaiah, "Come, let us reason together!" Isaiah was sawn in half, Kennedy was shot in the head. Charlie Kirk insisted on repeating his arguments over and over until his positions were crystal clear. He wouldn't stop, so he was shot. 

Poor communications permit compromise. The refusal to define terms, the willingness to engage in equivocations, allows your opponent wiggle room. As Sun Tzu says, "When you surround an army, leave an outlet free." Always give your enemy the means to escape, so he doesn't decide to die on his feet instead of on his knees. 

Crystal clear communications removes the enemy's ability to escape. Unclear communications allows the opponent to think he may have misunderstood, that perhaps you do share common ground and he can eventually bring you around to his way of thinking. But clarity... clarity is the death of this hope.

This is why bureaucracies engage in obfuscation. They are designed to make sure no one knows exactly what the government means or wants. Entire decades of foreign policy are built around deliberately refusing to clarify what America's position is on Taiwan or Korea. Israel won't say whether it does or doesn't have nukes. The examples could be easily multiplied.

This is the female mode of communication. Women are weaker than men, they will consistently lose in direct confrontations, so they obfuscate. They hint, they misdirect, they play mind games, redefine language, do whatever is necessary to avoid clarity, to give themselves wiggle room in front of a superior foe.

This is not the way men communicate. This is also why Ephesians commands men to die in the marriage. Women aren't capable of the direct, clear communications necessary to carry on a marriage. The Scriptures specifically deny that women are good at any of this. Women are described as honey tongued, smoother than oil, but more bitter than wormwood. According to Scripture, women are the source of infidelity and sin, not men.

According to the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, the person closest to a task should bear the most responsibility and direction for that task. Men have headship precisely because Scripture sees men as closer to the absolute heart of marriage, of personal relationships, the master of communications and interpersonal connections. Women don't have headship in a marriage because women aren't very good at being married. Women are not at the heart of marriage.

The traditional three purposes of marriage are: 

1. improving the sanctity of the spouses, 
2. the procreation of children
3. remedy for concupiscence

But procreation, which is the specialty of women, is not at the heart of marriage. If it were, Josephite marriages could not be a real thing. Yet the Church teaches that Josephite marriage, which shuns all sexual intercourse, is actually superior to a procreative marriage. 

If women were really better than men at communications, personal relationships, or marriage itself, then women would have headship. Women don't have headship precisely because they aren't good at any of these things. Women initiate 80% of the divorces because in general, women are lousy at communications, lousy at interpersonal relations, lousy at marriage. That is Scripture. That is why Scripture says men must die in marriage, but women must only submit.

In Holy Orders, the parishioner is required to submit to the priest, the priest required to submit to the bishop. The grace of the sacrament means the bishop is better at carrying authority than the priest, the priest better than the lay person. Marriage is also an ordo. So, similarly, in the ordo of marriage, the grace of the sacrament makes the man better than the woman at all these things.

But now I am communicating Church doctrine far too clearly. Yet, the heart of the Christian message is simply this: 

The minute Charlie Kirk insisted on clearly communicating his position, clearly repeating his position, clearly removing all possible doubt about what his position might be, he had to die. 

If you teach your children that they can "talk it out" without resorting to violence, you are either lying to them, or you are teaching them how to lie. If they really, truly, talk it out, someone is going to die.

Heddy Lamar Did Not Invent Frequency Hopping

 I'm just a little tired of seeing this trope on various social media platforms.

Heddy was a beautiful women, she ran naked through the woods and was filmed doing it, which was the basis for her later success, but she really did not have a head for engineering. She mostly just stole stuff from the men around her and acted as a marketing girl. 

It is true that Lamarr and her unlikely partner, the radical modernist composer George Antheil, hold a patent for an important radio-transmission method that finds its way into several modern communications technologies, including Bluetooth. But it is equally true that their patent was hardly the first in this area. It is further true that the earliest operational systems employing this technique were created after World War II independently of their patent, and the essential idea can be traced back nearly to the birth of radio itself.

And more:

Now incontestable evidence shows that the U.S. Patent Office itself dismissed the idea that Lamarr and Antheil were first to propose frequency hopping. David R. Irvin, a patent agent and engineer with 44 patents to his credit, has examined the original documents related to the invention, which are preserved by the Patent Office and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History

And still more:

Abstract: Analysis of primary-source documents archived by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and the U.S. Patent Office refutes the widely accepted legend that actress Hedy Lamarr and musician George Antheil invented frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) communication.

Polytheism Guards Against Divorce

 According to Pew Research, Hindus have the highest rate of marriage and the lowest rate of divorce.

When the survey breaks down the various religious groups by marital status, the findings show that Hindus (78%) and Mormons (71%) are the most likely to be married. These two traditions, along with members of evangelical churches, also have the lowest rates of never-married members. Hindus also have the lowest divorce rate of any group; only 5% have been divorced.

So, apparently converting to Hinduism is a great way of assuring you have a long and happy marriage.

Also, if you want children, Christianity may not be the way to go. Again, Hinduism and Islam are apparently more "pro-life" than any Christian group.

The more ya' know, huh? 

Bacchanal and the Olympics

What does the Bacchanal have to do with the Olympics?

According to Livy, the Bacchanal was a murderous cultic instrument of conspiracy against the Roman state. Livy points out that seven thousand cult leaders and followers were arrested, and that most were executed. He considered the Bacchanalia scandal to be one of several indications of Rome's inexorable moral decay. The earliest version of the Bacchanalia was open to women only. The cult held particular appeal to those of uneducated and fickle mind (levitas animi), such as the young, plebeians, women and "men most like women". It was confined to the Italian peninsula.

The Olympics, on the other hand, were officially sponsored and recognized by all participating GREEK city-states with a universal peace treaty. Greek athletes modelled themselves on the physical competitions of the gods themselves. It was restricted to an all-male audience, and only the strong were permitted to compete and attend. The point of the games was to win prizes by displaying the highest ideals of masculine honor and courage.

In short, Bacchanal, a privately-funded Roman festival, has absolutely nothing to do with the Olympics, a multiple state-sponsored Panhellenic Greek festival.

Persons are Products and Always Have Been

The pro-life position is that human persons are not products, and should not be turned into a commodity. While that may be true in a theological sense, it has almost never been true in a practical sense. Humanity has commodified persons for all of history.

That's what slavery is, and slavery appeared in every culture on every continent for all of recorded history, universally.

Out of the entirety of history, there has been a period of only about a century when people were not commodifying other people. Between the English-American anti-slavery movement of the early 1800s through roughly the mid-1900s, cultures were forced to back away from slavery by European military fiat. During that same period, we were unable to widely implement abortion due to medical risks.

But that's all done with now. As Islam surges, slavery resurges, and as tech grows, abortion predominates. That golden century has passed. Persons are, again, products.

The Soul of the Matter: A Theological Problem

This is a problem for Catholic theology.

In 2002, Lydia Fairchild, a mother from Washington State, faced a baffling and distressing situation when DNA tests required for public assistance showed she was not the biological mother of her two children—despite having physically given birth to them. The results raised suspicion of fraud or surrogacy, and authorities even considered removing her children from her custody. When she gave birth to her third child in a hospital under supervision, the same outcome occurred: DNA tests again claimed she was not the mother.

Fairchild’s legal battle intensified, and she stood on the verge of losing her children based on genetic evidence alone. Her attorney, Alan Tindell, began researching unusual biological conditions and came across a similar case involving a woman named Karen Keegan. This led to the discovery that Lydia was a chimera—a person with two sets of DNA. In her case, it was caused by absorbing a fraternal twin in the womb.

A cervical DNA test finally matched her children's DNA, confirming her biological relationship to them. This critical breakthrough not only saved Lydia’s family but also raised important concerns about the reliability of DNA evidence in legal settings. Her case became a landmark example of how rare genetic conditions like chimerism can challenge long-standing scientific and legal assumptions.

Lydia absorbed her twin. The first and most obvious theological question: what happens to the soul infused at conception? 

Different reproductive tract vs somatic DNA raises the question of whose DNA she is transmitting when she has children. Is the different DNA considered hers by right of conquest, for having essentially eaten her twin in the womb? This is not an isolated problem. About 8% of fraternal twins could end up with blood chimerism. In the case of triplets, the chance for blood chimerism rises up to 21%. True tetragametic chimerism (such as Lydia's case) is believed to be rare, with only 100 documented cases in the medical literature, but it may be more common than once believed. It is possible that up to 10% of singleton births may have started as twin pregnancies.

Lydia's case is a less obvious form of the even more pressing problem presented by Abby and Brittany Hensel, conjoined twins who share a common torso and common reproductive tract. Abby Hensel, one of the conjoined twins, married Josh Bowling. Now, the only difference between Lydia Fairchild and the Hensels is the latter has two fully developed brains. But, as noted, the Hensels do share a common reproductive tract.

So, if it was licit for Lydia to conceive, carry and give birth to children that do not share her DNA, then why would it not be licit for the Hensels to have children, especially since Abby and Brittany have the same DNA? In what sense is the Hensels' marriage valid, given that the two were already conjoined into one body, so that both women are having sex with one man, but only one of those women is married to that man? Is the other woman always committing adultery? Or is Josh actually married to both women? 

But if the Hensel's marriage is invalid, then in what sense is Lydia Fairchild's marriage valid? Unlike the Hensels, Lydia's reproductive tract is actually someone else's body. Now, true, the other body belongs to someone who is not ensouled and alive, as far as we know, but her reproductive tract is certainly not "hers" in the same way her somatic cells are "hers", are they? If we argue that a baby in the womb is someone else's body because of DNA, then Lydia's reproductive tract is also someone else's body because of DNA. If we argue that her reproductive tract belongs to her, then the baby in the womb also belongs to her in very much the same way, and the somatic argument against abortion collapses.

But, if we try to keep the pro-life somatic argument alive, and insist her reproductive tract is not hers because of its different DNA, then is having sex and conceiving with Lydia a form of necrophilia? The organs are alive, but the soul that animates the DNA is not the original infused soul, again, as far as we know. When a person dies (that is, when a person's soul separates from the body), individual organs within the corpse can stay alive for hours or even days. This is what allows for organ transplant. If we argue that the soul of Lydia's twin has departed, then Lydia's body has just kept her deceased twin's body on "life support" for Lydia's entire life. Thus, a strong argument can be made that having sex with Lydia really is really just necrophilia with her dead twin. The Catholic Church does not permit necrophilia. 

So, can marriage with a true tetragametic chimera be valid? Under what circumstances? And how would you know that you married a chimera if no DNA testing has been done? Is that grounds for an annulment? 

The Catholic Church isn't equipped to deal with this. 

Silicon-Based Persons

Jimmy Akins is not the brightest bulb on the tree. He is of the opinion that AI cannot be a person, cannot be ensouled by God. He's got absolutely no theological reason to hold this position.

Remember when the fake Bayside apparition claimed IVF children had no immortal souls, because the IVF embryos were created outside the human body? Condemned by the Church.

Consider that sperm and egg cells can now be created by manipulating normal somatic cells. It's called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), and it works: 

"Japanese scientists describe how they've already perfected IVG in mice. The researchers used cells from the tails of adult mice to create induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, and then coaxed those iPS cells to become mouse sperm and eggs. They've even used those sperm and eggs to make embryos and implanted the embryos into the wombs of female mice, which gave birth to apparently healthy mouse pups."

Would a human being created this way NOT have a soul? Obviously, that's absurd. Any human being created this way would have a soul.

The question is, would God create and infuse a soul, create a person, in something made of silicon instead of something made of carbon? There's nothing in Scripture that says He won't. And if we can manipulate carbon-based materials to create a new human life, then what's so holy and sacred about carbon?

Alien life forms are not beyond the ability of God to create, and we participate in God's creation of new human persons, so why would He deny us the ability to participate in the creation of silicon based persons? Perhaps we are meant to participate in the creation of every new person, human or alien, so God is just waiting for us to figure out how to build the silicon soma so that He can create and infuse the necessary rational soul. 

Akins is just making up shit because he needs clicks, and he's more likely to get clicks from stupid and ignorant people than he is from others, so he's playing to his audience.

The Vaccine Paradox

1. Vaccines work.
2. Vaccines have negative sequelae
3. Diseases have negative sequelae

Discussion: at some point an effective vaccine will drive the incidence of disease so low, that your are more likely to be injured by the vaccine than your are to catch and be injured by the disease.

Consider polio. For the inactivated virus, the risk of anaphylactic shock is 1-2 per million doses. For the oral polio virus, the risk is estimated at 1 case per 2.4 million doses distributed, with higher risk for the first dose (1 in 750,000). This equates to a probability of approximately 0.00004% per dose, or 400 chances out of 1 billion. The attenuated virus in OPV can circulate and revert to a virulent form, causing outbreaks. This is rare, with fewer than 1,000 cases globally since 2000.

The global population stands at roughly 8 billion. In 2024, there were 62 confirmed cases of wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) globally, all reported in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the only two countries where WPV1 remains endemic. Afghanistan reported 23 cases, and Pakistan reported 39 cases.

So, the polio vaccine has 400 chances out of 1 billion of harming you, while you have less than 8 chances per billion of catching and suffering adverse consequences from polio.

At this point, for most people in the world, the polio vaccine is far, far more dangerous than the probability of catching polio.

The 21st Century Information Barons

Information technology corporations own

• the data storage space, 
• the data transmission space, 
• the data analysis space, 

and those same corporations will soon start locking up the energy space in order to guarantee their holds on storage, transmission, and analysis.

Data determines everyone's future, so IT corporations determine everyone's future. They know this. The politicians also know this. 

For most of human history, the elite were the people who controlled communication with the gods or with God (for the monotheists). As technology advanced in the Middle Ages (500 to 1500 AD), via horse collars with heavy plows and three-field agriculture, the control of society shifted to secular kings, royalty who were not viewed as gods. The new agricultural and transport techniques permitted by literally harnessing the power of the horse permitted nations to develop military power without necessarily referencing religion.

Notice, that throughout the Middle Ages, religion is still important. In fact, it grows at an accelerating rate in Europe throughout this period, but the locus of power had already begun to split. This was reflected in things like the investiture controversy and the calling of the Crusades. The first four Crusades were powerful and called by Popes, but subsequent crusades, such as the Children's Crusade, were either not called by popes at all, or were essentially useless. While the Pope called the Albigensian Crusade, the northern crusades local royalty had already put those crusades in motion well before the Pope sanctioned them. By 1200 AD, religious power had already begun to fracture. 

As control of communication shifted from the clerical monastics to royalty, and subsequently to anyone who owned a printing press, knowledge of additional technologies, like gunpowder and time-keeping, also spread and shifted. The Church tried to control information by establishing an Index of Forbidden Books and by burning books in public ceremonies. It didn't work. 

Religion didn't just lose control of information, but of time itself. Cathedrals used to be constructed as enormous master seasonal clocks, but by 1800, the cathedral's time-keeping function began to be eroded by tech that had reduced the size and cost of clocks so they could be used even in homes. Society built itself around time that was no longer sacred. Religion no longer controlled the military. It no longer controlled time-keeping. It no longer controlled the transmission of information. 

Religion still exists, but the locus of power has shifted to those who controlled the technology that defines society. Advanced tech allowed secular politicians to step into the role that god-kings once held, that the priesthood and Church once held. But even as politicians rose to power, the corporations that controlled the technology rose to supplant them. England endured a 300-year long struggle between Parliament and the British East India Company, vying to see who would dominate. The EIC dominated agriculture and transport in multiple countries around the world, but  it wasn't enough. The EIC eventually lost. 

It's not clear who will win this time around. Many science fiction/fantasy novels posit a future in which corporations rule worlds. The tech companies have already vertically integrated data. If it can add  power generation into the stack, that should cover all the bases. Like priests, politicians will continue to exist, people will continue to vote for them, thinking the politicians can actually do something. But, like the priests, the politicians will be useless. Information technology corporations will rule the world.