Crys and William have reacted to the news of the death of Stephen Hawking, and I have little to add except that he was a man who earned respect for both his contributions to science and his struggle against a debilitating disease. Also, he had a sense of humor.

It would be so useful if bad people were walking around with a great big neon “L” for loser attached to their heads — it would make it easier to avoid them. Unfortunately, they don’t. They’re not that stupid that they’d advertise their loserhood.

Or are they?

For years now I’ve noticed a very handy written/oral flag some of the bad agents willingly throw out there: it’s two magic words, “cultural Marxism”. Trust me on this, anytime someone starts babbling about cultural Marxism, the Frankfurt school, white genocide, any of that crap, you’ve got ’em pegged: they’re neo-Nazi ninnies. If, like me, you’re still confused about why you’re getting called a cultural Marxist in the first place, here’s an excellent overview of the history of the term. Bonus points for a cool deep German accent.

One thing briefly mentioned in the video is that the ninnies are beginning to realize that the words “cultural Marxism” is a give-away, and that they can’t even define it or explain the evidence behind the concept, so they’re transitioning to a new term: “post-modernism”. It’s the root of all evil, don’t you know. Of course, they can’t explain that one, either, but they trust that no one wants to be labeled with it, so they’re going for it. Also, the word has another useful property, in that it actually is a real thing, unlike “cultural Marxism”, and it has a real and useful meaning that is understood by people who actually use the concept, so it’s going to be harder to sort out. Not everyone who says “post-modernism” is a crank, just the ones who use it as a synonym for degenerate cultural practices and say it with a sneer.

We almost shared the same birthday, so I think of her every year on 11 March. She would have been 50 today.

Hey, all, I took a blog break yesterday — it’s been a long semester so far and I just decided to cut off one thing for a bit. It was…different (that’s Minnesota slang, I’ll let others translate). I’ll ease back in today.

First on the agenda: my birthday was on Friday, and I got inundated with greetings on Twitter and Facebook and all those social media places, and I did not reply to them. Not because I’m a bitter, hateful old man now, but simply because there were so dang many of them that if I tried I would have been sitting there all day typing the same short phrases over and over again. So I will now simply broadcast one mass “THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I HAD A LOVELY TIME. I’D HAVE INVITED YOU TO THE PARTY BUT THE WEATHER WAS TERRIBLE AND I DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH CAKE. SINCERELY, PZ.” Although actually I had tacos, but if I’d told you that you would have been even more annoyed that I didn’t invite you. Sorry. But really, thanks!

For those of you hoping for news from the future, I have to tell you that so far being 61 is awesome. It’s a prime number, you know, and you get all kinds of superpowers on prime birthdays; now I have to wait 6 more years before I get another base power boost. It’s also the sum of two squares, so you get to feel as good as you did when you were 5, 6, 25, and 36, which is nice.

All in all, I highly recommend living until you are at least 61. I encourage all of you young’uns to do so.

A Minnesota Democrat, Linda Slocum, has proposed some sensible gun control regulations for the state.

Slocum’s bill would expand the definition of assault weapons and ban those weapons, prohibit many private gun sales, outline felony charges for possession of bump stocks, silencers and high-capacity magazines, restrict ammunition sales to licensed dealers, and outlaw gun ownership for individuals who fail to pay court-ordered child support.

Those restrictions sound reasonable. Heck, they sound excellent, and I’d vote for Slocum if she were my representative. However, you can guess what happened next.

Thousands of angry emails have poured into the office of state Rep. Linda Slocum (D-Richfield) since she introduced the proposed restrictions, but one of those stood out, reported KMSP-TV.

“He threatened to kill me,” Slocum told the TV station. “(He said,) I have my gun, and I’m ready to come and get you — and it was very threatening.”

Other messages compared her to Hitler, called her a whale or included lewd comments and profanity, but Slocum said she would seek charges if that man called again.

One of Slocum’s aides received what he described as a threatening call while working late on Feb. 26, but state police investigated and decided not to press charges, reported the Pioneer Press.

“He said, ‘You better hide because I have my gun and I know where you are,’” said legislative assistant Adrian Benjamin, who reported the threat to capitol police — which then passed on the report to the Minnesota State Patrol.

And there you have it. That’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to get rational gun laws in this country — because so many of the gun-fondlers are irrational, violent lunatics, and they are armed.

Just like I do! But instead of mocking the wacky beliefs of his correspondents, Dreher likes to praise them and agree with them. I guess he gets better letter-writers than I do.

But no! This guy is nuts. He senses omens of cultural armageddon in the Academy Awards. He is apparently very concerned that the Best Picture award went to a movie that was all about…bestiality. It’s not just cats and dogs living together, it’s human women copulating with fish! That’s all that movie was about!

Full confession: I very much liked The Shape of Water, although I would actually have favored Get Out winning the big award. It’s a nice, gentle story of love triumphing against adversity in a fantastic context. I guess that makes me a sexual prevert and degenerate now.

They haven’t seen the movie, but these two are aghast at what they think is the plot.

He’s talking about The Shape Of Water, a movie in which the female protagonist falls in love with a humanoid amphibian, and has sex with it (“cod coitus,” according to Sonny Bunch). The reader continues:

Even more astounding is that no one seemed to care: the critics, the media and now the Academy all applauded at director Guillermo Del Toro’s “boldness”. The Best Screenplay and Best Foreign Film winners — respectively about a pederastic love story and a trans woman fighting prejudice — look almost tame in comparison, though they’re symptomatic too.

But the movie is so much more! The villain, the excellent Michael Shannon, is a deeply conservative, materialist man who is also a kneejerk Christian — see? Dreher’s ilk have a prominent role in the movie. One of the protagonists is a gay man. The heroine is a disabled poor woman with a mysterious past, who also seems to have gills. The “humanoid amphibian” has supernatural powers, and is actually a kind of god, worshipped in his native land.

There’s so much they could have hated if only they’d seen the movie.

But gosh, they must suffer greatly at the movies if the idea of a trans woman fighting prejudice repulses them. They see everything as an attack.

I agree with the things you say most of the time, but something I think you miss is how the turmoil we’re witnessing is basically a transfer of power from “regular” people to the freaks. Everything previously deemed inferior, abnormal, marginal, obscene is now not only normalized but embraced, even glorified. In his book The Antichrist, Nietzsche denounced Christianity as a perversion of all good and healthy values. He called for a total revolution in values, to overturn Christian morality and replace it with its opposite. That’s what we’re seeing now, at a very deep level.

This wouldn’t matter that much if our new lords weren’t so full of rancor and determined to get their revenge on those who humiliated them, hence the attacks on the various “privileges” that systematically target the representatives of the old order: patriarchy, masculinity, heterosexuality, “whiteness” and — yes — Christianity. As a member of a minority group, this shouldn’t worry me so much, as many aspects of said “old order” were not worth preserving or friendly to me. But I’m telling you, what is coming threatens to be much worse because it’s revenge, not justice.

The Shape of Water is not a revenge story. It’s a love story about people finding happiness outside of conventionality. If you want to see a movie about rancor and revenge and people who attack those who are different, the remake of Death Wish is playing right now. I’m sure torture-porn is more in keeping with Christian values.

Dreher ends with an apocalyptic warning:

Listen to me, conservative Christian readers:

• there are no politicians on earth capable of turning this tide of decadence; the power of culture is far too strong;
• you cannot expect your children to be salt and light to a culture that gives its highest honor to a movie celebrating bestiality as an act of liberation, and a “love letter to love”;
• soon, people who believe the things you do will be regarded as perverted and dangerous to the common good; are you ready for that?

You had better be ready for that. The handwriting is on the wall, and the cracks are widening in the foundations.

Again, if we’re going to prognosticate on the future of our nation based on movies, The Shape of Water gives me far more hope than Death Wish. I’d rather see a love letter to love than a celebration of bloody violent murder.

It used to be that I’d only get ranty, incoherent, ill-informed email from devout Christians. I guess we’ve won and converted them all to ranty, incoherent, ill-informed atheists now. Victory!

You are a stalker

Why do u continue to stalk Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and shermer and other NA.[Define “stalk”. You seem to think it synonymous with “criticize”. Does that mean you’re stalking me?] You vermin. You are obsessed. Just leave these people alone. [meme?] You have target. You really think you are smarter then a PhD in neuroscience.[All bow down before the Ph.D. in Neuroscience] Sam Harris is like really really smart [who else is like really, really smart?], you couldn’t get a PhD in that field.[I don’t know why I find that amusing]

You side with irrational blue hair women [More accurately, I don’t use hair color as a criterion for deciding who I side with]. Hysterically pathetic “girls” not women [I knew there’d be misogyny in here — there always is]. Sam is more of a man than you’ll ever be. [Oh. Degrees of manhood — so he’s agreeing that gender is not binary?] That’s logic [I missed the logic bit there]. Where suppose to trust a buzzfeed journalist. A retart could get a degree in journalism.[A journalist would know to spell and use proper grammar] Only the top 1 percent get into neuroscience. [Source? Top 1% of what?] You wonder why majority of people choose Harris over your inquisition [Source?]. A Harvard graduate vs were did you get your degree from a community college. [University of Oregon, Institute of Neuroscience, 1985] Hahahah. Lawrence a mit grad. You really think an mit grad is a rapist? [Impossible. No rapes ever occur at MIT. Also, I don’t think anyone has accused Krauss of rape. Why do you bring it up?] We will win this war.[With your logic?] Notice how na movement is a hundred times bigger than your movement.[What is “my” movement? I wish I knew. Also…Source?] I wonder why?[Because you just made up a number?] Hmmmmmm. #loser [I am crushed. You are #winning!]