Month: February 2023

P&C drink and review a homebrewed stout, and along with special guest John Wayne Jew discuss how diversity, equity, and inclusion don’t mean what you think they mean, or what they should mean.

They start with an effort to find the good things in DEI. But they don’t get very far.

DEI is a social and moral catastrophe. It hides behind words that sound virtuous and pleasant, but it twists and distorts those words into something unrecognizable.

“Diversity” only applies to a very narrow range of issues: race, sex, and who you fancy. There’s no effort to have diversity of opinion, of religious views, or personality traits, or any of the thousands of ways that humans can be distinguished.

“Equity” is a classic bait and switch. Americans all believe in equality of opportunity, but equity means equality of outcome, which is a horrible mess. “Equity” justifies letting people out of jail because of their race, irrespective of whether they’re guilty.

There’s something similar with “inclusion.” The DEI proponents are only interested in including certain groups and certain ideas. They don’t want to include conservatives.

P&C drink and review Cream Team, a cookies and cream milk stout, then discuss “advances” in reproductive technology.

Ectolife is working on creating an artificial womb, where babies can be grown in a production facility. There’s been some success with mice, and they want to extend the tech to humans.

The goal is to alleviate some of the pain and risk inherent in childbirth, and to help couples who are unable to reproduce naturally.

It would eliminate premature births, miscarriage, c-sections, and all sorts of complications in pregnancy. The system would also report on genetic abnormalities, and possibly allow doctors to correct them — or even correct inherited diseases.

It can go even further. You might be able to choose some of your baby’s characteristics, like eye and hair color, strength, intelligence, height, etc.

But there are criticisms.

If babies are so easily created, will they be less valued?

There’s also no real connection between the mother and child.

It seems like a slippery slope. How far does this go?

Every human that has ever born came from a woman’s body. How will these babies be different?

How will this affect our perception of women?

The boys drink and review Crowhill’s Henry IV homebrew, then discuss possible causes of the recent uptick in gender confusion.

Just recently — all of a sudden — we’re getting an epidemic of people with gender dysphoria. Why? What’s causing this?

We’re told that the only possible explanation is that this has always been true — that sex is not binary — but that truth has been suppressed by the patriarchal tyranny.

P&C think there are lots of other possibilities, including …

1. Microplastics.
2. Environmental toxins that are interfering with reproduction / sexual systems.
3. This is nature’s way of responding to overpopulation.
4. Loss of fathers.
5. Liberal social policies in the schools.
6. Decline of religion.
7. Mass hysteria / social contagion.
8. Social media, narcissism and attention-seeking.
9. Feminism.
10. Mixing the sexes in more and more social settings.
11. Trans is the new punk. It’s all about rebellion.
12. Redefining men and women in the face of reality.

The boys drink and review a chai latte stout from Schlafly, then discuss out-of-dates ads.

You’ve probably seen the headlines. The basic concept is “ads that are not acceptable today.” But why are they unacceptable?

In some cases, the old ad is playful, and we’re too uptight to go along with the joke.

In other cases, there were cultural assumptions in the past, or a different understanding of the science, that don’t apply today. Does that make them offensive?

Some of the ads are just plain creepy, but in some cases, the very act of finding something wrong with the ad seems to implicate the critic, not the ad.

Overall, maybe we just get offended too easily these days.

The boys drink and review Stone’s Delicious Double IPA, then discuss rights.

What is a right? We hear it all the time, but when do we stop to think about it, what does it really mean?

Do rights depend on someone granting us a right, or do we have rights by nature?

The idea of natural law goes back to the Greeks, and has a long history in the west. But what is it based on?

In the Christian world, the natural law was received as a body of unwritten rules depending upon universal conscience and common sense, ascertainable by right reason.

How does natural law relate to legal rights?

John Locke promoted the idea of Life, Liberty, and Property. How does that work with “cultural relativism,” or the idea that we get our rights from the government?

The Declaration of Independence asserts we have rights from our Creator. Do rights depend on God?

And what about enumerated vs. unenumerated rights.

The boys drink and review Delicious IPA from Stone, then discuss skills they wish they had learned.

Everybody has to make choices about how they spend their time, and some skills require a lot of work to acquire. Pigweed and Crowhill talk about things they wish they could do, but have never applied themselves to.

Things like …

• Being handy, or a gearhead,
• Whistling well,
• Getting comfortable with the Celsius scale,
• Learning the metric system,
• Budgeting,
• Tying lots of cool knots,
• Learning other languages,
• Dancing,
• Playing the guitar, or the piano,
• Charming fabulous women,
• Swordfighting,
• and other fun stuff.

The real question is, if they really wanted to learn these skills, why didn’t they?

The boys drink and review Kostritzer Schwarzbier, then discuss homelessness.

When we talk about “the homeless,” we have to make some distinctions. Some people with no home have a job, a car, and are making do … they just don’t have a place to live. They live in their car and shower at the gym.

Others are drug addicts or have mental illnesses. It’s a mistake to lump them all into the “homeless” category.

Homelessness is closely associated with drug abuse, mental health issues, street camping, open drug use, and property crime.

There are different philosophies on how to address this. One is called “housing first.” Another is “treatment first.” Many policies are based on permissiveness and perpetuation of the drug-addled life on the street.

Good policies require people to have skin in the game and demonstrate responsibility. Accommodating drug addiction and facilitating a vagrant lifestyle is sold as compassion, but it’s not the solution.