Showing posts with label arts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arts. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

What Accounts for the Continuation of Homosexuality? Why Hasn't Evolution Weeded Out the 'Gay Gene'?


The following is pure speculation as I'm not an expert on evolution or homosexuality. It is a response to the article, "The Evolutionary Mystery of Homosexuality"
By David P. Barash
in THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION.

Maybe homosexuality results from the complex and unstable process(es) involved in the very nature of sexuality. After all, everyone is a combination of maleness and femaleness. Males just happen to far more male than female, and females just happen to be far more female than male. But all males some degree of femininity, and all females have some degree of masculinity. If we put it in Eastern Mystic terms, there's a bit of yin and yang in everyone. Even straight guys can find certain men attractive, and straight girls can find other women attractive. Indeed, if a straight guy was given a choice between humping a fat, gross, and disgusting woman and humping Tom Cruise, I'll bet a whole bunch of guys would opt for the latter. While straight guys will take a pretty girl over any guy, he may still prefer a pretty guy over a fat, gross, and disgusting woman. 

Suppose homosexuality is generally the result of unstable processes involved in sexuality. 
Consider a product that is made by mixing certain chemicals. Suppose the mixing of the chemicals is tricky and can easily go wrong. Suppose the process is 'perfected' over the years but, even so, can never be foolproof. So, even though mixing chemical A with chemical B should ideally produce Item C, sometimes the chemicals just don't mix properly, or the process of mixing doesn't always go according to plan. 

Nature probably works the same way. There are certain processes that are meant to produce certain  outcomes, but the processes don't always work out the way they should, especially if they happen to be highly complex and unstable by nature. Among chefs, making mashed potatoes is a lot simpler than certain French cuisines. Humans are complex cuisines, not simple dishes, and that means there's always a chance of things going wrong. Even a master chef who's 'perfected' his skills over many years sometimes turns out a bad dish, especially if the preparation involved is highly complex and tricky. He could use the same ingredients and materials, but the process could have been disrupted by stress, distraction, accident, anxiety, and etc. 
Over 100,000s of years of evolution, the process of creating men and women have been 'perfected' among humans, but it can never be foolproof since the processes involved have remained--or have gotten even more--complex. Genetics may work like machines, but then, machines don't always produce the things they are meant to produce. Even robots sometimes churn out defective products. 

The instability inherent in human sexuality is due to the fact that all humans are the product of opposite tendencies, i.e. all humans are the product of mixing of male and female genes. Generally, the offspring is male(or mostly male) or female(or mostly female), but the process is so complex and unstable that it may sometimes yield someone who is neither strictly male or strictly female. So, you end up with men who feel like women and women who feel like men.
So perhaps, the main reason for homosexuality is not so much the genetic ingredients as the complex processes involved in mixing those ingredients. Such a process of mixing unstable and opposite elements--'maleness' and 'femaleness'--may not always go according to plan. (If this is true, even if the world were to be rid of all homos and their supposedly 'gay genes', homosexuals may yet arise again from the simple fact that the process of sexual differentiation in reproduction is incredibly complex and therefore shall always remain prone to errors and 'accidents'. Thus, homosexuality may be unlike other genetic characteristics. If we were to rid the planet of all blacks or all Asians--along with every last genetic vestige of blackness or Asianness--, there would indeed be no more black people or Asian people. But even if we were to eliminate all gay people and their supposed gay genes--and the recessive 'gay genes' among straight people--from the earth, there may still be homos in the future because the processes involved in the mixing of male genetic ingredients and female genetic ingredients are so complex and prone to 'things going wrong', e.g. resulting in homosexuals. Non-blacks don't need to mix with blacks to produce life. White people can have sex only among themselves and survive as a race forever. Or blacks can have sex among themselves and survive as a race forever. And this is true of every race, every ethnicity, every nation. But, men cannot have sex with men and survive as a 'race' of men, and women cannot have sex with women and survive as a 'race' of women. Men must mix with women to produce life, and so, all humans are the combination of maleness and femaleness. Ideally from a biological point of view, the product of male and female sexual mixing should be a boy or a girl, but some boys end up girlish and some girls end up being boyish. The mixing of opposite elements is always an unstable thing. Now, since gay men prefer having sex with other men, they cannot produce life. So, it's logical to ask how homosexuality could have survived throughout the course of evolution if 'gay sex' between gay men cannot produce life. But, such an approach could be barking up the wrong tree. Homosexuality may actually be the defective byproduct of the complex and unstable process involved in straight sexuality that combines the male genes/principle with female genes/principle.) 

Anther instability inherent in sexuality is that maleness and femaleness may not really be opposites. If they are opposites, they are opposites that attract one another. Before the division of life into male and female, life was asexual. Sexuality grew out of asexuality when asexual organisms split into 'male' and 'female'. So, both maleness and femaleness are outgrowths of asexuality. Though asexual organisms split into male and female, the purpose was not to keep the male and female separate but to bring them together to reproduce even more effectively. It is the central paradox of life. Life was separated into male and female in order to facilitate better replication by uniting the male and female. Thus, maleness and femaleness arose not to go their separate ways but to come together in a more powerful union. They are like magnetic opposites.
Among homosexuals, it's as if maleness and femaleness exist side by side within the same person. So a gay guy looks and may even act like a guy, but he has feminine-like feelings in his heart. He's kinda whoopsy-doopsy. 

If homosexuality is the product of genetic ingredients, certain groups should have more homosexuals than other groups. But the article above says that rates of homosexuality are more or less constant across cultural groups.  Paradoxically, if homosexuality is genetic, there should be more homos in repressively anti-gay cultures than in relatively permissive ones. Why? Because in a repressive social order that is highly anti-homosexual, homos are forced to remain in the closet, get married, and raise a family. Given the intensely anti-homo creed of the Jews and Muslims, there should be more homos in the Jewish community. In a social order that is relatively tolerant of gays, gays could go off on their own and do their gay stuff. But in a social order that persecutes or even executes homos, homos cannot risk being suspect of being gay, let alone practice homosexuality out in the open. Among traditional Jews, homosexuality was a capital sin against God. An outed homosexual could be stoned to death or, at the very least, exiled from the community. So, there would have intense pressure on traditional Jewish gays to remain in the closet, get married, and raise a family, i.e. conform to socio-sexual norms. Thus, more homo genes would have passed down the bloodline of Jews. If indeed there are more gays among Jews than other groups, one might say genetic ingredient is the key to homosexuality. But if the rates of homosexuality is same among Jews as among groups where homosexuality has long been relatively tolerated, then homosexuality may be more the result of normal reproductive processes--their complexity and instability that increases the likelihood of defectiveness and accidents--than of the impact of 'gay' genetic material or ingredients. 

Could there have been cultural reasons for the continuation of homosexuality? Perhaps, natural homosexuals--as opposed for socially coerced homosexuals like the Spartans--tended to be less warlike and therefore less likely to serve as warriors. So, if a whole bunch of tough straight guys went to battle and got killed, maybe homo guys had a higher survival rate by staying at home with the ladies. Since he was so close to the ladies, maybe he humped some of them EVEN IF his sexual preference was with men. Since most men were not gay and refused to have 'sex' with gays, the gay guy might have had to make do with women, or at least with women who looked man-like. Or the gay could close his eyes while humping the woman and pretend she was a he. And gay or not gay, many people eventually want children. Since gay men cannot have kids through homo 'sex', they would have had sex with women to have their own children. A gay guy might have 'sex' with other men for fun, but he could still have sex with women to have kids.
Indeed, a similar arrangement was common among many aristocrats across cultures. A privileged guy would marry a respectable woman to be his wife and mother to his children, but he may have no special feeling for her, sexual or otherwise. His real fun would be with his mistresses, with the 'hos'. So, just like powerful men had both a respectable life--with wife and kids--and a fun life--with a bunch of mistresses, gay men could have played the same game. They could have had most of the fun with male sexual partners, but for the sake of having kids--because even gays want children--, they might have humped some women. It's 'having sex for fun' vs 'having sex for kids'. 

Also, a disproportionate number of gays were likely to be powerful and privileged, even in societies that were hostile to open homosexuality. Why would this have been so? Because the rich and powerful like nice and fancy things. If the sensibility of your average straight guy is to be crude macho man who likes to play warrior, the sensibility of many homosexuals tended to be finer, more creative and expressive, more visionary. Sublimity after all arises from the friction/fusion of seemingly opposite elements. So, twilight and daybreak are more special than plain day and plain night. While most guys are simply masculine and most girls are feminine, some homos--especially the males--tend to have that sublime blend of male aggression and female grace. It means gays had the advantage in design, art, and etc, and that means they were favored by the privileged classes that wanted fine things to wear, hang, display, and show off. Even the most conservative guy wants his wife's dresses to be designed by a gay guy than by Big Boss Man. Italian society was officially anti-gay during the Renaissance, but consider the number of famous homosexual artists who were patronized, favored, and protected by the privileged class. With greater wealth, gays could have practiced a kind of aristocratic sexual lifestyle. They could have kept wives for the sake of producing children while having the real fun with other men--just like aristocrats had children with their often-not-very-exciting wives while having the real fun with a whole bunch of mistresses. 

Monday, May 3, 2010

Thoughts on Alex Kurtagic's Article SOMETHING TO DREAM.

http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/wanted-something-to-dream/

"I have argued that the reasons campaigners have failed to make real political progress, in spite of having logical arguments, a moral case, and massive supporting data, is that, in the effort to persuade and inspire action, key aspects of human psychology have been ignored. Even though he is typically steeped in sociobiology, the White advocate has generally relied on rational persuasion to advance pro-White agenda, neglecting well-known pre-rational motivators, such as the need for status and self-esteem (which he knows well enough), and the role of emotion (which he often deplores)."

This is false. Too many outspoken elements of the White Nationalism have done just the opposite, making the entire movement look ridiculous(not to mention evil and stupid) by lighting crosses and carrying out other dumb rituals, getting swastika tattoos on their asses and heads(hard to tell which is which among skinheads), denying an obvious historical facts like the Holocaust, apologizing for lunatic Hitler, exaggerating racial differences(which, though substantially real, isn't exactly like man vs ape), ugly and hideous metal music(talk about 'degenerate art'!!!), fetishizing laughable neo-pagan rituals associated to wicca and black magic, arguing that Jesus was blonde and blue eyed Aryan, and etc, etc. If anything, it's such ridiculous, anti-factual, and anti-rational expressions which have made it easy for scumbags at ACLU and SPLC to characterize white nationalism as the last refuge of human refuse.

If white nationalism or advocacy has made any progress, it's thanks to rationalist thinkers like Murray, Sailer, MacDonald, and others. If they've had a limited impact, it's not because rational and factual evidence/arguments lack power but because most of the media and academia are controlled by the Left which censors those views. If conservatives had equal access to MSM and schools and disseminated the ideas of Charles Murray, Kevin MacDonald, and others, they would have a HUGE IMPACT on people across the country. The problem is not rationalism but access. The Left has more control and access to MSM and schools because (1) Jews are smart, make more money, and bought up nearly all the media outlets. Thus, educated people come under leftist Jewish influence. (2) Liberals and leftists tend to be more interested in intellectual and cultural affairs. In terms of both financial and intellectual capital, the Left outshines the Right. Thus, the Left has the power to disseminate their ideas over ours. If NPR, PBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, and colleges were mostly dominated by people like us, our ideas would spread like wildfire. Even so, if white advocacy has indeed won over some talented people in the past 20 yrs, it's thanks to people like MacDonald.

Kurtagic is contradicting himself when he says white advocates have been both too rational and too obsessed with apocalptyism, which is irrational(at least in the doomsday scenario fantasized by the Right, sometimes with barbaric glee.)
 
"I have written elsewhere about the need for pro-White campaigners to provide their target audience with better incentives than the apocalyptic warnings about economic collapse, race wars, and extinction that have constituted the traditional fare of the White Nationalist movement."

Kurtagic needs to more clearly define what he means by "pro-white campaigners". If he means neo-Nazis, skinheads, KKK, or Holocaust Deniers at Stormfront(and even some of the less enlightened ones at Occidental Quarterpounder), they are beyond hope. They are genuinely deranged, dishonest, and dumb. Just like you can't do a makeover on Roseanne Barr and make her pretty, you can't reform the demented elements of the White Nationalism--anymore than liberals can reform diehard Stalinists and Maoists.

A better recommendation is for the decent white right to reject or denounce the idiot Holocaust Denying crowd, neo-Nazis, KKK morons, and skinheads. These morons have been the BEST GIFT to the Left, just like Abbie Hoffman and the Black Panthers were the best gifts for Nixon and the GOP in 68 and 72. Do not coddle the elements of the crazy white right nor think you can make them see reason. Heaven knows I've tried.

"One area, in my opinion, is the ability to inspire heroic feelings of superiority, pride, and glory... it flatters their vanity, it caters to their need to belong in a manner that enhances their self-esteem. The radical traditionalit Right excels at this for the same reasons that the Left does not even try: the former has a Romantic ethic, aspires to greatness, strives to push forward and upward in an organic and metaphysical sense. This, of course, implies elitism, a hierarchical conception of life. Leftists, by contrast, are egalitarians, so they resent hierarchy because it reminds them of their own mediocrity - after all, only the mediocre benefit from egalitarianism. Rather than elite, proud, and glorious, Leftists are resentful, envious, and self-hating. Accordingly, their tactics rely on guilt-mongering and on inspiring a sense of grievance; they are champions of the weak and the pathetic. It is difficult to feel inspired by this, let alone be roused into heroic action for abstract principles like 'equality'. The best they can hope for, therefore, is to inspire feelings of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is unattractive, and people who are self-righteous tend to be preachy and irritating."

Well, feelings are kinda fun, but lots of whites are filled with envy and resentment(and for good reason). They are envious of the smarter Jews who make lots of money and have attained Nietzschean dominance over the US(and the world). Lots of whites(especially males) also envy and resent the athletic dominance of blacks such as Jack Johnson, Jesse Owens, Muhammad Ali, NBA players, NFL players, and etc. Most blue-collar ethnic whites resent the Jews and Wasps who dominate at Harvard and Yale. Lots of whites also resent and envy the more studious and successful Asians, whether they be Asian-Indian or Chinese. As Obama has said about small town whites in Pennsylvania, much of white political culture is centered around resentment and envy. If we are to follow Kurtagic's advice of honoring and worshipping the GREAT and SUPERIOR FOLKS, we would be bowing down before Jewish intellectuals/scientists/intellectuals/writers and black athletes and singers. Nietzsche didn't obsess about race. He was for the GREAT INDIVIDUAL who transcended the collective mentality. If we are follow this principle, we white folks should abandon our collective sense of whiteness and admire GREAT INDIVIDUALS. When it comes to brain power, Jews are the masters of the universe. In creativity, homos have an edge(consider the Renaissance). In sports, blacks are #1.

What Kurtagic is asking for is impossible. He says worship the GREAT and SUPERIOR, but then he pretends that it's some kind of unique WHITE quality. Sure, there have been many great white individuals, but they shone as individuals, not as a mob. In other words, most people of all races are mediocrates, and as such, are filled with resentment and envy of those who are better or superior. Truly superior people are maybe less than 1% of the population. Actually, something like .01%.

Sure, most people may want to feel the power, glory, and supeiority, which is why Ayn Rand novels still sell millions worldwide. People want to be Howard Roark. But, this is also true on the Left. Most young people turn to Marxism not because they wanna be humdrum peasants or factory workers but because they wanna be the next Lenin, Che, Castro, Mao, Trotsky, Gramsi--a great activist, intellectual, or leader.

But, 99.9% of young people grow up and find out they have no special talent. Out of 1000s of garage bands across the country, how many make it? All actors aspire to be the next Cary Grant or Tom Cruise, but most fall flat. In the end, people grow up, fall to ground, and discover they are NOT superior but humdrum and dime-a-dozen--like myself, like most people here, like Kurtagic. Indeed, I wonder if Kurtagic considers himself as a Superman, a part of the noble natural elite? Is he Mr. Siegfried or Parsifal arrived to save us? If so, what is superiority based on? What great deed has he accomplished in life? What great business did he start? What medicine did he invent? What great work of art has he created? What great novel has he written? What great athletic feat has he accomplished? It's one thing to feel superior, which anyone can do. It's another thing to BE superior, which is a reality for only .01% of the population. I'm sure these Neo-Nazis see themselves as superior individuals of the superior race, but who's fooling whom?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMQrARaTKDc

Any idiot can climb a hill, thump his chest, look at the sky, call out to Thor, and think himself a combination of Conan the Barbarian, Henry Ford, and Einstein, but that doesn't make it so. Most of us are mediocre helots. We find peace and happiness in finding our lot in life according to our ability and needs, not by pretending we are superman or spiderman. This isn't to deny the appeal or admiration of excellence and superior qualities. It's only to stress that the message of THE WORLD BELONGS TO THE SUPERIOR doesn't apply to most of us.

GOP and the likes of Limbaugh failed because they'd convinced many Americans that ANYONE can become ANYTHING in good ole free USA. Just think about it. A drug addicted lardass yells into a microphone for 3 hrs/5 days a week and makes 200 million dollars a year, and his message is America is a nation where everyone can be just as successful and great as he IF people just worked hard enough. Limbaugh is a mediocrite but he, like Oprah, has special talent in fooling the masses that superiority is within the reach of anyone. I mean if a lardass like Limbaugh or Oprah can rake in millions, why not we? It's no wonder that so many white conservatives have been blind to the abuses of the plutocracy in Wall Street, Oil Industry, Military Industrial Complex, etc. The cult of democratic superiority--that anyone or their kids can become GREAT if they just try hard enough--infected many people during the 80s and 90s, a time when Americans blindly worshiped CEOs of corporations as genius visionaries of the new future. Well, so much for the dotcom bubble and Wall Street collapse.

While some people do indeed have superior talent, the truth is superior talent often leads to great fortune, which leads to great power. Power is often very often corrupted and abused–even by SUPERIOR men. So, while we should admire superior talent, we should also be wary of it since the superior/powerful often use their power to dupe and exploit us.
One of the best developments in the past 20 yrs was when Buchanan met with unemploywed white workers and shook their hands and listened to their problems. These people's jobs and livelihoods had been sold down the river by SUPERIOR people--the best and brightest in business and government committed to the NWO, designed to make the elite even richer and more powerful. Yet, I wonder what Kurtagic would have done with those unemployed white workers. Would he shown them German Romantic paintings, turned Wagner on a boom box, and told them "No Time to Fear, Nietzschean Superman Is Here!" Yeah sure, the hell with materialistic stuff like jobs, having to pay the rent, and feeding the kids? Who needs that when we can fly off with Peter Pan Kurtagic Pan to Aryan Neverland?

"For the mystically-inclined, another area of natural advantage is our esoterica, which is linked to the Romantic ethic, which is in turn linked to traditionalist inclinations. Marxists would have never been able to produce a Left-wing analogue to, say, Armanism. Esoteric Marxism? Such a thing, were it ever to be invented, could erupt only out of a Right wing mind. Leftists are rationalists, materialists, anti-traditionalists; they see the world as a machine. Whereas our side has thousands of years of rich and deep mythology and tradition, both exoteric and esoteric, to draw from for the elaboration of alternative, meaning-laden narratives, Leftists impoverish themselves by their wholesale jettisoning of the past, of tradition, or metaphysics. If the Left has any use for any of these, it is to subvert it, pervert it, mock it, and uglify it."

The problem with mystical esoterica is it's subjective or tribal, thus hard to convey to people outside the cultish community. Universalist rationalism, on the other hand, is objective and therefore easier to create a community where large numbers of people agreed on common principles. This is why the Right tends to be more fractured since its 'ideas' are based on visions and feelings, which can only be felt and understood by those within the community. During WWII, Western Democracies and Soviet Union were at least agreed on certain rationalist-universal principles despite their economic/political ideological differences. They agreed on common humanity, the value of all human life(whatever the actual practice), basic equality of/for man(whether political equality as in the West or economic equality in the USSR). The Axis powers, on the other hand, had little in common. Japanese thought they were descended from some sun god and goddess(and regarded non-Japanese as inferior). Germans saw themselves as the superior Aryan race and saw non-Aryans as inferior or even subhuman. Italians thought they were a race of tough brave invincible he-men destined to revive Roman glory.

In the end, rationalism-materialism won over romanticism-mysticism. Why? For one thing, it’s appealing to greater numbers of people since most people want to be liberated as equal people than dominated by a SUPERIOR people. Also, it was because having more tanks and planes and bombs wins wars. Germans might have imaginatinatively and mystically seen themselves as Aryan god-men, but they could not stop 10,000s of T-34 blowing them to smithereens.
In Northern China, the mystical Yamato race were helpless against the Soviet onslaught. Tanks and planes--products of rationalist materialism--kinda have an advantage over samurai swords, no matter how holy or sacred. When Japan faced the US in the Pacific, the Japanese saw the war in mystical terms whereas Americans GI's were just materialistic good ole boys who wanted to beat the Japs and go home. Well, guess which side won? The mystic warriors drinking sacred sake and invoking their gods for help OR the rationalist-materialist yanks who built a 100 planes for one by Japan? I believe the kill ratio between the US and Japan was like 1000 to 1. Gee, rationalist materialism comes in kinda handy, doncha think? And if Germany and Japan were, for awhile, winning battle after battle, it had more to do with their tanks and strategy--rational before turning uttely reckless--than on mystical mumbo jumbo. If mystical mumbo jumbo is the path to power, American Indians who had a sacred connection to their soil would have beaten the materialist whites with guns and cannons. The more aristocratic and romantic South would have won the Civil War against the materialistic Yanks. Heck, the continent of Africa, steeped in tribal cults and black magic, would be the most powerful and the richest part of the world.
Let’s not forget China fell behind because of its immersion in mystical middle kingdom mumbo jumbo and fell prey to the West which had stumbled upon rationalism and materialism. China seems to be rising into superpowerdom thanks to their adoption of rationalism and materialism. China even sent a man into space, and I think it was rationalism than yin-and-yang that did the trick.

Now, this isn't to discount the importance of culture, tradition, imagination, sacredness, and visonariness, etc. They are psychologically and emotionally important to mankind. But we live in the real world which is governed by scientific laws. This doesn't mean that everything is a machine. It means that there is a certain inherent design to things in the world.
The problem is not rationalism or materialism(or even egalitarianism) but radical rationalism, radical materiailsm or radical egalitarianism. Intrinsic to the concept of the 'radical' is the insistence on ONLY. A radical materialist, rationalist, or egalitarian demands adherence to ONLY his view of the world. A radical materialist says all religions or spiritual matters should be banned. A radical rationalists arrogantly insists that reason can explain all the mysteries. A radical egalitarian is a communist. But most materialists are scientists into empirical research, not crazy lunatics. Most rationalists insist on the use of reason to figure out problems. And most sane egalitarians are for equal rights for citizens of the state, not for Maoist communism. Who doesn't want equal political rights? If political rights should ONLY belong to the superior, I suppose they should be limited to graduates of Harvard, Yale, and to billionaires. Many ordinary people joined the French Revolution and the American Revolution because they wanted to be politically equal as free citizens. They didn't want to bow down to any king or to a class of noblemen. Just when US is run by a NWO plutocracy, Kurtagic thinks he's gonna win over lots of whites who are facing hard times by pandering to their sense of superiority.
But this is just the worst kind of racial therapeutism, and the Nazi experiment should sober us up. It was one thing--indeed a good thing--for the National Socialists to promise the German people economic improvement, national justice(after yrs marred by effects of Versailles Treaty), national dignity, and restored pride. Things turned poisonous when Hitler began to spread the notion of superiority. The problem was your average German was not made of superior stuff. Sure, he was hardworking, solid, honest, etc. But he was not intellectually, artistically, nor athletically gifted. If most people cannot enjoy individual superiority, how do you make them feel superior? You offer them the therapeutism of collective racial superiority. Superior to whom? The non-Aryans... some of whom came to be seen as subhuman. This way, even a German with an IQ of 90 can feel superior to a Jew with an IQ of 180. This way, a German without the slightest musical talent can feel superior to a great Polish pianist. Collective superioritism is pernicious therapeutism for the dummies. Indeed, it is most appealing to people with a strong case of inferiority complex. Is it just a coincidence that some of the dumbest white people join racial supremacist organizations like the Neo-Nazis? I know Kurtagic is not endorsing Neo-Nazism but group feelings of superiority is not a good thing.

Radical rationalism, materialism, and egalitarianism are dangerous but radical irrationalism, spiritualism, and elitism can be even more dangerous. The former trio at least have some clearly established rules, as in Newtonian physics whereas the latter is like quantum mechanics where truth is whatever some GREAT LEADER or VISIONARY says it is.

--A. F.