I was convinced to look more closely into Orthodoxy for three reasons:

1. The Beauty and Naturalness of the Liturgy, Art, and Holy Days.

The Orthodox Church strives for timeless, transcendent beauty in it's liturgy and art; while all too often Protestant churches strive for mere fashionability.

Add in the feasts and fasts, and Christianity easily becomes part of the natural tempo of life, rather than simply being for Sundays, Easter, and Christmas, with the other 312 days of the year dedicated to secularism.

Of course this is not an exclusively Orthodox virtue--it's shared to at least a certain extent with Lutherans, High-Church Anglicans, and the Roman Catholics; in fact a Catholic blogger (John C. Wright) was a major influence on me in this area, but it is something sadly lacking from the Evangelical traditions.

Reading more about the "High-Church" traditions left me feeling that there was something missing from the churches of my childhood, which started my journey towards Orthodoxy.

2. Authority versus Radical Individualism.

Protestantism has embraced a form of radical individualism in it's attitude towards truth, doctrine, and morals. But if we must each come to our own conclusions about the tough questions that leaves only two possibilities:

1. Universal direct Spiritual guidance, aka: everyone's a prophet. But those people who do claim such a gift of prophecy are often the most contradictory to each other and to mainline Protestantism.

2. Each man follows his own intellectual reasoning. But, forgive me for being a little arrogant here: I'm am very, very intelligent, and enjoy reading moral and philosophical works; if independent reasoning is the important factor, then I should have been closer to the truth than nearly everyone, but an honest appraisal of my own thoughts and history shows that it took me years to figure out fairly basic questions. One man alone, no matter how smart, can not develop a full system of Christian morals and doctrines by himself.

If neither universal prophecy nor independent reasoning can lead us to the truth, or at least not to anything approaching the full truth, then the question is not "what opinions to hold", but rather "what authority or authorities can I trust to inform and shape my opinions".

3. Standing Against Political Correctness.

In reading various writers on social subjects, while many writers from all parts of Christianity and beyond held views I could agree with, I found myself agreeing with writers from a relatively little known faith tradition far more often than I would have expected. (In particular I should mention David Scott Klajic who writes at American Dad, but he was far from alone)

I found myself wondering why both clergy and laymen, of this relatively small and little-known [in the west] sect was so over-represented among Christians who actually where willing to take a stand against the abuses of Political Correctness. Perhaps this was the Church that had a rightful claim to authority?

Conclusion

There where various other issues I've looked at over the last year or two--the Bishop of Rome, Church History, Ecumenical Councils, Sola Scriptura, etc.--but these three factors are what originally got me through the door of my local parish a year and a half ago, and laid the foundation of my decision to convert last week.

Heinlein for all his brilliance as a writer was also a dirty old man, and sadly that completely ruins this book. The central conceit, two-thousand-year old man contemplating finally ending it all settles down to tell some tall tales to one of his distant descendants, is quite interesting, and a couple of the individual tales (rescuing the twins, and the wagon-train) manage to be pretty good until they essentially stop being about anything other than sex.

It's not that there's sex in the story, or even taboo sex, but that Heinlein let's the story cease to be about anything other than taboo sex. Both the stories-within-a-story work despite having taboo sexual themes, because there's more to them than that, but essentially all the other stories are just sex, perverted sex, and talking about sex.

Dear Ambassador Gras XVII, Hand of the Red Council, First Lord of Bosae IX, etc.,

Greetings and Salutations.

To answer your queries I will need to first explain a bit about what makes humans special.

While I was on my recent tour of Earth I was shown a video of a human hunting a kudu (a local herbivorous quadruped). Kudus are much faster than humans, so the kudu easily sprinted away, but they also lack the humans' endurance, so whenever it had to stop and rest the human would close the distance. Eventually after the better part of a local day of this sprinting and too short rests while the human jogged along behind it the kudu collapsed from exhaustion, and the human simply walked up to it and finished it off with a small knife he carried for that purpose.

The humans I was with quite correctly thought that this video demonstrated what made humans special; where they where mistaken was in what attribute of humanity demonstrated in the video was actually so unusual (I didn't even fully get it myself until much later).

Most of the humans with me focused on the running; over a long-enough distance, and in a hot-enough environment (the video was filmed in one of the hotter parts of their homeworld) humans can beat pretty much anything else from their home planet. But while impressive, there's several other sentient species that can compete with them, and even a couple that could easily outrun them.

One or two humans suggested that it was stubbornness; surely the ability to keep going for a whole day even though for much of the run it must look pretty futile--as if the kudu wasn't actually getting any tireder--is unusual? But in reality humans are little more than above average in this regard.

(In fact my own species, the Huxaar, have a fairly solid claim to being the "Kings-of-Stubbornness"; I once saw a warrior who had lost nearly 90% of his body mass to a plasma bolt not only survive and continue to fight, while outnumbered, but he ended up winning, and with modern medicine he made a full recovery physically (two of his redundant brains where completely destroyed and the third somewhat damaged, which sadly resulting in minor memory loss))

No, the humans completely missed the important point, and since you probably have only a vague idea of what a human is like physically, and no idea at all of what a kudu is like I imagine you haven't realised what it is either. An adult kudu weighs somewhere between five and seven Kuy [Approximately 177-247kg], and has sharp hooves, and horns of around 30-40 Bulew [Approximately 38-50cm], while the human in question would have been lucky to hit two Kuy [Approximately 70kg], wore no armour, and as I mentioned only had a small knife to supplement his few natural weapons, which, on humans, range from the poor to the laughable.

Despite this absurd match-up the kudu was the one to run away. Why? Because the human acted as if he could win, and the kudu believed him. I couldn't understand why this was happening at the time, so I started looking into more human hunting techniques. This special form of deception is sufficient common among humans as to warrant it's own name, "bluffing" in the language of the dominant culture.

As well as several more standard techniques (it seems nearly every carnivorous sentient comes up with the idea of sneaking up on your prey and stabbing it with a pointy stick at some point), there where several more examples of the same sort of thing, such as groups of humans in their prehistory scaring herds of mammoths (which can literally be a hundred times the size of a human) so much that they'd rather run off a cliff than hang around and fight the humans, or more recent examples of humans waiting until a group of lions (a much bigger and stronger non-sentient predator) had killed a prey animal, and then chasing the lions away from their food.

For a more mundane example take the "bullwhip", a bull is a creature that can easily weigh 30+ Kuy [Approximately 1060+kg], has horns and hooves like the kudu, and a reputation for aggressive stubbornness. Yet a bullwhip is barely better than a human's natural weapons in a fight; it's real advantage is that it's noisy. Yes, when having to deal with an animal fifteen times their size they think a noisemaker is a reasonable piece of equipment. (Apparently the bulls do occasionally realise the absurdity, which can end tragically, but such events must be rare, otherwise becoming a farmer would simply be a rather elaborate form of suicide for humans)

You might get the impression from the above that humans only bluff dumb animals, that would be a mistake, they will happily bluff each other, or even aliens as I learnt to my chagrin when I discovered the game of "poker".

[A detailed, and somewhat dry, explanation of the rules of poker was originally provided here, but it doubled the word-count of this letter, and the translator felt that that would be unnecessary for the intended human audience of this translation.]

I trust you can see how such a game could be of interest, particularly to more statistically inclined individuals, when played straight, but that's not how the humans play. Bluffing is seen as a core part of the game. A common strategy is to bet far more than your cards would warrant in the hope that other players that might actually have better hands will lose their nerve and fold. The social skills to deceive the other players or spot their deceptions are seen as the real skill of good players.

I initially discovered the game when I was travelling through a small town in their southern hemisphere. I noticed an ad for a "Poker Tournament" on one of the local sporting clubs. When I expressed an interest in finding out more my guide kindly took me to the club and let me observe the games.

After observing for several minutes I had a feel for the rules and realised that many of the human players didn't seem to really grasp the odds involved, so I rather over-confidently joined a game expecting to do reasonably well.

One of the humans who was playing with me, and, I must admit, thoroughly thrashing me, was generous enough to inform me after about ten hands that it was obvious that Huxaarians where ill-suited for poker, and that I should withdraw now before I lost any more money. He was even kind enough to offer to give me back half the money he had won off me.

(I later found out that he was an very good poker player, so much so that several of the other humans donated to a "float" for him--winnings to be spent on beer for club members. He had realised I was completely incapable of detecting a bluff by the third hand, and I think he was feeling guilty about winning the equivalent of nearly half a year of local wages in the next seven hands)

What's this digression about human betting games got to do with your query? Well, remember what I said above about Huxaarian stubbornness, and complete inability to give up? Even it's obvious to everyone that we couldn't possibly win?

That is how the Huxaarian Empire became a vassal state of the South Maitland Bowls Club.

As for your second query: I assume that you're smart enough to see why I can't say if the humans are serious when they claim to be able to beat the Glibelian Fleets easily if you invade.

--

Emperor Halak II
Vassal Emperor of Huxaar
Special Adviser to the Imperial Board of the South Maitland Bowls Club
etc.

Written from the Imperial Palace on Huxaar Prime

Letter to the Glibelian Ambassador dated 12th of Bilu in the 7th year of Emperor Halak II [Approximately 11th of May 2032 AD]

Dear Ambassador Gras XVII, Hand of the Red Council, First Lord of Bosae IX, etc.,

Greetings and Salutations.

I can easily understand why the destruction of the cream of the Glibelian Fleets by the new 3rd Provincial Fleet (Flagship: The Golden Bluff) is distressing for your leadership.

I've reread my last letter, and it appears that I failed to mention that sometimes a good bluffer will pretend to be weaker than he actually is. "Oops, my bad"; as I'm assured that the young humans say.

PS: My condolences on the loss of nearly 20% of your offworld holdings. I understand that the loss of the pleasure palaces on Rilo III has been particularly frustrating to your court members.

--

Emperor Halak II
Vassal Emperor of Huxaar
Special Adviser to the Imperial Board of the South Maitland Bowls Club
etc.

Written from the Green Moon Pleasure Palace on New South Maitland (formerly Rilo III)

Also published on r/HFY.

First up, we've got Mike Cernovich's guide to winning the current propaganda war:

We are everywhere, and that's why the media is losing its mind.

The media is on the defensive. They simultaneously can't look away from what we do, and yet they don't want to wake people up.

Cernovich again with the Jim Ghomeshi Rape Hoax:

[Jim] Ghomeshi, a former CBC radio host, bragged about being a women's study major and male feminist.

Then his life changed. Several women came forward to claim he sexually assaulted them. He lost his job, he was put on house arrest, and he was called a rapist by international news.

The problem is that Ghomeshi is innocent.

Vox Day's transcript of Roosh's press conference (there's a video for those who prefer):

All right, so the world has gone insane in the past week. Why? Number one, I had organized meet ups around the world for men to enjoy a social happy hour to meet in private and talk about anything. Work, politics, girls, just to meet. Okay? Number two, a year ago I wrote an article How to Stop Rape. This article, to a 10-year-old, was obvious that I didn't intend to legalize rape or cause harm against women. But starting on Sunday, a lot of you have lied by saying that I am a pro-rape advocate. He wants women to get hurt! And then the third thing, you said the meet ups are about rapists. They want to gather to learn how to rape. They are going to exchange tips. Some of you have called it a rape rally! What the hell is that? A rape rally? So because of that I've been all over the world in terms of the news. Over 100 articles have been written.

And finally a Sci-fi author get's blackballed:

I launched a book this week and I went Indie with it.

I had to. My Publisher, HarperVoyager, refused to publish it because of some of the ideas I wrote about in it.

Top, got a minute? Can you tell us about the company? I mean the real inside scoop.

"Oh, it's not so bad, I suppose. Could be worse anyway. I mean, I think maybe it could be worse. It used to be worse, actually, back when the XO - Lieutenant Dainty, our lipstick lesbian - was still pining over the fact that Staff Sergeant Levee wouldn't return her affections. God, she was the distilled and concentrated essence of PMS for months. But Levee wasn't attracted to lipstick lesbians, and was too much of a pro to cross the officer-enlisted divide."

Mike Cernovich on why so much effort is being put into censoring social media:

Why is there a huge effort from governments and social activists to censor social media? Why do I fight like hell on social media? Isn't social media a waste of time and a place to share cat pics?

Once upon a time if you wanted your story to get out, you had to call up your friends in the media. ... Today you don't need the media to get your message out. If you have something to say, you take your message directly to the people.

Ross Douthat's Ten Theses on Immigration in the New York Times:

1. The nation-state is real, and (thus far) irreplaceable.

2. Immigration is a perilous solution to demographic decline.

(There's eight more over there obviously, and arguments in favour of each of his theses)

Finally we have a Change.org petition of interest:

In order to show how safe current migration is to Europe, particularly regarding the cause of feminism (I reject wholeheartedly the notion that North African and Middle Eastern migrants are unsafe, and rapists), Emma Watson should spend a week's holiday in a Calais migrant camp, without guards of course, to show how safe, and how pro feminism these migrants are.

Volume 7 is The Confessions of St. Augustine and The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, both of which I acquired in hard copy.

The Confessions is pretty much what you'd expect; it's the story of St. Augustine's life from his birth to shortly after his conversion from Manichaesm into Christianity, as well as a couple of of bonus chapters on the subject of Creation and Genesis.

I used a relatively old translation by E. B. Pusey, which was somewhat dry and tiring to read unfortunately, but it was still well worth reading. At some point I think I'll try to track down The City of God and read that as well.

The Imitation of Christ is essentially a series of notes on how to live for young monastics. Many parts of it are still applicable to non-monastics, but that was the intended audience of Brother Thomas, and it shows through on occasion.

I used the fairly modern translation by William C. Creasy, which I think may have been a mistake. He favoured a very simplified style of language, which suffered the failing of many "simply" translations of complex works: it's often rather ugly, and reading ugly prose is tiring in it's own way.

As well as that according to his introduction he deliberately set out to translate it in a manner compatible with modern post-Vatican II Catholic theology; he claimed in the Introduction that he only did so to the extent necessary to make up for the modern lack of understanding of the context to which Brother Thomas would have been writing, but I as a reader am left not knowing what he might have changed.

He gives this example in the introduction of how he changed the translation of one particular sentence. Early in the book Brother Thomas says "This is the highest wisdom: through contempt of the world to aspire to the kingdom of heaven." which apparently and "informed reader" would understand as (and Creasy translates as) "This is the highest wisdom: to see the world as it truly is, fallen and fleeting; to love the world not for its own sake, but for God's; and to direct all your effort toward achieving the kingdom of heaven."

This may be a reasonable opinion as to what an "informed reader" would get out of that passage, but it is just Creasy's opinion. Essentially we're viewing the work through the lens of Creasy's personal theology and understanding of medieval philosophy.

Moving on from the questions about the translation, I found Book 4: The Book of the Sacrament the most interesting. It showed a different, and far more serious attitude towards communion than I am used to from the more easy-going Protestantism I grew up with. And an attitude I find myself starting to move towards more and more.

Volume 8 is various ancient Greek plays. I modified the list a little based on what I had print copies of, but I ended up reading:

• Seven against Thebes by Aeschylus; I forget which translation
• Hecabe, Electra, and Heracles by Euripides and translated by Philip Vellacott, which I had in hard-copy
• The Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles and translated by F. Storr
• The Acharnians, The Clouds, and Lysistrata by Aristophanes and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein, also in hard-copy

Seven against Thebes was the dullest of the plays, and covered some of the same events as the Oedipus Trilogy. It appears that I didn't even keep a copy of the ebook. It probably was not the best choice for a singly play of Aeschylus, but it's what I ended up with.

The tragedies of Euripides where a step up, but really there's not much to say about them. They where entertaining, and worth reading for the window into a different world, and different world-view they offer though.

The Oedipus Trilogy, AKA the Theban Plays, is actually three unrelated plays by the same playwright (Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone), which where not intended as a trilogy, but are often combined since they deal with the same characters, and the later two are very definitely dealing with the carry-on effects of the first. I'd say these where my favourite of the Greek theatre that I have read, and Antigone is probably my favourite of the three. If you're only going to read a little bit of Greek theatre go with these ones.

The Comedies of Aristophanes I didn't like as much as the tragedies, interestingly my favourite was The Clouds, which is the most tragic of the three.

The most interesting observation to come out of these was how much of what would be considered gross-out humour in modern times they had. Fart-jokes, poop-jokes, and sex-jokes all abound; Lysistrata has two groups of old folk (one of men and one of women) have a battle-of-the-sexes in song, in which their genitalia feature heavily, any stage directions in the plays are apparently guesses from modern scholars, but I'm pretty sure it's generally accepted that at least the old men strip off during the song, perhaps the old women as well.

My dislike of such humour quite probably contributed to my poor opinion of these plays, so people who like that sort of humour may find them more entertaining.

First up we have John C. Wright's Point Deer, Make Horse about the leftist response to the San Bernardino shooting:

[F]or the Left, their God is Caesar, that is to say, the State, that is to say, themselves.

After every crime-spree or disaster or terrorist attack by persons who never turn out to be white rightwingers, the Left says that it is the punishment rightfully delivered for not being faithful enough to Caesar, not giving him what he demanded for our good: not giving Caesar enough power, property and control over our minds and souls to solve the problem.

Also on the San Bernardino shooting Anonymous Conservative posted this:

One of the San Bernardino shooting victims was a staunch supporter of the right to bear arms.

He knew the threat, he had the skills and ability to deal with it, but he was killed ... by the political machinations of weak and pathetic rabbits who managed to use ... cops and his own respect for the law, to kill him and help the terrorists.

Next up Dalrock on the Fantasy Land that many Christians seem to live in regarding the push to get women into the military:

[T]he CBMW’s [Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood; a group of Christian complementarians] response to the generations long push by feminists to insert women into all parts of our armed forces is to pretend that something else entirely is going on. To avoid confronting the very open feminist rebellion, the CBMW pretends that men are insisting that women be forced into combat in their place. No one else believes this, and I have to believe that deep down even the complementarians themselves know this is a farce. However, confronting a generation of women demanding to usurp men’s roles is difficult, and to a complementarian downright terrifying. Changing the subject from reality to a fantasy world allows complementarians to avoid what is difficult and instead focus on posturing.

And finally, and just for fun: Cataclysm DDA; a rather addicting rogue-like about the zombie apocalypse.

For a data source, Forebears has a nice system where you can find out various stats about different surnames, which we'll use for this. Using that I calculated the percentage of people with each surname who live in the US [excluding any who aren't known to Forebears.io].

Huckabee 2016!; Click for Larger Version

Huckabee is a very strong winner here, with 3,700 in America, and only 20 in the entire rest of the world, or a 99.5% America surname. No one else is even close to matching him.

You might think that I would have done better to simply pick the name that's most common in America, but calling "Smith" the most American name ever doesn't seem quite right to me.

To give an example of why, most people would say that Ainsworth is a more English name than Smith. This is reflected in the stats: 28% of Ainsworth's live in England, but only 9% of Smiths do.

Interestingly Ainsworth is actually more common in America than England, but only slightly more popular; not the six times more numerous the population differences would suggest, while Smith is pretty close to six times more numerous. The same comparison works for Australia as well; Smith is about how popular you'd expect it to be given our population differences, while Ainsworth is about half as popular in Australia as you'd expect it to be. The conclusion is obvious: Smith is a generic Anglosphere name, while Ainsworth is more of a specifically English name.

For those of you who remain unconvinced, here's total numbers instead, which gives Sanders a slight lead over Cruz, and then Graham, with everyone else much further down:

Sanders 2016!; Click for Larger Version

If you want them, you can download the original data-set and gnuplot script.