March 28, 2007
Puerile
..eight American boys were woundedThey are not boys. They are volunteer soldiers, men, doing their duty to defend Americans, even 4th estate 5th columnists.
- CNN Iraq reporter
March 27, 2007
How Liberals think
Evan Sayet's speech is terrific but 47 minutes long. 5-15 minutes will cheer you up.
His subject is that since Liberals aren't all evil and aren't all stupid, how come they're 180 degrees from right about everything? They can't be stupid because then they'd be right some of the time. They can't be evil because we all know good Liberals, eg his sister.
Weeell, I say that morally speaking you are what you do, not what you think of yourself as you're doing it (given foreseeable consequences), so nice abortionists, well-meaning appeasers and so on are not excused judgement in my sci-fi heaven, tho Lord knows it won't be me doing the judging.
March 25, 2007
March 21, 2007
Obvious, doable
Here's a family friendly policy for Mitt Romney to flesh out:
I'd deal with the censorship issue by first making the scheme voluntary. My guess is that would knock out 75-95% of salacious websites from inadvertent viewing. If there's still a severe residual problem, sure consider 'censorship', but it really isn't censorship if adults are free to access it. It's child protection. If we can forbid plying children with legal drugs, we can forbid sliming them with porn.
Utah's governor and state legislature has lent its weight to efforts to persuade Congress to pass laws requiring adult content providers to stay off port 80, which generally carries HTTP web surfing traffic......
Censorware, or internet-filtering software, is supposed to achieve the same results. But port-exile advocates say their way of blocking internet porn is better.
The technical obstacles to implement CP80 are considerable, and the scheme calls for an arbiter of public taste (i.e. a censor) to decide what kind of content is fit for inclusion of the mainstream internet. The difficulties of getting the .xxx top level domain established also point to another set of potential problems.
Supporters of Internet Community Ports Act argue that the approach preserves all current URLs and current naming conventions, unlike the .xxx top level domain plan.
I'd deal with the censorship issue by first making the scheme voluntary. My guess is that would knock out 75-95% of salacious websites from inadvertent viewing. If there's still a severe residual problem, sure consider 'censorship', but it really isn't censorship if adults are free to access it. It's child protection. If we can forbid plying children with legal drugs, we can forbid sliming them with porn.
March 19, 2007
When you wish upon a star..
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Watch me make an options scandal disappear!Disney's official report is out. The verdict: I'm innocent. No harm, no foul. Were options backdated? Yes. Was I the largest shareholder? Yes. Was I running the company? Yes. Am I to blame? No. Does this make sense? Absolutely.Another view.
March 18, 2007
Little big lies
I agree with Hitler that the power of "the big lie" is that the lie is so colossal that no one would believe anyone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."
A couple of elisions that make my eyeballs bleed:
"Climate change is more dangerous than terrorism." Maybe, maybe not. The issue is the materiality of manmade climate change.
"Stem-cell research should be funded by the government." Maybe, maybe not. The issue is the morality of killing foetuses to obtain the cells.
These little big lies have the merit of slipperiness and a kind of lazy deniability. For discriminating minds it's hard to credit the mental sloppiness of the swallowers of these lies, but you can fool a hell of a lot of the people a hell of a lot of the time when you're spinning a web they want to get caught in. Fuhrerprinzip, scapegoatism, feminism, abortionism, hedonism, it-takes-a-village-ism, catastrophism and scientism succeed because they are ego-syntonic, they denote impulses consistent with self-conception.
What then must we do? Well, what we are doing. The World Wide Web allows truth and lies, science and scientism, to parade their beauty side-by-side before the whole human race. Little lies, big lies, little big lies - their facelifts, their cellulite, their sagging bums are mercilessly projected onto a giant screen and contrasted with the fresh good looks of simple truth.
Instance the Manmade Global Warming scam which recently peaked around Oscar time. The UN's decree that the debate was over has provoked a pushback that has publicly destroyed the scam's credentials. Imagine a virtuoso confidence trickster, revelling in his technique as he beguiles his grinning marks, who suddenly realizes the word "liar" has been pinned to his back, his toupee has slipped and his flies are open.The scammers are re-grouping, probing for a re-configuration of the scam that has more stickability, but "Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!"
Anyhoot, my Screwtapian ways with words aren't the real issue. The real issue is this: the spinners of little big lies need to control the World Wide Web itself. Governments must rescue the apparatus from US hegemony so that the minds of starving Africans and of our children and of starving African children cease to be infected with American consumerist trash and theocracy. Unesco would be a suitably democratic Lord Protector of the world's thought channels. The BBC (re-branded as The World Broadcasting Corporation) would be a suitably expert instrument for Philosopher Kings and then a Philosopher Fuhrer to shape information and ideas for the greater good. Then the little big lies can be consolidated into one big big lie - Liberalism, A Convenient Untruth - which is a ripe and rotten host for another big big lie - Islamofascism, An Incovenient Untruth.
A couple of elisions that make my eyeballs bleed:
"Climate change is more dangerous than terrorism." Maybe, maybe not. The issue is the materiality of manmade climate change.
"Stem-cell research should be funded by the government." Maybe, maybe not. The issue is the morality of killing foetuses to obtain the cells.
These little big lies have the merit of slipperiness and a kind of lazy deniability. For discriminating minds it's hard to credit the mental sloppiness of the swallowers of these lies, but you can fool a hell of a lot of the people a hell of a lot of the time when you're spinning a web they want to get caught in. Fuhrerprinzip, scapegoatism, feminism, abortionism, hedonism, it-takes-a-village-ism, catastrophism and scientism succeed because they are ego-syntonic, they denote impulses consistent with self-conception.
What then must we do? Well, what we are doing. The World Wide Web allows truth and lies, science and scientism, to parade their beauty side-by-side before the whole human race. Little lies, big lies, little big lies - their facelifts, their cellulite, their sagging bums are mercilessly projected onto a giant screen and contrasted with the fresh good looks of simple truth.
Instance the Manmade Global Warming scam which recently peaked around Oscar time. The UN's decree that the debate was over has provoked a pushback that has publicly destroyed the scam's credentials. Imagine a virtuoso confidence trickster, revelling in his technique as he beguiles his grinning marks, who suddenly realizes the word "liar" has been pinned to his back, his toupee has slipped and his flies are open.The scammers are re-grouping, probing for a re-configuration of the scam that has more stickability, but "Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!"
"Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights into the question if it recognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists - and politicians - must trade (normal) truth for influence."3/10, I'd say, for a delicious recasting of "the" truth as either "normal" truth or "post-normal" truth, but "post-normal" suggests "post-modern" and "post-modern" won't stick these days. Maybe "paranormal" truth or "my" truth, as in "my truth is I'm a gay American".
Anyhoot, my Screwtapian ways with words aren't the real issue. The real issue is this: the spinners of little big lies need to control the World Wide Web itself. Governments must rescue the apparatus from US hegemony so that the minds of starving Africans and of our children and of starving African children cease to be infected with American consumerist trash and theocracy. Unesco would be a suitably democratic Lord Protector of the world's thought channels. The BBC (re-branded as The World Broadcasting Corporation) would be a suitably expert instrument for Philosopher Kings and then a Philosopher Fuhrer to shape information and ideas for the greater good. Then the little big lies can be consolidated into one big big lie - Liberalism, A Convenient Untruth - which is a ripe and rotten host for another big big lie - Islamofascism, An Incovenient Untruth.
March 17, 2007
Hip,hip,hip,hypocrisy
The dogmatic character of the Church of Manmade Global Warming makes it apt that carbon credits are thought of as ecological indulgences. Flatulent twerps like Al Gore can buy these waivers for their own colossal carbon footprints and incentivise the construction of exceptionally filthy power plant elsewhere which is most cheaply able to supply the carbon offsets. Perverse moralising meets perverse incentives. But what is really needed is hypocrisy credits to induce a vast transfer of wealth from Edwards and Gore to deserving right-wing bloggers.
March 15, 2007
Inject! Inject! Inject!
I'm waiting to hear from NJ whether one of my children will be exempted from its compulsory vaccination programme. In NJ there is no philosophical exemption, so parents who have rational objections must cite specific supernatural tenets. In order of significance, what's at work here is:
1. The lust of the state to assume the rights of parents.
2. Vaccination is big business and big lobbiness.
3. Medical omniscience.
4. A superstition that mass vaccination improves overall immunity in affluent societies.
Reasoned discrimination is not a force in play. The vaccination lobby resembles the Manmade Global Warming lobby in its religious adherence to dogma, its anathemizing of 'deniers' and its 'greater good' propensity to lie thru its teeth and omit inconvenient truths.
The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that mass vaccination for chickenpox adversely re-shapes the disease's profile so that it is far more virulent. The answer is either to stop mass inoculation (not considered in the article) or to start mass repetitive boosters thru adulthood with at least one known result - sacks more tax for drugs to be shot into my younger children. My elder children caught measles, mumps, chickenpox etc when they were young and developed hardy immune systems.
1. The lust of the state to assume the rights of parents.
2. Vaccination is big business and big lobbiness.
3. Medical omniscience.
4. A superstition that mass vaccination improves overall immunity in affluent societies.
Reasoned discrimination is not a force in play. The vaccination lobby resembles the Manmade Global Warming lobby in its religious adherence to dogma, its anathemizing of 'deniers' and its 'greater good' propensity to lie thru its teeth and omit inconvenient truths.
The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that mass vaccination for chickenpox adversely re-shapes the disease's profile so that it is far more virulent. The answer is either to stop mass inoculation (not considered in the article) or to start mass repetitive boosters thru adulthood with at least one known result - sacks more tax for drugs to be shot into my younger children. My elder children caught measles, mumps, chickenpox etc when they were young and developed hardy immune systems.
March 13, 2007
The Oil Industry
I prefer wit, brevity, the quick dagger breezily slipped between the ribs of my enemies, but my elegant postures collapse in a heap before David Cameron, leader of the Cameroons and their hangers-on, aka the Conservative Party of Great Britain. This party leads the polls, so Cameron may well be Prime Minister in 2-3 years.
Cameron fuses my circuits, smoke seeps from my eyeballs, I can't speak, I gawp like a fish out of water. This,this,this Old-Etonian, ex PR man, slimy spiv; this oily chancer, this BBC nominee, this faux-conservative, nouveau-man; this,this,this is the successor to Margaret Thatcher. Woe. Is. Me.
There have been have been so many last straws with this, uh, scumbag is the mot juste, but this is the last, last straw. He's re-invented himself as an eco-fascist and invited Al Gore to address the Shadow Cabinet. Listen, friends in Utah, reserve a place for me in your country. I may need to tear up my passport and get one of yours. Just don't elect Gore, Clinton, Obama or McCain.
March 07, 2007
March 05, 2007
Why God made powers of 2
Daniel Tammett is an autistic savant 'whose brain somehow possesses an island of brilliance.' He appears to be unique as 'the first recorded savant to have no easily recognizable autism' and in that he can describe how he performs his feats of memory. Here is a decent video about him, but what will stay with me longer than the clip of Daniel reciting the first 22,514 digits of pi was the short segment titled 'Bullied'.