Sol Invictus 2019
December 31, 2018
Devolution of democracy
December 28, 2018A modern politician’s priorities:
- Me
- The party
- The party’s leadership
- My voters
- My party’s voters
- The country
- My constituency
Other parties’ voters do not enter the picture.
The many, many gods of science
December 27, 2018Many scientists (and all atheists) deny the gods of religions. Many also deny the existence of the unknowable but then illogically also deny that omniscience is unavoidable.
(Of course omniscience is one of the requirements to be a god).
But science does assume gods – in everything but name.
Many, many gods.
Where matter and energy came from
December 23, 2018
How big is the universe?
December 23, 2018
97% of reporters fabricate some part of their stories (probably)
December 21, 2018Claas Relotius at Der Spiegel, Jayson Blair at The New York Times, Johann Hari at The Guardian and Jim Avila at ABC News are only the tip of the iceberg. They are not exceptions but merely examples of the malaise. They are all a part of the general erosion of journalistic ethics. But what was just a decline of ethical standards has now degenerated to the point where every news story has an agenda. The use of fabrication, lying, cherry picking, and omission are standard. A journalistic report which is not skewed and which is not trying to promote a particular viewpoint has become a very rare exception. Journalists today find it perfectly acceptable to be lobbyists and activists and propagandists while purporting to be objective reporters.
The line between advertising and reporting has virtually disappeared. It is not difficult to get media desperate for copy to print pure advertising material as objective reports. It is virtually impossible for some media to report any story which does not reinforce their own biases.
“Journalists” caught lying include Mel Judson, Juan Thompson and Brian Williams among others. Journalists who fabricated include Louis Sebold, Stephen Glass, Jant Cooke, Patricia Smith and Carl Cameron among many others. Cheating is the norm not the exception.
The Media Still Hasn’t Figured Out Why They’re Losing Credibility
The outlook is bad for media credibility. Poll after poll finds public confidence in the press is at historic lows. The AP cites a Pew Research Center report that two-thirds of Americans believe “fabricated news” is causing a “great deal of confusion” about basic facts, and a poll conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago found the percentage of Americans expressing a “great deal of confidence” in the press has fallen from 28 percent in 1976 to just 8 percent in 2016.
The American Press Institute put the percentage at an even lower 6 percent in an April 2016 survey, which also found 85 percent of Americans rate getting the facts right as extremely or very important, and prioritize that metric most highly when deciding which news outlets to trust. “Accuracy is the paramount principle of trust,” the survey noted.
The simple truth is that it is more likely that 97% of all journalists now fabricate some part of their stories, rather than that 97% of journalists are honest reporters.
“Girls were made to love and kiss” – and who are we to interfere with this
December 19, 2018Fertility drops when you can’t tell the boys from the girls.
This is now as politically incorrect as it is possible to be.
Still true though.
“Flirting is jolly, it’s folly, but fun”
I must have first heard this in the 1960s and it was probably the Richard Tauber version I heard on radio. It is still as enjoyable now as it was then. (The second verse has not quite the meaning it once had).
GIRLS WERE MADE TO LOVE AND KISS
From the Operetta “Paganini” (1925) (Franz Lehár)
(Original libretto by Paul Knepler & Béla Jenbach)
(English adaptations by A.P. Herbert & Harry Dexter (1937),
and by David Kram & Dennis Olsen)
As recorded by Richard Tauber:
Girls were made to love and kiss
And who am I to interfere with this?
Is it well? Who can tell?
But I know the good Lord made it so
Am I ashamed to follow nature’s way?
Shall I be blamed if God has made me gay?
Does it pay? Who can say?
I’m a man and kiss her when I can
Yet I have suffered in love’s great deeps
I know the passion that never sleeps
I know the longing and wronging of hearts
The hope that flatters and shatters and smarts
I suffer still but I sleep at nights
Man cannot always be on the heights
And when our aching and breaking is done
Flirting is jolly, it’s folly, but fun
Girls were made to love and kiss
And who am I to interfere with this?
Does it pay? Who can say?
I’m a man and kiss her when I can
Justice always requires discrimination
December 16, 2018Equality is a mirage and justice (fairness) always overrules equality.
And justice always requires the discrimination between good and bad.
Creation Myths
December 7, 2018
Religions have no answer to the question and merely invoke God (or a god among a a pantheon of appropriate gods). Science has no answer either. No physicist or astrophysicist or cosmologist actually has the faintest idea about where energy and matter came from. The disingenuous claim that a smooth nothing suddenly and spontaneously produced clumps of matter and anti-matter (such that the total remained nothing) is just as far-fetched as any creation myth. Energy is handled similarly. The otherwise homogeneous universe is allowed to have clumps of “something” provided that they can be neutralised by equivalent amounts of “negative somethings”. The Big Bang is just a label for a Big Unknown.
Atheists, of course, don’t even try to answer the question. They are satisfied to say that the answer is unknown but they do know that it is not any kind of conception of God.
The other Big Question is : “How did life begin?”
Religions again have no answer and invoke God or gods. Science has no answer either and puts it down to random chemistry which became biochemistry and which, by accident, led to life.
Neither science nor religions nor philosophy have the faintest idea of what time is.
It’s all just Magic.
Fear of political incorrectness is just cowardice
December 4, 2018Every human has a conception of good and bad. It is the most fundamental value that underpins all other values. Not everybody agrees on what should be considered good or what should be labeled bad, but it is pretty clear at the level of the individual.
Taking cowardice to be the subjugation of actions to fears (and bravery then to be the subjugation of fears to necessary actions), it seems to me that since WW2, the discourse about human behaviour is dominated by cowardice. Judgements of good and bad are suspended or ignored for fear of being labeled politically incorrect. Bad behaviour is excused and even encouraged by the failure to hold to one’s own set of values. In fact, the cowardice is rationalised by the idea that bad behaviour is always excusable. It is conveniently forgotten that all so called “human rights” are, in fact, just privileges afforded by human societies to their members. Politically correct rhetoric will have it that these “rights” (actually privileges) are not subject to behaviour – yet there is no society which does not, in practice, sanction members for their behaviour (but not always).
How Political Correctness Protects the Bad Guys
……. Today, police know that criminals’ rights will often be held above victims’ rights. As a result, police must cope with procedures specially designed to prevent criminals from admitting their crimes, with evidence procedures designed to prevent officers from looking where evidence might be, and with a virtual ban on profiling the characteristics of a likely criminal during the search. ……..
The power of political correctness is especially evident in Britain, where a training manual instructed magistrates not to have prejudice against black youths who commit violent crimes but, rather, according to the Salisbury Review, to “think of them as quirky Lenny Henry characters”—referring to a black English comedian. The Sentencing Guidelines Council says teenage muggers should not be jailed. Those who defend themselves when criminals invade their homes, however, are regularly jailed. One woman was ordered to remove barbed wire from the roof of her house because an intruder could be injured. Dr. Ian Stephen gave the following advice at Glasgow Caledonian University: “If you attack the burglar, or react in an over-the-top manner … you will inevitably end up on the receiving end of a prison sentence that will far outstrip that imposed on the intruder in your own home …. Direct contact should be avoided whenever possible. If unavoidable, the victim should adopt a state of active passivity ….” One must show proper respect for the criminal!
A consequence of this cowardice in making judgements is that “bad” is equated to “good” in the name of equality. What is fair and just, which requires a judgement of good or bad, is subjugated to the politically correct notions of “human rights” or “equality” or “discrimination” or “sexism”.
- For fear of being labeled racist, anti-social activities by “ethnic groups” are tolerated and even allowed to flourish.
- For fear of being labeled “anti-religion”, brainwashing of children is permitted and encouraged.
- For fear of violating “human rights”, vicious rapists and murderers are treated better than their victims.
- For fear of violating “human rights”, being bad is privileged.
- For fear of being labeled “discrimination”, the incompetent are equated with the skilled in the job market.
- For fear of being labeled “anti-feminist”, incompetence is equated with experience or skill.
To allow a fear of being labeled “politically incorrect” to subjugate one’s own values is simple cowardice.
Bad is never equal to good.
We cannot keep making excuses for bad behaviour. There may be explanations for bad behaviour, but it must have consequences. An explanation cannot eliminate liability.
Related:
Why is there an ethical problem with capital punishment?
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