Apart from in June and July, it would seem that New Year is celebrated somewhere in every month of the year.
Many New Year celebrations left in 2019
January 1, 2019Sol 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.
