Riddle me this one:
A “Greenie Weenie’s” Dream World
Audi. Touched a nerve. Made me want to avoid their products.
Yep. greenie weenies dreaming of a new dark age.
Once Again With the Obvious: The TSA is “Full Employment for Idiots”
Bollywood star, Shahrukh Khan, one of the most popular and well-known celebrities in the world–just notsomuch in the US–was hassled by the TSA in New Jersey.
…one can only imagine the American reaction if Brad Pitt was subjected to a “routine inspection” in India to ascertain his intentions and identity. However, the comparison is hardly apt considering Khan’s star power in India [N.B. pop. ~1,148,000,000, or nearly 4X the U.S. population] is likened to the combination of Pitt, Tom Hanks and Will Smith multiplied tenfold by ten Oprahs reading a book by Deepak Chopra.
Par for the course with an agency that hassles active duty military, nursing mothers and Medal of Honor recipients with equal churlishness. *feh* The Thugs Standing Around is nothing but security theater performed as an exercise in turning citizens into subjects and visitors into (justly) anti-Americans. We’d be better off to take the folks working for the TSA and pay them to sit home and watch soap operas and pound the floor with their clubs.
Dissing a guy with an estimated 3.5 billion fans worldwide? Just another day with the TSA.
“Consider the dandelions of the field… “
A repeat of this post from my old Blogspot third world county blog (it’s been imported here as well… somewhere *heh*) is long overdue, IMO.
“Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
Weeds are mostly in the eye (and heart) of the beholder. Let me submit for your consideration the lowly dandelion. Was there ever a more beautiful yellow, a more deliciously luscious green? What a feast for the eyes! And yet, our culture considers the dandelion to be a pest plant; not merely useless, but something to be eradicated. *sigh* Useless? Every part (excepting the seed puffball) of the dandelion is edible. The greens cleaned and steamed or boiled are not only tasty but highly nutritious. The root, after cleaning, peeling and then blanching, boiling or roasting is also highly nutritious and useful in many ways. And even the yellow bloom is nutritious and a treat for both the eye and the tastebuds in salads.
And what can I say of dandelion wine? 🙂
And, as much as our society spends to eradicate this nutritious food and lovely flowering plant, it thrives in spite of all the poisons thown its way. And have you ever attempted to pull a dandelion to get rid of the “weed”? Unless you get every last piece of the root, it’s more than likely to simply grow back. Lilies of the field? Nah.
“Consider the dandelions how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
No matter how our society’s warped values may deem the dandelion to be an obnoxious weed, children who are as yet unpolluted by the depraved value system that would deem such a radiently bold and beautiful flower a weed, bring their mothers glad bouquets of dandelions every spring.
Monday Quote
As to that Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind I speak of so often…
“When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.”
–attributed to “Dresden James” (whoever that is)
Fear-mongering
In the decade or more before his death, Michael Crichton spoke widely about fear-mongering in science circles (often coupled with making a religion out of science), exacerbated by the pressing need in media to market fear (the pun was intentional; if you groaned, shame on you :-)). The Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind (and the politicians who bow before its altar) openly embrace fear-mongering both for immediate audience share and to enhance the addiction of the masses to its poisonous screeds.
Both those who embrace a strictly dogmatic scientific approach to issues and those who rebel against such dogmatism seem to often embrace fear-mongering as a primary persuasive tactic. Take “natural” foods proponents and “scientific nutritionists” or medical establishment dogmatists and “holistic medicine” proponents and put them in the same room, and you’d likely end up with a kilkenny cats donnybrook of fear-mongering. Just one example can serve as a cautionary: chelation therapy is presented by some alternative medicine proponents as THE answer to a host of ills–ills they often imply the medical community only want to treat with very expensive therapies that work less well. The medical establishment counters with scary threats of death from chelation therapy, often pointing out that more than 30 deaths from chelation therapy have occurred… since the 1970s while noting that more than 800,000 inpatient/outpatient chelation treatments are administered per year. Let’s see now… that’s about 0.0000000125% of treatments have resulted in deaths!
*feh* Fear-mongering. Since chelation therapy for other than heavy metals poisoning is most often for alternative medicine treatment of heart and artery disease how about comparison to another common treatment for heart and artery disease? Heart bypass surgery results in at least a 1.0% death rate. That’s about 80,000 times more risky than chelation therapy. *heh*
The dire warnings from the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming (which previously was the Church of Anthropogenic Global Cooling and is now transitioning to the Church of Anthropogenic Global Climate Change) have all been nothing but crying wolf. Not one of the warnings have come to pass–not one!–and so, like other whack job religious nuts who keep pushing back the date they prophesy for the end of the world, the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming keeps having to move the goal posts in their deadly game to keep the fictional fear-mongering within the realm of the sheeple’s oh-so-flexible suspension of disbelief.
Lies, lies and more lies, built upon grains of sand, less than even kernels of truth, lies designed to induce fear in the credulous sheeple who, thanks to long term media brainwashing aided by a public education system that seems to be designed to produce idiots and individuals who cooperate in their own lobotomization, are completely unable to even parse this moderately complex sentence, let alone deconstruct the lies fed them by The Powers That Be.
As a popularly-voiced, accessible (to anyone who really can read and do simple arithmetic at a genuine upper grade school level) preparation to skeptical perusal of contemporary science-as-religion as presented for sheeple consumption, I recommend once again James Hogan’s Kicking the Sacred Cow. It’s an easy read for any even minimally literate person, and the footnotes are well worth following.
it’s not just literacy that’s a problem, although that certainly is a problem, but, as I found out in a recent conversation with someone locally, most people can’t even tell when they’re being manipulated with numbers. The “more than 30 people have died since the 1970s” attempt to frighten people away from thoughtful consideration of chelation therapies noted above is one such example. By contrast to the 30 or so deaths out of 24,000,000 or so chelation treatments in the U.S. since the 1970’s, 90 people a year are killed by lightning strikes. That’s roughly 0.000000003% of the population… per year! Ooo! Scary, huh? Not. Sure, ones chances of dying from a chelation therapy treatment are more than ones chances of dying from a lightning strike, but compared to other risks, both are neglible in the extreme. (I’m not advocating chelation therapy for anything but heavy metals poisoning. I’m just noting that scare tactics are reprehensible… and that the only defense is knowledge.) WHat’s my point here? Most folks wouldn’t even bother to count the zeros in the numbers offered above, and even more wouldn’t be able to discern how they were educed. The “recent conversation” that spurred this observation? Someone who’s back in school commented on how much trouble her statistics course was for her. Numbers are haaaard. *heh* Without a calculator, most folks can’t even balance their checkbooks. Heck, with a calculator many folks can’t. (OK, even I don’t do as many maths problems in my head as I used to do. I’m slowing down.) Even with calculators, math is just too hard for most folks, Why? Because most folks can’t do simple math at all and have no idea what that calculator they’re using is doing with the garbage they input–garbage because they don’t know what to input to get answers they need.
The simple answer is to learn to read. No, not how to read: to read. Read copiously, and choose books that are both well-written and have something worthwhile to say and that are well-grounded in reality. Even science fiction or fantasy novels can be more well-grounded in reality than much of the fear-mongering toxic waste poured down the gullets of credulous UNliterate sheeple by the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind and its partners in crime found in Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries and Congress.
Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Democrat=Socialist, The World According to Carl, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
On Liberty
Back in the day when there were liberals on The Left, liberty was a concept that was much-valued by those who called themselves liberals. When I was but a lad, as the expression used to go, I exposed myself to John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty, which dealt not so much with liberty of conscience or of will but liberty as exercised by individuals within the civil realm, in the social order. Of course liberty of conscience and social liberty are closely related, but Mill made clear that freedom to express oneself in the marketplace of ideas was a different thing to liberty of conscience.
Those who call themselves liberals nowadays seem to have forgotten any kind of liberty in their pursuit of extirpating all discourse that challenges their dogma in the areas of
homosexual behavior/priviledges
pseudo-scientific dogma in everything from Darwinism to anthropogenic global warming
economic suppositions
statist control of private matters
property rights
education
religion
and just about all other areas that touch our lives.
Of several things that Mill said in his famous essay that influenced much of my behavior during my formative years, two stand out: his comment that truth need not fear debate and that we must always be wary of the tyranny of prevailing opinion stifling debate.
A simple example to demonstrate that the typical soi-disant “liberal” of today is no such critter is Algore’s response to those who would challenge his AGW position with… facts.
“There’s no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. . . . There is no more scientific debate among serious people who’ve looked at the evidence.”
Funny thing, that “no more debate” meme he seems intent, along with other AGW dogmatists, on making fact: real scientists (as opposed to AGW dogmatists) are debating it, examining the facts and the hypotheses. You can find links to quite a few real scientists (AGW dogmatists simply dismiss real scientists as “deniers”) who have some inconvenient facts to discuss with Mr. Gore here, although anyone who can type “google” can find many, many more references (including this one–pdf, and do note the creds the interviewee has that Algore lacks).
Cutting off (or shouting down) debate on an issue to avoid having to deal with facts is the mark of a weak argument, which says a lot about most fake liberals’ arguments.
I do encourage you to track down (there, that wasn’t so hard, was it?) and read a copy of Mill’s essay, On Liberty. I have my copy, first read as a wee lad *heh*, within reach of my right hand, as I have had for many years. You might find it useful to purchase a hardcopy for marking and note-taking (it’s interesting to me to go back and read my “arguments” with Mill and see how they have changed over the years).
BTW, Mill’s arguments concerning liberty bear very closely on an upcoming post on authority, one I keep deferring but need to write soon.
Trackposted to Diary of the Mad Pigeon, Faultline USA, Nuke Gingrich, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Wolf Pangloss, Democrat=Socialist, A Newt One, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
What’s the matter with kids today?
From a wide array of socially destructive interests affecting youth today, one stands out as the 500-pound gorilla: prisons for kids, AKA public schools. While I have some arguments with some of his sub-points, John Taylor Gatto’s The Underground History of American Education is a book every American should read… those that are able to, that is. *sigh*
Why, in the face of readily, easily, available source information, free courseware (here and elsewhere, as well), tutorials, literature and direct interaction with Wise Men is the electorate of our democratic republic ever more stupidly uninformed (as can be inferred from the candidates it votes for)?
I think I can assuredly assert that at least a major part of the reason is our nation’s prisons for kids, AKA public schools.
Exactly what John Dewey heralded at the onset of the twentieth century has indeed happened. Our once highly individualized nation has evolved into a centrally managed village, an agora made up of huge special interests which regard individual voices as irrelevant. The masquerade is managed by having collective agencies speak through particular human beings. Dewey said this would mark a great advance in human affairs, but the net effect is to reduce men and women to the status of functions in whatever subsystem they are placed. Public opinion is turned on and off in laboratory fashion. All this in the name of social efficiency, one of the two main goals of forced schooling.
Gatto’s book, linked above, is available in full on the web. I’d like to reorganize his website to make it easier to read, but if you stick with it (and do open links on the TOC page in new tabs–that’ll help) and read the whole thing, you’ll soon be foirwarding the link to everyone you know… especially those in your addressbook who are teachers.
Don’t expect politicians to read the thing. They don’t have the time or inclination to read things that would tell ’em how to actually fix what they’ve broken (and the record shows they do not have to fear an electorate holding them accountable for the child abuse they encourage–and in cases outright dictate–in the classrooms across our country). You’ll have to read it, spread the word and build a grassroots groundswell of “take your damned hands off my kids!”
*heh*
Trackposted to Nuke Gingrich, Faultline USA, Allie is Wired, Woman Honor Thyself, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Leaning Straight Up, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.