Catholics in a Faraway Galaxy

Click here for a video report on the Pope's elevation to inter-galactic status.

Understanding Lefties

Some people (confusingly) use the word "liberal" as a synonym for "lefty" (leftwinger). But many self-declared liberals are not lefties at all; indeed, many liberals regard lefties as deluded clowns.

The other day I saw this brief account on the Web of what a "lefty" allegedly stands for. Do you think it is spot on? On the right track, but could be tightened up? Mostly unfair? (Please let me have your comments.) Here goes:

The West is despicable. America is trash. But let's be soft on African thugs and militant Muslims. Let's constantly portray the Third World in a positive light (but secretly get down on our knees every morning and thank our stars that we are living in a gated community in California and not some God-forsaken hovel in Somalia). Let's insult capitalism while often reaping the rewards of capitalism. Let's see the normal family as distorted and fascist (but bend over backwards to accommodate every conceivable form of weird sexuality). Let's be soft on violent yobbos (because it's not their fault, poor darlings), but if a teacher puts her arm around a child, arrest the bitch and charge her with assault.

Let's fawn over anybody's attempt to protect and value their "identity", but if a White man says he is proud to be White, then dismiss him as neo-Nazi scum. Let's gurgle with delight at the customs of the various ethnic communities (no matter how blatant or outlandish), but if somebody wants to put up a small Christmas tree in the corner of their office, they should be treated like dirt. Let's sneer at classical art but see dried urine on a toffee paper as an avant-garde cultural statement. Let's deconstruct and undermine all "absolutes", except (of course) the self-evident and eternally valid absolute that conservatives are evil.

This Is Not My Father

The adventures of George, Barbara, Laura, and Bill.

No Work Today

America Versus Russia

Bananas and Coconuts

Something Fishy?

The rain beats down on a small Irish town. The streets are deserted. Times are tough. Everyone is in debt and living on credit.

A rich German arrives at the local hotel, asks to view its rooms, and puts on the desk a 100 euro note. The hotel owner gives the German a bunch of keys and he goes off for an inspection. As soon as the German has gone upstairs, the hotelier grabs the note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher hurries down the street to pay what he owes to his feed merchant. The merchant heads for the pub and uses the note to pay his bar bill. The publican slips the note to the local hooker who's been offering her services on credit. She rushes to the hotel to pay what she owes for room hire, and puts the note in the hotelier's hand. He thanks her and puts the note on the desk in front of him. Less than a minute later the German appears, says the rooms are unsuitable, picks up his money and leaves town.

No one did any work. No one earned anything. But everyone is out of debt. And the German still has all his money.

Is there or is there not something fishy about the above account? Please email me and help my poor brain to sort it out...

The Government Wants To Help You

In A.N. Wilson's book The Victorians, he points to an important difference between a prudent and sensible government (whether conservative or liberal) and the whining, interfering nanny state supported by today's prissy leftwingers. A government which tries to improve the quality of things like pavements and roads and parks and tapwater and drains and beaches and public libraries and facilities in schools may occasionally be thanked for its efforts; but a government whose odious and tiresome mission it is to improve the people themselves (or to try and "protect" the people from themselves) will receive at the least irritation and ingratitude and at the most abuse and contempt.

And so it should be.

Get Over It

Whenever I see a poster that says:

     Some people are gay - get over it

I imagine another poster that says:

     Most people are not gay - get over it

Toad of Towed Hall

American education on the decline:

American Airport Security

Bruce Schneier, talking about the history of American airport security:

"We screen for guns and bombs, so the terrorists use box cutters. We confiscate box cutters and corkscrews, so they put explosives in their sneakers. We screen footwear, so they try to use liquids. We confiscate liquids, so they put PETN bombs in their underwear (PETN is a kind of plastic explosive). We roll out full-body scanners, even though they wouldn't have caught the Underwear Bomber, so they put a bomb in a printer cartridge. We ban printer cartridges over 16 ounces -- the level of magical thinking here is amazing -- and they're going to do something else. This is a stupid game, and we should stop playing it."

The Israelis have much better airport security than the Americans do, with far fewer delays. Your homework is to find out how the Israelis have achieved this...

The Young Skeptic

Calmly and patiently listening to what others have to say and recognizing when they are feeding you

a load of crap.

Helen the Younger

The actress Helen Mirren is 62 years old. If you click on the link below, you will see a picture of her on the beach, wearing a two piece bathing suit. What is her secret? - five hours in the gym each day?? Many women aged 52 would envy Helen's appearance...

Helen on the beach.

He's in a Meeting

Terror Warnings

The American government could have been a bit clearer when they sent out notices advising people what to do in terrorist situations...

Schooldays

Schooldays in the year 1957 were certainly different from what they will be like in 2015. Were schoolchildren in 1957 better off? You decide...

Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagan's famous "Pale Blue Dot" video, about the earth in perspective:

Lewis and the Moral Law

Do you agree with C.S. Lewis' famous statement about the moral law? Here goes:

Some people say that though decent conduct does not mean what pays each particular person at a particular moment, still, it means what pays the human race as a whole; and that consequently there is no mystery about it. Human beings, after all, have some sense; they see that you cannot have real safety or happiness except in a society where every one plays fair, and it is because they see this that they try to behave decently. Now, of course, it is perfectly true that safety and happiness can only come from individuals, classes, and nations being honest and fair and kind to each other. It is one of the most important truths in the world. But as an explanation of why we feel as we do about Right and Wrong it just misses the point. If we ask: "Why ought I to be unselfish?" and you reply "Because it is good for society", we may then ask, "Why should I care what's good for society except when it happens to pay me personally?" and then you will have to say, "Because you ought to be unselfish" -- which simply brings us back to where we started. You are saying what is true, but you are not getting any further... If a man asks what is the point of behaving decently, it is no good replying, "in order to benefit society", for trying to benefit society, in other words being unselfish (for "society" after all only means "other people"), is one of the things decent behaviour consists in; all you are really saying is that decent behaviour is decent behaviour. You would have said just as much if you had stopped at the statement, "Men ought to be unselfish".

And that is where I do stop. Men ought to be unselfish, ought to be fair. Not that men are unselfish, nor that they like being unselfish, but that they ought to be. The Moral Law, or Law of Human Nature, is not simply a fact about human behaviour in the same way as the Law of Gravitation is, or may be, simply a fact about how heavy objects behave. On the other hand, it is not a mere fancy, for we cannot get rid of the idea, and most of the things we say and think about men would be reduced to nonsense if we did. And it is not simply a statement about how we should like men to behave for our own convenience; for the behaviour we call bad or unfair is not exactly the same as the behaviour we find inconvenient, and may even be the opposite. Consequently, this Rule of Right and Wrong, or Law of Human Nature, or whatever you call it, must somehow or other be a real thing -- a thing that is really there, not made up by ourselves.

And yet it is not a fact in the ordinary sense, in the same way as our actual behaviour is a fact. It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men's behaviour, and yet quite definitely real -- a real law, which none of as made, but which we find pressing on us...

(From C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1943, chapter three)

Old Russia

Some color photos of old Russia, taken (believe it or not) between 1909 and 1912.

Dumb or Dumber

Mocking Postmodernists

Here is Ophelia Benson mocking the strange views of postmodernists and their fellow-travellers.

The Looney Left

What do we know about the British politician George Galloway?

In this picture, George is the fellow with the dark glasses...

Max Dunbar says:

Galloway has said that "the disappearance of the Soviet Union was the biggest catastrophe of my life". To Saddam Hussein, he said, "I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem!" We know that Galloway signed a petition demanding the release of Saddam's number-two Tariq Aziz, with whom Galloway once danced in a North African nightclub. The Iraqi "resistance" (jihadis who kill civilians, socialists and aid workers) is "defending all the Arabs, and they are defending all the people of the world from American hegemony". When trade unionists broke down in tears at their recollections of torture under Iraqi Ba'athists, Galloway sneered that their visible emotion was "a party trick".

Galloway said of the Syrian dictator that "Syria is lucky to have Bashar al-Assad as her President".

Galloway fascinates as a symbol, a freakshow, a grotesque parody of leftwing politics. And one of the qualities I admire about Galloway is his resilience, and his ability to make a comeback; he walks away from the smoking ruins, whistling, cigar in hand, already thinking of the next opportunity, and planning his next big score.

Christopher Hitchens says:

"Galloway looks so much like what he is: a thug and a demagogue, the type of working-class wideboy and proud of it who is too used to the expenses account, the cars and the hotels - all cigars and back-slapping. He is a very cheap character and a short-arse like a lot of them are, puffed up like a turkey. He has managed to fuse being a Baathist with being a Muslim sectarian and a carpet bagger in the East End. He's got the venomous riff-raff at one end and your one-God fanatics on the other. Wonderful. Just what we need..."