"Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying." - Fran Lebowitz

Random Playlist Song: Trevor Pinnock - The English Concert and Choir: Handel - Messiah - For behold, darkness shall cover (Accompagnato (Bass))

For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but the lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.


Random Trivia bit: The French words for cheese and jam are "fromage et confiture"

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History has to be rewritten as school bans BC and AD - "A secondary school has banned pupils from using the terms BC and AD when writing dates because they are deemed unsuitable in a multi-faith society."

One of the more egregious manifestations of political correctness is terming dates in BC and AD, BCE ('Before Common Era') and CE ('Common Era') respectively. Supposedly this is to show respect for non-Christians.

However, by the same token we should rename the days of the week: Tuesday (Tiu's Day), Wednesday (Woden's Day), Thursday (Thor's Day), Friday (Freyr's Day) and Saturday (Saturn's Day), the months: eg January (Janus) and the gods know what else, just as the Quakers did.

Besides which, terming dates which essentially have the same reference point (ie 1 AD) being before or after a "common" era is conceivably just as disrespectful.

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There is no question about the intent of implying guilt by association. The most popular way to do this is to invoke the Nazis. If you're anti-euthanasia, just do what many "pro-lifers" do and mention the fact that the Nazis practised euthanasia. Never mind that the Nazi euthanasia programme was nothing about people exercising their free choice to end their own lives and everything to do with cold-blooded murder. Just suggesting a Nazi link is enough to cast proponents of euthanasia in a negative light.

The same trick can be applied to an astonishing array of beliefs and practices. The Nazis were very keen on ecology, compulsory gym classes and keep fit, forests, eugenics and public rallies. If you yourself object to any of these, then slip in a mention of Nazi policy next time you want your criticisms to pack an added rhetorical punch. And if you're being bothered by a vegetarian while you're trying to enjoy your T-bone steak, just remind your critic that Hitler too eschewed meat.

The problem with guilt by association is that it fails to do what any genuine criticism must do: show what is wrong with the thing being criticised. The fact that some bad people like or support it, or that it can be mentioned in the same breath as something bad, does not add up to a criticism. Would love be bad if the devil had loved? Should books be banned because Mein Kampf too was a book? Should we banish sauerkraut from our tables because Nazis ate it? Of course not. Nothing is bad or wrong simply because the hand of evil has touched it. If it is wrong, show why it is wrong and don't resort to innuendo to make it appear wrong by association.

(Bad Moves: Guilt by association)

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A source:

You might be interested to know that promotion is not 'automatic'. From what I found out, the process involves CPC asking for 'recommendations' on promotion from your unit. This is normally just a de rigueur procedure, as every clerk will be 'recommended' for promotion unless good reasons are given against it (and backed by someone with authority). As SAF operations are shrouded in mystery, I feel that this insight is important to current NSFs not affected by the 6 months reduction. When I first came in, I was told that CPC 'automatically' promotes when the time comes. I surmise that maintaining the idea that promotion is 'recommended' serves to maintain the 'integrity' of promotion.


I know from my dealings with clerks that CPC has to 'ask' for recommendations, but from what I know even people who went to DB got promoted. In fact, if you're a troublemaker they'll probably want to promote you even more strongly to punish you. Unless you're such a pain in the ass that they can't wait to get rid of you.

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Someone on why Santa Claus is communist: the northpole is a classless society, everyone is an elf, and everyone is proletariat, leadership is centred in a 'champion of the masses'-santa claus (who incidentally looks just like karl marx) . the presents that the elves made are distributed by santa, puttin resource allocation in the hands of the state. at the same time he is elevated to a god-like status

the idea that only good kids gets presents suggests a value judgement based on what is accpetable by the state. the whole operation is run in the 'spirit of christmas' ,making it an opiate of the masses (how ironic) and blinding the elves to the fact that they are being exploited and have becoem little more than a cog in machine. and everyone wears red

Me: what about the reindeer?

Someone: santa is the only one in the state who owns them...what do u think
he's the only one who possesses the means to leave the country

my theory is he managed to find a barren land in the coldest region of the north and over there found a race of inbreeding people with congenital birth defects-stunted growth and limited cognitive ability, dumb but hardworkers if instructed. there was extreme division of labor, os little skill was expected out of each elf

think of north pole as siberia

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Why aren't the people opposed to casinos because they will result in many "social ills" opposed to the stock market as well? The two operate in essentially the same way, with essentially the same consequences - people becoming bankrupt and despondent, people jumping off skyscrapers and the like.

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Scientific American: Flying Carpets and Scientific Prayers

How to talk about liberal education (if you must) - "A true liberal education, he says one in which learning is pursued for its own sake, and is based on the idea that broad literacy prepares students to act as educated, enlightened citizens requires a "community of scholars" who are not worried about job-placement rates, or the relevance of their work to government officials, and who view a life of scholarship "as a vocation," not simply a career. "We couldn't well imagine Socrates taking early retirement,""

Death before dishonour - "What is it about the power of shame that drives a father, brother, even a mother to slaughter a close family member? In the UK alone, 117 murders are being investigated as 'honour killings'. But over-sensitivity to cultural differences means that many victims are denied the justice that they deserve"

Blue-state philosopher - "If the 21st century becomes a Singer century, we will also see legal infanticide of born children who are ill or who have ill older siblings in need of their body parts. Question: What about parents conceiving and giving birth to a child specifically to kill him, take his organs, and transplant them into their ill older children? Mr. Singer: "It's difficult to warm to parents who can take such a detached view, [but] they're not doing something really wrong in itself." Is there anything wrong with a society in which children are bred for spare parts on a massive scale? "No.""

Math profs link particle actions, human free will - "The professors, John Conway and Simon Kochen, have proven what they call the Free Will Theorem. It says that given three assumptions, if particles' behavior is truly predetermined, then people cannot have free will. In other words, if the behavior of a particle is fully determined by its past, so too are all the so-called decisions people believe they are making."

Firing the canon - "If you are a literate, sentient human, then you know some Shakespeare and even if you haven't read Cervantes, you know about Don Quixote. If asked to name great composers, you will start with Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, or Mozart, Mussorgsky and Messiaen. You may never have opened Childe Harold, or Little Dorrit, but you can strike a Byronic attitude and spot a Dickensian character. Your sense of both the history and geography of the humanities extends from Plato to Charlie Parker, from Homer to James Joyce, from Trollope to François Truffaut. And if somebody mentions Rashomon, you know better than to blink and say "who?" The canon changes with national boundaries, and again for each generation. But at any time, there must be 1,000 names and notions to which most educated westerners would claim familiarity. Canonical names become labels: Chestertonian paradox, Swiftian savagery, Gibbonian irony and so on."

strongest man - "I try and hold a camera at arms length"
Idiot holds camera at arm's length for 4 minutes. One of the most stupid things I've ever seen (and that's saying something).

'Obesity tourism' is Mugabe's answer to feeding Zimbabwe - "Zimbabwe has come up with a bizarre proposal to solve the food crisis threatening half its population with starvation. It wants to bring in obese tourists from overseas so that they can shed pounds doing manual labour on land seized from white farmers."

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I don't know why people like to crowd outside exam halls. It's terribly hot and stuffy.

Someone left her (for it is almost certainly a her) phone in her bag, and her SMS tone, which was the sound for announcements in KLIA, sounded 57 times in just over 2 hours. Argh. Meanwhile I saw someone with white nail polish playing with a stick of liquid paper, so maybe what I thought was nail polish was actually liquid paper.


Quotes:

What if the blood bank couldn't cope with the sudden influx of blood donors? (people needing blood)

[On a girl in a tube top] Who dresses like this for an exam? [Someone: Maybe it's an oral exam.

Maybe you should do your thesis on the sociology of Power Rangers