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Eat drink and be merry ....

Posted by Greg England on Thursday, September 25, 2008 7:55:41 PM
Bill Maher has made a movie that mocks religious faith, in a "shooting fish in a barrel" way that makes liberals feel smug, whilst providing little illumination:
 
Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Canterbury has come out in defence of Christ.
 
Of course he hasn't, he is too busy praising Marx, Dawkins and Hitchens:
 
And I quote:
"Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, if about little else ........ The mythologies and abstractions, the pseudo-objects of much modern financial culture, are in urgent need of their own Dawkins or Hitchens."
 
Well, here's my reply for the Archbishop of Canterbury:
"And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."  Friedrich Nietzsche.
  

PS:  If you have never heard of Nietzsche then I don't recommend him.  He is a seriously nihilistic philosopher ...
... (his collected works were a gift from Hitler to Mussolini for his sixtieth birthday!)

Nevertheless, it's these thinkers who have shaped the modern world (like Marx) so it's important to at least be aware that they exist.  And the internet is full of liberals who are busy rewriting history and apologising for Nietzsche (poor, poor misunderstood Nietzsche ... ah, didums).

So, if you are still curious, then I highly recommend this Catholic analysis:
 
Unlike a liberal analysis, this article pulls no punches and tells it how it really is.
 
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A house divided against itself

Posted by Greg England on Wednesday, September 24, 2008 5:39:12 PM
May I refer you to algore's latest piece of enviro wisdom as reported in sweetness-light:
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/gore-civil-disobedience-to-stop-coal-plants
 
And here's the link to the original Reuters article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE48N78A20080924?sp=true

"Nobel Peace Prize winner and environmental crusader Al Gore urged young people on Wednesday to engage in civil disobedience to stop the construction of coal plants without the ability to store carbon."

The article introduces carbon capture technology:
Carbon capture and storage could give coal power an extended lease on life by keeping power plants' greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere and easing climate change.
 
But then it dashes it against a wall:
But no commercial-scale project exists anywhere to demonstrate the technology, partly because it is expected to increase up-front capital costs by an additional 50 percent.
 
By using logic:
What algore's enouragement effectively amounts to is a blanket opposition of all coal powered electricity generation
 
But hang on a minute:
In the 1980s, the National Union of Mineworkers went on strike in 1984, lead by Arthur Scargill, protesting at the closure of pits.  This was the definitive cause for all left-wingers and opponents of Margaret Thatcher:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_miners'_strike_(1984-1985)
 
It has inspired films:

Arthur Scargill (ex NUM leader) today is still taking on those who oppose coal.  However, these days it's not the Thatcher government, it's the environmentalists:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/08/nuclearpower.fossilfuels

What are we to make of all of this?  Well, gather round, and I will let you into a little secret:
 
"You don't have to debate a liberal to win the argument.  That's because for every liberal who is passionately in favour of X, you will find another liberal who is equally passionately against X."
 
Liberalism is utterly riddled with contradictions.  Liberals are not united by their opinions.  Otherwise, why would fundamentalist Muslims march with gay rights activists and feminists under an anti-war banner? 
 
Mutual Respect?
 
I don't believe it.  I don't believe for a moment that we are talking about "tolerance" or "diversity" else how do you explain the visceral hatred that liberals have for Christians, for conservatives and especially for Christian conservatives?
 
Truth be told, liberals are on an unholy mission to control our lives.
 
 
However, there is one small consolation.  Because liberalism is full of contradictions there are only so many liberals that you can gather together in one place before you reach a critical mass.
 
A bit like Uranium 235.
 
So encourage liberals to gather together in one place, stand back and watch their heads explode.
 
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I only buy Playboy for the pictures ...

Posted by Greg England on Saturday, September 13, 2008 11:12:27 AM
I have started to read the Bible again.
As a secular Brit living in a largely secular society, it is very easy to end up in an existentialist hole.  Before you know it, you are listening to Radiohead, drinking too much whisky (having said that, I do like a fine single malt) and ... erm ... well maybe I also need to get out more.

I don't pretend to fully understand the Bible. 
However, I have never encountered a book which speaks to me with such authority, and I have read a wide variety of books.  It also has a positive and healing impact in my life, which particularly important given some of the difficult family events that have occurred over the years.

Here's a question for you though:
I can easily understand atheists who don't believe in God because ... well, they just don't.  Why believe in someone you can't physically touch?  If you have never had a spiritual connection with something greater than your own existence, why would you buy into a religious worldview?  And life's hardly a bowl of cherries is it?
 
But how do you explain the current growth in materialists? 
You know, people who brush aside all subjective experiences as being irrelevant for their understanding of the Universe.  They claim that everything can be explained through physical processes (e.g. chemical reactions).  So we are all just a bunch of chemicals.  We don't even exist, we are just robots.  Hahahahahah!
 
It doesn't even have to be religious or spiritual experience
For example, when you love someone, it's not just a feeling.  It's a connection to that person. 
You feel their presence, sometimes even when they are not in the room. 
 
Everyone understands that ... don't they?
 
How do we defeat the zombies?
Why are scientific materialists so intent on mocking "concepts" like "love" and reducing them to chemical processes?
What do they hope to achieve by imposing such a narrow and frankly absurd monist view onto a complex pluriverse?
 
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Kudos Sarah Palin

Posted by Greg England on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 5:50:26 PM
"Russell Brand was forced to cut jokes about Sarah Palin sending her own daughter to the electric chair when he presented the MTV Video Music Awards, he has said." 
 
Nuff said.
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God Save the Queen ...

Posted by Greg England on Wednesday, September 03, 2008 4:19:48 PM
The Fascist regime
Motorists could either be monitored using “spy in the sky” technology, which would involve boxes being fitted to cars and tracked by satellites, or using a system where a charge card is fitted to the windscreen. The card would be scanned by roadside gantries on toll roads. In both cases the motorist would be sent a monthly bill. Trials of the "pay as you drive" system are due to get under way in 2010 and the details, including using the electoral roll, are set out in a consultation document sent out to those firms tendering for the contracts.
They made you a moron
A DfT spokesman said: "This is intended purely to allow local authorities to offer a local residents’ discount as part of any congestion charging scheme they chose to introduce - such as in London where residents living within the charging zone receive a 90 per cent discount. "The technology trials will help local authorities with their thinking on congestion charging. "We have been absolutely clear that we are a long way from being able to make any decision on national road pricing and that the legitimate concerns that people may have must be addressed first."
Potential H-Bomb
Plans for national road pricing have proved hugely unpopular and 1.8 million people signed a petition on the Downing Street website, which was backed by The Daily Telegraph, calling for the scheme to be dropped.
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Tough day at the office?

Posted by Greg England on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 6:01:11 PM

University  (yu'n?-vûr'si-te)  Noun
A temple to human vanity.  A bastion of liberalism.  A place for elites to gather and mock their intellectual inferiors.
An institution to explore increasingly baroque and arcane forms of thought and speech.  A buzzing hive of nonsense
poems, the sole purpose of which is to subvert common sense, destroy meaning, and propagate the counter-intuitive,
bizarre and impractical. 
This isn't really a political post ...
....I'm just expressing my ongoing frustration with academia ...
... and with university papers that are incomprehensible to me ...
 
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Is it morally acceptable to use veterinary drugs if they have been tested on animals?

Posted by Greg England on Monday, July 28, 2008 7:29:08 PM

How would an animal rights activist answer this question?  I presume that they would answer no.   Because under no circumstances will they use anything that has been tested on animals.  Never, ever, ever.  Animal testing is cruel.  Their dog will only be treated using medicines that have not been tested on animals thank-you very much.

Okay, well what if their own dog suffers a violent allergic reaction?
 
No, no, no they say.  That won't happen.  This is the modern age.  Nowdays, you don't need to test drugs on animals.  The drug can be de-risked through computer modelling, and tests on tissue cultures etc.

Okay then.  Let's see if I understand what you are saying.

If it is possible to de-risk a drug using computer modelling and tests on tissue cultures, and you are absolutely sure that it is safe ... then why not humour me?   If you are that sure that all these tests have proved that the drug is safe, why not perform one last confidence check on a single dog, before you release this drug out to the big wide world?

Surely even you can see that it is better for one dog to be exposed to a small risk, than for thousands of dogs to be exposed to that same risk?  Come on, for the sake of the doggies. 

Test the drug on one dog before certifying the drug as safe.  It's the only moral choice.
 
And given that we all agree that human beings are more valuable than animals:
Is it too much to ask that all human medicines are finally tested on an animal subject as well?
  
 
PS:  I am not necessarily pro-vivisection.  And I know I have simplified a lot of issues.  But this question fascinates me, because when you explore the veterinary angle, it exposes some of the inherent contradictions and anti-human agendas of the animal rights movement.  I can see only one logically viable moral argument for not testing drugs on animals:

The animal didn't give you consent for the tests.
 
But given the arguments I have outlined above, the rest just turns to dust.
 
 
PPS:  Yeah, yeah I know animal physiology is not the same as human physiology.  Presumably then, if Fido keels over when you give him a small amount of a new wonder drug, you are perfectly happy to ignore these test results and still give the drug to human beings.
 
Hello?  Any activists still there?  Why are you fuming?
 

PPPS:  I started to post this whimsy on PajamasMedia, in response to a blogger who was suggesting that executing murderers was itself murder.  My reply in effect was that if you take this to its logical conclusion then the last person remaining on the planet will have to jump off a cliff.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/its-not-just-muslims-christians-play-the-victim-card-too/

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On a lighter note

Posted by Greg England on Wednesday, July 02, 2008 7:16:34 AM
Here I am, on an American blog, practising my 1st Amendment rights ...
Well okay ... technically speaking I don't have 1st Amendment rights.
But is it really necessary for Townhall.com to source local adverts?
 
Especially when they are UK Government adverts reminding me to purchase a licence to watch TV:
  
Photobucket
 
Watch this youtube video, and tell me that it doesn't make you shiver:
 
 
If you enjoyed that, there are plenty more videos on this website: http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/mediaandcommunity/mediatvcs.jsp 
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Lord of the Flies

Posted by Greg England on Tuesday, July 01, 2008 2:56:27 PM
Another teenager has been stabbed to death in Britain: 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2229348/Ben-Kinsella-murder-Stabbing-'motivated-by-jealousy'.html

That makes 17 teenagers killed in London this year so far.  Of course, where violent crime is concerned, there is no shortage of liberals who wish to 'understand' the root causes:

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/why+kids+kill/1400747
"Dispatches discovers the main cause of fighting is not bloodlust so much as boredom. Teenagers blame their violence on a lack of youth facilities or being able to reach the ones that do exist as they are outside their gang's territory."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6464853.stm
"I think it's a problem in London that's caused by the huge disparity in wealth" 

Do I have to explain just how disgusting these lines of reasoning are?
I'm not for one minute suggesting that life isn't tough for some of these people.  But they are not the only ones who have to deal with adversity.  And if we wring our hands when confronted with evil, what are we saying to the rest of those noble souls, who prefer to make the best of their circumstances without turning to violence because they are "bored" ...

So let me say this right here, right now, with absolute confidence:
I don't give a damn about the "people" who killed Ben Kinsella.  And neither should you.
 
Get this:
 
Regardless of whether you believe that an ex-young offender should be permitted to train as a doctor, how does this sit with the previous discussion?  In the UK, if you commit a crime, the liberal newspapers are full of idiot columnists making excuses for your behaviour.  Maybe you had a bad childhood.  Maybe it's the poverty, or the deprivation.
 
But woe betide you if you get off your backside and try to turn your life around.  Oh no, no no!
 
It's almost as if these people want a permanent underclass ...
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Top Gear

Posted by Greg England on Sunday, June 22, 2008 6:52:20 PM
I was reading Pajamas Media (http://pajamasmedia.com/) ...

.... and I found a link to this website (http://thenakedemperor.blogspot.com/2008/06/delightful-failure.html) ...

.... which linked to this video .... which is an excerpt from the British TV programme Top Gear ...
 
Oh, just watch the video:  
 
 
To explain Jeremy Clarkson's comment wrt. US gas prices (which I appreciate are expensive):

UK Petrol Price = £1.17 per litre
There are 3.7854 litres in 1 US gallon.
There are $1.9648 in £1
 
US equivalent price = 1.17 × 3.7854 × 1.9648 = $8.70 per gallon
 
Jeremy Clarkson's suggestion to buy a Golf diesel car suddenly makes a lot of sense ....
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Bone through the nose

Posted by Greg England on Saturday, June 14, 2008 12:44:27 PM
Ecologist: Hello, I'm an ecologist.
Economist: Hi, pleased to meet you I'm sure.
 
Ecologist: I am looking for a new kind of economics .... erm, can you help me?
Economist: Sure, take a seat. Now tell me, what is it you are after?
 
Ecologist: Well, for a start I'm worried about the state of the planet, global warming and all that ... I was thinking about raising taxes ...
Economist: Whoa! Steady on. Look, why don't you tell me your concerns, and let me do the economics.
 
Ecologist: Okay then.
Economist: Fire away.
 
Ecologist: I want a system that enourages people to be careful with the world's resources.
Economist: (writing this down) careful allocation of resources ...
 
Ecologist: I also want people to be energy efficient, and highly productive when they do use energy so as not to waste it.
Economist: ... energy efficiency and productivity ...
 
Ecologist:  I want people to be open minded enough to try new things.
Economist:  ... entrepreneurial system ...
 
Ecologist: And I want the system to produce things that people actually need, and not to waste energy creating junk that nobody wants.
Economist: ... consumer demand.
 
Ecologist: Have you got all that?
Economist: Yes I have. You want a system that rewards energy efficiency, that makes best use of the world's resources, that is geared towards rewarding efficient production, that makes things in response to consumer demand and not just because some committee tells them to, and provides signals to consumers when supplies are in short supply to discourage them from overconsumption.
 
Ecologist: That's sounds about right. What do you have in mind? I've tried living on a commune and ploughing a field using horse and cart, but I want to expand the concept on a global scale.  I'm a bit worried about sustainability though ...
 
Economist: Have you thought about free market capitalism?
Ecologist: (spluttering) .... but ... but .... Bush ... Blair ... CO2 ... Iraq ... good intentions hijacked by liberalism ...
 
Economist: Because in the whole of human history, nobody has ever come up with a more efficient system for the intelligent allocation of the world's resources in the face of scarcity.
 
Well ... I can always dream, can't I?
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Spot the missing candidate

Posted by Greg England on Wednesday, June 04, 2008 1:48:54 PM
 
Most households in the UK have access to digital television, either by satellite or by terrestrial broadcast.
Here's what the BBC had to offer this morning, in the way of In Depth news profiles using this service:
 
(I have sharpened the relevant area of the screen)
  
Photobucket
 
That's right, your eyes are not deceiving you.
 
The BBC provides profiles for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton ... but no profile for John McCain.
 
(1) Given that the drive-by media and the Democrats chose John McCain, why haven't the Beeb given him a profile?
(2) Given that the drive-by media has already chosen Barack Obama as the winning candidate ... why does it still have a profile for Hillary Clinton?
(3) Given that the drive-by media secretly hates John McCain, why not create a profile that rubbishes him?
 
Some consistency please from the liberal propaganda machine!
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The Mask Slips ...

Posted by Greg England on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 2:58:57 PM
... and they reveal their true nature:
 
On Monday night, British TV (Channel 4) will host a documentary entitled:  Life after people

Here's the press release in their own words:
 
"What would happen to Planet Earth if the human race were to suddenly disappear forever? Would ecosystems thrive? What remnants of our industrialised world would survive? What would crumble fastest? From the ruins of ancient civilisations to present day cities devastated by natural disasters, history gives us some clues to these questions."
 
I have just one question:
 
If we are just another animal, why do environmentalists keep fantasizing about our extinction?
 
 
Post Blog Note
Take a deep breath and read this: 
 
How does one go about claiming asylum in the USA?
 
Another post blog note:
Read this if you have a strong stomach:
 
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I know just how he feels

Posted by Greg England on Friday, May 16, 2008 6:19:14 PM
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The drive-bys always get it wrong - Part Two

Posted by Greg England on Thursday, May 15, 2008 6:03:49 PM
In today's Daily Telegraph I discover the following headline.
 
Starbucks is facing a boycott from a group of Christian activists in America
who claim the coffee chain's new logo is vulgar.
 
But wait ... it's the drive-by media remember.  Further investigation is required.
 
Internet search reveals the following link:
 
And finally, a link to the "Christian" website which quite frankly scares the hell out of me:
http: // www . the res ista nce man ifes to . com /
 
(I have put spaces in the domain name, to prevent it becoming a link. 
You can visit it if you want ...  but I wish I hadn't clicked on it).
 
This has nothing to do with mainstream Christianity (the group only has 3000 people in it!!!)
 
However, if you haven't done the internet research, all you will remember from this Telegraph story is that some Christians in America are protesting about the boobies on cups of Starbucks.  Must be Dubya's fault.  Those crazy Christian fundies!
 
Click on the Huffington Post link, and you will find the usual suspects banging on about the Christian right.
 
There's hope though, because even some of the bloggers on the Huffington post have seen through the ruse, and have complained about this misrepresentation.
 
Thank God for that!
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