Monday, September 15, 2008
Strong words
Dr. Sanity, always fascinatingly verbal and verbally fascinating (yes I intend both separately) has written a long and detailed article today about where we find ourselves at this point in the campaign and, perhaps more importantly, in the overall scheme of things. You'll need to read the entire article to understand where how she gets here, and it is well worth the time.
A complete unknown named Barack Obama has managed to capture all this hysteria at its peak and parlay it into an unprecedented run for the US Presidency. In him, the left has found the personification of all their fantasies. According to their pre-set script, his election would vanquish the evil infecting the land; slow the rising of the ocean and heal the entire planet. If he were not to be elected, then it is already predetermined that it will happen because America is racist and evil. Quod erat demonstrandum.
I agree that much of the fuss is "just another way of avoiding reality" - how else explain the recent financial messes and Iraq and the endless cult of meaningless celebrity. Perhaps she is correct that "we are witnessing the tragicomic demise of the glib and pretty postmodern man of inaction" but I'm not sure.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:17 AM

Friday, October 12, 2007
Peace(????) prize
Putting aside for the moment whatever one thinks of Al Gore and his theories of human causes of climate change, please tell me what does it have to do with peace?? The core of his message - and please note that all he has done is send a message - is that humans caused climate changes that are violently dangerous. He dismisses any other cause for climate change such as geological cycling or solar aging. Why is that so meritorious as to earn him international acclaim, adulation, money and the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize? Genuine peace-seekers who did or did not win the award must be spinning and frowning a lot. On the other hand, it is also true that the namesake of the prize was a chemist who invented dynamite, so perhaps I'm missing the point. Yes, I know: inventions aren't good or bad, they're just used for good; or not. Anything good can be used for bad things and vice versa. Blah blah.

Gore's message is that good people have done a bad thing but what is peace-ful or peace-engendering about either the message or the blaming? Longer growing seasons and more rain might actually help some countries gain economic and health footholds, and money spent on what may well be unavoidable planetary and solar system cycling would more effectively be spent on public health and population issues. But again, I am undoubtedly missing the point.

Alan Sullivan at Fresh Bilge puts the case strongly and aptly, that if Gore's "fixes" are implemented, there will be more poverty and disease, and less food, globally: "The victims won’t be blown to bits [by Nobel's dynamite]; they will die early of malnutrition, disease, and the strife endemic in many poor lands, which will get poorer under the global government our international elite is attempting semi-consciously to create."

But I ask again: where's the peace? It's a puzzling, difficult world, Virginia. Santa or no Santa.

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Permalink | 3 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:24 AM

Monday, April 2, 2007
PC gone too far?
Read this and see what you think.

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Permalink | 3 comment(s) | posted by jau at 11:19 AM