Tag Archives: idiocy

The End of Education?

24 Tuesday Sep 2019

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This insanely idiotic and evil proposal would do it.

Labour party members have voted to commit the party to integrate private schools into the state sector.

The motion calls for funds and properties held by private schools to be “redistributed democratically and fairly” to other schools.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said it would help build “a more cohesive and equal society”.

But Boris Johnson called it a “pointless attack” on education, based on a “long-buried socialist ideology”.

The vote by members signals a desire for the policy to be included in the next Labour Party general election manifesto.

Speaking at the party’s conference in Brighton, shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said “tax loopholes” that benefit private schools would be scrapped by a Labour government in its first Budget.

That includes the withdrawal of charitable status, other public subsidies and tax privileges.

That’s not just from the Labour manifesto…

I don’t think, even in a Britain without BREXIT, there’s a danger … yet. In America, many would love to try something similar. I’m surprised they haven’t gone after homeschoolers already. Now, it’s a little late. But, just remember that these lunatics and agents of the devil are always, always trying to undermine, corrupt, plunder, and destroy.

What would Tom Ironsides say? Do?

TV Kills the Brain

29 Monday Jul 2019

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This has been an accepted fact for decades. Now, some try to put an anti-Nationalist spin on the phenomenon.

To estimate the effect of cable television on I.Q. scores, the Norwegian scholars analyzed data on the introduction of cable network infrastructure by municipality. They calculated years of exposure to cable by considering the age of eventual test takers when cable became available in their municipality. They controlled for any potential geographic bias by comparing siblings with greater or less exposure to cable television based on their age when cable infrastructure was put in.

They estimate that 10 years of exposure to cable television lowered I.Q. scores by 1.8 points. In related research, Mr. Hernaes finds that exposure to cable television reduced voter turnout in local elections.

This is all partly true. But, the truth goes deeper, into hard neuro-science. TeeVee acts literally like a digital narcotic. It turns off certain brain centers, sometimes with lasting effects. If lower rhetoric and trash nonsense account for the 1.8-point drop, then how much else can be attributed to diminished physical capacity in the brain? Better not to find out. Turn off the tube!

The 2033 Idiotmobile

18 Tuesday Jun 2019

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Eric Peters on the “entertaining” future of the automobile.

H.G. Wells wrote about a time machine but Aldous Huxley – author of Brave New World – may actually have had one. And used it to to travel to our now, jotted down a few notes and then returned to the early 20th century to write his chirpily depressing picture of what tomorrow will look like:

A world of endiapered adults who remain perpetual children, perpetually distracted by imbecile pursuits – because distracted imbeciles are much easier to herd than conscious, thinking adults are to bayonet-prod in the desired direction.

Well, here we are – almost.

Talking cartoon characters will be displayed inside the automated cars of the impending Future – to keep the endiapered imbeciles within droolingly quiescent and vacuously smiling as they are meatsacked to whatever destination the controllers input. Perhaps the mall.

Perhaps, in time, somewhere else.

They won’t know the difference and – far more important – won’t care. They will be entertained.

This is no kidding. It was on display at the CES Technology Trade Show in Shanghai last week. Not one but several former (or soon-to-be) car companies, which are transitioning into “mobility” companies – had kiosks and PR people on hand to show the wares.

The automated car will become a kind of Boob Toob on wheels, with “virtual reality experiences” embedded within to keep the meatsackeds’ minds off what’s happening without – and generally.

A neighbor just bought a new car, and a nice one too. We chatted about what I might like as a replacement for the old 19th Century buggy. I can’t think of a single new car that excites me. Cartoons won’t help. But, the people… The people will end up demanding this.

Facebook Bravely, Boldly Fights White Supremacists!

02 Thursday May 2019

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By banning them. Specifically, the following evil, white-washed, right-wing, Nazis have been thrown off Zuck’s spy site for good: Louis Farrakhan (black Muslim), Alex Jones (friend of Louis Farrakhan the black Muslim), and Milo Yiannopoulos (gay Jew).

Facebook announced Thursday afternoon that it had designated some high-profile people, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who’s notorious for using anti-Semitic language, and right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as “dangerous” and said it will be purging them from its platforms.

Jones and his media outlet InfoWars had previously been banned from Facebook (FB) in in August 2018, but had maintained a presence on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. On Thursday, Jones and InfoWars will be barred from Instagram as well.

Other people banned Thursday include fringe right-wing media personalities Laura Loomer, Milo Yiannopoulos and Paul Joseph Watson. Also included are Paul Nehlen, an anti-Semite who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2016 and 2018.

“We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement provided to CNN Business. “The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today.”

I need to call WP (much as I hate too) and see if there’s some way they can remove the little FB button from my posts. And, I’m going to request that MB stop promoting my TPC columns on FB (his call, totally). As for the newly banned, I say “Great!” No fan or supporter of either of these three men – or anyone with a triple-digit IQ – should have any connection to the Devil’s Anti-social Site. Consider yourselves honored, gentlemen.

The “Business” of Playing God

21 Sunday Apr 2019

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This may be the final article I link to from “Business” Insider (or, maybe in the future, Business Insidious):

We’re altering the climate so severely that we’ll soon face apocalyptic consequences. Here are 11 last-ditch ways we could hack the planet to reverse that trend.

Geoengineering is a term that refers to technology that can alter Earth’s natural cycles to cool down the planet. It’s being increasingly discussed as a potential way to address climate change.

Putting mirrors in space, capturing carbon dioxide, and seeding clouds with particles are all ways of manipulating weather or the atmosphere.

But some scientists and politicians think geoengineering could damage the planet or lead to war.

Here are 11 strategies researchers have put forth to hack the planet and combat climate change.

Eleven ways, that they don’t even understand, to stop a problem that doesn’t exist. As always, this crap is about fostering communism and nothing else.

The apocalypse is still just around the next corner. But! Now the people that told us aerosols were destroying the planet via the skies, want to flood the sky with aerosol to save the planet. This is more religious than scientific and the priests, acolytes, and followers are utterly insane.

Ms. Woodward and her “experts” are right about one thing – with or without Marxist meddling, there will be war. That’s where the apocalyptic consequences come from.

Investigate Facebook and Zuck for Theft

19 Friday Apr 2019

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Inadvertent? Right. Here’s the Farceberg outrage of the day minute: 1.5 million accounts robbed of email contacts.

Facebook harvested the email contacts of 1.5 million users without their knowledge or consent when they opened their accounts.

Since May 2016, the social-networking company has collected the contact lists of 1.5 million users new to the social network, Business Insider can reveal. The Silicon Valley company said the contact data was “unintentionally uploaded to Facebook,” and it is now deleting them.

The revelation comes after pseudononymous security researcher e-sushi noticed that Facebook was asking some users to enter their email passwords when they signed up for new accounts to verify their identities, a move widely condemned by security experts. Business Insider then discovered that if you entered your email password, a message popped up saying it was “importing” your contacts without asking for permission first.

At the time, it wasn’t clear what was happening – but on Wednesday, Facebook disclosed to Business Insider that 1.5 million people’s contacts were collected this way and fed into Facebook’s systems, where they were used to improve Facebook’s ad targeting, build Facebook’s web of social connections, and recommend friends to add.

Why do the police always take Zuck’s word about these “inadvertent” mistakes? Smells kind of like theft to me. 1.5 million consecutive 1-year prisons sentences should do as punishment.

Anyhow, I’ll bet it was more than 1.5 million and it was more than just email contacts. If, for some strange, low-IQ reason, you’re still on FB, do at least check your “secret” file to find out exactly what they admit they have on you.

Strike that… If you’re still on the Zuckbook, then just keep looking at those pics and “reading” all those worthy Russian trolling attempts. You don’t need privacy nor need you be worried about anyone invading it; small minds aren’t worth reading.

The Corrosive BS of American Academia

21 Monday Jan 2019

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As seen and chronicled by an American academic, Prof. Christian Smith of Notre Dame’s School of Sociology:

I have had nearly enough bullshit. The manure has piled up so deep in the hallways, classrooms, and administration buildings of American higher education that I am not sure how much longer I can wade through it and retain my sanity and integrity.

Even worse, the accumulated effects of all the academic BS are contributing to this country’s disastrous political condition and, ultimately, putting at risk the very viability and character of decent civilization. What do I mean by BS?

BS is the university’s loss of capacity to grapple with life’s Big Questions, because of our crisis of faith in truth, reality, reason, evidence, argument, civility, and our common humanity.

BS is the farce of what are actually “fragmentversities” claiming to be universities, of hyperspecialization and academic disciplines unable to talk with each other about obvious shared concerns.

BS is the expectation that a good education can be provided by institutions modeled organizationally on factories, state bureaucracies, and shopping malls — that is, by enormous universities processing hordes of students as if they were livestock, numbers waiting in line, and shopping consumers.

BS is universities hijacked by the relentless pursuit of money and prestige, including chasing rankings that they know are deeply flawed, at the expense of genuine educational excellence (to be distinguished from the vacuous “excellence” peddled by recruitment and “advancement” offices in every run-of-the-mill university).

BS is the ideologically infused jargon deployed by various fields to stake out in-group self-importance and insulate them from accountability to those not fluent in such solipsistic language games.

…

Read on and on about what BS is in higher “education.” Understand that, “the long-term corrosive effects on politics and culture can also be repaired only over the long term, if ever. There are no quick fixes here. So I do not speak in hyperbole by saying that our accumulated academic BS puts at risk decent civilization itself.”

Hope remains:

… We will need people with the capacity to retrieve and revitalize the best of higher education’s past and restructure it organizationally in ways that are most effective in the future.

History gives us some reason to hope that creative women and men will, over time, develop fruitful experiments and build new institutions that lead to a reblossoming of excellent higher education worthy of the name and help revitalize culture and political life. …

I’d like to help with the retrieval and revitalization. In addition to posts like this, a very few of you know of my ongoing covert work in this area. And, boy, does it need work.

Amazing Amerikan Woman Tries to Change World, Fails Horribly

21 Saturday Apr 2018

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Horribly. Miserably. This story is beyond sad; simply horrifying:

How this Midwestern mom ended up married to an ISIS sniper

Yahoo! ran a representative picture right up front (but don’t be fooled):

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A pretty good, almost Madison Avenue worthy start, but … read on:

Samantha Sally spoke to CNN about how her “romantic” second marriage to Moroccan-born husband Moussa Elhassani resulted in an unexpected move to Syria in 2014. Once there, Elhassani became violent and joined ISIS as a sniper.

“Before he would spoil me,” the 32-year-old American said. “We were very much in love. The romance never left. As soon as we came here, it changed. I was a dog. I didn’t have any choice. He was extremely violent. And there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing.”

…

The family ended up settling in Raqqa, Syria, where Sally gave birth to two more children. In addition to Elhassani’s violent behavior, she was subjected to abuse from ISIS leaders, including a three-month stretch in jail while she was pregnant. Sally says that she was tortured, sexually abused, and put in solitary confinement while being accused of espionage on behalf of the U.S.

Their home life eventually included the purchase of three Yazidi slaves — two teenage females and one young boy — captured by ISIS. Both girls were raped by Elhassani, though Sally defends having them stay in her home.

“No one will ever know what it is like to watch their husband rape a 14-year-old girl,” she said. “Ever. And then she comes to you — me — after crying and I hold her and tell her it’s going to be OK. Everything is going to be fine, just be patient.

“I would never apologize for bringing those girls to my house,” she added. “They had me and I had them. And we knew that if we were just patient, we would stick together. You understand? In any other situation, they would be locked in a bedroom and fed tea every day. And the situation I was in with them, we cooked together, we cleaned together. Drank coffee together. Slept in the same room together. I was like their mother.”

Her eldest son, Matthew, was also taken advantage of and was made to appear in videos on behalf of the terrorist group. Sally’s objection to his participation resulted in a beating and two broken ribs.

Things changed when Elhassani was killed in a drone strike in 2017. Sally and her family eventually left Raqqa and were detained soon after. They remain in custody and wait for U.S. officials determine whether her affiliation with ISIS merits jail time.

Sally, meanwhile, is hopeful that she and her four children are able to return to the U.S.

“I will do anything to get my kids back where they belong,” she said. “If I have to spend 15 years in prison, it’s better than anything here.

“Me and my kids, we talk about wanting to eat McDonald’s,” she continued. “We want to live a normal life again.”

So. Did you catch it? This was one of the most vile, racist reads I’ve seen since I don’t know when. It’s like David Duke, Robert E. Lee, and Richard Spencer conspired to write an evil, dystopian fictional plot. But, sadly, this one is all too real.

I’ll never, for the life of me, understand women like this. Living with the slanderous allegations of being a “terrorist” and of “treason” do not justify her. The insult and shame of being expected to apologize for her savage “husband’s” illicit amorous affairs is not an excuse. Nor was seeing her cockroach “husband” squashed like what he was. No excuses. None.

After experiencing the very best of diversity, an immersion class if you will – the tribal war, idiotic violence, slavery, abuse, child rapes, broken ribs, traitorous behavior, etc. – this bigot had the audacity to contrast the great good of the barbarous stone-age world with “normal life” back in America. Normal. Life. In America…

How can she shun the very cultural enrichment which will surely save Western Civilization by destroying it? It boggles the mind.

She even thinks 15 years in American prison is “better than anything [in the land of greatest pride, strength, and human dignity].”

Leave her in jail where she is. That’s where she belongs. The kids can come back. Maybe they can share with the deplorables all the good lessons they learned living among our betters. Maybe.

We Shall Never Overcome

04 Friday Aug 2017

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Seems the Civil War just won’t go away.

In Maryland the problem isn’t the crime, the unemployment, the illiteracy, the illegitimacy, or the false sense of entitlement. No, it’s a 17th Century Coat of Arms.

“When the General Assembly in 1904 adopted a banner of this design as the state flag, a link was forged between modern-day Maryland and the very earliest chapter of the proprietorship of the Calvert family.”

But the red and white part of the flag, known as the Crossland arms, was also the design flown by Marylanders who sympathized with the South in the Civil War, according to state records.

“During the war, Maryland-born Confederate soldiers used both the red-and-white colors and the cross bottony design from the Crossland quadrants of the Calvert coat of arms as a unique way of identifying their place of birth,” the records say. “Pins in the cross bottony shape were worn on uniforms, and the headquarters flag of the Maryland-born Confederate general Bradley T. Johnson was a red cross bottony on a white field.”

During the slow process of reconciliation after the Civil War ended in Union victory in 1865, a “flag incorporating alternating quadrants of the Calvert and Crossland colors began appearing at public events” in the state.

By extension of this “logic” all state flags are Confederate in nature – all states share the same hemisphere with those former CSA states once in rebellion…

Better tear down some monuments. Riot or something. Blame someone.

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This is “racist.”

Seeing as how so many are obviously unhappy in 21st Century America, maybe it’s time they depart. To anywhere.

Television Jumps the CGI Shark

25 Tuesday Jul 2017

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For the record I did not watch the great Michael Phelps race the fake Great White. Many did – and were not happy about the spectacle.

Remember back in December 2014, when Discovery Channel hyped that a man would be eaten and then regurgitated by a giant snake on a special called “Eaten Alive?” Then that didn’t actually happen, and viewers were furious?

We bring this up because 57 minutes into Discovery’s heavily promoted Sunday night Shark Week program — in which Olympic powerhouse swimmer Michael Phelps was set to race against a great white shark — viewers heard this quote from ecologist Tristan Gutteridge, one the featured scientists:

“Clearly, we can’t put Michael in one lane and a white shark on the far lane. We’re gonna have to do a simulation.”

Hold on. So Phelps wasn’t going to actually race a shark in a TV event titled “Phelps vs. Shark: Great Gold vs. Great White”?! Why was the hour-long special billed as such?

While common sense probably could have saved any disappointment — along with preshow interviews where Phelps assured everyone that he wouldn’t really race next to a shark in open water — many viewers were not pleased.

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Yeah, it’s television, it’s all bullshark. Twitter/WP.

I did not watch, and was not disappointed, for two reasons: 1) I don’t waste time on TeeVee, and; 2) I didn’t care. When I first heard of the possibility of Phelps racing a real shark, my initial thought was, “I hope they find a shark named ‘Darwin’.”

Seems Phelps and the producers aren’t entirely stupid. Some viewers are.

I think they could have put in a real shark with a high degree of safety and a very high degree of cost. A net or plexiglass barrier would have sufficed. Such would have been too expensive, costing far more than some creative 1s and 0s in a computer.

You get what you pay for. Or what you watch.

With a very few exceptions television has been intellectually dead for decades. Anyone who spends time staring at Plato’s electronic cave wall deserves to be disappointed. And they almost uniformly are.

Batman, Fonzie, and Phelps. Who’s next?

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Twitter.

And Phelps lost…