Post-post-modern!

Would you like some insight into our future? Read this: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/sauntering_beyond_good_and_evil/
...and then go buy yourself a cabin in the deepest, most isolated rural environment that you can access, or pray like never before.

Welcome to 1984.

Miranda Devine comments on what is happening under current Federal Government policies:

 It’s about using language to correct people’s thoughts.

For instance, a friend studying education was astonished to find in a textbook that the new national history curriculum is to require people to use the term “BP”, rather than the traditional “BC”.

BC, of course, was the historical term used to denote the time “before Christ”. This is now deemed an offensive idea, which must be erased from the minds of Australian children. So instead we are to replace it with the nonsensical BP, which stands for “before present”, in an effort to stamp out Christ in the curriculum.

History is ripe for politically correct redesign, as we saw in Sydney City Council’s rewriting of all its official documents to insert the term “invasion”.

And, as the 10th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks looms, there is even a quarrel over whether Muslims should be mentioned.

Never mind that the men who flew planes into New York’s twin towers were Islamist terrorists bent on jihad against the satanic West. Those inconvenient facts must be sanitised from a colouring book for children, which has drawn the ire of America’s PC brigade.

Nearly sixty two years ago George Orwell wrote this:

“This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs-to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as often as was necessary.” (p 42)

Define correctly, communicate effectively!

One of the more irksome journalistic obfuscations (among many) is the one where they refer to the 'left' and 'right' factions within the Labor Party.
Its own constitution refers to the labor party as a 'Democratic Socialist Party' and I am quite sure that no self respecting 'Socialist' in their right mind (excuse the pun) wants to be called 'right-wing'.
Equally; few conservatives like to be referred to as 'left-wing', therefore I would suggest that it is perhaps time for reporters to find a more accurate term for the various factions.

Honest prayer.

Philip Yancy said something to the effect that it was only the truly helpless that could honestly pray. I am beginning to understand the truth of that claim.

Blogsense!

I concur with Tim T's reason for blogging: 'Random meaningless outbursts by people of exceeding eccentricity'.

Hypocrisy writ large.

This is an email I sent to The Newspaper and Lainie Anderson about her column on page 27 of the Sunday Mail.

”Few people are more loathing of Tony Abbott than my amicable husband Max. ”

A letter to Max.

What a way for your wife to introduce her attack on Tony Abbott. The word ‘loathing’ and ‘amicable’ in the same sentence...if that doesn’t set up a bias from the outset then I am a monkey’s uncle.

It’s an even bet your ‘amicable’ self has never even met Tony Abbott and your ‘loathing’ is probably little more than an ideological difference. A little shallow don't you think or perhaps merely a tautological error on your wife’s behalf? 

I too am becoming heartily; “...sick of the white-anting, the relentless negativity.” Mr Amiable, but not of the alleged attack on this worthless government which deserves no less (especially from the Opposition!), but rather of the ideologically blinkered attack on Tony Abbott by media harridans such as your wife and, by inference; rather callow and allegedly amiable hypocrites such as yourself.

Your ‘loathing’ is directed at a man who has proven intellectual ability (a Rhodes scholar), and a successful family who love him, who is reputed to be honest, kind and generous, who is physically adept through hard work and discipline, and who is not rich but struggles like most of us with school fees and a mortgage (unlike Rudd or Turnball). Yet you believe it acceptable to embrace the unrelenting vitriol as expressed by the unfortunately subjective main-stream-media, oh please forgive me, your wife is one of the comrades...might that be another clue to your ‘loathing?”

Speaking about your wife, note well the language she uses to push her agenda:  ‘Mr Abbott's band of merciless men’, ‘...score political points at any cost’, Captain Abbott push full throttle into reverse’, Tony Abbott’s ‘bellowing his way to power’, and these just a few paragraphs into the diatribe.

She then goes on to make the point that Newspoll expressed voter dissatisfaction with both leaders. I can fully understand why Gillard is down, but am constantly amazed that Tony Abbott has anyone on his side given the extreme bias against him. When last did you read something positive about Abbott or do you actually believe he is the Devil incarnate? It makes a mockery of those who question Abbott's constant 'negativity' doesn’t it. In short the correct word is HYPOCRISY.

Allow me two minor questions regarding both of your political positions:

To the charge of Abbott pushing the many and abysmal decisions taken by this most incompetent of Governments into reverse...would you prefer it that he should maintain the disastrous course Gillard has forced us (dishonestly by the way) onto?

And secondly; do you believe that bankrupting the country to serve the prejudices of a ‘Watermelon’ minority is in the country’s best interest?

The article gives me reason to believe that both of you do, which makes your agendas far, far more; “weird and worrying”, than Tony Abbott’s could ever be.

Mr ‘Amiable’, you say that we should 'give him what he wants' in order to stop the ‘white-anting’. The inference that Abbott desires power more than anything else is rich in irony considering the moral vacuity at the heart of the current Labor government who are blatantly breaking all moral boundaries to remain in power. Again HYPOCRISY springs to mind...or perhaps the blinkered mind is just unable to comprehend these connections?

Needless to say that when the electorate, whom I have no doubt you and your kind think stupid and ill-informed; give power to Abbott in the near future, I look forward (occasionally) with amusement, to the bile and impotent rage that splatters these columns in the future.  

Mike of Sheidow Park, Adelaide.

Eureka!

Facts trump theory every time:

The (extremely generous) test Darwin set for his theory was this: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

Thanks to advances in microscopes, thousands of such complex mechanisms have been found since Darwin's day. He had to explain only simple devices, such as beaks and gills. If Darwin were able to come back today and peer through a modern microscope to see the inner workings of a cell, he would instantly abandon his own theory.

It is a mathematical impossibility, for example, that all 30 to 40 parts of the cell's flagellum -- forget the 200 parts of the cilium! -- could all arise at once by random mutation.

The more we have learned about molecules, cells and DNA -- a body of knowledge some refer to as "science" -- the more preposterous Darwin's theory has become. DNA is, as Bill Gates says, "like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we've ever created." (Plus DNA doesn't usually crash when you're right in the middle of reproducing.)

Evolution fanatics would rather not be called on to explain these complex mechanisms that Darwin himself said would disprove his theory.

Instead they make jokes about people who know the truth. They say that to dispute evolution means you must believe man walked with dinosaurs.

Galileo's persecutors probably had some good guffaws about him believing in Fred Flintstone.

This is why the brighter Darwiniacs end up sounding like Scientologists in order to cling to their mystery religion.

Crick, winner of the Nobel Prize for his co-discovery of DNA, hypothesized that highly intelligent extraterrestrials sent living cells to Earth on an unmanned spaceship, a theory he set forth in his 1981 book, "Life Itself."

Beam me up Scotty!