In Pursuit of Knowledge and Wisdom

In the past, one often found the Latin phrase, Sapientia vis vera (wisdom is true power), as the motto of some educational institutions. In the sixties, the world started turning its back on knowledge and embraced emotion as the solution to everything, as the popular Beatles song, All you need is love, proclaimed.

As the end of the twentieth century approached, and the Reverse Flynn Effect ate away at the average intelligence of those born after the mid-seventies, the world became hostile to knowledge and embraced ignorance and celebrated stupidity. Carl Sagan is supposed to have said, One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media are reassuring people it’s all right to know nothing, that in a way it’s cool. Carl Sagan’s nightmare is our present reality.

Knowledge and Wisdom

What is knowledge? What is wisdom? How can they help us?

Knowledge

Knowledge is simply knowing things. Of course, at different times, different pieces of knowledge are far more critical than others. For instance, if your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, knowing how to fix it can be a lifesaver.

Wisdom

Wisdom is simply the ability to apply your knowledge in such a way that it solves a certain problem. Without knowledge, there can be no wisdom. Applying knowledge correctly is reasoning correctly. To do that, you need to apply the rules of logic. To apply them, you need to know them. A word or two about logic.

Logic

There are two kinds of logic:

• Deductive logic. Using known truths to arrive at unknown truths. This is mostly done in the mind and does not require much research. But it needs to be done correctly or the conclusion will be wrong.
• Inductive logic. Making many observations (research), looking for a pattern in the observations, arriving at a conclusion (hypothesis) based on the discovered pattern, rigorously testing your hypothesis with more research to see if it always holds true.

Logic is a topic on its own, and I won’t go deeper into it in this post.

Examples of applying the above

In Australia, politicians are the considered the least trustworthy people. How did those in the survey arrive at this decision? Over 90% of people base their beliefs and decisions on emotions and personal preferences. So, what these people believe may not be fact. How can we test their belief?

One will need to do research on every profession in the list, assign each a score and see if politicians come last. That's more work than I’m willing to do. Let’s just see if they’re, by and large, a bunch of corrupt rotters, as the survey holds them to be. I’ll use something I already know (knowledge).

Alcohol (also tobacco smoke, diesel exhaust fumes, processed meat, etc.) is a Group 1 Human Carcinogen. That means it certainly causes cancer in humans, among others, breast cancer. It also kills people in other ways; one of the most common being liver cirrhosis. Alcohol kills about 5,500 people per year in Australia. That’s just over 15/day. Yet, alcohol is sold with no warning, unlike tobacco. The WHO says there’s no safe limit one can drink, and even the Australian Government says, It’s never completely safe. So, how come alcohol is sold with no warning labels? Everything in this paragraph is factually true, therefore knowledge.

Do the booze barons maybe reward the politicians to look the other way? Let’s see. Do you really think there’s no connection, as the politicians will claim? Does this smack of corruption?

The above strips politicians of any trustworthiness. Maybe one can trust them to look the other way if one lines their hands with silver. Based on known facts and applying sound logic to these facts, one can conclude those in the survey were right to hold the trustworthiness of politicians in low regard.

Another example

When I was at university in the seventies, we (males studying the sciences) regarded the arts and humanities as jokes. It was OK for a girl to do a BA, which even they called a BA Husband Hunting. After all, we males believed—you might disagree—that true happiness for a girl was finding a husband. But a man doing a BA? If he was not intelligent enough to do something worthwhile (studying the sciences), he should dig ditches or drive a truck. Were we right in holding males doing the arts and humanities in such low esteem? Let’s see.

We know by far the majority with university qualifications in any government will be from the arts and humanities. So, if we were right, they would often do really, really stupid things. There are so many governments and they do so many things, one can't examine them all. So, I'll deal with one government and one thing.

Australia gets 70% of its electricity from burning coal. Coal-fired power plants have by orders of magnitude the highest mortality rate per unit of electricity produced compared to the only other viable form of 24/7/365 electricity production on a city, state, and country level—nuclear power. About seven times more people die in Australia yearly from coal-fired power station pollution than the total direct and cancer deaths of Chernobyl and Fukushima combined.

Yet coal power production is legal in Australia and nuclear power production is illegal. If that is not stupid, what is?

This last example does not establish governments, and by extension arts and humanities monkeys, as really, really dumb. We will need many more examples and much more research. But it’s one step along the way. One can also mention trying to build a submarine locally, which ended as a debacle, and then trying it again, which again was a debacle. Will they never learn?

A rare example of government wisdom

In 1969, they discovered oil in the North Sea. In 1990 the Norwegian Government established the Government Pension Fund and in 1996 transferred the first money into it. In 2019, the fund was worth US$950 billion. This fund made Norway fabulously wealthy. They avoided splurging the money and instead opted to delay gratification. The world over, this is used as an example of wise government money management. Most other countries spend money earned through raw materials as soon as they have it. And raw materials don’t last indefinitely.

In conclusion

It’s long been known that knowledge and wisdom are of great value. 3,000 years ago, Solomon said: 1 My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, 2 making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; 3 yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding. (Proverbs 2) Knowledge and wisdom will help you discover how the world really is and guide you to the right decisions and beliefs.

The LGBTQ Agenda

In 1989, two gay activists, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, set out the LGBTQ agenda in the book After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the ‘90s.

You can download a 16-page synopsis of this book free. The numbers in parentheses in this document refer to the page numbers in the original book.

You can download a full-text, PDF scanned copy here., and you read or listen to the book online here. It’s the blue Download button with the headphones image left high on the page.

If you want to, buy the paperback book for US$345 from Amazon.

They made no bones about the fact that theirs is a propaganda campaign; a “Campaign of unabashed propaganda, firmly grounded in long-established principles of psychology and advertising. (xxviii)”

This is how they define propaganda: “Three characteristics distinguish propaganda from other modes of communication and contribute to its sinister reputation:

1. Relies on emotional manipulation–through desensitisation, jamming and conversion;
2. Use lies, and is
3. Subjective and one-sided. “Tell our side of the story as movingly as possible. In the battle for hearts and minds, effective propaganda knows enough to put its best foot forward. This is what our own media campaign must do. (162-163)”

About people, they say: “90% of people have low intelligence. 10% fairly/highly intelligent. Can never alter the 90% through beliefs or arguments, only through emotions.”

I agree with them about this. I used to guesstimate the stupid percentage at 85%, but I‘m happy with 90%. Like democracy, they aim at the 90% and disregard the 10%.

About any religion opposed to their agenda, they say: ‘Accuse religious people: “Gays can use talk to muddy the moral waters, that is, to undercut the rationalisations that ‘justify’ religious bigotry and to jam some of its psychic rewards. “Portray such institutions as antiquated backwaters, badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of psychology.”’(179)

Their campaign rests on three main pillars:

1. Desensitisation; stop people from cringing when they hear about homosexuality or see its expressions.
2. Jamming; neutralise those opposed to their campaign.
3. Conversion; turn people into supporters of their campaign and admirers of the LGBTQ lifestyle.

They’ve had success, especially in pillars 1 and 3, amongst their target audience; the 90% basing their beliefs on emotion rather than reason. It’s not only with the LGBTQ issue that these people base their beliefs on emotion, but with everything. Doing research and learning logic require work and effort while emotions come freely and without effort. It’s no surprise that the 90% whom the LGBTQ lobby describes as having a “low intelligence” is intellectually lazy.

One unintended side-effect of their campaign was that its brazen nature solidified opposition to it among those rationally opposed to it. Just as reason won’t work to sway emotions, so emotion won’t work to change rational viewpoints.

The fact that nearly all media monkeys are driven by emotion rather than reason is strongly in favour of the LGBTQ lobby. And the media monkeys have free access to the hearts of the feeling 90%. The thinking 10% is closed to them.

Education has much to do with one’s preference for either feeling or fact. The arts and humanities are not based on the hard, unforgiving laws of nature, but on words and unconstrained ideas; mistakes have no or only late consequences and can’t be traced back to the one responsible. Sweden opened its doors to free immigration and now has the second-highest gun-crime rate in Europe. The perpetrators are immigrants. Sweden had a very low gun-crime rate. Can one point a finger at whoever was responsible for this? No.

On the other hand, small mistakes by those working in the applied sciences often have early, disastrous consequences. This happened when something as small as system resonance was ignored. Nowadays, it’s always taken into account.

So, certain people are forced to take reality into account, while others can ignore it. The first group was often against the LGBTQ agenda from the start, and, in many cases, are now hostile to it due to the incessant, strident propaganda. The last group is where you’ll find most of the ardent supporters of the LGBTQ agenda. I know there are outliers.

As the second pillar, jamming, didn’t have the hoped-for success (you’re reading this, aren’t you?), it’s now more energetically pursued and the LGBTQ group and their fellow travellers now propose harsher action against those not on board. Luckily, it seems there’s a wider backlash against the aggressive LGBTQ propaganda. One case is Facebook’s continuing problems. But apparently their wokeness was only one cause of their problems.

The cost of pursuing wind and solar.

In the early to mid eighties, the world started pursuing solar and wind electricity generation to get away from the very polluting coal power generation which is still the most prominent form of power generation.

Right from the start, they knew that humans don't control the sun and the wind, and that peak energy demands were when the sun didn't shine and the wind wasn't at its strongest. As temperature gradients decrease at night, the wind usually subsides. They also knew that there was no way to store significant amounts of electricity—batteries have a puny energy density. Even now, petrol (gasoline) is 100 times more energy dense than lithium ion batteries.

To make matters worse, there had been a safe, clean form of electricity generation available since the early sixties. What's more, it generated electricity 24/7/365 in massive amounts. To make matters even worse, it's been calculated that nuclear derived electricity saved about 1.84 million lives and prevented the release of 64 gigatonnes of CO₂.

Had the world pursued nuclear electricity generation for these almost 40 years (it's now July, 2022) as they have been pursuing wind and solar, most developed countries could have generated the overwhelming majority of their electricity needs from nuclear power. I'm talking 80% plus. Millions of people would not have died unnecessary early deaths and global warming would have been much less.

After relentlessly pursuing wind and solar electricity for 40 years, there's not one town on Earth with a population of 5,000 or more relying solely on them. That qualifies as a dismal failure.

The German case

By 2010, Germany had decided to go green in their electricity generation. This program is called Energiewende. Following Fukushima in 2011, Germany closed 8 of its 17 nuclear reactors. That made them more reliant on coal and increased not only CO₂ production, but also deaths from coal power station pollution. They have approximately 1,100 excess deaths yearly due to shutting down their nuclear power plants. That means Germany's Energiewende costs more lives yearly than the combined death toll of Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Despite the many claims that renewable energy is cheap, Germany and Denmark, two of the most rabid followers of green power, have of the most expensive electricity in Europe. Here is more. If renewable energy is so cheap, why the high prices in places where it is most used?

The following is from Wikipedia: In 2014 Sigmar Gabriel, German minister of economic affairs and energy, lobbied Swedish company Vattenfall to continue investments in brown coal mines in Germany, explaining that "we cannot simultaneously quit nuclear energy and coal-based power generation". And then they wonder why hothouse gas production rose again and over a thousand extra people die each year.

The following is also from the Wikipedia Energiewende entry: In 2019, Germany's Federal Court of Auditors determined the program had cost €160 billion over the last 5 years and criticised the expenses for being "in extreme disproportion to the results". Despite widespread initial support, the program is perceived as "expensive, chaotic and unfair", and a "massive failure" as of 2019.

Following Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, many European countries face natural gas shortages, among them Germany. That made them fall back on coal again for electricity production. If they had nuclear energy, this would not have been the case. Here's what happened to electricity prices in Germany since Putin's invasion of the Ukraine. Thank Energiewende for these prices. Had they copious amounts of nuclear power...

Despite nuclear power stations closing, more electricity is generated from nuclear power than ever before. Read this interesting page on nuclear energy. Individual nuclear power stations now generate more power than ever before, which brings the total electricity generated by nuclear power to the highest levels ever. And many countries have made u-turns on their plans to shut down their nuclear power stations, and others are getting their first: Belarus, Bangladesh and Turkey are all constructing their first nuclear power plants.

Why the madness?

In two words: political correctness. Nuclear power generation is anathema to the libtard. It doesn't matter how many people die or if the Gulf Stream stops flowing and north-western Europe becomes bitterly cold—as cold as Canada at the same latitudes—as long as the principles of political correctness triumph.

Keep in mind that most people in all democratically elected governments, and nearly all in the media, are arts and humanities monkeys. They understand nothing except feelings and slogans. Reality and numbers are not on their radar. What is strange is that Angela Merkel, she has a doctorate in quantum chemistry, knowingly sold her country down the drain.

Political correctness has a price, a very high price, not only in monetary terms, but also in human lives. Self-government (such a politically-correct concept) in Africa has so far cost millions of lives, but who cares? Not your libtard. Earth can spiral into the sun, as long as political correctness is maintaned to the very end.

So, you want to be a politician

To become a politician you need only two things:

• A constituency in which to stand
• Enough votes to be elected

To deal with the first, find a strong political party and join them. From your point of view, they must optimise your chances of making it into parliament. Don't choose a small political party, except if it's up and coming and clearly going places fast.

Now you must make your way up in your party so you're given a seat to represent. You'll hear about hard, dedicated work for years, but that's nonsense. Brown-nosing and backstabbing will work better and are the two most popular ways of getting somewhere in politics, but there's something even better—building a huge popular support. No party can resist a candidate who brings waves of votes with him. You'll leapfrog the old party stalwarts with years of dedication into a seat.

Building your following

This has nothing to do with honesty, putting people first, dedication, or any of what's commonly trumpeted. It has everything to do with playing the great unwashed. Don't concern yourself with the few of higher intelligence—they don't swing constituencies. Work the masses.

So, how do you do this? The two abilities that will serve you best are acting and speech-making. Study them. Hitler went to beer halls and delivered speeches, closely watching the reaction of the crowd to what he was saying and his mannerisms. What eventually made him untouchable was his huge public support. No party could afford to ditch him or even speak in less than glowing terms about him. He was democratically elected. He told the hoi-polloi what they wanted to hear; they were better than other people and together they would make Germany great again. You can't beat telling people what they want to hear to make them like you. Let that be a lesson to you.

Some people have a face and a voice one just likes. Ronald Reagan was such a one and most likely the most popular President America ever had. He often had a trace of a smile on his face and loved telling jokes. Hitler was threatening and promised to rain hell and damnation on everybody in Germany's way. You must know your audience and your times and adapt to them—they won't adapt to you. Mingle with the masses and find out what they think and what they want and tell them you heartily agree with them and will give them what they want. You want to be an elected politician, right?

You can't beat Count Victor Lustig as someone to learn from. Pay attention to his Ten Commandments. Politicians and confidence tricksters are both in the people business, and both must know how to sway them. You really have only one commandment, the eleventh—don't get caught.

Follow this advice and you'll soon be on easy street from where you can rake it in. You don't have to know anything about anything, except how to hoodwink people and get the masses on your side.

Why do bad things happen?

The misery so often visible on Earth is a major cause of people deciding there’s no loving God behind everything.

But the complexity of creation, both physical and biological, demands a higher intelligence. Nobody can point to anything complex, like encoded information, arising without an intelligent source. So, how does this work?

Viewpoint

We see things as humans from an Earthly viewpoint, which is understandable; we’ve only ever been humans living on Earth. For us, the highest value is human life, especially our own. But see things from the standpoint of some creatures we’re familiar with, say a sheep. Nobody can say a sheep does not value his life as much as we do. Prey animals flee from predators and often show terror when facing death. We slaughter tens or hundreds of thousands of cattle and sheep daily without blinking an eye. If we don't value the life of lower animals as much as they do, who’s to say the creator of the Universe values human lives as much as we do? This leads to the next point.

Knowledge

We know humans have lives on Earth—we see that every day. We’re intrigued by what happens after death and speculate about it, but let’s be honest—no one’s ever come back from death with a report of how it is. There are near-death experiences, but they’re not widely accepted and too varied to convince. And they cover at best a few minutes. But how would we see death if we knew what lay beyond? Would Earthly death still be such a big deal? Even total annihilation is a painless nothingness.

The creator of the Universe can reconstruct us from our genetic code and engrams to the same state we were on Earth. A few improvements in our genetic codes, and we never die. Would such a creator not value our short lives on Earth less than we do?

Accountability and choice

Mankind wants to row its own boat and not be accountable to a Cosmic Creator.How can mankind now expect this creator to step in and save them from their own choices? Will we then ever get the message that while humans can manage many things, there are many we cannot manage? Will we be willing to hand over government of Earth to the creator if we don’t come face to face with the full consequences of human government?

Conclusion

Seen this way, what’s happening on Earth makes sense. Compared to what comes after, our time on Earth is short and not that important. The creator of the Universe will doubtlessly know far more than we know and it’s arrogant of us to question him. In the book of Job, Job questioned God about his misfortunes, and God’s only reply was, how can you question me? It’s like a cat or a dog questioning our decisions.

Delta Strain Mortality Rate in Australia

This is at least the third peak in daily case numbers and by far the largest. But the death rate is only 20-25% that of the second peak, despite the more cases now. The site to which the link leads is updated daily. Go to the Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases graph at the top and then scroll down to the Daily new confirmed COVID-19 deaths graph and compare.

The governments and the media are quiet about this. A bit of perspective; go to Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths. From 1 March 2020 to 23 August 2021, there were 984 deaths. That's almost 17 months, say 16.5. Air pollution from coal-fired power stations kill about 795 in Australia annually. That's 1093 in 16.5 months—more than COVID. Gladys said nothing about that. Alcohol kills about 4,000 annually in Australia. That's 5,500 in the time COVID has been going. Total silence.

The grog shop near where I live is open in this lockdown. That's the BWS in Lavington. It's a drive-through, but they get out and go into the shop. Just checked, the one in town is open from 09H00 to 19H00.

The authorities are loath to give up the power COVID handed them and the media would like the easy news (find TV or radio news or a newspaper without COVID in it) to continue.

I've had my second shot on 1 July, and I'm still treated as if I have leprosy—a very lowly contagious disease, btw. I have to wear a mask and sign in everywhere I go. What's next? Should I ring a bell and shout, unclean, unclean?

How to easily stop and reverse global warming

The technology to do this has existed for many decades. The problem is people.

The human factor

Two overlapping groups are the problem.

• the libtards—those who can’t distinguish between reality and the ideals of political correctness, and side with the latter
• the teeming masses—they keep politicians in power and politicians will never upset them

As I ennumerate what should be done, starting with the most important, you’ll see how these two groups are the problem.

What should be done

• replace all fossil fuel power stations with nuclear ones and ignore the libtards
• stop all animal farming and go vegan—that’s right, redneck, from now on you’re a vegan

The above are the two remedies which will have by far the most effect on global warming. There are too many smaller ones to mention. I’ll name a few.

• let private vehicle licence fees rise exponentially with fuel consumption—more below
• stamp out all inefficient energy use—more below
• replace all huge ships with nuclear‑driven ones
• stop wasting money trying to create city, state, and country scale wind and solar electricity—it’s pie in the sky; build nuclear power stations

Vehicle licensing fees

Set a fuel‑consumption reference, say 7.5L/100Km. Have a certain test, say a long distance trip involving some cities on the way, and get the figures for the vehicles. Let a vehicle using 8.5L/100Km pay ten times more (10¹ times), one using 9.5L/100Km 100 times more (10² times), etc. One can use decimals for the power if the excess use is a fraction of a litre. Yes, bogan/redneck, you’ll have to sell your 4WD/SUV and get a small car.

Of course, everyone will claim they must use a big, fuel‑hungry vehicle. Each case should be individually evaluated and inapproprate vehicle use (no load, only a driver in a fuel‑hungry vehcle) heavily fined.

Inefficient energy use

There is so much of that. Below only a few.

• cretins love to let their vehicles idle for minutes on end—starting and about seven seconds of idling use the same amount of fuel—there are billions of cretins in the world
• running empy or near‑empty buses all over the planet
• open, cooled shelves in supermarkets—not just here and there, all over the world
• stupid people setting their air‑conditioners to the maximum heat (often 30°C) in winter and on the minimum in summer;in summer, the AC should only be able to start cooling at 28°C and not cool below 24° and in winter it should start at 18°C and not heat above 22°C
• open doors and windows in rooms with AC and AC left on for hours when people leave

Doing all this will work, but it will upset most people. Tough titties, I say. Do we want to beat global warming, or don’t we? Of course, the politicians would not want to upset voters and so lose their cushy, well‑paid jobs. So, global warming is with us and may yet wreak havoc with the planet.

Political correctness is a mental illness

The other day I thought that if schizophrenia is characterised by delusions and hallucinations then political correctness is schizophrenia without hallucinations.

Dictionary.com has a hallucination as a sensory experience of something that does not exist outside the mind and a delusion as a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact.

The politically correct (henceforth called libtards for short) don't generally suffer from hallucinations. But they have strong delusions completely resistant to evidence. I'll name only a few. Note that goes for by far the majority of libtards, but not every single one of them.

Nuclear Power Generation

You cannot be a card-carrying member of libtards incorporated if you don't throw a hissy fit at the mention of nuclear power generation. It doesn't matter if one tells them that nuclear power generation kills fewest people per unit of electricity generated. Fewer than even their darlings, solar and wind power generation. Here is more.

Then, of course, there's France which gets more than 70% of its electricity from nuclear power which is the world and Europe's biggest exporter of electricity. Here are the world figures. Note that they export to the politically correct countries heavily relying on renewables - think mostly Germany here. Strangely enough, the two libtard nests with their renewables, Germany and Denmark, have the most expensive electricity in Europe. And France has no health or other problems from all their nuclear-power-generated electricity. The French don't glow in the dark. Strange, isn't it?

But do these figures change their warped little libtard minds? Not by a long shot. Is it normal to ignore decisive evidence and stick to one's delusions? Maybe in the madhouse.

Race

There are libtards who say there is only one race, the human race. No, libtard. Humans are a species. Homo Sapiens. Sapiens is Latin and means wise or clever. Obviously, the reality-denying libtards don't belong to this species. The definition of a species is something like, a group that can freely pair and consistently produce fertile offspring. A cross between a Collie and a Labrador is a fertile dog. Not so a cross between a donkey and a horse—a mule.

A race is more something like a subspecies. The definition of a subspecies is something like, a subgroup in a species which breeds true and has common features identifying them as members of that subgroup and separating them from other groups in the species. By breeding true I mean Chinese have Chinese kids, German Shepards have German Shepard pups, Caucasians have Caucasian kids, etc.

We know that some dog races are faster than the others—only a libtard will put his money on the Bulldog in a race between a Bulldog and a Whippet. Similarly, some are cleverer. A Kelpie will leave a Boxer far behind in obedience training. Africans seem to be faster than the rest of us if one goes by Olympic medals in sprints. But when Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa in about 1498 the Africans did not have writing (already more than 2,000 years old in other parts), they did not use the wheel (even older) and they had no form of mathematics. Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth in Alexandria, Egypt in about 250BC. Do you think the state of the Africans at any stage, or even now, is a sign of intelligence? Obviously, that cannot be.

In 2002 Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen published a book called, IQ And The Wealth of Nations. Basically, the higher the average IQ of a country, the wealthier they were. This book caused many libtards to prolapse their uteruses (strictly speaking, uteri) and twist their spermatic cords. A flurry of testing was launched to prove these two wrong. Unfortunately for the libtards, however... The results were so unanimous that they couldn't be questioned. Here's one with the results lower down on the page and here's what happens if one dares contradict the libtards. Here is a short version of the history of research into race and intelligence. Academics even say suppressing the debate on this issue may do harm.

What the libtards do is try to nullify these results. They say intelligence is hard to define and cannot be measured. Although the race IQs are different, that means nothing according to the libtard. The fact that Africa is a mess is whitey's fault. In the process of doing this, the libtards talk more BS than was in the Augean stables. It's a pity Hercules is not here.

Homosexuality

According to the libtards homosexuality is just a harmless variant of normal. So, how come the astronomical suicide and self-harm rate amongst homosexuals? Here is more. Of course, that's society's fault. And what about their predilection for serial killing? More than 40% of US serial killers are homosexual and more than half their serial killer victims were killed by homosexuals. Look at this. I suppose we should not mention that. This is no evidence that there is something seriously wrong with homosexuality, according to the libtards. They stick their heads in the sand.

Islam is a peaceful religion

Yeah, right.

But those were naughty Muslims, the libtards say. They didn't know that their own religion is a religion of peace. Well, what did they read in the Quran and the Hadiths? Kill the infidel, they read. Cut his throat. You may not want to fight, but fighting is good for you, they read. Here's their favourite verse in the Quran, the verse of the sword Here's another opinion. And this person actually went to the trouble to extract violent passages and he gives references. But despite all that, the libtard says, Islam is a religion of peace.

The evidence is clear, political correctness has a major problem recognising reality. Evidence means nothing to the libtard. That means they're delusional. Political correctness should be in the psychiatry textbooks. Someone should be looking for medication to at least control the madness of these poor people.

Bushfires in Australia

It's now 6 January 2020.  Australia had disastrous bushfires in the past week or two and some are still going.  About 3.5 million Hectares were scorched, at least 20 people are dead, the army is apparently helping to bury 100,000 dead cattle and more than 1,500 homes were burned down.  The prime minister, Scott Morrison promised a two bilion dollar recovery package.  The actual cost of the fires will, of course, only be known later.

Here are some resources confirming the above figures:

• Seven TV Network
• BBC A Visual Guide 
• The Guardian - Australian Edition

In the winter of 2019, I was in a car driving through the Mount Hotham area in Victoria.   There were masses of deadwood on the forest floor as far as one could see.  And it didn't stop as one drove along.  "This is a bushfire waiting to happen," I told my friend.  The order to evacuate Hotham came on the 3rd of January.

It's hard to set a Eucalyptus tree ablaze.  In New Zealand, we used to start the woodfires using pine and only then added the Eucalyptus wood.  One needs a lot of kindling to set fire to Eucalyptus wood.  This kindling is in plentiful supply in the woods of Australia.  And the authorities do nothing about it.  They have no incentive - they are never held accountable.  To say they were derelict in their duty would be a euphemism.  Gross negligence is closer to the mark.  And still, the law protects them.

The CSIRO did a study on wildfires in Tasmania which you can get here.  They studied three plans of action:

1. Do nothing - popular with those living on the taxpayer dollar the world over.
2. A maximal treatment, with the most possible prescribed burning within ecological constraints.
3. 12 hypothetically more implementable state-wide prescribed-burning plans.

 Of the third option they said:

Leverage analysis of the 12 more-realistic implementable plans indicated that such prescribed burning would have only a minimal effect, if any, on fire extent and that none of these prescribed-burning plans substantially reduced fire intensity. 

This means it won't work.

Of the second option they said:

Statistical modelling showed that an unrealistically large maximal treatment scenario could reduce fire intensity in three flammable vegetation types, and reduce fire probability in almost every vegetation type.

My point is that bushfires are so devastating that expensive, large-scale preventative measures are justified.

Keeping that in mind, option two is clearly the way to go.  But they are already making excuses stating backburning won't work.  One of the problems is it can only be done in the right weather conditions.  They didn't say it, but I say it, backburns can get and have got out of hand.  So, if backburns are not the way to go, what is?

Finland had a decrease in forest fires over the past few decades.  They fare much better as far as forest fires are concerned than neighbouring Sweden.  The do clear deadwood from the forest floor and they go so far as to clean the forest floor of combustible material after cutting down trees.

It is justified to use armies of prisoners and able welfare recipients to clear the ground in Australian bushland.  It may not be politically correct, but political correctness should yield to reality.  And these bushfires were and are very real.  Of course, if anything is preferable to violating the principles of political correctness, go for the bushfires.

Getting the kindling out of the woods is most likely the most important thing to do that will yield results the soonest.  One should focus on the big gains first.

Jamestown, South Australia Grid Battery - How Long Can it Supply South Australia?

The 129MWh storage capacity Tesla battery in Jamestown, South Australia brought tears of joy to the eyes of the politically-correct, greenie retards. Just look at how they celebrate this. And here's more.

Little do they know, it's only good for topping up the electricity supply during times of peak demand. A battery can discharge quickly without preparation when needed. This battery is totally useless for coping with sizeable blackouts.

Let me explain some things so you will quickly know more than the Minister of Energy about electricity.  For our purposes we are interested in a unit of used electricity.  Household electricity is paid per kWh - kilowatt hour.  A kWh represents an amount of work done.  A watt is the rate of work made possible by the input of a certain amount of energy - a watt of electricity. Say your kettle is marked as 1,000W - one Kw.  If you boil that kettle continuously for one hour you will have used 1kWh of electricity.  A kWh is a unit of electricity used to make a certain amount of work possible, say cool your room for x minutes, light up a certain area for y hours, etc.  When it comes to mass consumption a kWh is too small a unit and 1,000 of them are lumped together to make a MWh (megawatt hour) and 1,000MWh are lumped together to make a GWh (gigawatt hour).  1,000kWh = 1MWh.  1,000MWh = 1GWh.
 
What does 129MWh mean? It means they can supply 129MWatts for an hour. As the battery's maximum discharge capacity is 100MWatt/Hr it means the battery can actually go on for about 75 minutes discharging at 100MWatts/hour.

You will find much of what's in the paragraph above on the linked-to pages. But you won't find what it actually means as the media monkeys don't understand numbers. They don't answer the question of how long can it supply electricity to how many people. I wanted to see how long it can supply Adelaide with electricity but I could not find Adelaide's electricity usage. My guess for Adelaide was less than 10 minutes. I did find this AEMO pdf document online. It gives the electricity usage for the whole of South Australia.

On page 18 you will see that in 2017-18 South Australia used 12,203 GWh. Giga is 1000 Mega. So, with minimal rounding, it comes out that South Australia used 33,433MWh/day, 1,393MWh/hour and 23MWh/minute in 2017-18. 23MW/h means 23MW delivered for an hour.  But they need that delivered per minute.  So, they need a supply of 1,380MW/h for business as usual.  The supply rate of the battery is not remotely up to that - it's only 100MW/h.  Immediately, it's going to hit the fan big-time.  Now say the supply rate can be upped to the required 1,380MW/h, how long can SA keep running?  That's easy, the battery capacity is 129MWh.  Per-minute they need 23MWh.   So, the battery can supply South Australia with less than 6 minutes worth of electricity.  But, as already shown, even these six minutes won't happen. Only a few islands of light will be able to last the six minutes. And these must be decided in advance.  Who will get the electricity and who won't?  That'll be the night the lights went out in South Australia. Those backwoods, southern yokels will be crying into their beer for their battery to save them, but it won't.

Adelaide has about 515,000 homes.  This battery can run 8,000 houses for 24 hours. That's 0.0155% of Adelaide's homes.

I wonder how many of the numerically and reality-challenged politicians in the various governments know this.  I would not be surprised if the answer is none.

This is typical of this world – the world is mostly populated by retards led by their noses by the arts-and-humanities monkeys in governments using the arts-and-humanities monkeys in the media to disseminate their propaganda to the great unwashed. All three these groups have but a tenuous hold on reality and don't understand our technical world. That's the world we live in – the hoi-polloi crying out to be deceived and the politicians and their flunkies, the politically-correct media people, are all too ready to oblige.

Who Created God?

In an interview featuring Roger Penrose and William Lane Craig the former said a higher intelligence, like God, as the agent responsible for the Universe, is not a satisfactory explanation.  Roger Penrose wants a reason for the higher intellect as well.

Before Edwin Hubble demonstrated redshift in the nineteen-twenties, most people were happy that the Universe had just always been there.  In Stephen Hawking's last book, Brief Answers to Big Questions, he states that with the Law of Gravity in place, the Universe could have just happened.  Now the Law of Gravity had to be there for all time.  Others say that fluctuations in a quantum vacuum or quantum space were responsible for the existence of the Universe.  That means the quantum something must just always have been there.

So it's clear - most people are happy with something just always being there, as long as it's not a higher power to whom they are most likely accountable.  A few come right out and say so, to their credit.  But most are not that honest.  They have to invent a "scientific" reason for their disbelief in a higher power.  Their big question is if God created the Universe, who created God?  Richard Dawkins asks that question frequently.

First, let's get our heads around what a chain of causation is.  Say Y created Z, then the immediate question is who created Y?  Why X of course.  And who created X, you ask.  That's W.  And so on and so on.  If we travel back along this chain of causation, we will eventually reach A.

In our quest to discover who created the Universe, we can start with anything in the Universe and then travel back along this chain of causation.  There are only two possibilities.  This chain can be:
1) Circular
2) Non-circular

If the chain is circular, we will eventually get to something that was created by something that it had created - the chicken came from the egg that the chicken had laid.  That's Wheeler's Participatory Universe.  In short, the Universe was created by intelligence the Universe had created.  This concept has to do with particles acting like waves if not observed but acting like particles if observed.  That means that the act of observing them after their creation made them go back in time and influence their own nature so they act like particles.  That's enough to give anybody a headache and, not surprisingly, this explanation for the Universe's existence hasn't really caught on.

If the chain is not circular, there are only two possibilities:
1) Infinite regression - we never get to the ultimate creator, which will mean nothing can exist.  We know this is not the state of things.
2) Somewhere we run smack-bang into an uncaused cause - the higher intelligence.

There are only these three possibilities:
1) The Participatory Universe possibility
2) Nothing exists because there's no ultimate creator.
3) The uncaused cause is behind everything.

One cannot ask where the Uncaused Cause came from - that's a stupid question.  Just like people were happy to accept that the Universe was eternal and Stephen Hawking was happy to believe that the Law of Gravity was eternal and those of the Quantum faith have no problems with something quantum being eternal we have to accept that there may be an infinite higher intellect.  Not only that, an eternal higher intelligence is by far the most satisfying explanation.  After all, who would want the Law of Gravity or something like a quantum field as their God?

Trump won, liberals lost, suck it up.

It takes pride of place on the news - liberals and Muslims protesting against Trump. The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) and artistic communities are outraged. It seems the whole of the film industry had their haemorrhoids prolapse and thrombose. Not surprisingly, this motley lot is joined by many politicians from many countries declaring their condemnation for what Trump is doing. At the same time, this sorry lot, the politicians included, are displaying their hypocrisy in the media of the world. Liberals are always loudly in favour of democracy, except if the vote goes against them.

Furthermore, this sorry lot is also displaying to the world that they are sore losers. They whine and complain and carry on like a hypochondriac told there's nothing wrong with her. This is really very bad style. When did conservatives go on like this after they had lost an election? I can't recall them ever taking to the streets and making such a sorry spectacle of themselves. Shame on you liberals. But come to think about it, this is just what can be expected of you, given you are such sore losers and hypocrites. My advice to you is to act with style and dignity - very hard for two-faced liberals. Suck it up. Prepare for the next election. Who knows, maybe...

And as for the Muslims, what did you expect? There are very few things as well established on this Earth as the link between Islam and terrorism. Don't try to convince us that Islam is a religion of peace - the evidence says differently. First convince your fellow Muslims of it and get them to act on this Islam is a religion of peace, which, given the present facts, only the most obtuse will believe. Maybe then it won't be dangerous having Muslims around.

Against Democracy

There are only two things wrong with democracy. They are:

• Those who vote
• Those they vote for

Those who vote

The average intelligence of the general population of every country is average. But don't let the word average fool you. It really means that on average, humanity's as thick as two short planks. When it comes to voting, the small percentage of intelligent people doesn't matter. Those who matter are the great unwashed. And this group has only a tenuous grip on reality. We all know the Greeks have been living beyond their means on borrowed money for years. When it finally caught up with them and they needed to curb their lifestyles and get their hands dirty and work, they demonstrated and had protest marches. They wanted to keep on living beyond their means on borrowed money forever and ever. How they saw that as possible, they didn't say.

When the French government recently wanted to introduce legislation to make French industry more competitive by giving greater power to employers, the French took to the streets. They demanded that their jobs stay highly paid, secure and with generous perks. They didn't say how they planned to be competitive with mostly Eastern countries where workers don't have it so well.

The whole democracy issue is best summarised by a quote attributed to Robert Heinlein; Once the monkeys learn they can vote themselves bananas, they'll never climb another tree. Benjamin Franklin said much the same; When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic. And this is the crux of the matter, the great unwashed will want what they want irrespective of whether what they want is reasonable and realistic. And they will vote for those promising them what they want.

In Australia, young people from all over the world come on extended holidays. They don't have much money, so they stay in modest accommodation known as backpacker lodges. They themselves are referred to as backpackers. Many of them take up menial work to supplement their funds, mostly things like fruit picking in season. Australians don't want to do this kind of work. As much of this work is on a cash basis, the government doesn't get what they regard as their fair share of this money. Just now, on TV, a politician, maybe the relevant minister, talked about financing government. Back-packers featured prominently. The government considered introducing a flat tax on them, but reconsidered as they thought it would discourage backpackers coming to Australia and doing really essential work and spending some money here. This politician bemoaned the fact that Australians won't take up this work, in which case these workers would be on the books and could be taxed. In addition, these people would then not rely on Centrelink to keep them in the pink and in booze with enough left over for the horses, the poker machines (pokies), and the many kinds of sports betting available in Australia. This politician said the government is deliberating how they can change things so that Australians will take up these jobs.

Of course, laws could be changed to implement Paul's dictum : The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat. But that will ensure that whichever party is in opposition will promise to undo these changes if they come into power. The opposition will then be elected at the next election as sure as politicians have very generous perks. It is, therefore, safe to say that Australians won't take up this lowly paid, hard work. Legalise compulsory higher wages for this work and the products generated won't be competitive in the world markets.

Working mothers of newborns in Australia can get paid parental leave amounting to AUD672.60 per week before tax for a maximum of 18 weeks. 18 Weeks amount to four months. Not only can new mothers get paid parental leave, there is also a Dad and Partner paid parental leave for the same amount, but only for two weeks. Needless to say, there is a clamour to make these perks even more generous.

And that's not all, Domestic Violence Leave is also much in play in Australia. In fact, the perpetrators may be entitled to paid domestic violence leave . This will surely make Australia more competitive in the world's markets and ensure jobs into the future.

In Australia, like in much of the West, manufacturing is on the ropes. The export of manufacturing jobs to Eastern countries is going strong, however. It's widely accepted that the car manufacturing industry will go. All the remaining three big manufacturers will close in either 2016 or 2017. In fact, the Ford factory closed on Friday the 7th of October 2016. The story is very similar to the British Motor Industry. Jaguar is owned by the Indian Car Manufacturer, Tata, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Limited is owned by BMW, Austin is gone, Morris is gone, and the list goes on and on. Recently, a contract for new railway carriages for the NSW railways went to South Korea, despite the fact that there is a concern that manufactures rolling stock in Newcastle, NSW. The relevant government said that the South Korean bid was 25% lower and that there are no quality concerns. In fact, as regards to quality... Thank the unions, thank democracy. For a while, the workers had it very good. But they were, as the great unwashed always is, unable to see what was real and sustainable and what was only a socialist dream leading to a rude awakening. As there was so little brain to wash, brainwashing them was an easy job. Pie in the sky seemed so real.

The only qualification needed to vote is to have reached the voting age. As if age brings intelligence.

When all is said and done, a true democracy where the great masses get their wishes is nothing but mob rule.

Those getting the votes

Before an aspirant politician can become a fully fledged politician, he or she must get enough votes to be elected. That means he or she must be able to convince enough of the great unwashed to vote for him. That means, first of all, he must maneuver himself into a position to become a candidate for the party with the best chance of winning his constituency. Of course, he may stand as an independent, but that greatly diminishes his chances of getting elected. All that is needed depends on appearances. The ability to get elected has nothing to do with the ability to manage a country or part thereof. A minister of a portfolio needs no knowledge of his portfolio. A hairdresser is often better qualified for her job than a minister of a portfolio for his portfolio. The people attracted to politics are by nature snake oil salesmen and women - all they need to do is to charm and smooth talk enough people to support them when they need that support. They must know how to lead the fickle great unwashed by its collective dirty snout. The ones who can see through them don't matter. There are too few of those.

Democracy is not to be found in any field needing knowledge. How would you feel if the surgeon going to operate on you were elected by the great unwashed from among any group of candidates who thought they'd like the pay of a surgeon? Say the pilot of the plane in which you're going to fly were also elected. And the engineers who designed and supervised the building of the huge bridge that's supposed to carry hundreds of thousands of cars a day had been elected. How come it's fine that those at the head of a country need no knowledge? All they need is enough of the great unwashed to vote for them. Does this make sense?

Being so dependent on the fickle masses makes a politician vulnerable. Anybody who can deliver on anything that can sway the great unwashed will have much influence with a politician. Enter the lobbyists who control too few votes to make a difference at election time but have enough money which a cunning politician can use to sway votes his way.

A few months ago, the NSW state government banned dog racing when it was discovered that there was much animal cruelty involved in it. Of course, there was the usual outcry by those involved in this shady (gambling) industry. Just today (11 October 2016), TV news reported that the NSW government was going to reverse this ban. I immediately wondered what the gambling bosses did to engineer the reversing of this ban. Of course, we can expect no in depth reporting on what happened behind the scenes. There will be the usual claptrap providing a reason - stepped up supervision, promises to eradicate cruelty from the industry, etc. But what will be offered won't be the real reason. The nature of elected government officials is such that by far the majority of people in whichever country expect them to behave dishonestly. It is no surprise therefore that people are sceptical in a situation such as this.

By far the majority of elected officials desperately want to keep their jobs. They want to remain where the pickings are rich and the pasture is lush. To succeed in this, they must convince the voting cattle to give them enough votes come election time. And for the voting cattle, being who they are, it's all about appearances. And the politicians, being who they are, appearances is the one thing about which they are very good. Reality takes a back seat.

Politicians will do whatever is needed to stay in the pound seats - collude with whoever can turn the odds their way, promise the voting cattle whatever is needed to make them vote for the party or politician concerned, even if it will bankrupt the country or kill off industry. Ask the Greeks and the English.

What else?

Most people will now ask, what is better than democracy? There is something, a country with a clear constitution and with laws flowing from that constitution. The biggest part of this constitution will be the same for all countries as people are people. There will be parts addressing the particular circumstances of the individual countries. This constitution should address everything, like the best way the particular country can be economically viable, given its strenghts and weaknesses. The constitution should embody what is best for the country and the people, not what the hoi polloi wants.

The above will never happen, though. It will prevent predators, like gambling bosses, booze barons, drug pushers, confidence tricksters and whore masters preying on the all too prevalent simple minded. And the simple minded will always be there in great numbers and those eager to prey on them, too. So, don't hold your breath. This is a world of predators and prey, with the blessing of the government of whichever country you are in.

Scientists and Logic

It's to be expected that your average person should make logical mistakes in his arguments. It's even to be expected that those with training in the arts, humanities, philosophy, theology and other non-scientific disciplines should make mistakes in logic. But I'm disappointed to see people with scientific training make mistakes in logic. And they do. Much more often than I would like to see. It's like seeing a man parking badly - they're letting the side down.

Still, it seems they are just like everybody else; if something is in line with what they believe, they demand little or no evidence before accepting it. But if it is in any way contrary to what they believe nothing but absolute mathematically certain evidence will do. And in most cases not even that.

Stephen Hawking said: "on the face of it, life does seem to be too unlikely to be just a coincidence." Then he goes on, trying to find ways to show that what he just said is not true, after all. He invokes parallel universes to get past the astronomical odds against 'just by chance.' There is absolutely no evidence supporting parallel universes. The astronomical odds are a certainty. Stephen Hawking should know one cannot invoke speculation as evidence to change a factual reality. One can also not invoke what amounts to magic - here we are, so it must have happened. Is Stephen Hawking so committed to atheism that he abandons logic to defend it? What a disappointment.

I'm reading a book called Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout by Patrick Moore. Patrick Moore has a PhD in environmental science. While attending a conference in Nairobi, he had a Damascus Road experience. He saw that Greenpeace was a movement more in line with ideals and convictions than reality. In fact, he went over to the other side to such an extent that he even doubts that man-made green-house gases are in any way responsible for the documented increase in global temperatures. He does not doubt the increase in green-house gases and the global heating up, just the connection between the two. He uses the analogy of the correlation between increased ice-cream consumption and an increase in shark attacks on humans. He does mention that there is no known direct connection between ice-cream consumption and shark attacks, which is of course true. There is no evidence that either humans having eaten ice-cream or ice-cream itself attracts sharks. However, Patrick Moore should know this is not an apt analogy to use to illustrate the connection between an increase of hot house gases and an increased global temperature - it is well known that hot house gases prevent heat from being lost. Therefore, it can be said with certainty that the increase in hot house gases is at least to some extent responsible for the increased global temperature. There may be other candidates also responsible for this, like sun spots. But in the absence of other candidates as clearly related to a temperature increase as hot house gases, it is justified to declare hot house gases the number one contender for the lion's share of the responsibility for the increased global temperature. This is not rocket science. I cannot see why Patrick Moore and others can't see this.

Patrick Moore is also heavily into atheism and evolution. Nevertheless, he says he bases his realities on science. In his own words: "The real strength of science is that it is based on two things: observable facts that can be repeated and logic." Then he goes on to say, not on the same page, of course, that whales come from hippopotamus-like animals that swam down rivers, ended up in the oceans and became whales. In the light of the total absence of any evidence for this, this qualifies as complete nonsense. Where are the "observable facts that can be repeated" that is his requirement for anything to be established as a fact? Or is such nonsense acceptable to him because it supports evolution? One should be consistent.

As for evolution, the starting point of evolution is the development of life purely by chance. If this cannot happen, evolution does not even get out of the starting blocks. The Internet is full of discussions about this. Everybody agrees that the chance of life coming about by random chance is less than one out of a figure bigger than the number of all the atoms in the Universe. Evolutionists have a few ways they try to get past that, among those life seeded from outer space (but how did life get there?) or the claim that the process wasn't really random. Exactly what it was, they don't say. The only way one can defeat such overwhelming odds is a brute force attack - try all combinations. But a brute force attack is not a random process. One should try one combination only once. Even if that is possible through random means, the numbers still are too large. And it isn't. So, purely mathematically speaking, the probability of life coming to be by random means runs up against insurmountable odds. So, mathematically speaking it is impossible that life can come about by itself by random means. This is a fact. There are no "observable facts that can be repeated" to show how life can come about by itself. To be consistent, anyone who claims to go only by science and logic should admit that evolution is a mathematical impossibility. As life developing by itself by random processes is a mathematical impossibility, it is a mathematical necessity that there should be something or someone behind the development of life. Again, this is not rocket science.

It is disappointing that people with scientific training make easily avoidable, logical mistakes. What is even more disappointing is that they so often talk absolute nonsense. This, unfortunately, is not as rare as it should be. Let me stress that no amount of speculation can prevent anything from being nonsense.

Barack Obama Speaks out Against Democracy

Yesterday, on PBS Newshour broadcast here in Australia, Barack Obama had much to say against Crimea going with Russia. My point is that as a liberal Barack Obama is strongly in favour of democracy - it put him in a cushy job and all liberals have to be in favour of democracy. Barack Obama knows that the Crimeans voted overwhelmingly in favour of going with Russia and he never disputed that. Even before the voting took place it was widely expected that this was the way the vote was going to go. So, from a democratic viewpoint, the Crimea going with Russia is the wish of the people.

Nearly 60% of Crimeans are Russian. Only 25% are Ukranian. 77% of Crimeans say Russian is their native language and only 10% say Ukranian is their native language. The Crimea was part of Russia until 1954 when it was added to the Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic, also with strong ties to Russia. The Ukraine went independent only in 1991. So, both the Crimean people and the recent history of the Crimea show strong ties to Russia. Nobody should have been surprised when the Crimea changed hands again. As this happened with the overwhelming support of its people, the liberals should have applauded. But no, this champion of democracy, Barack Obama, spits fire and threatens and looks generally unhappy about it. How is this possible? After all, this is an expression of democracy and Barack is such a big supporter of democracy. Well, the thing is, like all liberals, Barack Obama is a hypocrite.

It works like this, all liberals are supporters of 'freedom of opinion.' You can have any viewpoint or opinion as long as your viewpoint or opinion does not fly in the face of the manifests of the GCPC (Global Council for Political Correctness), the MFM (Militant Feminist Movement), or GALRO (Gay and Lesbian Rights Organisation.) You can have any opinion on legalised gay marriage, as long as it's for, you can have any opinion on capital punishment, as long as it's against. Most likely you are starting to see things clearly now.

Let's further explore the hypocrisy of the liberals. They were as a man for self rule of African countries. Now that Africa is a total mess with many millions dead as a result of African self government, these same liberals are deadly quiet. Once in a while one of them will quietly condemn an African despot (Mugabe was popular for this a while back) which they had helped to bring to power.

This is what I'm on about, the utter hypocrisy of liberals. And nobody says a thing about that. I'm neutral about this Crimean thing, it will work itself out. In reality it will most likely be better for Crimeans in the short run to go with Russia rather than a bankrupt Ukraine. Russia will be generous for a while to show them they voted the right way. I hope Russia will accuse all these hypocrites of being hypocrites. There's really nothing they can say about it in this instance. They people have voted and these liberals have expressed their opinions against the will of the people. And them such staunch democrats.

Packt Publishing's 2,000th Title

Packt Publishing publishes technical books. What makes things great is that one can buy pdf copies and download them immediately. As there is no shipping or paper involved one would expect to make a decent saving on these ebooks. That's just what you get. My first book from them was GNUCash 2.4 small business accounting. GNUCash is a freely downloadable accounting package which comes standard with most Linux installations. Since then both my wife and I have been using GNUCash to do our tax returns. It's just so much easier. This is a link to the Packt Publishing Special Offers as a 2,000th title celebration. Give it a go. There's just so much to choose from.

The case against the trinity

Proponents of any theory tend to accept even weak evidence as vindication for their theory and dismiss even the strongest of evidence against their theory.

People in general also are more impressed by evidence confirming a theory (positive evidence) as opposed to evidence against a theory. This is a very well known phenomenon.

Nearly all people accept things which are part of their environment, customs and heritage uncritically. People are also caught up in trends and fashions and tend to mindlessly follow the herd, even though the herd may be palpably wrong. There are a great many examples of this. Communism lead to widespread poverty and living in fear of the authorities, yet the majority of its victims were adherents of communism.

When someone is dressed in the garments of an expert, his word is accepted as the gospel truth by the majority of people. From about 2001 to 2007 England was in the grip of an MRSA scare which was a 100% scam. Undercover journalists took swabs from window sills, stairwells and many other places in public hospitals. They got positive results for MRSA from just one "laboratory" - the garden shed, unaccredited laboratory of Dr Chris Malyszewicz PhD, and they ran with it. The word spread that this was the place to go for positive results and soon all specimens were submitted to this "laboratory." The newshounds got what they wanted - positive results. Thousands of reports on this MRSA scam were published in the UK in those years. The PhD held by Chris Malyszewicz was from a non-accredited correspondence course in the USA. He had no qualifications whatsoever in microbiology. He had never published anything in a peer reviewed scientific journal. Some people noticed this early on, but not the newspapers. He was soon Britain's foremost MRSA expert in the newspapers, as is shown by this article in The Guardian. When his specimens were examined by other real laboratories they found MRSA only in single specimens, and MRSA shown by DNA typing to not occur in the UK, but only in Australia from where Chris Malyszewicz also got work - yes, he was world famous by then. The vast majority of the specimens showed no sign of MRSA at all. Some showed bacilli which could even with a 100x magnification of a cheap, child's microscope be distinguished from a staphylococcus. When the newspapers could eventually not hide this anymore - they did ignore all reports of it for as long as they could - they cried foul and held themselves out as the innocent victims of this fiend. The evidence was there from before the first article was published. The trinitarian dogma relies on many such experts and many such gullible spreaders of the word.

As the trinitarian dogma is under the spotlight here, one has to ask, what exactly does this dogma claim? Let's look at just a few of this dogma's claims.

• The Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all three fully god
• These three are equal
• Despite the fact that there are three of them and each is fully god, they add up to only one god

This is not all that the trinitarian dogma claims, but these three claims are essential to it. If only one of them can be shown to be false, the whole thing falls.

A unique theory

The trinitarian dogma is unique, as far as I know, in that only in stating its claims, before one has even started to examine the evidence for and against it, it contains a serious irrationality. It claims that 1 god + 1 god + 1 god = 1 god and that 1/3 = 1. Note that they don't claim that Jesus god + Father God + Holy Spirit god = family god, like father Smith + mother Smith + Johnny Smith = family Smith. Or something else like 4 + 4 + 4 = 1 dozen. No, they claim that the entity type right throughout the equation remains the same - god. One doesn't even have to go beyond primary school arithmetic to know that this is nonsense.

Right from the start of this dogma this has been a problem for trintirians. As there is no rational way of getting past this, they invoke magic. They quote Isaiah 55:8,9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says Jehovah. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. That does not say that God endorses pure nonsense. To claim that 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 and 1/3 = 1 is pure nonsense. Ask yourself, what cannot be made acceptable by invoking magic to get past its absurdities? If one has to invoke magic, one is dealing with hocus-pocus. That's what 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 and 1/3 = 1 are.

The above is enough to do away with the trinitarian dogma as a position that makes any sense. Anything more is just burying it deeper.

The evidence

What makes evidence weak or strong? Let's look at strong evidence.

• It is unambiguous, clear and straight to the point
• It is clearly relevant to the position it supports or contradicts

There is not one piece of evidence used in support of the trinity that passes those two tests. You are welcome to send on any you think passes those tests. We'll look at a few of the most commonly used passages and show how they fail the test.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. This is how it is in most English Bibles. Point one, as it's translated it doesn't make any sense unless "the Word" and "God" are one and the same entity. Look at this: in the beginning was A and A was with B and A was B. The only way that is possible is if A and B are two names for one and the same entity. That is one way some see it; Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit just three expressions of one being. That's called modalism and very few trinitarians subscribe to that. But that's the only way it can make sense. And what's more, it doesn't even come straight out and say "Jesus is god."

Point two, as it's translated is not the way it appears in the Greek of John 1:1. Here's a transliteration: In a beginning was the word and the word was with the god and a god was the word. Greek has the definite article, "the," but not the indefinite article "a." To get past it the "a" is assumed whenever "the" is not used. In the translated versions God is a proper noun - a name. In the Greek the word is "theos" and it is a common noun, like the words fish, human, apple and more. Theos can also mean a human of high position, an idol or even the one True God. Having so many meanings it's not a very useful word to determine exact meaning. Preceding theos with the "the" makes it one specific god, the Father. To get away from the fact that the Greek seemed to ascribe godlike qualities to Jesus - in fact, that's how some translations render it - the Colwell rule was invented. Not even all trinitarians say it can consistently be applied. John didn't use it as it didn't exist in his time. There is disagreement over how John 1:1 should be translated.

Taken together, the fact that John 1:1 doesn't make sense as translated, that the Greek seems to say something different, that there is disagreement over how it should be translated and that it doesn't come straight out and say Jesus is god makes it impossible to see John 1:1 as strong evidence in support of the trinity.

[ACV] John 10:30 I and the Father are one. Come on, that's an idiomatic expression. It does not even start to say that Jesus is god, unless you're a modalist. It's not even evidence supporting the trinitarian dogma.

John 8:58 Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I am. There is so much wrong with this verse as strong evidence, I'd better put it in a list.

• It does not come straight out and say that Jesus is god
• It's supposed to map to Exodus 3:14
  • Exodus 3:14 was written in Hebrew
  • John was written in Greek
  • Jesus spoke in Aramaic
  • To say that the translations could only have been to those words to make the mapping 100% sure, is ridiculous
  • The translation of Exodus 3:14 is by no means clear
• The exact Greek word translated here as "I am" is used many times elsewhere in John and the New Testament as well, but only here translated as I am. "I have been" would make more sense. Nowhere else is it seen as a claim to deity.

Acts 5:4 ...Thou have not lied to men, but to God. Lie to my emissary, and you lie to me. That's a valid understanding of the text. It makes sense. It does not unambiguously say the Holy Spirit is God, as it can be legitimately understood in other ways without adding or subtracting anything or changing it in any way. That's not strong evidence. In any case, if the Holy Spirit were God one would have expected something as important as that to have been mentioned more than once and very clearly, at that.

Please note that one can show up the weaknesses of the so-called pro-trinity evidence without changing them in any way. One does not have to add unspoken conditions or leave out or add anything.

The evidence against

Speaking to the Father, Jesus says: John 17:3 And this is eternal life, that they should know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou sent. Now that's clear. If there's only one "true God" and that "true God" is the Father, there can't be any others. Jesus didn't qualify this statement. Trinitarians try to. They say it was just when Jesus was here on Earth that the Father was the "only true God." But what about the Holy Spirit, then? That's not what Jesus said. This is very strong evidence against the trinity.

1 Corinthians 8:6 yet to us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him. The difference between the quality of this evidence against the trinity and that usually cited as evidence for the trinity, is vast. This is strong evidence.

John 14:28 Ye heard that I said to you, I go, and I come to you. If ye loved me, ye would have rejoiced because I said I go to the Father, because my Father is greater than I. This speaks directly to the much vaunted equality of the members of the trinity. Where's this equality now? Yes, I know, blah, blah, blah. Jesus didn't introduce any conditions for this statement, but the trinitarians do.

Note that this is by far not all evidence in the Bible making rubbish out of the trinitarian dogma. To examine all evidence held as pro-trinity evidence, and that against it, will take a book, not a blog post.

Prophecy

Here I'm going to be a prophet and prophesy that this post won't change the mind of one staunch trinitarian. Isn't it amazing? They believe in the trinity despite the overwhelming strength of the evidence against it. That doesn't say much for the intelligence, or is it intellectual honesty?, of Christians.

Making money out of suckers

They were always there, those of low intelligence. And I'm not talking only of those labelled as metally retarded; no, I'm talking of the majority of people - the workers, the salt of the Earth. In the middle ages they were serfs and were nearly slaves of the property owner on whose property they eked out an existence. In many countries, like Russia, this extended well past the middle ages. In this disempowered state they were fair game to anyone in the right position. They were shamelessly exploited for their labour and given just enough to stay alive to work again tomorrow.

But things change. In some cases it took revolutions, led by con men and idealists, and in other cases the masters slowly developed a conscience and things changed. Then came democracy and each of these children of serfs had a vote. Unfortunately intelligence didn't come with the vote. As Robert Heinlein said, "when the monkeys find out they can vote themselves bananas, they'll never climb another tree." And find out, they did. They were stupid, not mentally retarded.

With democracy came a new kind of con man: the democratically elected politician. All they had to do was convince enough people to vote for them. Abraham Lincoln said, "there are some people who can be fooled all of the time." That's all a politician asks for. The "all people can be fooled some of the time" is a bonus.

Given the fact that these people of low intelligence make up the majority, it's no wonder laws changed to favour them - the politicians want to stay on the gravy train. These people, the ones who don't know the difference between "their" and "there" and "your" and "you're" and "its" and "it's" and use apostrophes to pluralise words, are now the politically correct elite. There is no way one can herd them together and put them to work for a pittance. But that doesn't mean some people don't want to take advantage of them and make money out of them. After all, they're still stupid. One just has to come up with the right formula.

Being stupid, these people can be suckered into wanting what is really of no good use and harmful to them. This can be sold to them at a huge profit. So, how does one trick a sucker? Why, every con man and politician knows: appearances. Dress it up, talk it up and tell them it's desirable. Why are politicians' speeches so flowery and full of fine sounding, empty rhetoric? They know their audience.

So these prospective con men employed statisticians to sort the milking cattle into groups to which different strategies will appeal. And, boy, did they come up with the right answers. Things harmful to these suckers, their families and society are so popular with them they will revolt if it's taken away. Think of drugs, smoking, booze, prostitution, and all the forms of gambling. Many of these are dressed up as the essence of having a good time, and it works. Some cigarettes were sold as the brand of the man's man - the Gunston man knows where he's going. Yeah, straight to the cancer ward. Some menthol falvoured brands were for "ladies." Some with expensive, imported tobacco were for people of refined taste. The same happens with booze. The ultimate con trick with booze is the wine connoisseur. Go online and search for double and triple blind wine tasting. You will see that all this sniff, sniff, taste, twirl, the far away look in the eyes like a dog busy evacuating its bowels, and then the wise pronunciation about the origin of this wine, its character, its merits, are all such a crock of... This masterpiece of deception fooled even many people who don't belong to this stupid group.

So, now you have these people clamouring for what's bad for them and the other group who proclaims itself as benefactors of these morons, selling it to them at a huge profit and the politicians pocketing the cash from these "entepreneurs" and washing their hands and asking "am I my brother's keeper?"

Now I ask you, seeing these morons are asking for it, shouldn't one get on the band wagon and milk these suckers for all one is worth while the going is good?

Local fuel prices

The other day I filled up with fuel. It wasn't cheap. As I drove away I wondered if there were a site where I could look up local fuel prices. When I got home, I did a search. There wasn't much. Not one of those I found could give me fuel prices at local filling stations. As you know, a few hundred meters between filling stations can mean a few cents per liter difference in price.

So I did a bit of research and came up with a concept. Basically it boils down to this: a site where filling stations can sign up for free and enter fuel prices and promotions. Users can search by postcode or postcode and suburb. Then I put some icing on the cake.

To show results, the page doesn't reload. Ajax does its magic. That means fast, really fast. Drop down select boxes populate from the database using Ajax as well. Clicking on the address of a filling station returned with the results will bring up a Google map showing the location of the filling station.

I knew from the start that getting filling stations to sign up would be difficult. I emailed all the fuel companies, handed business cards I had printed to some filling stations - nothing. It takes a while for anything online to take off, if it does. So, I'm still hopeful.

Go and have a look at Petrol Price Site and enter any Australian residential postcode - there are more than 16,000 in the database. Try 2100, 2300, 2320 or something like that.

The question is, how do I get filling stations to sign up?

The booze baron is your friend

When you took your first drink, who was it who saw to it that you grew up in a society where alcohol was part of everyday life and readily available? Why, the booze barons of course. And of course their booze baron fathers and booze baron grand fathers and... It took a lot of work over many centuries to see to it that the booze was there when you took your first drink. And society, then, as now, regarded booze as a grown up thing. And the booze barons made sure everybody knew it was a grown up thing - something for kids to aspire to. As you know, all kids want to be grown up. Why, you ask yourself now. But that's another story. Be that as it may, the booze was there when you took your first drink. You didn't like it at all, but hey, that was what grown ups and the cool crowd did. Remember the booze ads?

Then, when you were a young buck who drank with his friends after work and over weekends, who saw to it that the liquor stores were open seven days a week, from early morning to late at night? That didn't happen by itself, you know. The business hours of many other business concerns were not as liberal, even though some of them would have liked it to be. Those people didn't campaign with such diligence and persistence for their customers as the booze barons did. And their pockets were not as deep. There are always politicians for sale if the price is right. And the booze barons didn't skimp in their efforts to remove all barriers between their customers and their product. Remember how much of a man you felt when you managed to out-drink your friends? Those booze ads depicting a heavy drinker as a real man had something to do with that. Alcohol was the stuff showing one was a man and the essence of having a good time. The world was your oyster and your tankard was always full.

Every time one of your friends was fined for driving under the influence his notch went up in your estimation and your circle of friends drank to that. When one of your friends went to jail for causing an accident which led to severe injuries while drunk, you drank to that. Booze was never in short supply and society had nothing bad to say about the inebriate. On the TV, in the newspapers and magazines, the booze barons told everyone booze was what made the world go round. And, like everyone else, you swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.

When an acquaintance, as drunk as a judge, took on a truck on his motorcycle and lost, it didn't phase you one bit. Your circle discussed it over many beers and decided it had most likely been the truckie's fault. There was more than enought booze to smooth over these few rough patches in life. You all drank a toast to the recently departed acquaintance and forgot about him. This type of thing was never mentioned by the booze barons in their ads, so it must have been a fluke. No need to give it too much thought.

Remember when you got your first tattoo? You went to the bar and proudly showed it off. Yvonne, who was always at the bar, was very impressed by it. She had several tattoos and body piercings. Everyone had many drinks to your tattoo. As if they needed a reason. There was booze aplenty and life was good. That night Yvonne gave you Herpes - like a booze baron, Herpes is a friend for life.

Then you were fired from a job for the first time because of booze. What a bummer. You went to the pub and had a drink to it with your friends. There were several among them who had the same experience. One can always get a new job, they assured you. And you drank and forgot about being fired from your job. Thank you booze barons for the nectar of the gods which can make a man feel good when bad things happen.

An uncle on your mother's side died of alcoholic liver cirrhosis. You knew him well as a kid. He always used to be friendly with you. Well, a man had to die of something. That night you had a few to his memory. It was so good that there was always booze to give life a golden haze. With life as it was, one surely needed it. Running out of booze was not on the cards - the booze barons saw to that. Oh well, one thing less to worry about. Thank heavens for the booze barons.

Things at home slowly got worse and worse. Your wife couldn't understand why you kept losing jobs because of booze. In the end you went on an unemployment benefit and your wife left you, taking the kids with her. There was only one thing to look forward to - your next drink.

Years went by and there was just one thing you could depend on - there will always be booze to take the sting out of life. Thank you booze barons, you said, without you my life would have been lost.

It came on quite suddenly, your slide into near permanent sickness was fast. One week your liver still coped, with the occasional hiccup, then the whites of your eyes started turning yellow. Your GP felt your abdomen and said you had a four cm liver. He sent off some tests, which showed your liver was no longer coping. Your GP said you had alcoholic liver cirrhosis. Just like your uncle, you thought. But there were liver transplants, you thought. Not unless you had been completely off the booze for two years, they told you. Who could do that? You became sicker and sicker. You felt worse than a 1000 hangovers can make a man feel. Well, the booze was still there. And your unemployment payments which now increased because you were chronically ill saw to it that there was always more than enough booze in your house. Your family heard you were, what they called terminal, and your kids, now grown up, started to visit you. You had so much catching up to do. And then you were more in hospital than out of it.

Now, as you are drifting in and out of consciousness, you have the solace of knowing that the booze barons will be there, too, for your youngest son who dropped out of school and is showing all the signs of following in your footsteps. He is in good hands. You can close your eyes on a life well spent knowing your kids will be taken care of. Thank you, booze barons.