internalising

Lenin in his comments:
[W]hile "most people" have not been "trained" in liberal guilt and relativism and all the rest, they have had ample training in internalising the purview of power, in screening out information that is not compatible with it, in refusal to acknowledge inconvenient facts and their import, in subtly racialising what purports to be 'universalist' discourse (hence, Hamas' "apologists" are damned as relativists, even by the same people who apply different, and lower, standards for Israel).

Most people are perfectly trained to understand that Muslims and Arabs are less rational than we are (even if Shuggy sarcastically implies that he himself is not prone to such constructions), less capable of having a coherent political programme, less capable of tactical voting, more prone to 'violent mood-swings' (like the Barbarians of Boris Johnson's programme about Rome), more hardened to war, always ready to take by force what they have never earned by sweat (like the Barbarians...), lazy, opulent, decadent, cunning, yet loyal as a dog if you feed them regularly...

more sense than his usual marxist boilerplate when he doesn't try to shock.

No-one

No-one likes a fart at the dinner table. Don't talk too loud, you might spoil the atmosphere.

gallopiffle

"The British parliament is full of people who jet around the world on fact-finding junkets to exotic places every day of the week and they are never hauled over the coals," Mr Galloway claimed.

That's exactly it.
I get through cycles of being exposed to vacuous bullshit about Galloway, and getting an increasing impression that he is somehow distasteful... and then I actually go through all the stuff that people are accusing him of, and find it half of it to be rubbish and the rest to be totally disproportionate to all the anger generated, and generally irrational.
"He didn't attend a vote!!" Sure, he's the only MP doing that because, well, we never hear about this happenning usually do we?
"He dressed up in ridiculous clothes!!" Must be the only one in the BB house to have done that...

Still not a fan of the cigar-chomping marxist, but to me all this noise is a clear manifestation of one of the features of our modern Western societies: anyone who articulates any deep social criticism or "radical" progressive opinion is excoriated. (deep not in the intellectual sense necessarily, but far-reaching). Don't you dare cause anyone some even remotely degree of guilt or you will be strip-searched for any fault, which will be inflated into the equivalent of an accusation of hypocrisy.

Galloway is continually shouted at by the media and the comfortable population because he is seen as issuing serious criticism. The latter are hardly ever heard or discussed, but a volley of bullshit is constantly repeated and passed around.
"Sure, Galloway got money from Saddam... well, everyone is saying this." A quotes B, and B quotes A and we have a nice media circle-jerk of hate, with nearly zero substance.
Of course the cluster-bomb lefties lap it up, since it plugs the bleeding holes in their worldview....

Unhinged

So funny, just read that column from Nicky and it sounded nuts... and it was!

Typo?

The prime minister's official spokesman [..] said: "Part of the education secretary's job is to deal with matters like this and to reassure the public that the government is taking all the action it can to reassure the public and to make sure ... this issue is dealt with.

I hope that's a typo, if yes it is highly ironic, and if not that guy should be flushed out together with Kelly the Opus Dei breeder...
This pedophile scandal is probably another bureaucracy fuck-up blown up by the press, but another explanation is that the nu-lab government is stacking up on pedos to fill up all these new private catholic schools and thus bypass that whole maturing process that takes centuries. Another glorious fast-track project from Tony.

Golden rule corollary

If you should draft any public policy or recommandation, re-evaluate it putting yourself top of the list of affected people.

Theory of relativity for work-time

Any mass of work will distort space-time locally.

This means that your private space decreases and the flow of time increases in speed, from your (and your immediate colleagues') point of view.
A consequence of this is that workload increases exponentially, eventually leading to the black hole of infinite despair (from which you can't turn back!)...

Put that in your head

If there was any justice, all the cluster-bomb lefties (flocking to and cuddling together on the "meeting place for the anti-fascist left", makes you wanna puke) would be forced, abu ghraib-style, to continuously be exposed to a tape with this thing running on repeat:

Before the invasion, regime change was never cited as a reason for going to war. Indeed, Mr Blair insisted that regime change was not, nor ever could be, a reason for going to war. Had such a justification been fully debated in parliament, it is exceedingly unlikely that the necessary political support would have been forthcoming. It was the apparent need to defend ourselves against a dire threat - so vividly described by Mr Blair in the Commons - that finally won the political argument.

(Oh irony, this comes from:

General Sir Michael Rose [] adjutant general of the British army and commander of the UN protection force in Bosnia

Why doesn't he understand the "anti-fascist" and humanitarian urgency of the Iraq war? I suspect he loved that genocide in Bosnia...)

After 10 hours of this, you could put to them the simple question:
"Did you believe that the US was going to spend 100 to 200 BILLION $$ for the sole well-being of the habitants of a middle-eastern country? Were you that naive?"
Of course they make the reverse argument, helped by fuzzy logic thinking they convince themselves otherwise.
Luckily there is Rupert Murdoch's Times and the Evening Standard, last remaining bastions of the Left, where they expand on their brave hatred of fascism! And all these anecdotes about those scary darkies...

A madman in his most incandescent bloom

Listening to Charle Mingus' Town hall concert and this fantastic poem:
(thanks for the transcription)

This mule ain't from Moscow, this mule ain't from the South,
But this mule's got some learning - mostly from mouth to mouth.
This mule could be called stubborn and lazy.
But in a clever sort of way, this mule's been waiting and planning,
And working - in seclusion - for a sacred kind of day.

the day that burning sticks - or crosses - is not mere child's play,
but a madman in his most incandescent bloom,
whose loveless soul is imperfection
in its most lustrous bloom.

Stand fast, old mule, soothe in contemplation, Thy burning hole and aching thigh.
That your stubbornness is of the living
And cruel anxiety is about to die.
Stand fast young old mule. Stand fast.

The band (as congregation) then sings in moaning church style: "Freedom for your mama, freedom for your daddy, freedom for your brother and sister, but no freedom for me." ...

Great acoustics story

Here on wired. Lovely story.
Although... Boingboing's take on this is semi-idiotic: he did not "hack" his machine, but uploaded some clever models, developed quite independantly of him, by boffins in research departments.

About a year after I received the implant, I asked one implant engineer how much of the device's hardware capacity was being used. "Five percent, maybe." He shrugged. "Ten, tops."

I was determined to use that other 90 percent. I set out on a crusade to explore the edges of auditory science. For two years tugging on the sleeves of scientists and engineers around the country, offering myself as a guinea pig for their experiments. I wanted to hear Boléro again.

This book looks stunning. Unbelievably, the gulags are back.

He spent three years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement, and was subjected to over three hundred interrogations, death threats and torture, witnessing the killings of two detainees. He was released early in 2005 without explanation or apology.

polarity shattered

There is a great article in January's Monde Diplo by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, about the recent dramatic shift in Israelo-palestine politics.
Basically the situation has been reversed, with the palestinians confused divided and hesitant, and Israel opinion solidifying around Sharon which is becoming an incarnation of the state, as the rais Arafat was. The situation had been moving at least in one direction, of course not fair to the palestinian but moving at least, with Abbas the negociator left powerless and lost.

Many would say that Sharon's moving to the centre is a sham given his past behaviour, but an optimist take would be that he has been forced to incorporate the large movement of public opinion (mostly on the left) in favor of a better solution. This is how democracy should work after all. It's stupid to reduce Israeli opinion to the vocal and insane emanations of the hardline likudniks.

But just after this masterful analysis was published, it will probably be thrown off-course totally by Sharon's huge stroke. 8 hours surgery! Even if he comes out unscarred a lot of trust will be lost...

Cold!