Monday, January 15, 2007

The Problem With Multi-Culturalism

Yes this is a deliberately provocative title.

In many ways this is dangerous ground where political correctness reigns supreme, but Steve Sailer's take on a Harvard professor's belatedly released research provides some challenging perspectives.

There are some disturbing elements there, particularly the apparently beneficial effects of Christian fundamentalism, and the potential for those with a racist bent to use some aspects of the research negatively.

But none of this should stifle debate.

One thing that I found disturbing was the delay in publishing the research and the spin the professor put on it to try and soften the impact. This shows how stifling political correctness can be on getting to the reality of an issue.

Chastity: The New Sexual Revolution?

Dawn Eden's journey from free loving 70s rock groupie to chaste 30-something may give those who live out "Sex In The City" pause for thought.

A fascinating read.

Maybe some of those old-fashioned ideals we have so easily jettisoned might have some value after all?

But then new-order protagonists are always so "right" until maybe they discover for themselves that their preciously held new-think is really stink-think.

Procrastinate later

This rang a huge bell for me.

As one of the world's worst I found myself saying "yes" repeatedly as I read it.

I find I procrastinate mainly for 2 reasons.

If it's a task I loathe.
If it's a task I fear.

The latter has caused me anguish in some important issues as it sometimes renders dealing with the issue impossible as a deadline flies by.

There seems to be no cure.

At least I seem to be able to do the things I enthuse about with ease!

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Our Leader's Arrogance Knows No Bounds

HC has tramped into Manilla and told the President off for their human rights record and is going to get our government to investigate what support it can give human rights organisations in the Phillipines.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10419151

She may done it politely and worded it carefully, but that is the bare message.

Just imagine if a foreign leader came here and read such a riot act to us!

Fair enough for political commentators or activists to behave in such a way but for the leader of our country to bowl into another country and do this is outrageous and arrogant in the extreme.

And she's only just redrawn breath after giving JA a telling-off for daring to criticise the good ol' US of A - is this a double standard? Or is she picking on the weak and steering clear of the strong? Isn't that how a bully behaves?

But are we surprised?

Saturday, January 13, 2007

The Burton Case

We have all been shocked by the horrific Burton case and feel for the families of his victims, especially the Kuchenbecker family.

And we have all reflexly regaled against those idiots on the parole board who freed him.

But is what they did really that unforgivable?

They have a hugely difficult job. And hugely difficult jobs inherently come with the risk of occasional errors. Or is a lack of ability to predict the future an error at all?

Read the parole board hearing report here and reconsider. I have.

http://www.paroleboard.govt.nz/nzpb/media/decisions/burton-graeme.html

iPhone

Apple's name-plagiarised killer device has finally been announced.

Is it as big as they want us to believe?
If you blindly genuflect towards anything from the Jobs podium it will rule the world, but more realistic minds are questioning just how original and innovative it is.

Ok it does no more than what many devices currently do and it doesn't do some things that many do.

But to succeed it doesn't need to be all things to all people - it just has to do it extremely well, stylishly and simply. Something that Apple excels at.

It'll certainly be interesting to see how it goes and don't believe for a moment that the roll-out dates are anything like accurate - Apple have a history of releasing product far ahead of annouced times - it's all part of Jobs's wonderful marketing strategy and who can say he's not good at it!!

Movies

Don't get to the movies much lately, but seen a couple of good ones last couple of weeks.

The Valet: Delightful romantic comedy, french with subtitles. The folly of the middle aged man with a penchant for younger flesh, and the costs that go with it! Mind you, the younger flesh was very tempting and since the apple we don't have a great track record. Great acting and not intellectually or emotionally challenging - just easy fun.

Casino Royale: Not a real fan of the latest Bond movies, but this one is a cracker - he even gets realistically hurt believe it or not. Not all bright and glitzy, in Hollywood style, but more "European" in feel and that's great. Apparently runs reasonably true to the original book, but not having read it I can't say. As it's a populist movie I am sure the critics will pan it as usual. Do they ever like a movie that the masses enjoy? Guess they are just above all of that!

Holidays

Ok, it's holiday season. Just started two weeks away at the beach in Bay of Plenty New Zealand.
The weather is ......yuk - rained from when we arrived yesterday until about 2 hours ago when it became foggy!! Yes, foggy!

But now the skies have cleared and it's beautiful:

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f248/audidude/Blog%20Pics/DSCN206507689.jpg

Post your holiday experiences, good or bad here.

Why do you think the weather's been so awful this summer?? Must be the ethereal elements or maybe, SHP, global warming!!

Bring it on

Introduction

This is a free and open forum for anything that people who like straight no-bull talk about anything.

Things that will not be tolerated are:

1- profanity - use aterisks to fill in the gaps but no blatant swearing please
2- abuse of other bloggers. Strongly expressed opinions are one thing, direct personal abuse is definitely out.
3- no porn or links to same
4- no txt-spk and please spell check before posting - it just annoys me!

Topics of interest:

Anything in the news - current affairs
Cars and driving
Politics
Politcal correctness and other postmodern bull

So that's it - simple really :)