Category Archives: Random Grumps & Raves

Anthropogenic Global Warming as Organised Religion

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Filed under Global Warming, The Demise of Democracy and Freedom
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The UN, its environmental propaganda unit (the IPCC) and the organisers want us to believe that man-made CO2 and methane emissions are the cause of global warming.  They and their supporters refer to anyone who is skeptical of that claim by the derogatory term “Denier”.  They wish us to feel guilty about the perfectly natural twentieth century warming, and blame ourselves for it.

This is organised religion at work – massive manipulation on a scale not seen since the Dark Ages.  Its purpose is the increase and entrench the power and wealth of the UN.  If it is not constrained it will impoverish us all – while the developing nations continue to develop, financed by our CO2 carbon-credit taxes.  Think about this:

From the time of Constantine until after the Renaissance, the dominant organised religion of the Western world set up the most enduring bureaucracy of all time to build and maintain its power.  It had it all – Fear of mortality, original sin, guilt about sexuality, the seven deadly sins, blessings, indulgences, tithing, the inquisition, the priesthood, cathedrals, the Swiss Guard and more.

It still exists, but its power is but a shadow of what it was in the Dark Ages.  Sadly, nature abhors a vacuum, even a power vacuum.  So, now we have the UN.  It already has many of the infrastructure elements of the old church.  But it has lacked the driving religion that is needed for really comprehensive power.

Until now.  Now, it has Anthropogenic Global Warming.  I have seen the priesthood (the IPCC) and that’s bad enough.  I am not keen to see what the UN will do for an inquisition.

The Key Components of Organised Religion:

Organised religion purports to bring us enlightenment, universal truth, knowledge of God and salvation.  It does nothing of the sort – it’s about control, wealth and power.  It achieves this by feeding us baloney, fostering fear and guilt, positioning itself as the sole path for forgiveness of our sins,  and charging us for that “service”.

It also builds infrastructure to support its aims.  The organisational infrastructure includes bureaucracies to maintain our fear and guilt, punish us when we don’t comply with their rules, collect our payments and recruit us as disciples to promote and enforce their views.  It also always includes a priesthood whose duties include propaganda to promote the baloney that is central to its control.  Some organised religions even maintain military and security organisations.  The physical infrastructure includes imposing cathedrals, churches and temples to which we are required to come for our regular indoctrination sessions and express our gratitude.

A key element of most organised religions is fostering of hatred for non-believers and dissenters.  Those who do not believe are branded as heathens.  Any expression of dissent or disagreement from believers is branded as heresy or blasphemy, and severely punished.

Political Correctness in Sodding Sudbury Bingo

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Filed under Random Grumps & Raves, The Demise of Democracy and Freedom, Things to Consider
Tagged as ,

The cancer of Political Correctness is now affecting the popular English game of Bingo – believe it or not!  In the town of Suffolk town of Sudbury, England, the local officials have banned bingo-callers from using the traditional number identifiers “Legs Eleven” (for the number eleven) and “Two fat Ladies” (for the number eighty-eight), on the grounds that they are politically incorrect and may spark lawsuits against the council from outraged portly persons, or from women who might deem them sexist!

Oh, good grumping grief!  Are the Poms going mad?  Bingo calling is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game for the players – the rhythm, pitch and cadence of the caller’s voice, the traditional embellishments that globally identify the numbers.  These are as old as the game itself, as instantly recognisable as a market fishmonger’s patter, square-dance calls or a running joke in a sitcom.

The bingo call “Two fat Ladies” is so much a part of the English bingo tradition that it was adopted by two gifted female chefs as the very name of their highly successful television cooking show.  Get this – the two lady chefs were indeed fat, cheerful, entertaining and talented.  And obviously unabashed by being two fat ladies and happy to adopt the term as their own.

If a caller used the platform of the bingo hall to make gratuitous racist or derogatory jokes, then I would expect lawsuits to be a likely consequence.  Not to mention a black eye.  But bingo calls are not gratuitous insults like racist jokes.  They are the traditional fabric of bingo, part of it’s colour and ambiance, giving pleasure to the players.  What court of law would uphold such a lawsuit?  Or are English jurists as bonkers as some English local officials?

P.S. Bingo is a Pommie tradition that has even found its way to some of England’s former colonies.  The harmless group gambling game attracts faithful followers, who revel in the company, the cheerfulness, the excitement, the chance to make some extra cash for the price of an outlay so small that it has no more significance than the cost of a movie ticket.  And given the low quality of the average cinematic pot-boiler, bingo can be more entertaining.

Players each draw bingo cards, that have rows of numbers.  No two are alike.  The players pay a small fee for each game.  The pot of their fees is the jackpot for the game, and the winner takes all.

The game is led by the bingo caller, who has a sheet for each game, for which he calls the numbers in turn.  Players mark off each called number on their own card (if it is on the card).  The first player to have marked off all the numbers calls out “Bingo!” and subject to a quick check by the caller, the game is won.

P.P.S. “Pom” is an antipodean colloquialism for an Englishman.  When used without any other qualifier, it is a fond term, not a derogatory one.

The Trouble with Free Speech

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Filed under Random Grumps & Raves, Rights and Responsibility, Things to Consider
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I love free speech.  I am very happy that I live in a society that allows all to hold and communicate their opinions.  For me, free speech is a cornerstone of democracy and vital to its survival.  It is also vital to the growth of human knowledge – remember the difficulties that confronted Galileo?  Censorship, thought control and political correctness are the tools of the forces of darkness.

The world-wide-web with its email facilities, blogs and social-networking systems provides a platform for the whole world to communicate.  So I should rejoice, right?  Well, not entirely, mate!  A platform for learning and enlightenment is also a platform for banality.  A medium for information can also be used for misinformation.  A forum for understanding is also an opportunity to promote bigotry and hatred.  On the Internet, geniuses and halfwits, poets and proselytisers, statesmen and racists, thinkers and wanna-be celebrities, scientists and chicken-lickens, writers and chain-letter zombies, all have the same right to disseminate and promote their views and themselves.  And so, they twitter away.

Blogging provides a wealth of information, entertainment and amusement.  From travel anecdotes to family records to seriously well-informed scientific discussions – whatever, it’s all there.  Some of the forums raise very intriguing questions, inviting replies from interested readers.  The self-promoters butt in in the forum response sections, with mindless gushes like “I just wanted to say Hi”, or “Amazing – keep up the good work”.  Good grief – all to see their “contribution” in a public forum.  It’s a waste of space and time, and the noise makes it more difficult to find the answers from the real contributors to the forums.

You know the chain-email types.  Pass this on to at least 20 people and spread warm fuzzies, raising the total happiness in the world.  Or save a starving child/dolphin/nuclear family/world peace/the Earth.  Break the chain and they are doomed and you will suffer bad karma and die alone.  If you really believe this stuff, don’t saddle me with it.  Keep your fantasies to yourself.

And then there are endless emailed jokes.  It seems that nearly everybody forwards every goddamn joke and cutesy URL link they ever receive, to everybody else.  Is there anything to be said in their defence?  Well, maybe – some are actually funny.  About one in a hundred, that is.  And of the one percent that are funny, one in ten is funny enough to forward on.

That leaves ninety-nine percent that are not funny and a waste of storage space, bandwidth and my time.  That would be bad enough to deserve a good old-fashioned grump, but it’s not the worst of it.  No, the worst of it is that a disturbing percentage are created to promote the bigoted stereotypes of the writers and senders.  Their intention is to promote and maintain hatred or derision of whatever group or groups the writers themselves may despise.  That could be Muslims, Jews, Blacks, Asians, Whiteys, Catholics, Capitalists, Communists, Republicans, Democrats, whomever is blamed by the writer for the ills of the world.

Here are three examples of Internet “jokes”.  I wonder if they will make you laugh:

Scientists are trying to combat crime by combining the DNA of a Maori and a Samoan. The are hoping to come up with a blackie that is too lazy to steal.

The presidential inauguration compared to  Hurricane Katrina:  “How can 2,000,000 blacks get into Washington, D.C., in one day in subzero temps when 200,000 couldn’t get out of New Orleans in 85 degree temps with four days notice?”

“Breaking News!  Playboy just offered Sarah Palin $1 million to pose nude in the January issue.   Michelle Obama got the same offer from National Geographic.”

These examples are not funny, and I am very grumpy about them.  If you are in the habit of passing on stuff like them, please stop it.  There’s enough misery in the world.

P.S.   If you get a one-in-a-hundred joke email that is really funny enough to pass on, send it.  Even grumpy old men need a good laugh.