[thursday] you can keep it

Between lunch time and ‘chas pik’ [peak hour], I can usually do the run into or back from town in 20 minutes and my record is 12 minutes. Today I left town at 1830 and now at 2035, I’ve just walked through the door.

The fSU is a country with only the barest lip service given to law and order and the moment unusual conditions prevail, it’s a signal for people to do absolutely anything they want.

There was one intersection where cars were hurling themselves into that intersection irrespective of functioning traffic lights and citizens were standing in the middle, blocking traffic in an effort to get their friends through. Cars were at every conceivable angle, like something from a chase film.

Not one policeman was controlling the situation. They were on the sides of other roads somewhere else taking money from passing motorists. I tell you – only aggressive driving got me through that intersection, only to repeat it at the next. So why the complete mayhem?

A bit of snow.

Well actually, quite a bit. Like 36 hours of it, non-stop. That’s all right usually but when the temperature alarmingly climbs to 0 degrees, you know you’re in trouble. It’s slush, cars are bogged everywhere, sliding into one another, let me give you an idea. In my carpark place, it was up over the hubs and I measured 20cm on the roof and bonnet.

Oh, by the way, you may have noticed no posts today. Internet down. The telephone also decided to go down in sympathy and then the car’s windscreen wiper connecting rod snapped in two and the car spent some time at the garage. Today was the day 47 new girls started and I had to meet and orient them. That part was quite nice, actually.

Lovely day. Lovely.

[total oil] interesting headlines, interesting reactions

Have a look at these two headlines and taglines:

Total's record profits stir up French election
Oil giant Total's record profits stirred up France's presidential campaign on Wednesday and the Socialist party said the figures underlined the need for a tax on excess oil profits.

Total profit slips 4.7% on weaker oil prices
Net profit fell to 2.23-billion euros, $2.9-billion, in the October-December period from 2.34-billion euros a year ago, Total said.

What do the Left consider excess profits and how could Total’s profits drop just like that?

[exxon] making surprising sense

You’d surely have to accept that the Double Cross knows the oil biz and so you’d have to listen when Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Rex Tillerson says that U.S. crude prices would be between $40 and $45 a barrel if risks of supply disruption were not in the market right now.

"Absent a lot of the risk volatility ... that's probably $10-$15 a barrel of risk premium that the commodity trading markets are reflecting," Tillerson told reporters at an energy conference in Houston. "I would say the underlying price is more like $40 or $45 a barrel if you didn't have the risk premium," he said.

Now to interpret his remarks, in the light of whom he’s trying to lay the blame on? Also, he says governments should address climate change – interesting, coming from the world’s largest oil conglomerate. What benefits have they now seen in supporting the idea of climate change? Have they already found a viable alternative fuel, after the Sakhalin rebuff?

[religion] my principles of spiritual governance

Earlier I ran a piece on the state and sane principles for its governance. Given my view that state and religion are separate, these then are my religious principles:

1] The separation of state and religion should be sacrosanct. There is no place for any religion to be aggressively and temporally enforced. Religion is a personal belief. That’s all. Better one person who truly believes than a billion who are coerced;

2] In Christianity there is no coercion, no state interference. It involves personally, each individual, one by one, if he or she chooses, accepting the teachings of a man called Jesus, whose guiding principles were three:

a] In all religions and societies there has existed the principle of sacrifice, more often blood sacrifice, to atone and appease. Man doesn’t understand any of this spiritual stuff but it seems to exist. The coming of the Christ eliminated the need for such sacrifices and ‘to believe’ is thus the only criterion, which I think is a cool idea;
b] Man should love his neighbour as himself;
c] This has annoyed and stymied a certain coercive dark entity out of his brain;

3] Christianity, having no secular basis, therefore cannot be a state religion. Thus, to compare adherents of different religions, as if numerical supremacy has anything to do with it, is illogical. On the other hand, the state can claim to nominally support a certain religion, e.g. Christianity but that’s as far as it goes. This was clearly demonstrated in the discussion with Pilate - JC was the first to argue for the separation of Church and State;

4] The Christian approach to other religions can only be tolerance [Good Samaritan], as He himself operated by persuasion and example, with a few miracles thrown in for good measure. There was almost no coercion, save the overturning of the money lenders’ tables at the temple;

5] Finer points of theology are garbage, such as con and transubstantiation – there is no record in the Gospels that anything was stated about those. Therefore, to coerce anyone on the basis of fine points of theology, as interpreted and decreed later by humans, is contrary to Christianity. In fact it works for ‘the other side’;

6] You ignore the existence of the coercive dark entity at your peril. Far be it for me to try to convince you, though the Sudan, Algeria, Rwanda, Star Wars, the Matrix and Lord of the Rings should be an indicator. You’ll know sooner or later, through his minions;

7] Even JC liked a drop of the vino and was partial to changing water to wine. To suggest that because a person adheres to the principles of Christianity, there’ll be no more cakes and ale, was never suggested by Him. Ditto for sex. Also, I believe He had a sense of humour though I can’t prove it, except that it exists within us.

[wednesday quiz] wrap your mind round these ten

1] Who do the Italians call Topolino?
2] What was the Jaguar car called before 1945?
3] Illustrated on its logo, the product Marmite is named after a French word meaning what? Cooking Pot
4] What is digamy?
5] Who was the founder of Lotus Cars Ltd.?
6] Donald F. Duncan introduced in 1929 a toy based on a weapon used by 16th-century Filipino hunters. What is it called?
7] Who is the longest serving member of the Privy Council?
8] On which day of the year does All Souls Day fall?
9] What are the caves at Lascaux famous for?
10] What is the collective name for the nine handmaidens of Odin?

Answers here.

[pointless post] world’s most unfriendly country

Tony [aside to Jacques]: Can’t you frogs eat even one meal without garlic?
Jacques [hissing back]: At least we can cook, you shopkeeper’s assistant.

It’s not my post, I swear. An Australian journalist has listed the people of Paris, US immigration officials, the English pub crowds, Switzerland, Austria and any other beautiful looking country as the unfriendliest in the world. Commenters added Turkey but many defended the French.

Surely it comes down, at least in part, to one’s own attitude and whether or not you’re a perceived natural enemy. Example – hitting the continent with a Thomas Cook group many years ago, visiting a supermarket, trying to speak to the girl in French and getting the cold shoulder and hostile stare really puzzled me at the time.

An American I’d met said, at our next stop, to come with them and they went to a little shop up the road and only French was spoken by any of us. Mine was very bad. I told them I was Australian. The French had a good laugh at our French but we were welcomed and helped.

And what of the friendliest? Google’s first page on the topic lists Rio, Ireland, Paris, New Zealand, the South Pacific, Arkansas and the Seychelles. I’d have to add the Russians, once you get to know them.

Again, I’m sure it comes down to your attitude. What do you think?

[february 14th] happy valentine’s day

This blog has absolutely no intention of drawing your attention to the year 1349 in Strasbourg and 1929 in Chicago. Surely the perpetrators now have their reward. Rather, this is a wish to you all to have the happiest, warmest, most loving, etc. etc. …..

As if on cue, the snow is falling here as soft powder and every nook and cranny has filled and smoothed out. The temperature has risen, the wind has dropped and people are out in the hushed, crisp atmosphere, under street lamps, walking, talking, smiles on their faces and cars breaking down everywhere or else sliding into one another.

But what’s mayhem when it’s the Day of Love?

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!

[r.i.m.] new business black berry 8800

Research In Motion Ltd has begun offering the new BlackBerry 8800:

# measuring 0.55 inches thick;
# tiny trackball on the front of the device (similar to the Pearl;
# full QWERTY keyboard;
# built-in GPS and BlackBerry Maps;
# multi-media player;
# expandable microSD memory slot;
# quad-band GSM/GPRS and EDGE-enabled;
# Bluetooth 2.0;
# usual voice and data applications, including phone, email, text messaging, web browser, organizer, and multimedia features;
# noise cancellation for better audio performance;
# "speaker independent voice recognition for voice activated dialing;
# high-resolution (320 x 240) landscape display;
# built-in light sensing technology that "automatically adjusts the screen, keyboard and trackball brightness for optimized visibility;"
# media player supporting MP3 and ACC music files, as well as MPEG4 and H.263 video files
stereo headset jack is also available;
# it ships with a rudimentary mapping capability developed in-house by RIM, but lacking some of the more sophisticated navigation and directions offered in other products;
# In the UK available from Vodafone and Orange (T-Mobile and O2 are expected to follow);
# In the US meanwhile, it will be available on AT&T Inc's Cingular network, priced at $300 with a two-year contract commitment.

Incidentally, what is the company trying to do blocking copying of the picture on their site, now it's released? Just for that, I'm not linking to them but only to this site.

[children] britain, u.s. on the carpet

I’d rather read a critique from a non-friendly source and see the worst it can throw, rather than read one from an ally, excusing himself and softening the message the closer it got to home. Thus it is here.

The United Nations Children's Fund ranked Britain and the US among the bottom third in the study which looked at overall well-being, health and safety, education, relationships, risk and their own sense of well-being. Child well-being was rated highest in northern Europe, with the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark leading the list.

Britain lived up to its reputation for "binge-drinking," hazardous sexual activity and drug use, with the report putting the country at the bottom of the rankings for risk behaviours "by a considerable distance". Almost a third of British youngsters aged 11, 13 and 15 reported being drunk on two or more occasions.

Britain and the US were also found to have the worst rankings in terms of children's relationships with their families and peers. Unicef noted the sensitivity of this field, but said "at the statistical level, there is evidence to associate growing up in single-parent families and stepfamilies with greater risk to well-being."

The report highlighted how the Czech Republic had a higher ranking than many richer countries, including France, Austria, the United States and Britain.

The good news is that Britain had made progress in the field of child safety, having cut the incidence of deaths from accidents and injuries to the "remarkably low level" of fewer than 10 per 10,000.

Despite the clear political point scoring in the article, nevertheless, it has implications and is a clear indictment of how children are being treated. Parents, as always, will blame the education system, quite rightly so but take none of the blame upon themselves.

[states] sane principles of world governance

Discussion paper, ladies and gentlemen, no more:

This is how I think the state should be run - my political views in a nutshell. My religious views are in a separate piece.

Historicity - Different parts of the world have developed idiosyncratic cultures and languages which define that nation and all artificial nationalist designations are subordinate to that. Pride in one’s historicity and ethnicity is a fine thing, even though it will eventually be redefined by immigration;

States’ rights – There is endless fragmentation of geographical areas down to the smallest district but for defense and administrative purposes, most people are happy to own themselves part of a state not so large that it cannot respond to their needs and it can be part of a loose confederacy for defence purposes, e.g. NATO. The principle of constitutionally combining under the auspices of a larger entity, e.g. the EU, is anathema;

States are subject to their people and not vice-versa - They need to be driven by an altruistic code towards that people. They take care of welfare for those who can convince a panel of doctors and JPs that they’re incapable and they combine with other states of the same ethnicity and/or views for the purposes of defence. Their major purpose is to oppose organized coercion, either military, religious or criminal and to ensure free trade. They supply and ensure electricity and water and that’s it;

The business of states is business - Free trade is the only criterion by which disputes are resolved and the only ensurer of personal freedoms. Anti-cabal legislation is the only coercive power invested in the state. Defence and balance of power is the only justifiable usage of state militias, within the state’s borders. International dispute is resolved through free trade principles;

Appointment, tenure and promotion - To any state office, this should be according to merit, tempered by the demonstrated time period of good service.

Borders should be fuzzy - Everyone knows where historical national borders basically are and while one can dispute Schleswig-Holstein or Sud-Tyrol ad infinitum, beyond that it’s generally recognized where the boundaries are and they are sacrosanct. Therefore invading Russia is right out and vice-versa;

Understanding the cabals – Once we recognize there is an evil actively at work in high places [Ephesians 6:12], attempting to overturn the natural order, clearly spelt out in both scripture and in history and which follows the principles of reduction of and enslavement of the common man under a global elite, ordering and regulation of all aspects of life, destruction of the family and suppression of religious belief, reduction of the world population to eliminate inferior species, promotion of deviance in all aspects of life and the rule of the world under a cabal of cabals, itself ruled by a certain shady entity, then all the other aspects above become infinitely stronger and more easy to maintain.

Having said all that - Each home country in the British Isles has its own parliament, which in turn cedes certain powers to local government; the national assembly meets on the Isle of Man for strategic and defence purposes only.