Idiots in the news.

A quick round-up of a small sample of the idiocy out there.

I am surrounded by about six to eight inches of snow (I really don’t care enough to go out with a ruler and measure it) which is enough to be irritating but not enough to be a problem. Actually, the snow shovel I bought last year was first wielded in anger this very evening. Last year’s snow was a series of fleeting visits. This year was similar up until now – this is the first snowfall that’s actually been worth shovelling. It didn’t take long, all I did was cut a path to the gate and salt it. The temperature outside doesn’t feel very cold (again, I don’t care enough to bother measuring it) so I suspect this snow won’t be around too long.

There are places with much more to worry about. Chigaco is so cold that dousing a burning building with water ends up with the building coated in ice. The idiots are not in the article, but in the comments.

Who wrote this nonsense, Minnesota at -36c methinks Fh and C have been confused. – phil, rowhedge, 23/1/2013 14:05

Do you mean minus 36 F ( 68 degrees of frost ) ? The coldest night in the UK big freeze of 1962/3 was minus 10 F. Just wondered if it was minus 36 C ( which is still very cold)! – james, puerto del rosario, 23/1/2013 22:26

(sigh). Minus 36 F is equivalent to minus 37.8 C. Minus 36 C is minus 32.8 F. Quibbling over bugger all difference does not make you look clever. Quite the opposite, in fact. Below 0 F (about -17C) nobody gives a stuff about the number, they’re just looking for something to burn.

Schools used to teach how to convert between the scales but then teaching is secondary to indoctrination these days. One does not simply add 32 to convert from F to C. There is dividing and multiplying involved too. Hard stuff. Serious maths. The sort of thing you weren’t expected to understand until you were at least eleven years old.

Oh, and of course we are bound to hear from the firmly indoctrinated who have been convinced that they are intelligent because they believe exactly what they are told to believe:

Here come the mouth-breathing climate change deniers, mistaking weather for climate…… – John, London, 23/1/2013 13:24

We know how it works, John. When the weather agrees with your bias, that’s climate. When it doesn’t, it’s only weather. Simple, really. Well it would have to be, wouldn’t it? Note that the Climatologists now start the conversation with insults. Descending to insults with no further discussion of evidence is pretty much proof that they’ve lost the argument. Starting with insults means they have no argument at all. It’s just a belief system now.

As for extreme weather – hot or cold – proving that modern life causes climate change, there hasn’t really been much in the way of truly extreme weather since Niagara Falls froze solid in 1911. Funny, the Climatologists don’t want to talk about that. Nor do they seem to want to discuss the mediaeval warm period, nor indeed the little ice age. Just the last few decades other than the last fifteen years. That’s the bit they want to talk about. The little bit that fits their religion. I’m surprised they haven’t yet blamed it all on the Beatles and the resulting proliferation of record players. Sooner or later…

In other news, idiots have declared Lego to be racist because they now have a model of a green slug (Jabba the Prescott from Star Wars) and apparently that is a clear representation of all Asian Muslims. I did not say that, they did.

Jabba’s Palace apparently looks vaguely like some Mosque somewhere. It also looks rather like St. Paul’s cathedral and pretty much like any building with a dome on top. So that’s racist, evidently. Even though being Muslim is a choice, being born to a particular race is not. I could, if I so chose, become Muslim. I can never become Chinese. Which is a pity because Chinese girls are all very pretty and the booze and smokes are cheap over there. Yes, yes, I know they have repressive laws but most Chinese ignore them all. The only thing that can get you in really serious trouble in China is mouthing off about the government, and that’s not really very much different from the situation anywhere else any more.

But I digress. Any domed model building is now deemed to be a racist representation of a religious building belonging to a group of people who are not a single race. And that actually makes sense to the lefty mind, you realise?

Currently I have a damaged finger (pretty much normal wear and tear for the job). I managed to get some nasty chemical on it and dried out a patch of skin which then split. Nothing to worry about, it’ll grow back. Seems to be growing back from underneath, gradually pushing the split wider as the replacement skin fills the hole. No pus, no infection, no pain.

The split looks uncannily like a Christian cross so according to the new definition, I now have a racist finger. It’s the middle finger too. How appropriate. I should show it to a doctor, really. I won’t bother because he’ll tell me it’s caused by smoking.

Back to the loonies:

Members of the Turkish Cultural Community of Austria group also accused the toy manufacturer of depicting Asians as having ‘deceitful and criminal personalities’.

I don’t think there were any Asians in Jabba’s gang. In fact, I’m surprised he hasn’t been hauled up on discrimination charges. Likewise Lego, if they have no Asian little plastic men in that box of bricks. Even though there were none in Jabba’s gang. They do have different coloured bricks. Does that count?

A statement posted on the organisation’s website refers to Jabba the Hutt as a ‘terrorist’ and says that he ‘likes to smoke hookah and have his victims killed’.

Yes he does. Yes he is a criminal. Yes he is a very violent slug, in a slow and almost casual sort of way. Slugs can be violent in real life, you know. They are very territorial and will spend days chasing a rival off their patch. So, are the Turkish group claiming that hookahs and killing and criminality are representations of their faith? You know, I think that is exactly what they are claiming. Very poor choice of words, I’d say.

It adds: ‘It is clear that the ugly figure of Jabba and the whole scene smacks of racial prejudice and vulgar insinuations against Asians and Orientals as people with deceitful and criminal personalities.’

Are there any Oriental people who are green and shaped like a slug? We have a few white ones of the slug-shape, but I haven’t seen any green ones. Maybe in China? It’s a big place and I was only there for ten days and that was work, and twenty years ago. I do think though, that if there are any green slug-shaped people anywhere in the world, the Daily Mail would have run the story about five times a week.

Pickles the Hutt is a green slug. A giant green slug who runs a criminal gang. He is deceitful and criminal but the connection to Asians and Orientals is something that escapes me. Even in the original films before CGI created the slug, Jabba was a fatter human version of Ali Baba, a white children’s TV magician from the sixties/seventies who was probably fired for having a racist stage name. No Asian link at all. The original Jabba had to be overdubbed with  the slug version because the original had a fur coat. This cannot be allowed, the cheeeldren might see!

I haven’t met every Asian and every Oriental and never will – there isn’t time and I’m not sociable enough to try – but I will bet my shiniest and best 9F that there is not a single one who fits all the criteria of being green, being a giant slug and running an intergalactic crime syndicate while living in a domed building made of Lego. I will bet two 9Fs against that, in fact.

The statement says that the figures in the set are made to resemble ‘terrorists, criminals and murderers’.

Well, that might be because they are representations of fictional characters who were all terrorists, criminals and murderers. Asia was never mentioned in that film. Nor were Muslims. It wasn’t about you, guys. It was about a bunch of fictional characters, few of whom were even human.

There is an old joke about some Muslim high-ranking chappie who said to the US president of the time (possibly Reagan): “I really enjoy Star Trek, but why are there no Muslims in it?”

Possibly-Reagan: “Well, it’s set in the future…”

It might not turn out to be a joke if the game plays out as it appears to be playing out. Cameron is now on the anti-Islamist bandwagon while provoking them into doing terrible things and arming them so they can make the news. Then he (or the puppet who replaces him) will invoke another final solution…

It does not feel like a game when you’re a pawn, but to those playing, it is a game. We are all just pieces on the board and they care nothing if whole swathes of us are lost. Did you ever play the board game ‘Risk’? I have never lost that game. The key is to hold one particular place from which you can hit almost everyone and still defend your base.

The key to winning every game of Risk is Egypt.

We are in a game. One that is far nastier than any of those computer games the New Puritans want to ban. One that we cannot choose not to play any more than a Scrabble letter can choose to be a rune. We are not the players in the game, we are the pieces.

However, the pieces can change this game.