Quote(s) of the Day: Really. I do not want a woman who looks like A-level biology homework... Nobody seems to mind women who are so thin that if they ever produced enough hormones to give birth, the baby would weigh more than them... From leg-iron, and there's other good stuff, too.My own position on this is hardly revolutionary- I like women to have a bit of flesh, to be soft. And I like to be healthy and feel good, I imagine other people do, too. To be constantly hungry and lacking sugar is not a good thing. They say the money's good, though.
Research of the Day: This isn't really new, and if it were I wouldn't be quoting the NYT, but it's a good introduction to an important detail of mammal evolution. Tip of the spines to John Hawks, as usual in these things.
Worthless heap of shit of the day: Arnaldo Otegi, bloke pushed to the fore by the smarter ones to take the rap for leading an (illegalized) front for the Basque terrorist movement. Make no mistake, they are murdering scum; they are the equivalent of Sinn Fein, with the difference that they are controlled by the terrorists rather than the other way around. He's just been arrested again for being too stupid to exploit the freedoms that democracy affords him and that he would deny to any and everyone he doesn't like. (Terrorist spokesmen are expected to be bright enough to use their enemies' morality against them). Since he is thick, thuggish, short, fat, ugly, with terrible hair and a grin that is worth serious investment in bricks, it gives me great pleasure to see him behind bars, a situation which he has repeatedly shown he is psychologically incapable of tolerating. Despite my reservations about the use of the law against people with unfashionable opinions who have not themselves done any quantifiable physical harm, I would love to plant a boot in his face.
Observation of the Day: The state has a duty to provide an education for your children if you cannot do so yourself, assuming a certain GDP etc; this does not mean that the government owns your children or that it has any authority to indoctrinate them, nor that you may not transmit your own ideas and values to your children. I have written about this before, and shall again. I would never entrust my children to the state.
2 comments:
Glad to hear about that ETA guy getting locked up.
Do you think that a propensity to being terrorist is somehow genetically pre-programmed in Celtic/Basque people? There are plenty of other sort of marginal border/ethnic minority situations in Europe (like South Tirol being in Italy, despite it's Austrian, or Elsasse-Lorraine, the Danish minority in Schleswig Holstein, the Catalans in Spain/France) and so on but it's only the Irish and ETA who are that violent.
I don't think it's much to do with genes. Nor, in these cases, with religion, though broader culture may play an important role.
Accidents of history have created the opportunity for unscrupulous leaders to poison the minds of others with hate, by feeding them a constant diet of grievance for real or imagined injustices. Terrorists groups don't just emerge; they are deliberately created by thugs who want an excuse to kill, control and generally exercise power.
One way that terrorists control people is by denying them a proper education. Keep them ignorant- and poor- deprive them of ambition and opportunity, and they will be easier to manipulate. Terrorists always do this (and governments are keen on it, too).
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