Some of the most controversial recent articles published on Boston.com have had comments shut down where normally, comments from users would soar and draw attention to an article or site. This includes a recent story about a(n) (il)legal immigrant apparently about to lose access to his health care: State lawmakers deleted money for immigrants’ health [...]
Posts from ‘July, 2009’
If you live in denial, expect rude surprises
Life provides a metaphor in this story about a sign that got vandalized in Las Vegas: The famed “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada” sign greeting visitors to the vacation destination has red graffiti scrawled across it. Tourists who discovered the defacing said they were disappointed and planned to digitally remove the graffiti from their [...]
Freedom is collective slavery
Slavery takes many forms. An individual can be enslaved; a group can be enslaved, both physically and optionally, by ideas. Today, in celebration of Amerika.org’s history of telling the difficult and unpopular truth, we’re tackling “Freedom,” the holy grail of the modern West. It’s slavery. Not for the individual — no, you’re held to fewer [...]
Ye newe deluded peasant and his PS3
Another thing I often hear people saying is how much better life is nowadays than in former times. I think what they really mean is more comfortable. Our modern average man aka technology-empowered-peasant, genuinely believes that comfort (read: TV, couch, porn, air-con) = progress and civilisation. But gradually moulding an ass-shape into a sweaty couch [...]
Jesus needs better mints
So in the name of being open-minded, I tried the “scripture mints” that came my way through interesting channels. On the whole, I have a rule that I will consider anything, but if I figure out it’s based in bad thinking, I bail out and head for the hills, never to return. My first concern, [...]
Diversity is destructive
If you watch Hollywood movies, they give clear advice to those pursued by another human: go hide in a crowd. Our current mania for diversity reflects the individual desire to hide in a crowd. If there’s a dominant ideology, then we can be seen as not participating in it. But if there’s no ideology, culture, [...]
The climate change elephant in the room
Humans are funny. Because we are personalities that control the mind and body, we view the world through the same filter, and tend to defer to authority even if it’s incompetent — so long as it leaves us alone. No obligation to others means we’re just fine pretending we’re solitary hunter-gatherers, even if we depend [...]
Why you lose your (cr)appetite
I bet you’ve often heard people say how junk food products they remember from childhood “don’t taste the same anymore”. My mother used to say it about a particular brand of energy drink, my father about a particular brand of chocolate biscuit. My great-grandfather used to say it about Coca-Cola (well, he was right there, [...]
Self-pity and Darwin
Our society is very fond of the idea that we are enlightened. We are scientific, progressive, compassionate humanity. Underneath this veneer of nice, the usual manipulations go on for personal profit — which is the underlying theme of humanity in every age: sacrifice the self for the whole, or sacrifice the whole for the self. [...]
The problem is the Crowd
We all like the idea of society just taking care of us because it sounds good like the products Billy Mays used to sell. Life can be scary — heck, it’s always scary to know at the end we die and probably go nowhere — and sometimes it sounds good to have them take care [...]
