Let’s assume for a moment that Google Street View is damaging, in case it is. When villagers in the quiet, ‘affluent’ village of Broughton in Cambridgeshire spotted a Google Street View car creeping into sight, they leaped into action and formed a human chain until the Google car slunk away with tailpipe between its tyres. [...]
Posts Tagged ‘passive aggression’
There are no radical ideas
Sometime in my early twenties I realized that “radical ideas” are marketing twists, not actually anything radical. There is nothing new under the sun, and nothing all that surprising, unless of course you venture away from reality and then you can have unicorns and eudaemoniac imaginary friends. The universe itself is mind-blowing, but that mind-blowingness [...]
Austin: liberal paradise
This place tries so hard to be tolerant, it becomes the parasite: Just nine people accounted for nearly 2,700 of the emergency room visits in the Austin area during the past six years at a cost of $3 million to taxpayers and others, according to a report. Eight of the nine patients have drug abuse [...]
Do we dare not norm?
This article had me rolling: First Worlders have a moral obligation to give away thousands of dollars — thousands! — a year of personal income to eradicate Third World poverty? Right. Even when Americans had jobs and 401(k)s, they weren’t exactly emptying their wallets for the 1.4 billion people who live in absolute destitution — [...]
No-culture is still culture that wants to destroy other cultures
If we have categories “A” and “not A,” is there a grey area? The soldier testified that the “clear” message of literature distributed to troops by the rabbinate was: “We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight [...]
Depression: a lack of goal
Modern societies tend to produce two kinds of people: oblivious fools, or obliviots, who fail to notice failure and just blunder on like drunken gourmands; and depressed smarter people, who realize that the long-term prognosis for such stupid decisions is awful, but simultaneously note that everyone else is an obliviot, therefore there’s little chance of [...]
Why the world fears the dying West
From travel guru Rick Steves: When I came home after the most learning 12 days of travel I’ve ever had in my life, I realized this is a proud nation of 70 million people. They are loving parents, motivated by fear for their kids’ future and the culture they want to raise their kids in. [...]
Sexual liberation makes bad sex
Only one in four women and one in three men enjoy 100 per cent sexual satisfaction following a romp beneath the sheets. Women’s biggest complaint is that men lack imagination and go through the same routine time and time again. Men reckon most women are in too much of a rush to get things over [...]
Recognizing passive aggression
Baby screams. Onlookers glower. Mom gives in — even when she’s a monkey. Rhesus macaque mothers are about twice as likely to let a howling infant have its way during very public tantrums than during more private moments, says Stuart Semple of Roehampton University in London. Research has found that nonhuman primates pay attention to [...]
Red light cameras: like the drug war, a slippery slope
I’ve noticed these annoying little gadgets in the news more lately. They’re our latest fascination because they make it so easy to do something — but the definition of that something keeps expanding. It’s what they call a “slippery slope” because once you start descending it, you slip and slide and gain speed and soon [...]
