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It’s not about left-wing or right-wing: it’s about individualism vs. collectivism
July 25, 2011 — xanthippaI know I have posted these videos before, but…
…over time, some of the links got broken.
Plus, we cannot be remided often enough that the ‘LEFT-WING’ vs. ‘RIGHT-WING’ labels are woefully inadequate. Even the ‘Libertarian vs. Totalitarian’ distinction is not as useful as some may think….
Personally, the one political label that most closely describes me (if I HAD TO pick one) would be ‘individualist’.
Why?
Because the smallest ‘group’ that can potentially exist, the minimum number of members it can have is: ‘one’.
Because if the rights of each and every member of any given group are protected equally, then the rights of the group as a whole cannot possibly be violated.
The converse, however, is not true!
Therefore, in my never-humble-opinion, the default position MUST be to protect the rights of the individuals – this way, nobody is left out in the cold, with their rights stripped away simply because they do not happen to be members of he currently favoured ‘group’….
Without further fuss, here are the videos (sorry about the annoying background music – the alternative ones don’t work so well any more…)
Introduction:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Part 5:
After all, as John Robson says: we ARE the children of the Magna Carta and any constitution imposed upon us muxt be interpreted in that context, as an imperfect re-statement of the Magna Carta – and as subordinate to it:
When ‘Coyright’ is ‘CopyWrong’!!!
June 26, 2011 — xanthippaCopyright.
So many people think that ‘copyright’ and ‘patents’ are necessary to protect artists and scientists and must be rigidly enforced in order to protect creativity.
Except that…
The WAY this is being done is so wrong, it actually HINDERS creativity and research and all that.
Do you know that doctors claim that the number one obstacle in, for example, the research to cure cancer, is patents?
No kidding!
This is because patents and copyrights are not being granted for things people invented, but for naturally occurring things that people happen to describe.
In the case of fight against cancer, the most infamous such patent is for the genetic sequence of breat cancer tissue: the genetic sequence has been patented and nobody – absolutely nobody – is permitted to do any research on it without paying such ridiculously expensive royalties to the patent holder that it makes the whole process incredibly expensive…meaning most researchers cannot even touch it. And, even if you had breast cancer and wanted to use your own tissue to do the research on – you would still not be poermitted to.
By the terms of that patent, you are not the master over your own flesh!!!
And, yes – it is, in no uncdrtain terms, the thin wedge of ‘technological slave-mastery’!
But that is a complex issue – which I invite you to due the due dilligence on on your own, because what you find is hard to believe if it comes second hand.
Here, however, is a very simple example of inapropriate copyright grant: pi.
Yes, the constant which is used to ‘calculate circles’!
Some guy had copyrighted the first 32 digits of pi, as set to music. Not his arrangement (and he certainly was not the first to set pi to music), but ALL the arrangements of seting one of the best known constants in human history to music.
Listen and weep!
Nigel Farage (UKIP) 2011 in Germany: anti-EU, pro-Democracy
May 22, 2011 — xanthippaPart 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Landmark Report: Free Speech or Not – Part 1
May 20, 2011 — xanthippaThe first installment in the series by Kaffir Kanuck.
“…Combine those realities with the squeamishly absent Canadian politicians, who both advocate free speech yet have the testicular absenteeism of their convictions to be seen in public with Mr. Wilders, empowered are the extremist left who see a bigot under every honest debate just waiting to be exposed so they can turn them into the nearest Human Rights Commission for hate speech.“
‘The cult of Apple’ confirmed through fMRI
May 19, 2011 — xanthippa‘Religion’ is more than just a set of world-views.
There is a significant amount of evidence that some humans are ‘wired’ for religiosity: that their brains are ‘built’ so that their need for religious beliefs, practices and experiences is as physical as their other ‘human’ needs. This is why ‘religious belief’ is not an entirely voluntary thing…
‘Religiosity’ is a forseeable result of our social evolution – a feedback-loop, if you will, making it possible for humans to live in ‘unnaturaly’ large groups with top-down rules administered by an authority figure with minimal requrement for physical enforcement. Rules are essential for the functioning of early human societies: the individuals with the greater religiosity needs would submit to an authority figure’s rules through religiously-motivated self regulation. By reducing the need for social regulation through physical punishment, the authority figure is enabled to exert a great deal of control without the kind of revolt a physical enforcement of oppressive or invasive (or both) rules would elicit.
(Aside: OK – perhaps a better explanation is needed – but I do not want to go off on a huge tangent. So, let me be brief:
- our brains are capable of fully conceptualizing around 150 people – our ‘monkeyshpere’ – which is the ‘natural’ size of a human social group
- when we began to live in groups larger than our monkeysphere, we needed ‘social rules’ to govern our interactions with other members of our group, since we could not ‘know and care about’ each and every one in our group
- ‘religiosity’ is one of the evolutionary mechanisms through which this process is achieved)
Though many people are curiously resistant to the idea, ‘religions’ do not necessarily contain dogma about any deities, or afterlife, or any such concepts. Anthropologists and sociologists will confirm that in the past as well as in the present times, the one thing all religions share is belief is ‘powerful forces’ – whether these be physical or not. (‘God’ is just one paricular incarnation of these ‘powerful forces’.)
To paraphrase C. G. Jung, religions are concerned with things (including ideas and principles) that we believe important, powerful or beautiful enough to be recognized and or worshipped.
The following bit of news from Digital Trends therefore does not come as much of a surprise:
…Previously, the scientists had studied the brains of those of religious faith, and they found that, as Riley puts it: “The Apple products are triggering the same bits of [Brooks’ [‘an Apple devotee’s’]] brain as religious imagery triggers in a person of faith.”
“This suggests that the big tech brands have harnessed, or exploit, the brain areas that have evolved to process religion,” one of the scientists says.”
Which, really, really, really makes sense.
DU: Christianne Amanpour said Osama bin Laden lived in a villa in Pakistan 3 years ago
May 4, 2011 — xanthippaI guess bin Laden’s locations wasn’t such a secret…
And nobody had to waterboard her for it, or anything!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 