This is my web log which contains all sorts of random thoughts I felt it necessary to record for posterity here. I've recorded ideas on all sorts of topics in here so I hope you find something interesting, and maybe even useful!
Just Some Feghoots
2026-03-09. Comments. Rating 1. ID 2433.
I just noticed that I have written almost 2500 blog posts and I have not done a humorous one recently, especially about the worst form of humour ever: feghoots! It's hard to believe, but it appears to be true. Anyway, what is a feghoot, I hear some of you ask. Well, it's an amusing and rambling story which ends in a lame pun. It generally elicits a groan rather than a laugh. You've been warned! Anyway, here are some of my favourite feghoots and a brief explanation of each...
Feghoot 1: Some friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise the funds.
Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, the rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. He asked his mother to go and ask the friars to get out of business. They ignored her, too.
So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town, to "persuade" them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close shop. Terrified, the friars did so, thereby proving that...
Only Hugh can prevent florist friars.
Comment: The catchphrase "only you can prevent forest fires" comes from a US Forest Service campaign starting in 1947. It has become very well known, so I hope you know about it or the "joke" is even more lame than usual!
Feghoot 2: Back during the stone ages our ancestors mostly lived in grass huts supported with wooden rafters. The highest technological achievement was stone cutting and most tribes would have their best stone cutters craft elaborate thrones for their tribal chieftains. These thrones would be a source of pride among the tribe and stealing another tribe's throne was a way to demoralize a rival and a way to show superiority without resorting to open warfare.
One such tribe wanted to honor its chieftain and so a group of young warriors crept into their main rival's camp and stole their throne. Wanting to surprise their chieftain the warriors hid the throne up in the rafters of their grass hut. Unfortunately no sooner had the chieftain walked in then the rafter broke and the chieftain was killed by the falling throne. The moral is, of course...
People in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones.
Comment: Starting to see how this works now? The pun sounds very much like the old proverb "people in glasshouses shouldn't throw stones". There is even a Spoonerism here as well, but I will not discuss those on this post.
Feghoot 3: The big chess tournament was taking place at the Plaza in New York. After the first day's competition, many of the winners were sitting around in the foyer of the hotel talking about their matches and bragging about their wonderful play. After a few drinks they started getting louder and louder until finally, the desk clerk couldn't take any more and kicked them out.
The next morning the manager called the clerk into his office and told him there had been many complaints about his being so rude to the hotel guests: instead of kicking them out, he should have just asked them to be less noisy. The clerk responded...
I'm sorry, but if there's one thing I can't stand, it's chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.
Comment: Apparently, chestnuts roasting in an open fire are a great thing, although I've never tried them that way. Hopefully anyone trying to make sense of this joke will recognise the phrase, though.
Feghoot 4: Mahatma Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him...
A super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.
Comment: The last sentence resembles the word "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" when spoken quickly enough, and it is actually a real English word which was made famous in the Disney song from the movie "Mary Poppins". This is one of my favourite feghoots, and not just because it is the shortest! The word actually pre-dates the movie and its meaning is explained like this: it is a compound word made up of: super- (above), -cali- (beauty), -fragilistic- (delicate), -expiali- (to atone), and -docious (educable), with all of these parts combined meaning "atoning for being educable through delicate beauty".
So now you know. Never say you din't learn something reading my blog!
There are a lot of people out there who I refer to colloquially as "control freaks". These are people who aren't happy with trying to control their own lives, they want to control yours and mine as well. They range from partners and friends at the bottom level, to managers and colleagues, to police and other authority figures, and (of course) at the top (or bottom, depending ony our perspective) we have politicians!
Of course, most of these people don't think they are trying to control others for no good reason. They generally think they are doing what is best for everyone, including the person being controlled, because the leaders are either more knowledgeable, more moral, or just smarter than those "beneath" them.
I'm sure there are examples where this is true: where leaders genuinely are making good decisions which are for the good of the majority, but I am equally confident there are a lot of those decisions being made which are based on poor information, or toxic ideology, or just some sort of subjective factors which might not be easy to justify.
The need to control others is often based on some sort of moral panic. The leaders see a major problem in society which has to be fixed, and as the only holders of truth and high morality, it is up to them to do it. But they are usually wrong, deluded, and just distorting the true situation for their own benefit, often (I suspect) subconsciously, which is far nore dangerous than those who know that they are following a corrupt or irrational path.
Let me give you some examples of moral panics from the past: witch hunts and especially the Salem Witch Trials, McCarthyism, the Pedo Panic, the Satanic Panic, and many others. There is a list of moral panics on Wikipedia with 30 or 40 examples.
And what is the latest panic that we must rely on our "betters" (our esteemed political leaders, activists, and other control freaks) to fix for us? I say it is the internet and social media in particular, which allegedly causes a lot of harm to people, especially younger people and kids.
I have already blogged about this issue in "Too Much Control" from 2025-12-11, but more information has appeared recently, and I wanted to mention it here.
According to a guest on a recent podcast from the New Zealand Free Speech Union, there is no good evidence that social media specifically causes any harm, because the studies which might indicate this are not detailed enough and fail to account for the difference between correlation and causation.
So people who use social media might have higher levels of anxiety, but is it the social media causing that, does higher anxiety cause people to use social media more, or does a common cause lead to both? We don't know, and don't know what specific social media activities these anxious people are engaging in.
Surveys of young people about the causes of their anxiety don't indicate social media is the major cause. In almost every case the cause is school, and especially exams and excessive homework. So if we want to reduce anxiety levels maybe we should abolish school, or at least abolish exams and homework!
There is research, by well known scientists like Jonathan Haidt, which does but more blame on social media, but this is just one view, and is not the complete picture. So it is possible to pick and choose evidence to support whichever side is convenient. Why do politicians emphasise the alleged problems but ignore the poor evidence and downplay the benefits?
Maybe it's because it gives them a chance to be control freaks. For years now, they have wanted to control free speech with their so-called "hate speech" laws which were really nothing more than a way to control opinions they didn't like. Sure, a small part of it might be reasonably classified as genuine hate speech, and there was undoubtedly misinformation involved as well, but I have seen what I might view as hate speech and what is by any reasonable definition mininformation come from government sources as well. But those would never be censored, would they.
The strategy of controlling young people in schools and universities has worked well for the groups wanting to destroy Western civilisation and capitalism in recent years, and this just seems like an extension to it. Stop young people seeing alternative views on-line now and you can control them in the future.
Sounds like a conspiracy? Sure, it is. But remember some conspiracies are real. They say that if you want to see who is oppressing you just look at those you're not allowed to criticise. This sure does seem like a moral panic being created out of very little, then used as an excuse for draconian controls over free speech. I think a little bit of risk is worth accepting in order to gain greater freedom. Don't agree? Maybe you're part of the problem then. Is this just another witch hunt?
No one is entirely consistent in their beliefs, and as a person's ideology becomes more extreme they tend to become less consistent than the average, at least in my experience. It is not limited to any particular society, culture, or political group, of course, but it does seem particularly bad amongst the stragglers who still haven't moved on from woke-ism yet.
Before you feel like criticising me for that statement, let me save you the bother. Yes, I know I am somewhat infatuated with woke-ism but I do believe it has been the cause of many of our societal problems over the last few years, so I don't apologise (well maybe a little bit) for concentrating on it. Also, my little dig about the "stragglers" suggesting that most people have already moved on is based on societal changes I think I have seen (that woke is no longer the force it was) but that could be debated.
But let's move on to my main point: I recently saw a post reflecting this lack of consistency, specifically aimed at the woke mob, so let's have a look at what it said and see if it is valid...
Comment: They call you racist, but say black people are too dumb to get ID.
Response: This is in reference to proposed voter ID requirements in the US, which some people claim are unfair to black people there. It seems to imply that those people are too incompetent or stupid or whatever to provide ID to vote, which does seem racist. Of course, they would claim it is because of "systemic racism" but have no evidence that it exists, as well as ignoring the ID requirements for many other parts of normal living, like driving, etc. So sure, there does seem to be some inconsistency here.
Comment: They call you a science denier, but say men in dresses are women.
Response: This is an obvious dig at the constant posts we see saying "trans women are real women" which by any objective standard is clearly false, although it depends on your definition of words, and woke-ism is very much an offshoot of postmodernism where redefining words is a common tactic. Again, there does seem some merit in this. If redefining words and ideas is fine in one context, why can't it also be in others? Better still, let's just stick to the definiton of words we already have.
Comment: They call Elon a Nazi and say you shouldn't buy a Tesla, but buy Volkswagens.
Response: The Volkswagen company was originally created partly through pressure from Hitler, so it does have a problematic past, but I think we can safely move on from that by now. The Germans are now some of our best friends! But calling Elon Musk a Nazi is just stupid. He clearly isn't one, and it just degrades the meaning of the word, just like has already happened to "racist", "Islamophobe", and "misogynist".
Comment: They kicked religion out of schools because "indoctrination" but are fine with drag queen story hour.
Response: The drag queens would deny they are there for indoctrination, but it does seem in some cases as if this is a fair point. Young people are very impressionable, and it is OK to question their motives, just like we would question the motives of religious people wanting influence over children. So this is another fair point.
Comment: They call you fascist for wanting secure borders, but create "safe spaces" to keep out people they don't agree with.
Response: There does appear to be a double standard here, although a case could be made that the people wanting to cross the border are often in dire need of help, but the people being kept out of safe spaces have little need to be there. Despite that, I think there is some merit in this criticism.
Comment: They preach to you about climate change, but fly in private jets.
Response: This is a very obvious case of hypocrisy, and seems to be very common. But the elites who are at the front of "climate action" are not well known for their connection with everyday life. Another very obvious case of double standards.
Comment: They say you're intolerant, but shout down and try to ban speakers they disagree with.
Response: Yes, they love to push tolerance and diversity, but are very intolerant of some opinions and the diversity never extends to opinions they disagree with. Clearly another double standard here.
There are a few others but I'm sure you get the point by now. The post finished with the comment "Liberalism is a mental illness", which is problematic because "liberal" means very different things depending on which country you live in, and on the context. All I will say is the American style of liberalism has almost nothing in common with the classic form of it. That would never succumb to these obvious inconsistencies.
I often rant about the poor state of the media. It's not that most media companies are lying to us, it's more that they are biased, opinionated, and selective in what they tell us.
For example, every time Trump is mentioned on left-oriented outlets like RNZ and TVNZ (while I am concentrating on New Zealand media here, a similar argument applies to other countries) there is an explicit or implied criticism of him in various ways. I could say it is subtle, but when you are alert to this it really isn't: anything which is clearly positive is ignored while anything the media disapprove of is reported with a negative spin.
So the media are reporting fairly factually, but they are selective in which facts they report, when they have opinions they are almost always from one perspective, and instead of just reporting the facts they can't help adding some sort of moral judgement as well.
Here are a few examples...
The negative effects of climate change are constantly reinforced, but any positives are completely ignored. So we might hear that we expect more people to die from the effects of extreme heat, but we don't hear how currently about ten times as many die form extreme cold and this number is likely to reduce.
And the negative effects of increased CO2 are openly reported, even when some of them have become more uncertain, but the greatly increased plant growth and forest cover which has appeared over the last 10 years is never mentioned.
I'm sorry to be repetitive about this disclaimer, but I need to say again I am not denying that climate change is happening and is likely significantly caused by human activity, but I am debating the net effect of it, and I am debating the effectiveness of the steps taken to allegedly mitigate it.
Here's another one I saw recently on social media, which I think has some merit: "We are advised to NOT judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners and bikers by the actions of a few lunatics. Funny how that works." (relating to recent events in Australia).
In other words, when a Muslim carries out an atrocity it is not connected (by the mainstream media) to their religious beliefs so the bigger picture is ignored, but when a crazy person uses a gun to murder someone that is connected to the alleged underlying cause: too many guns.
And from the same post: "Seems we constantly hear about how the Australian Old Age Pension Plan could run out of money. How come we never hear about welfare and illegal immigration support running out of money? What's interesting is that the first group worked for their money, but the second group didn't."
TO be fair we would need to know the cost of each of these schemes before reaching a conclusion based on practicality, but to reach one based on morality I think is fairly clear that this biased reporting is deeply problematic.
How much reporting do we see on the current civil unrest in Iran? Considering the number and type of casualties there why is it that we hear almost nothing compared with the war in Gaza when it was at its height? Gaza was a real war where the target was terrorists, Iran involves a government murdering thousands of its own citizens for protesting.
And the general state of dysfunction in many other Islamic countries is also ignored, or at least minimised. Why? Surely this doesn't represent a genuine effort to present the news in a factual way. It seems more likely that it is a deliberate effort to emphasise news which fits the ideology of the news source while ignoring the news which contradicts it.
And then there is news which is not even news, but fits a woke agenda. I often see items about people who are pursuing some sort of activity which is seen by the media as admirable but is actually quite inconsequential, and shouldn't really be classified as news at all.
For example, a presenter on a local TV channel decided to leave her job to study the Maori language full time. This was news, apparently. But if the person had not been part of the media in-group or had been studying a language not currently seen as significant to the woke majority in the media, would it have been news? I can't prove a counter-factual but we all know it would have been ignored, don't we.
I do have to admit that there are exceptions where some news sources do make some sort of effort to present all sides of a debate. For example, my local newspaper, the Otago Daily Times, has published two quite significant articles defending a mining company involved in what is probably the biggest current controversy here: new gold mining activity in Central Otago.
I should add though that even when I am complimenting them there is still an apparent bias against the mining company, because more items against the mining are published and they tend to be in more prominent locations. Still, at least we heard both sides, so well done the ODT.
So how do we overcome this problem? Well, I'm not suggesting not consuming news from mainstream sources, because they do an adequate job on non-contentious issues, and they do present controversial material which is at least worth considering. But we should be doing two things: first, don't believe everything they say; and second, try to get contrary opinions from alternative media (which we should also be suspicious of).
I really think that critical thinking skills should be taught at schools. Not only are these useful for any further study but they are also essential for functioning in modern society. I don't think I would have gained these skills at all if I hadn't taken a couple of psychology papers at university which emphasised them. But most people don't to that, so they are more susceptible to media inconsistency.
I often write a post about New Zealand's (alleged) national day, Waitangi Day, and it is generally fairly negative because it isn't a national day at all, it is primarily an opportunity for Maori activists to whine about how bad things are and how they should be given a whole pile of undeserved money and special privileges.
Many people will say I am a racist for calling out this phenomenon, because it involves a "minority racial group", but I equally criticise any other group which utilises similar tactics, and it is the activists I am talking about, not Maori in general. Also, many activists for Maori causes are not Maori themselves, so I think it is fairly clear it is the idea I am against, not any particular racial group.
At this year's Waitangi Day commemoration the leader of New Zealand's libertarian party, Act, made a few comments which got the woke mob into a bit of a bit of a state. While that party is nominally libertarian, it is fairly moderate in fact, and it's only because politics has gone so far to the left that some people dare to suggest it is "far right", which it is not, or course. See my blog post on the Overton Window from 2024-06-19 for a discussion on how what is labelled, left, right, and centrist has changed in recent times.
The comment that got most attention was one on the positive aspects of colonialism. The British colonised this country and the Treaty of Waitangi (which is primarily what our national day commemorates) served as an official agreement on how the process of colonisation should proceed, to ensure that all groups were treated fairly.
Unfortunately there are several issues which affect how the Treaty is interpreted and utilised. First, there is more than one version, with potentially different meanings. Second, some words in the Maori language do not have an exact English equivalent (and vice versa) so the Maori and English speaking sides might have had different expectations. Third, in recent times a new concept, known as the "principles" of the Treaty has emerged which tries to add extra obligations which aren't mentioned directly anywhere. And finally, both sides have not followed even the most basic requirements very well resulting in claims for compensation.
Many people think the Treaty is no longer fit for purpose (that is assuming it ever was). I tend to agree. The Treaty was written in a time when there were two very distinct cultures in the country, and when there was almost constant war, primarily between different Maori tribes, and it was necessary to bring some order to the situation. But New Zealand is now a modern, mainly peaceful and fairly affluent society, so the original pupose is no longer relevant.
Now the Treaty is more a mechanism to generate division than it is one to create unity. It is an excuse to give one group (Maori) special privileges that others don't have (and yes, I can list those if necessary). It is a way to get woke ideology included in places where it can have the most effect, especially in education, where naive young people are being indoctrinated with pro-Maori propaganda.
So apart from a few Maori elites, and a group of super-woke morons, no one is gaining much from this worthless travesty of a document: it is time for it to go. Of course, that will never happen, because those groups I mentioned above have too much to lose, and too many people have been taken in by the propaganda about the Treaty being an important founding document. All we can really do at this time is to resist the nonsense they are trying to spin.
So the point that colonisation had both good and bad aspects, just like everything else, was seen as controversial. But this is absurd. Nothing is all bad, and even if you believe that colonisation was primarily a bad thing (something I reject entirely) it is ridiculous to say that we should ignore the positives.
It is because of colonisation, and not a lot because of the Treaty or anything Maori did, that we live in that prosperous and peaceful country I mentioned above. And those positive things apply as much to Maori as anyone else. Sure, it is possible that if the country had not been colonised that Maori might have developed an advanced society by themselves, but would they really? And even if they had, how much longer would it have taken without the colonisation process acting as a sort of shortcut to advancement?
There have been very few cultures, outside of Western society, which have advanced to the same degree as those which were colonised. Even India, which did have a quite advanced culture in some ways before the British arrived, benefitted hugely from colonisation. India, like almost every country previously colonised, is now independent, but the benefits the British brought with them are still there.
So I say let's celebrate colonisation and when I am accused of being a coloniser I often say "yes, that is true, you can thank me later". Of course, as an individual I am no more a coloniser than anyone else, because that is ancient history, but the culture I identify with (Western) was a coloniser, so I accept both the criticism and the thanks which should go along with that.
Colonisation was a thing of it's time. It was bad, it was good, but it is no longer really relevant. The same applies to the Treaty and to our horrible national day which derives from it. I think it is time to forget Waitangi Day, and to forget the Treaty!
Many people who make decisions on behalf of others seem very convinced that they are right about everything. Obviously if you are the sort of person who feels that you can do that you probably have an unrealistic view of your own infallibility, especially when you live in an echo chamber of sycophantic positive feedback. But I think if these people were more honest and considered opinions from a wider range of sources they might be a bit less confident and just maybe might make better decisions.
To be fair, there are usually very good reasons why decisions are made, and superficially they often seem to make a lot of sense. But there are always unintended consequences to every change, and awareness of that fact is often lacking.
I was working with someone recently who works for a large corporate entity. He suddenly found that all of his services, such as email and wifi access, had stopped working and his devices were telling him that his password was incorrect. We tried all sorts of things but it looked like his account had been locked for some reason, which happens automatically after a certain numbers of attempted logins with an incorrect password. But he had been using the same, correct password all along, so that didn't seem likely.
Anyway, it was a bit of a mystery and I was going to visit to help him, but then he called to say that after enquiring at the helpdesk (which had been closed previously) it turned out his account had been locked by security staff after he reported a phishing attempt where he clicked a link but didn't provide any further information, something which on a Mac is almost impossible to result in a major security concern.
So the security "experts" had followed what was probably standard procedure (which of course, was totally unnecessary and arguably more trouble than it was worth) by locking his account, but they hadn't bothered telling him. They claimed they had no way to contact him even though he had a phone issued by the same organisation.
But what is the consequence of this? Well when he asked me what he had done wrong I said he shouldn't have reported the phishing incident. He said thet they were told they should, and I said yes, in theory it is a good idea, but are you prepared to put up with the end result of that report? He replied, no.
So by instituting inflexible and dogmatic procedures to manage this sort of alleged security incident the management had ensured that people were less likely to follow the prescribed actions in future, and presumably that actually decreased security. Clearly an unintended consequence.
And this particular problem was made much worse because of the use of single sign-on. SSO means that one user name and password is used for all services at an organisation. Sign in once, and those credentials automatically propagate to everything else. It's good in that there is only one password to remember and often the login is handled automatically, but that can just as easily be achieved using password managers, like Apple's iCloud keychain which is built in to every Mac. It also means security is handled by one service and maintaining password changes and forcing password minimal requirements is easier.
But the down side of this is that you are putting "all your eggs in one basket". If a user accidentally gives away a password for one service, especially if it is one with minimal security issues associated, they are also exposed for every other service covered by that SSO password, including potentially really basic services they might need to fix the problem, such as login to the computer, and connection to the the network.
In my opinion SSO is just an inherently bad idea. It is standard practice in large corporations and many people would say that indicates it must be a good thing on balance, but I'm not so sure. I know how large organisations work and making sensible decisions based on deep knowledge of a process is not a common event! As decision making evolves further up the hierarchy the people tend to be less involved with the technicalities of anything and also less attuned to the needs of the people they are theoretically there to help. So they make worse decisions, not better.
So it seems to me that SOO is another example of something that leads to unintended consequences. It is something that seems like a good idea in theory, but in practice the bad aspects outweigh the good. As I said, this is just my opinion and I realise alternative views are possible, but I haven't ever heard a really strong argument supporting it, except it is what "everyone else does".
There is one last element of this I should mention too. The institution involved in this case requires employees to have a long and complex password which is changed regularly. Again, superficially this is a good idea, but what about those pesky unintended consequences?
Well in this case people cannot remember their passwords (because they are too long and because they change too often) so they write them on a sticky note next to the computer. This is additional security how, exactly? I agree it increases security against remote attacks, but it reduces it massively for casual local access.
Along with my computer science degree I also majored in psychology, so you might say I understand both computers and people (a claim I don't take too seriously, BTW) but it does seem that many other people making IT related decisions are ignoring the human nature aspect of their decisions. They're ignoring the unintended consequences.
I work in IT and often have to help people who have run into issues with their computers, phones, and other devices. Sometimes the people I am helping sort of apologise for not being able to resolve the issue themselves, and it is true that sometimes if they just read the screen, slowed down a little bit, and put a bit of thought into it, they could have fixed it themselves, but more often there is something genuinely weird happening which is not their fault.
If you use a computer you have probably noticed that things don't always work as advertised, and that the suggested solutions sometimes make things worse rather than better, and that an expert is needed to make any progress. Also, the solution is often to restart the device, log out then log back into a service, or wait an hour and try again. Do those solutions sound like they are really fixing the underlying issue or just temporarily disguising it? To me, it sounds a lot like the second.
In fact I don't like restarting a computer to fix a problem because that is not a permanent fix, it is just resetting stuff to a previous state which could easily result in the problem returning. That's not to say I don't use that method some times, but when I do I don't like it!
So now is the time to list a few recent examples of this phenomenon...
A client recently bought a new printer and was told by the staff at the shop some sort of convoluted story about using a smart phone to set it up. When he tried to do the setup he got nowhere because the instructions didn't appear to have any connection with the actual printer he had (a Brother in this example, which are usually quite good). He thought maybe the instructions were for a different model entirely.
When I looked at it I could see that the instructions did apply to his model, so I followed them carefully to try to get the printer working. But did it work? By now you have probably figured that the answer is "no"!
I should clarify the situation here, and say that this was to get wireless printing set up. Normal printing through a cable on a Mac is usually very easy and reliable, but some wireless printers are not so simple.
In the end I just threw away the instructions and used my experience and intuition to install everything "the hard way". This involved steps like entering passwords by selecting letters in a grid using up, down, left, right keys, and other frustrations, but in the end it did work and seems to be reliable.
A couple of months back I had another wireless printer issue which, despite many calls to the manufacturer (Canon in this case), was never resolved. The client had to give that printer away and we bought an HP instead, which worked after only one weird glitch: a miracle for a printer!
It's not just me either: an IT geeks group I follow on Facebook often has posts making fun of problems with printers. A favourite joke is that the band "Rage Against the Machine" was named that after a particularly bad experience trying to get a printer to work!
I have several wireless printers at home even though I almost never print anything. In fact, you could say I use paper a negative number of times, because if someone gives me some information on paper I take a photo of it with my phone, store it as a file on my computer - and in iCloud so it is accessible from all my devices - and hand them the paper back again.
I don't use paper for various reasons: first, I don't want more trees killed just to store information in an archaic way (on paper); second, I can store the equivalent of millions of pieces of paper even on small devices like my phone; third, searching on a digital device takes seconds but a manual search for paper might take hours; and finally, I just want to show that the "paperless office" we were supposed to have decades ago is actually possible.
But sometimes I might want to print a poster, or a photo, so the printers do exist. Also my wife likes to print stuff, just like a lot of people do, and that's fair enough: I have given up trying to convert people to a paperless system like I have. My printers are connected to a print server, so the server does the connection to the printer through a cable and the computers wanting to print communicate with the server wirelessly. This is more or less 100% reliable, although I do realise that most people don't want half a dozen servers of various types cluttering up their house like I have!
This post was going to be a rant about IT problems in general but it seems to have degenerated into a whinging session just about printers. Maybe I will leave the complaining about other issues for a later date. All I want to ask the printer manufacturers at this point is this: why so hard?
As most of my readers know, I work in IT, and I recently took voluntary redundancy from a job I have had for almost 40 years. I am at retirement age anyway, but I would have continued working if I hadn't been hit with yet another restructuring: I guess about the 6th time that had happened since I started.
It is fine to change the structure of an institution, group, or company, but there has to be a good reason for it, and the changes need to be focussed towards making things better for the real people the organisation exists for. The restructurings I experienced though, seemed to be driven by the personal ideology of a senior "leader", or just a bunch of idle managers trying to justify their existence.
In my case, the changes always made things worse for the actual clients I was supposed to be supporting. I'm sure they made things better for some people - most likely the management - but that really just isn't good enough. Over the last 30 years the institution has grown the number for managers by massive amounts while technical, academic, and general staff have been "let go" in large numbers.
Morale has sunk to new lows, valuable people have left, and most people see the place as being a "sinking ship" after years of perceived gross incompetence in management.
Hey, I don't work there any more so I guess I can tell those of you who don't already know that the institution in this case is the University of Otago.
I used to discuss the state of the place with many people I worked with, and the opinion amongst the academics and general staff was almost universally negative towards the management. In fact there was only one staff remember I ever spoke to who thought the reorganisations we were forced into were a good thing, and that person is now in senior management. Apparently, if you support the power hierarchy and ignore the facts you can go far in an organisation like that.
Note that I am not saying the university is uniquely bad, because any large organistion infected with the curse of rampant managerialism will have similar problems. In fact, the only other really large employer in Dunedin, the hospital, is reputed to be even worse than the university. That might explain a lot about why our health system doesn't work. I suspect the main problem there is not so much lack of funding, but overbearing and incompetent management, and many people who work there support that view, although most of them would also like more money as well!
So I am now self-employed, doing casual IT support work for the Apple users around town. Of course, I do miss many parts of my previous job, because I genuinely enjoyed working with the vast majority of people at the university, except for the managers of course, which I avoided interacting with at all costs!
For example, I almost never went to their silly meetings, which really just degenerated into a talk-fest where a bunch of self-important bureaucrats talked for an hour while saying nothing. Honestly, if I didn't know better I would say they were trying to denigrate themsleves through satire. The mindless management jargon was so unbelievably awful that it was hard not to laugh at them some times.
And I know that IT tech people also sometimes use a lot of specialised language, but when I talk to people who aren't IT experts I adjust my vocabulary to use words they will be familiar with. I suspect that if managers also did that the true vacuousness of their thoughts would quickly be revealed, because without all the gibberish there is almost nothing left.
And superficially I followed the rules while bending them to breaking point when no one was watching. Of course, I occasionally got caught doing this sort of thing, and on one occasion I had to hire a lawyer to defend me against management attacks, but they were shown to be wrong and had to pay me out for the stress and loss of reputation to me. But that made no difference to them at all: the nice thing about being a manager I guess, is you can be totally wrong and still suffer no consequences.
Some people say I am wrong to criticise managers because they can see the "big picture" which I can't. But I say there is no *the* big picture: there are many big pictures and they vary depending on your philosophical and political beliefs. No one big picture is necessarily better than any other. The management's is just one of many, and not even close to being the best, in my opinion. Yes, it's just my opinion, but one which appears to be shared by many others.
People sometimes ask why I speak so critically of the university and why I continued to work there if I disliked it to that extent, but that is (maybe deliberately) misrepresenting my view. I criticise the management because I want the university to succeed. If I didn't care, why would I have bothered make myself a target like that?
In fact, a few years back I realised that there was no way anyone could make any real difference, so what is the point in even trying. After that I still tried to do the best for my clients, despite the rules making that difficult, but I accepted that I had to work in a bureaucratic environment. You've got to understand what can be changed and what can't. There's no point in making your life harder for no good reason!
I think it is time to start the year of blogging with something good and controversial, unlike my usual stuff which everyone agrees with (I'm being sarcastic). So let's have a quick look at the "invasion" of Venezuela and the "kidnapping" of Venezuelan (ex?) president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The anti-Trump brigade jumped on this immediately and denounced it as an example of "fascism" or "colonialism" or "economic warfare", but are these claims fair? Well, I think we would have to say that controlling access to Venezuela's vast oil reserves is part of the reason this has happened, but there might be more commendable reasons as well.
Let's face it: the US has a reputation for getting involved in foreign politics and hasn't hesitated in the past to remove any leaders they didn't approve of, or to attack a country with minimal justification. Additionally, although many of the actual invasions went well, there is a frequent problem in establishing when the "mission is complete" and to organise a better form of government after the US forces have left. Iraq and Afghanistan are good examples of this problem we have seen in recent years.
As well as somewhat questionable outcomes, these wars have resulted in significant civilian casualties: hundreds of thousands in Iraq and tens of thousands in Afghanistan.
So how does what has happened in Venezuela compare? Well it's far too early to know whether any useful regime change might happen, or whether the new leadership there might be even worse than the current one, but at least I approve of one thing: the low number of casualties, especially civilians.
I quite like the concept of directly targeting problematic leaders and leaving the civilians and even military personnel relatively untouched. There is no reasonable doubt that Maduro was a terrible leader, and the exodus of millions of Venezuelans should clearly demonstrate that. Venezuela is an example of what happens when economic policies err to much towards socialism.
Note that I'm not saying that policies which might be described as socialist in intent are always bad; there is room for that type of thing to some extent in a fundamentally capitalist society, but when the basis for the economy has major Marxist elements to it, there seems to be only one outcome: tyranny, economic ruin, and general failure.
But is it the US's job to "fix" these problems when they arise? Well, that's the big question, isn't it. The US is often seen as the world's "police force" and is generally expected to help out in situations where more positive intervention us required, such as providing development money and disaster relief, so I guess we have to accept the more questionable aspects of this role as well.
And if they are going to intervene in "badly run" foreign governments then this targeted approach seem to be the way to do it. I also like the way Israel has done this to a lesser extent, with its attacks on terrorist leaders and the infamous 2024 Lebanon pager attacks on terrorists. While I am uncomfortable with any government killing any people for any reason, I would prefer a more direct attack on the genuine cause of the problem rather than a less targeted one.
And, yes, I know if you look at Gaza it doesn't look like the Israelis have been too successful in attacking just the "bad guys", but remember those terrorists deliberately located themselves in civilian areas, and despite this the civilian to military casualty ration in Gaza is remarkably low. Could Israel have done better? Well, sure, but they could have done a lot worse too.
If you don't like Trump's actions in Venezuela I invite you to compare them with the death and destruction brought about by Obama. The numbers are difficult to know exactly, but there were at least tens of thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands, of civilians killed during his time as president. He also had more bombs dropped than anyone else, and conducted airstrikes in seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and Syria.
And, just for the record, some Mexicans referred to him as the "deporter in chief" after he had over 3 million illegal immigrants deported.
So whatever you think of Trump's actions, it could be worse, a lot worse, if Obama was still president. It seems to me that Trump really does prefer a better type of war!
The end of the year is approaching so I guess it is time for a summary of 2025. Of course, what are the most important events of the year will depend on the person making the appraisal, so these are just my thoughts. Feel free to share yours in the comments.
First, it was a good year for Trump. He still has plenty of critics, but I have started to get the feeling that a lot of the whining coming from them is more out of habit rather than anything involving genuinely individual thought or fair commentary on his actions.
What we have long suspected: that the media are inventing stories to make him look bad, has been shown to be real, with the revelations of the creation of apparently deliberately misleading stories at the BBC, and if you think it is limited to just them then you are showing an embarrassing level of naivety.
His work to improve the situation in Gaza has been recognised even by some of his harshest critics. One prominent and intelligent person with TDS (Trump derangement syndrome), Sam Harris, has even suggested he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, even though he still thinks he should not be president.
The US is also progressing relatively well with border control, the economy, and a limited control over the rabid fringe of extreme leftist hysteria, including LGBT issues.
Second, AI continues to become part of our everyday lives. I specifically use it several times every day, and it is also built into many functions I have used without AI enhancements in the past.
Whether AI will progress to the extent its supporters believe, whether it will ever rival humans in general intelligence, and whether it will ever become an existential threat is more uncertain. There are credible people who think it is just another tech "bubble" that will burst like so many others, but there are others who think it will revolutionise society, not necessarily in a good way. I tend to think it will continue to improve and that we will have major changes in our lives because of this within 10 or 20 years.
Third, there appears to be less of what I have been recently referring to (somewhat unkindly) as "hysteria". In this context I mean totally exaggerated claims of imminent disaster, often as a result of the actions of what might traditionally be thought of as the "good team" (the Western world, Israel, capitalists).
My first example of this is COVID. There is no doubt that this was a serious disease and well worth paying attention to, but the over-reaction by leaders, including our own repulsive tyrant Jacinda Ardern, was pure hysteria. At least COVID is no longer much of a source of interest to the vast majority of people.
I must admit that I still see people wearing masks, even though we know they do almost nothing and might even be more trouble than they are worth. Why? I guess because it marks the wearer as a "good person" who follows the rules, even when the rules no longer exist. There will always be a few people more retarded than most, I guess!
Then there is the "climate crisis". I think climate change is real and worth being aware of and taking reasonable steps to either avoid or to adapt to, but it is not a crisis, nor an emergency, and it certainly isn't an existential threat. Many countries, including New Zealand, are backing away from climate commitments, and I think that is a good thing. Targeted spending on adaptation seems like a better choice than the useless nonsense organised in the past by the world community.
I have noticed a lot less activism around the Palestine conflict recently too. Even the idiots in the Green Party seem to have stopped talking about it since the Sydney terrorist attack. Maybe they know that by implicitly supporting terrorism they were part of the reason that atrocity occurred. Maybe they will back off from the hysterical claims of genocide and other nonsense they have been pushing in recent years.
In general I am a bit more positive as this year closes than I have been for a while. There does seem to be a genuine push back against woke-ism and other irrational hysterical ideologies. The leftist leaders who remain (Starmer and Albanese in particular) seem to be the subject of a lot of ridicule and distrust.
Where it will go, who really knows, but it's going to be an interesting time.
About 7 years ago I wrote a post called "End of an Error" about how my wife and I sold our cafe. When I say "my wife and I", it was mainly her, because she was the owner/manager and did most of the work, but I did help out, and I suffered financially through it not being a great money maker despite it taking about 12 hours a day, 6 days a week.
So the second end of an era (or "error" if you prefer) I am announcing today is that I am leaving my job at the University of Otago. I was a computer consultant there for almost 40 years, but when I was offered voluntary redundancy during the latest restructure I decided the time was right to go now.
I have lost count of how many restructures I have endured during my time, but this one was just one too many. Occasionally these changes do produce some positive benefits, but in most cases things just get worse. Additionally, it takes years to adapt to these changes and sort out the inevitable problems, and guess what happens just as you reach the point where things are working as efficiently as could be expected: that's right, you get another restructure and have to start all over again.
I have go to say that this is both a happy and sad milestone in my life. There are many great things about the university, and most of the academic and general staff are really nice people and fun to work with. But the changes in how the place is managed just don't suit my personality. Standardisation, policies for everything, massive numbers of managers at many different levels, and just general oppressive bureaucracy might be what I should expect in a large organisation, but they don't really suit me.
Because, as I have said in many posts in the past, I prefer to use rules and regulations as a guideline rather than an absolute prescription of how things must be done. I like to have informal work relationships rather than take on work through a complex and sometimes inefficient set of procedures, and I think of my clients as the ultimate source of what needs to be done rather than have that come from a management structure.
I should say at this point that I am not necessarily right. You can make a case to say that strong policies and formal procedures are the best way to run a large and complex organistion, but you can also make a case to say they aren't!
As I said, I worked at Otago for almost 40 years, and I saw a lot of changes over that time. When I first started I was a mainframe (remember those) programmer and also wrote software for PCs. Note that I was not a Mac fanatic initially, even though my previous job was at an Apple dealer. As time passed I specialised in Macs as the mainframes all went away. The internet became more and more critical (when I started we didn't even really have an internet as we know it today, because the web was in its infancy), and serious software became available making the computer the most important tool people used in their work.
So there have been a lot of IT related technical changes I have experienced, and no matter how bad you think computers are now, they are utterly amazing compared with what we used to have. Sometimes I fire up one of my vintage computers just to enjoy the nostalgia of using one, and then I realise those happy memories from the past are not really what they seemed!
Of course, it is not all good, because while the computers got better, the work environment got worse. Again, I have to say that these are my opinions and I know that other perspectives exist, but the biggest change I have seen is the destruction of autonomy. People today are expected to work more like robots than humans, everything is standardised, there is close supervision, and rules come from a very top-down approach.
And apart from the lesser individual freedom there is also the scourge of the modern work environment: the open plan office and hot-desking. Sure those might seem to be a cheaper and more efficient way to have people work, but I have to wonder about the bigger picture and whether there is any genuine benefit when all things are considered. For example, I know of open plan work spaces which are at least as big as individual offices would be, plus there are rooms (such as so-called breakout spaces, and specialised rooms for confidential meetings) which appear to use far more space than a set of individual offices ever would.
Considering management spend so much time talking about cost-benefit analyses, I really do have to wonder whether they ever do any, or if they actually do an analysis like that, whether they just specify the paramaters in a way that will get the result they want. Of course, confidentiality rules stop the results of any analysis like that being made available to people like me who might be a bit credulous of them.
So that was then and this is now. What is next in my life? Well, I am at retirement age, so I could just stop working, but instead I plan to be self-employed as an Apple specialist. Dunedin has a lot of Mac, iPhone, iPad, etc users, and even though Apple stuff is generally very reliable and easy to use, there is still a need for people to get help with their Apple devices, software, and peripherals, so that's what I will be doing.
If you live in Dunedin (or in surrounding areas if you don't mind paying a bit extra for my travel) and need help with your Apple gear then you know who to call. You also know who to refer your friends and family to if they need help: Owen Baxter, Apple Specialist and Consultant. Email ojb@mac.com, or text/call 021 251 2910.
What sort of person wants someone else to control their lives? This isn't necessarily a rhetorical question because there are people who actually do want to relinquish control to someone else, whether it is a partner, boss, or politician. Another question is this: what sort of person wants to control another person's life or wants the government to do that? Again, this is a real question, and the control they want isn't always bad.
I'm presenting this subject because of the social media ban implemented today in Australia, and which might soon spread elsewhere, including New Zealand. The ban is for young people less than 16 years old and there are numerous restrictions already for what that age group, most of them fairly well justified, so surely this is another good move to protect them from harm?
Well maybe, but protection always involves limitations on freedom, and as Benjamin Franklin famously said: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety". Of course, like all quotes of this type, it is debatable, and it really depends on how much security is gained for what level of lost liberty.
The particular case for social media can be reasonably argued both ways, but my bigger philosophical opinion in this is that we should be striving for less government regulations and control rather than more. So I am against this new law for philosophical reasons, as well as issues of practicality.
Already, a day after the ban, there are piles of young people continuing to use the same services they always have as if nothing had changed. It has taken minutes for them to bypass the restrictions, often with the help of the parents who allegedly wanted this law enacted. They're breaking the law, but is that so bad when the law isn't a good one?
I understand that there are negative aspects to social media, including bullying, time wasting, and misinformation, but there are a lot of positives too, including support, time saving, and good information. So it depends on which aspects of these services you want to concentrate on whether you might see the ban as a good or bad thing.
Many people in government love control, which is a great reason we should resist new laws like this as much as possible. If we genuinely want to reduce the negative aspects of social media, why not do that, while maintaining the good parts.
If it is possible to monitor a social media account looking for signs the user is young (as they claim to ba able to do now) then why not use that to filter what they can see rather than preventing them from using the service completely? I know that sort of censorship is also bad in some ways, but at least it's a step up from a complete ban, and in the case of young people it is easier to justify, although even then I am uncomfortable with the idea.
Or maybe there should be a "help" button somewhere which notifies a person in some sort of authority (maybe a parent) about bullying or other issues. AI could even monitor the person's feed and activate the notification automatically. Again, this is far from perfect, but a less extreme step than a total ban.
Finally, it's not too difficult to place time limits on use so that the user doesn't waste too much time, and might use the time they do have (maybe an hour a day) more productively.
At a press conference in 1986, US president Ronald Reagan said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help". I think that most government actions really are done with good intentions, but the people making the rules are so totally out of touch with reality, and so lacking in reasonable criticism of their ideas, that they will almost always make the wrong decision.
Regrettably, we need some government control to protect the weaker groups in society (including children and young people) and to limit the actions of the more harmful members, but we don't need to be so enthusiastic about it. Let's have protective laws, but if we need them, make them as lightweight was possible. The last thing we need is a government with too much control.
Education is pretty important, don't you think? In that case, why do we trust teachers to provide it? I mean, I'm sure there are some good teachers out there, although I can only think of about 3 in my entire educational career (including university). Why is this? Well to some extent it is because "those who can, do; those who can't, teach" but also because education is totally infused with woke ideology, and (to be fair to teachers) it's a really tough job.
Why is it tough? Well, for three main reasons, I think...
First, there is the motivation and discipline problem. Most students don't really want to be there, and don't put much effort in when they should (and yes, that included me when I was at school), as well as being disruptive and uncooperative.
Second, teachers are expected to teach a class of about 30, which includes a wide variety of skill levels, intelligence, and interest in the subject being taught. If a math class has people who can barely add as well as others who are already doing algebra, how is the teacher going to teach them all at once?
Third, formal teaching environments do not encourage flexibility, attention to individual needs, dialog and discussion, or the ability to revise or move on as required.
So what's the answer? Well, it is AI, obviously. Famous educator, Sal Khan, the founder of the Khan Academy, did a well-known TED talk (millions of views on YouTube) a few years back, when AI was just gaining prominence, extolling the virtues of an AI system his organisation was working on, called "Khanmigo".
Here are my thoughts on why I think AI is a good fit for education. Most of these ideas are also generally supported by Khan in his talk...
Everyone learns differently, and ideally every learner would have their own teacher. Additionally, every teacher should be able to adapt to teaching in a way that suits the individual style of the learner. Clearly this cannot be practically done using human teachers, but what about an AI which can give individual attention to every student, and adapt to a style which works best for them?
Different people learn different parts of a subject at different speeds. They might understand algebra intuitively and quickly, but have problems with calculus for example. Or maybe something just didn't quite make sense at one point in a subject, and that has held the person back for the rest of the subject. Because an AI can change speed, go back, and pause to clarify a point, it can overcome this problem where a teacher might not be able to.
AIs are, potentially at least, free of bias, ideology, impatience, personal favouritism, and other unfortunate human frailties. I do say "potentially" here because AIs have been created which are deliberately very ideological because of the bias of their creators (I'm talking about you, Google). But at least it is theoretically possible to create an AI free from these defects, which every human is susceptible to.
Teachers' knowledge is constantly becoming outdated. For many subjects this doesn't matter too much, but for others it does. Many teachers do have ongoing training on new material, but this can be infrequent and inadequate. AIs, on the other hand, can learn constantly, and never rely on outdated material. One AI can teach a million students simultaneously in a custom style, while also learning new material. How could a human teacher compete with that?
And finally, there are many specialised subjects a student might want to learn. For example, in an advanced programming course, a person might want to learn more about AI programming. But what if the teacher knows nothing about that particularly focussed subject? Well, the AI knows, because it knows about everything!
There are issues, of course. Education is about socialisation and other "soft" skills as well as learning facts and techniques, so an AI might not do that as well. And there is the well known phenomenon of the AI "hallucinating" where it treats totally fake information as if it was real. And what about more "manual" skills like sport, woodwork, cooking, or performing chemistry experiments? Also, what are those teachers going to do when their job has been replaced by a computer? I guess the same thing as all the rest of us, which is, well yes, good question.
The work done at the Khan Academy has safeguards: for example all "conversations" with the AI are able to be reviewed by a human teacher, all AI interactions are checked by a second AI, and human teachers create the lesson plans and guide what material is taught, but all of these will all become unnecessary, eventually.
Kahn says the AI is great for debating in a non-judgemental way with the students, for making the student think about the answer instead of giving it to them, for detecting why a student might give a wrong answer, and for providing high level philosophical answers to questions like "why do I have to study this subject?"
Unfortunately, access to Khanmigo is not free, so I could not test it myself, but I think this might be one of the most important functions AI can provide. Soon it will be easy to get a good education.
In my opinion the Babylon Bee is by far the best satire site on the Internet, especially since the Onion went woke and hasn't published anything remotely amusing or insightful for years. I like the BB because it has a good laugh at my enemies (the woke mob) but also pokes a bit of fun at "my side" as well. As I say, if you can't laugh at yourself you leave that task for someone else to do!
So I would like to share a few of my favourite Babylon Bee satires. Unfortunately I will not share the pictures or the exact text because of copyright issues, but feel free to visit their site (https://babylonbee.com/) and have a look! By the way, the subtitle of their site is "fake news you can trust" which is pretty funny in itself.
First, we see a picture of a new car from Tesla. It is bright pink and is known as the Model W. The caption reads "Tesla Introduces Self-Crashing Car For Women".
Of course, many Tesla models have the self driving feature which is supposed to increase safety (and convenience) so crashes should be reduced. But how would that work for women who crash a lot? Well, here's the answer.
And yes, I know that some research shows that women have less crashes than men, but I'm not even going to get into those statistics, which are open to interpretation anyway. This is humour, OK? It isn't supposed to be factual; it's supposed to be both funny and provocative!
The next shows a picture of people holding some sort of vigil while holding candles. I think it was following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and shows conservatives commemorating his death. The caption is: "Democrats Confused After Seeing Conservatives Hold Weird Molotov Cocktail That Never Explodes"
Of course, this is a commentary in the difference in reaction of (so-called) liberals after the death of George Floyd, where people on the political left went on rampages of destruction, arson, murder, and assault, and conservatives after the death of Kirk who held peaceful candle-lit vigils.
Not every member of the two sides reacted in the same way, of course, but this is a powerful commentary on the genuine difference between them. As I have said before, this is not the left I used to support, which is why I no longer vote left. And I know this image relates to the situation in the US, but we do have a similar problem here in New Zealand, although it is far less severe.
Next, a picture shows a movie theatre with large academy award statues outside, with the caption saying "HOLLYWOOD, CA - In a recently published press release nobody read, a movie nobody watched raised nobody's eyebrows by being nominated to receive multiple awards at a ceremony nobody watches."
This is a dig at the Academy Awards ceremony which has steadily lost viewers, and the fact that movies which are expected to be successful often fail. Maybe the change in viewing habits is because of technology, such as streaming, piracy, and free content on YouTube, or maybe, just maybe, it is because both the movies and the award ceremonies have become increasingly out of touch and super woke, making them unattractive to most people.
Then we have an image of a new version of the board game "Clue" (often known as "Cluedo" in more civilised countries). If you don't know, Cluedo is a detective game where you attempt to figure out who committed a murder by asking questions of other players. The caption here reads "Hasbro Releases New Version Of Clue Where Mrs White Is Always Guilty".
The characters in the game all have colours in their names (Colonel Mustard, The Rev Green, etc) and Mrs White is one of the standard characters. But according to modern critical race theory, white people can be blamed for all of society's problems, and this satire is a reference to that absurd nonsense.
On a slightly different theme (non-political) we see a photo of a user holding an Apple AirPod case with a single AirPod in it, and a caption: "Apple Releases New AirPods That Come With One Already Lost For You". An AirPod is a wireless earphone which people use to listen to music or podcasts from their iPhone, iPad, Mac, etc. And yes, I have some and use them every day: they are a very good product.
But, being small and cordless they are very easy to lose, and I have lost some in the past, including one which our puppy chewed up into pieces! The current model has a nice "find me" feature which allows lost AirPods to be tracked with an iPhone, so I haven't lost any of my current ones, but I know the pain of that happening (being an Apple product, they aren't cheap).
Finally, we have a picture of Harry and Meghan with the caption "Harry And Meghan Announce Netflix Special About How Much They Want Privacy" and "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have announced a brand-new Netflix docu-series entitled Harry and Meghan that talks about why the famous couple wishes they had more privacy."
I love having a laugh at the expense of these clowns, because I think they are two of the most entitled, tedious, hypocritical morons on the planet, and I enjoy every time I hear about their misfortune (yes, I am susceptible to schadenfreude too). Pointing out how they pursue cheap publicity while complaining about it at the same time is a brilliant criticism.
Well, that's probably enough for now. I have 352 favourite BB satires in my collection, so there are plenty more where they came from. If you want a good laugh which also has some deeper political commentary involved (as all good satire should) visit the Babylon Bee web site. You won't regret it!
There's a classic Mitchell and Web sketch where two Nazis are preparing for an attack from the Russians during World War 2, and one notices the skull emblems on their caps and says "Hans, are we the baddies?" They then go on to discuss the significance of the skull, why their enemies have more positive symbols, and conclude there is nothing much worse.
Now this is comedy, of course, but naturally I used this as a symbol of how some modern groups might not realise they are the "baddies". Note that most of these groups aren't as bad as the Nazis - I don't believe in indulging in that popular pastime of labelling everyone who disagrees with me as a Nazi - but they still might be called the "baddies".
Now until they have this revelation we might assume that the Nazis really did believe they were the goodies, and that their cause was good and noble, and that's where I am going with this post: too many people think they are on the side of good, but never notice the (metaphorical) skulls they might be wearing.
When you believe you are on the good team you can justify almost anything, because anything you are fighting must be evil and it is OK to use any means available to win the battle. What I am saying is that the most dangerous people are not those who know they the baddies but are determined to use whatever tactics are necessary to win anyway, they are the ones who think they are the goodies so using those tactics is "the right thing to do".
There's nothing new about this: I can be fairly sure that the Crusaders were confident that they were doing God's work and that violence was a fully reasonable way to achieve their aims. I think that Stalin must have been fairly certain that eliminating his political opponents was an example of "the ends justifying the means". There are many examples from history as well as Hitler and Stalin: there is Mao and Po Pot, for example. And there are examples in fiction as well, especially in dystopian novels like 1984 and Brave New World.
Many people have noted how the political left have, in recent years, become violent and aggressive, while at the same time preaching about being on the "right side". I wonder if they have checked for the modern equivalent of those Nazi skulls, like an Antifa symbol, for example? Or what about the Muslim extremists? Do they not see the Jihadist flag as being equivalent to the Nazis' skulls?
Again, I am almost certain that both Antifa and the Jihadists really do believe they are the good guys even though any sensible and unbiased person would see the truth, which is they have deluded themselves into thinking that. Because self-delusion is the hardest type of false belief to fix. When a group thinks they are on the path to a utopia they are usually heading towards a dystopian future instead.
It's important to know that it can be hard to know who are the goodies and who are the baddies. For example, indigenous people are often seen as innocent and virtuous, and the colonisers are evil and self-centered. But let's have a think about this. For example, when the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, who were the goodies? If it was the Aztecs how would we explain their liking for human sacrifice, or how they invaded from further north and "colonised" Central America? Sounds like it's not as simple as good and bad.
The same applies to almost every indigenous culture. Many North American native tribes were well know for their brutal warfare and constant invasion of other tribe's territory. When the European settlers arrived and conquered them, were they really any worse than the earlier native invaders?
And my opinion of pre-European Maori culture is well known (if you read this blog) so I would never see the British colonisers as the "baddies" in that case, either.
In reality, there is good and bad in every person and every group, but I still think that there is a tendency towards good and bad, so labelling the Nazis as the baddies is fair. And anyone who says Churchill was worse than Hitler (yes, believe it or not, some people seem to really believe this) is just deluding themselves. Churchill wasn't perfect, but I think he would at least tend to the side of good.
There are cases where it is less clear, of course. In the case of colonialism it is trendy to label the colonisers are the baddies, but I think a case could be made to support the opposite view.
I think it's important for everyone to check their status in this way. Have a look at the symbolism your favoured group or belief uses: is it a cross, a crescent, the atheist "A" symbol, the Antifa logo, a Jihadist flag, your favoured political party's logo. What does it really symbolise? Maybe you should ask yourself: are we the baddies?
I'm not a big fan of race-based politics. By saying this you might think that I would be upholding the ideals put forward by MLK Jr when he said he looked forward to the day when people would be judged by the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin, but sometimes it is seen as the opposite. When I criticise the Maori Party (TPM) here in New Zealand for being focussed on race and for demanding privileges for one race while denigrating others, apparently it is I who am the racist. Go figure!
TPM is somewhat dysfunctional at the moment, so you might expect that many people would be concerned that a party which represents an important minority here is not effective, but you might be wrong about that, because there seems to be an overwhelming feeling of schadenfreude about their problems judging by comments I have seen.
RNZ is a national broadcaster here which most people would say is at least moderately left biased. This has been confirmed by surveys and studies in the past, although I haven't seen anything recently. So you might expect, amongst RNZ followers, to see support for TPM and a wish for them to fix their current issues so they can continue their good work. Yeah, nah.
As I said, RNZ is left biased so let's look at what their followers are saying (and my response) about a TPM item on X ("RNZ #BREAKING Te Pati Maori's national council has voted to expel MPs Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Takuta Ferris, after a period of internal conflict")...
Comment: All just a bunch of crooks who are ripping off their people.
Response: This is a common criticism. It does seem that a lot of the big payouts Maori receive have got as far as some of the elites and not much further. No doubt, they could invent some justification for this, but I would be skeptical of that.
Comment: I wondered how long it would take for this mob to disintegrate.
Response: Yes, many people wondered this, because the radicalism and lack of integrity did not seem to bode well for the party's long term stability. Maybe they will get over this and settle down, but maybe not.
Comment: Fantastic to see this bunch of losers self destructing! They are a complete waste of space, and of taxpayers' money, and the sooner we're shot of the lot of them, and all of the current woke bullshit, the sooner we'll be able to move forward progressively.
Response: Yes, here we have a fairly forthright thought, but one I think a lot of people would agree with. Whether they are complete waste of money is debatable, but I do have to say I would prefer to see the party disappear.
Comment: Does she have to pay back all the tax payers money? Or is this sacking the response of their auditors opening the books to see her vast misspending?
Response: I haven't seen any stats to prove whether Maori-based organisations are any more susceptible to financial fraud and other similar problems than other organisations are, but that is a common belief which I suspect is true. I'm happy to change my mind if reliable data is forthcoming.
Comment: How much of a moron must you be to be kicked out of this party?
Response: Well a better question might be "How much of a moron must you be to be allowed into of this party?" but that would be somewhat unkind. It's not so much being a moron which caused the problems, it is not following the draconian rules put in place by the leadership.
Comment: They and the whole party OUT OF PARLAMENT. Jokes.
And: They need a new ringmaster as the party is full of clowns.
And: Bunch of muppets.
And: Clowns.
Response: Yes, many people do not take them seriously, and I have noted myself that they do act like clowns, except sad clowns rather than funny ones! I also think they should not be in parliament because they are only there through racist laws giving Maori special privileges that the rest of us don't have. Let them compete for votes like everyone else: with our proportional system they should be able to get enough support through the same system the rest of us have.
Comment: Who cares.
Response: I can sort of see where this comment comes from, but we do need to take them seriously because there is a chance they will be part of the next government, along with another circus: the Green Party. I hate to think what will happen then!
Finally: It's cultural.
Response: I think there is room for alternative cultural ideas in government but I also think it is valid to criticise those ideas, even if they belong to a minority culture, and I do criticise them. I guess this comment is suggesting TPM can get away with stuff that other parties wouldn't because they have a different culture. Well OK, it's different but is it any good? I say no: it's anti-democratic, primitive, superstitious, and performative. I don't like it and neither do many others.
So not a single comment there supporting them. It looks like the majority of people do see them for the clown show they are. Do they have the right to be there? I say no. The party has around 3% of the total vote and other parties would have no one in parliament with that result. It's only the special, racist privilege of the Maori seats that put them there. It's time for them to go!
An issue which has been mentioned by many commentators from several parts of the world recently is the effect of the actions of senior bureaucrats on how countries are being run. Some people like to refer to them as the "deep state" although this has too much of a conspiracy feel to it for my liking!
When you understand this concept a lot of things start making sense, so let me give a few more details. The bureaucrats I am referring to are senior civil servants (the "servants" part of that description is particularly ironic) who like to make their own rules and run their own ideologically driven "empires" instead of following the requirements of democratically elected leaders.
Of course, as you might know after reading this blog, I dislike the idea of leaders, and would prefer for them not to exist at all, but if they do, at least let's make sure that those with the greatest power to control our lives can be voted in and out by the citizens.
So in New Zealand we have a number of people in charge of ministries and other large institutions who avoid any changes imposed by the government if they don't like them. These tend to be particularly in the area of changes which negate the previous woke zeitgeist which these people might have been appointed under, or which they might favour for other reasons.
This occurs more obviously in some areas than others. For example those in education, who are notoriously politically left, tend to avoid instructions from more center to right governments like our current administration in New Zealand, particularly when those instructions are contrary to their woke ideology. This happens especially in relation to indigenous issues, and other trendy matters such as climate change, Palestine, and trans.
Other problematic areas include the courts (where the legal profession seems to be badly infected with the woke mind virus), the health system, universities (of course), and several others.
And it's not just here that this happens. In the US, especially during Trump's first term as president, there was considerable failure to cooperate with his policies. And the Tories failure to carry out many conservative policies in the UK can also partly be attributes to this, although their PMs, such as Boris, seemed to be rather too woke by choice!
Now at this point you might be thinking that it is good when the wishes of Nazis, fascist, and demagogues like Trump are ignored or avoided, but think about it: would you say the same thing if the roles were reversed? If the government was left-wing and the bureaucracy was conservative, would you be happy if they ignored instructions from the government, even if I labelled that government as communists, ignoramuses, or extremists? No, I didn't think so.
Whatever your (or my) opinions of the different sides of politics are, we need to accept that the left and right correct each others' excesses and we need them both. But if only one side (whichever it is) can carry out their agenda while in power then that balance is destroyed. Also, in a democracy, we need to accept that the government has been elected to do a job, and if unelected officials are stopping that from happening then we have a problem.
There's a very obvious anti-government bias in New Zealand right now, especially amongst teachers. I've heard senior education people making the most absurd claims, which seem to have no basis in reality, and they all seem to be anti-government. No matter how bad a government is (and I don't think this one is much better or worse than most) there will always be some positive things they do, but we never seem to hear about anything the education elites like.
A lot of this negativity can be blamed on the legacy media as well, of course, which is another area of our society which is hopelessly left biased. Their political preferences make the situation even worse.
Finally, it might seem that I am suggesting that the bureaucrats who are causing all the problems are all politically left, but if the opposite was true I woud be criticising that equally. Don't believe me? Then have a look back a decade or two in this blog when the right was out of control and I supported the left more. You will see it's not left versus right which I am complaining about: it is bureaucracy versus democracy!
Ayn Rand is a controversial figure in the area of politics and philosophy. She was an American (originally Russian, which is undoubtedly significant) novelist and philosopher, who created a philosophical system (or ideology if you wish) called "Objectivism". One of her novels, "Atlas Shrugged", has a reputation for being like a starting point for extreme libertarianism.
Wikipedia sees it as work of mystery, science fiction, romance, and philosophy, so it is not a simple novel to categorise. It is also one of the longest novels in English at well over 1000 pages, and contains a speech by the main character which itself is about 100 pages long. And yes, I have read it (I have previously discussed it, with a mixture of positivity and negativity, in "Atlas Yawned" from 2012-11-30, and "Greed is Good" from 2012-11-20).
The book was surprisingly entertaining and I read it before I "converted to libertarianism" myself, so I wasn't necessarily convinced by all the concepts presented there. Of course, I'm not convinced by all the ideas presented anywhere, then or now, which ironically is something Rand would probably have approved of.
Which brings me on to the reason for this post: the importance of individuality. Here's a quote from Rand about what she calls "second-handers"...
They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They're concerned only with people. They don't ask: "Is this true?" They ask: "Is this what others think is true?" Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull.
At this point you should be able to see how this fits in with my beliefs regarding personal autonomy, freedom of thought, and rejection of ideology. I often criticise people, especially those I consider "woke" as having no original thought and just saying what they think they should to enable virtue signalling with minimum effort.
So when I see protestors, especially young people, waving their meaningless signs and chanting cliched slogans I immediately see them as "second-handers". They aren't revealing their own thoughts, they are parroting what they have been told they should think.
Here are some examples...
Pro-Palestinian protestors commonly chant "from the river to the sea", but when asked about that many of them cannot say which river or sea they are referring to. And for those who do know, they often fail to realise they are effectively calling not for a "two state solution" but for the elimination of Israel giving a one state solution: just Palestine.
Clearly these idiots have put no real thought into what they are protesting about, and are simply saying what they think they should, so they appear to others as being "on the right side of history" (a phrase which I have said before shows they are talking about ideology, not facts).
And how much thought has gone into the protest actions of groups like "Queers for Palestine"? Do they know what fundamentalist Islamic regimes do to anyone with alternative sexuality? If they don't, how can they be so ignorant; if they do, how can they be so hypocritical to support a regime which would not allow them to live?
And then there's our old friends, the climate protestors. They want to dispense "climate justice" and avoid a "climate crisis". As soon as you see these emotive terms being thrown around you know you're being gaslit. These people have no clue about the genuine facts and what might be effective in reducing CO2 emissions, or even if they can realistically be reduced at all.
In many protests I have seen participants being interviewed and asked to explain the meaning of their placards, only to admit they can't, and just collected them from a pile provided by the protest organisers. They are so obviously second-handers.
Finally, what about those who would like to censor what others have to say. A common excuse for their excesses I see is that "free speech has consequences". By this they mean that personal abuse, cancellation, and sometimes physical force are all justified if you say something they don't like.
Well, OK, I can accept that free speech has consequences, but I would like to think those consequences are exposure to a diversity of ideas, fair and reasonable debate of different perspectives, and the possibility of changing your or your opponent's mind. I hardly think being fired from your job, or enduring verbal or physical abuse, or even being assassinated (like Charlie Kirk was) is a reasonable consequence.
Where would this idea end? If I see someone waving a sign saying "from the river to the sea" is it OK for me to grab it off them and smack them over the head with it? After all, they exercised free speech and it has consequences, doesn't it?
Before I end this post, I do have to say that some people in the groups I have listed above are reasonable and are thinking for themselves, but I believe the vast majority aren't. They are the victims of political expediency, of social contagion, of manipulation by corrupt pressure groups. They are the second-handers.
I'm going to talk about moral philosophy in this post, so if you know nothing about that or it doesn't interest you, you might want to move on. Alternatively, if you know something about the subject, you might also want to move on to avoid my naive rantings since, I am not an expert. If anyone is left reading this, thanks!
In recent weeks I have heard a repeated discussion of how we should know what is right and wrong, and when different moral standards should be applied. There are two main ways to establish what is good: deontology and consequentialism. Very broadly speaking these refer to the concept that there are certain things which are just natural duties or obligations and require no further explanation (deontology), and that we should establish the right and wrong of something from its eventual consequences (consequentialism).
If you are a religious person, this becomes easier, because there are certain things which your religion tells you are right and wrong and you can take a deontological approach to morality, although there will be things not covered by the belief system because they weren't an issue when the religion originated or might be too trivial for the deity to bother with, which might require an alternative approach.
But even religious people make decisions based on practicality. For example, the Bible can be used to justify slavery or to condemn it, depending on which parts you read and how you interpret them, so in that case the person might still be making a consequentialist decision on this. There is also the decision on which religion to follow and to what extent. I would expect a "casual" Christian to have far different views about morality than a fundamentlist Muslim, for example.
The more puzzling case is when non-religious people advocate for a deontological approach. They might say that freedom of speech is a non-negotiable right, for example, but where do they think this right comes from? It can't be from a god because they don't think one exists, and if it is of human origin, surely that implies an element of imperfection which can never be used to justify an absolute. I find it very odd.
So what are my thoughts on this? Well I reject the idea of any absolute, inarguable morality, although we might reach a point where what is considered moral is so widely believed and such a clearly good things that we could almost say it is absolute.
I use a similar argument around the word "fact". I would suggest that outside of maths and formal logic, facts do not exist and everything is open to debate, but there are some things which are so clearly "true" that we can refer to them as facts as a sort of shorthand.
For example, someone asks me if evolution is a fact I might sometimes say yes, because it has so clearly happened, but if I am pushed on it I will admit that it is not a fact, just a well accepted theory. But the same argument can be applied to anything: that the Earth isn't flat, that gravity always pulls stuff towards the center of mass, that the Sun will rise tomorrow. I cannot absolutely prove any of those, but the word "fact" is still a good approximation for them.
So getting back to morality, I would say there are some moral principles that have been derived through a consequentialist framework, but are so will accepted that they can still be treated as fundamental.
So what are they?
I think free speech should be one. By that I mean, anything goes, except when there is a clear incitement to unlawfulness or a clear disruption of reasonable privacy. For example, if I say we should all meet at the corner in 30 minutes and kill Bob, that would not be fair free speech, and if I say Bob's password for his bank account is "bob12345" that would be an unreasonable violation of his privacy. But if I say I think Israel is on the side of good, or trans women are really men, or black people commit more crime, or Donald Trump is a good president, all of those should be fine.
And I think personal freedom should be maximised. I'm not saying people should have the freedom to do anything they want, because my freedom must be curtailed when it starts affecting someone else, but we should at least try to maximise it outside of those situations. For example, believe whatever religion you want, but don't let it lead you to violence; and follow whatever political or social ideology suits you, but don't expect me to comply with its dictates.
I think we should treat all people as if they were created equal. It's silly to say that they actually were created equal, because that is clearly untrue, but we should strive for equality of opportunity, which does not mean equity of outcome! So everyone should be able to get similar education, ability to work and generate income, and should be equal in law, but if all of those are true and there is still some inequity, we should be prepared to concede that it might be just because some people are better at some things than others.
Finally, I think facts matter and we should accept their existence. This might seem contradictory with what I said about facts above, but I'm happy with interim or even "uncertain" facts. As I said, the word is just an approximation for the real situation. So people are entitled to their own opinions (see free speech above) but not their own facts. That's why I reject philosophies like postmodernism which denies absolute facts, and cultural relativism which dismisses the superiority of one culture over another. It might be nice to believe that all perspectives have equal validity, but is it true?
If we have free speech, personal freedom, equality, and truthfulness we are off to a pretty good start in getting good consequences, wouldn't you say? Who needs deontology?
One of the more interesting public figures I follow on-line, and listen to on podcasts, is a Canadian professor, Gad Saad. He was born in Lebanon and is a cultural Jew. He is a controversial figure mainly because of his criticism of Islam. A concept he either created or at least popularised is "suicidal empathy" and that's what I want to talk about here, because it fits in with many points I have made in the past, including a post from 2019-10-04 called "St George in Retirement" which basically contends that all problematic ideas are just previously resonable ideas which have gone too far.
As I suggested above, the idea isn't new, although the name might be. Aristotle observed that to live a good life people should do the right thing, which isn't particularly insightful, but he added to this by saying that we should do the right thing to the right extent. In other words, doing too much of the right thing is itself wrong.
So as you might have realised by now, suicidal empathy refers to the state where a previously good thing (empathy) is taken so far that it becomes (at least metaphorically) suicidal.
Empathy refers to the ability to put yourself in another person's place and understand them that way. It is why we are upset by watching other people suffer, and clearly is a good thing for a social species, like humans. Empathy relies on theory of mind, where humans learn at a young age that others have thoughts just like they do, but what many people don't realise is that there is a lot of variation in the way people think as well, due to genetic, social, and environmental factors.
So enough of this theory. I always try to give examples of even my most theoretical musings, so now is the time.
Let's start with a very currently relevant topic: immigration, which has become a significant source of conflict and disagreement, mainly in the US, and Europe, and especially Britain.
Many pro-immigration people want more immigrants because they see the desperate situations other people live in and want them to live a better life by immigrating. They assume that the immigrants will be grateful for this, and integrate into the society and deliver major benefits.
No doubt many immigrants are very valuable to their new country, but does this extend to them all, especially the illegal immigrants who are allowed to stay by people who might be acting based on their own empathy?
It seems fairly clear that the answer is no. Especially in Europe, uncontrolled immigration seems to have been a disaster, resulting in increasing crime, violence, and conflict between different communities. In some cases it might be claimed that the societies allowing this to happen are committing suicide because of excess empathy.
Note that the claim of suicide might be too strong for many, but at least things are heading in that direction. Also note that this is a statistical argument. I'm not saying every immigrant is problematic, just a significant number of them.
What about crime? Well, in California theft up to a certain value was seen as a misdemeanour, and was unlikely to be acted on. It was assumed the thief was stealing something they really needed, and that a prosecution for that was unnecessary, cruel, and often racist. This allowance has been tightened up a bit recently, presumably because they realised how suicidal that form of empathy really is.
So now we move onto the form which Professor Saad has mentioned on many occasions: that is tolerance of Islam. Again, I have to say that not all Muslims are problematic, in fact the majority might be absolutely fine, but the more militant minority are a big problem, and Islam itself is just a bad belief system (more so than other religions, in my opinion).
Sharia Law is implemented to a limited extent in some Western countries, such as the UK and Sweden. Surely this is just a bad idea. Laws should not be based on religious ideas (and this includes ideas from other religions too, like Christianity) and the same laws should be used for everyone in a country. Being empathetic towards Muslims in this case goes too far when this is the result.
And police in the UK (and other countries) seem to be hesitant to prosecute Muslims, even when their actions are clearly illegal. The "grooming gang" problem in the UK has existed for years, and pro-Islam protests seem to be allowed far more leniency that protests against Islam. The UK has taken it to the extent where just making a statement critical of Islam often results in a visit from the police, even where no law has been broken.
Again, empathy for a religion, which has many of its members living in dangerous and unpleasant conditions, results in too much empathy for those trying to escape those conditions.
Who else do we have too much empathy for? Well, how about trans people who have been given far too much ability to infringe on women's rights. How about indigenous people, who get a pile of special privileges others don't have. It happens in many different places when you look for it. And you can tell it's happening when the supporters say something like: "don't you want to help refugees" or "don't you care about trans rights" or "criminals are victims of an unjust society".
There might be an element of truth in all of these, but that doesn't mean the actions they are used to support are reasonable. We need empathy, but not suicidal empathy.
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