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!
Return to Superstition
2026-07-12. News. Rating 5. ID 2449.
Many years ago, when I was an astronomy educator, I encountered a few awkward moments when people confused astronomy and astrology. Briefly, astronomy is the scientific study of the universe outside of the Earth. It tends to concentrate on individual components (stars, planets, galaxies) rather than the big picture, which is mainly the domain of cosmology. Astrology, in comparison, is the superstitious belief that the position of various bodies in the night sky, mainly the sun and planets, significantly affects life on Earth, people's personalities, and their lives in general.
I have been an amateur astronomer for... wow, it's about 50 years no, how old am I! While I am not a professional and wouldn't really call myself an expert, I do know quite a lot about the subject and have participated in research, education, and administration (well, I was on the local astronomical society's committee for many years).
So when an astronomer is asked a question about astrology it is important to try to be respectful and explain the difference between the two in fair terms.
There are two anecdotes I like to share about astrology. The first superficially seems to support it, and the second shows why the popular version of it at least is pretty silly.
First, there was at least one study which showed that there was a relationship between the time of year a person was born (and therefore their astrological sign: Aquarius, Scorpio, Leo, etc) and their personality. This seems to support astrology, but people tend to act the way they are expected to. If a Leo is supposed to be a leader, for example, maybe a person knowing they are a Leo might be more likely to pursue leadership. It's a cause and effect thing.
Second, a friend of mine (who is allegedly an intelligent doctor, although you might be aware of my somewhat negative opinion of medical profession) got a book about astrology and seemed to be quite convinced by it. I indicated my skepticism but she asked for my birth sign. I said Capricorn and she looked up the description of a person with that sign and claimed it fit me well. I then said "Oops, I meant Scorpius" which kind of shot her down in flames. Basically those descriptions are so vague and general that they can apply to anyone. It's pure superstition.
So maybe you might say that astrology is a bit of harmless fun, and fair enough as long as you don't take it too seriously and base important decisions on it. But calling an astronomer an astrologer is sort of a cross between a joke and an insult.
And you could say the same about the opposite (suggesting that an astrologer is actually an astronomer) which finally brings me to the point of this post.
For those of you in New Zealand you might know that a national holiday, Matariki, occurred a few days back. This is a new holiday invented by our ex prime minister, Jacinda Ardern. It coincides with the Maori new year, which is identified when the star cluster, the Pleiades (Maori name, Matariki) is first visible just before sunrise, and occurs roughly at mid winter (Southern Hemisphere).
Because it is a Maori cultural event the mainstream media are always all over it, telling people what it is, what to do, etc. I guess the massive advertising campaign for it was paid for by taxpayers, but even though that was a huge waste it was likely tiny compared with other government waste, so you know, whatever.
The hero of this event, according to the woke media such as TVNZ and RNZ, is a "renowned Maori astronomer" by the name of Prof Rangi Matamua. OK, so this guy is not an astronomer. He is a clown pursuing one of those stupid subjects which make our universities look like a circus. So, in reality, he is closer to an astrologer than an astronomer.
Here is one of his highly scientific (not) pronouncements: "Matariki sent this message: Like the ocean connects us, the sky connects us, and we are connected to each other. And these are unusual, difficult times for many of us. We need each other more than we probably understand. We are all related, we come from the same place and we actually come from the stars."
To be fair, in some ways, we are all related, and we do come from stars, because all life on Earth has a common ancestor (as far as we know, although that isn't certain) and many of the atoms in the bodies of living things were synthesised in ancient stars. But these are both quite trite points, and we've heard them many times before. They also don't excuse the other nonsense, even if it does superficially sound very positive.
He also says this: "there are three elements to Matariki: remembering those who are no longer with us, celebrating who we are today and then looking to the future". This also doesn't sound much like something an astronomer would say. In fact, amongst all of his inane drivel I didn't hear anything that sounded like it was anything to do with astronomy.
So yet again, Maori get a free pass to spread superstition. Can you imagine a "Christian astronomer" being allowed to tell us all about the star of Bethlehem (which almost certainly didn't exist) and explain its religious significance as if it was a fact associated with astronomy?
I'm not necessarily against the Matariki holiday, although as a semi-retired person, it doesn't really affect me at all: I work about the same on work and non-work days. But I am against my oldest hobby, astronomy, being polluted with what I unkindly call Maori BS. There's far too much of that around already. We don't need a return to superstition.
I have already written a recent blog post defending the idea of populism. Why did I need to do that? Because the "elites", including most of the media, have the attitude that populism is a lesser form of politics, and that policies which resonate with the "peasants" can never be good, and we should be guided by experts, academics, bureaucrats, and experienced conventional politicians.
I'm not saying that we should ignore experts, obviously, but there are several great weaknesses many experts have...
First, that their tight focus on their area of expertise often blinds them from considering a subject from other perspectives, because they only see things in relation to that area they know about, and either don't think other approaches are valuable, or maybe don't even know about them at all.
A common way to describe these people is that they now more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing! I worked in a university of almost 40 years and I saw that all the time from academics, although there certainly were exceptions.
Second, experts are sometimes quite arrogant. As I have said in the past, arrogance isn't necessarily bad when it is justified, but the specific problem I see is that people think that because they are so skilled at that one tiny thing, they are equally brilliant at everything.
I also saw this a lot in the university, although again, there certainly were plenty of exceptions, and many of the academics showed surprising humility.
Third, experts often concentrate on something which, in my opinion, has either no value or even has negative value when looked at from the greater perspective. I hesitate to list some of these areas but hey, let's do it anyway!
They include women's studies, indigenous studies, and theology. Note that there isn't necessarily anything wrong with these subjects n theory, but the underlying ideology these subjects suffer from is often entirely anti-intellectual, politically motivated, and grossly biased.
Often researching (or allegedly researching) these subjects actually reduces the amount of useful knowledge we have, because the results are so contrary to reality that they make our understanding of the subject worse.
Needless to say, I saw plenty of this at the university, although there are many subjects being researched and taught there which are still valuable.
Finally, experts often work in environments where their biases are reinforced, because there is often a monoculture in relation to philosophy and politics.
Universities are probably the best (or worst) example of this. It is well known that university staff tend to be hugely dedicated to leftist politics, and as you will be very aware by now if you follow this blog, universities are saturated in postmodernist nonsense.
While I like to criticise universities, they are not the only place this happens. Many large government bureaucracies are potentially even worse, and other organisations are similarly affected. And yes, some think tanks are dominated by right-wing dogma in the same was as other organisations are dominated by the left, but they are very much in the minority.
I had a bit of fun by criticising experts during the COVID era. In articular I enjoyed lampooning Mike Baker (who I like to call "Bad News Baker"), Ashley Bloomfield (AKA "Ghastly Doomfield), and Siouxsie Wiles ("Woozy Smiles").
Note that these "experts" really did know quite a bit about pandemics (well, good ol' Bad News did, anyway, but I would be more hesitant about the other two) but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be skeptical about their public utterances which were clearly affected by politics and their dedication to the tyrant, Jacinda Ardern.
As you might be able to tell from the names I gave them, I think they pushed the hazards of COVID far too much, primarily for political purposes, rather than engaging in genuine science. They were affected by all of the phenomena I listed above. I'm not saying we should have ignored them, but I am saying the "Podium of Truth" undoubtedly should have been challenged a lot more. But the media completely failed on that.
This blog post was originally going to examine the ideas of New Zealand's most well known populist politician, Shane Jones, but it has turned into a more general examination of the conflict between experts and the majority of ordinary citizens. I hope to talk about my thoughts on Jones (both good and bad) in a future post.
You might have heard that Elon Musk has just become the world's first trillionaire. Of course, many people hate the idea of one person having that sort of wealth, and because Musk is also so controversial the criticism is even more intense that it might have been for anyone else.
So what are my thoughts on this? Is this something to be celebrated, or is it a clear sign that our economic system is hopelessly biased and unfair?
Well, the system has its faults, there is no doubt about that, and such a gross imbalance in wealth are inevitably going to provoke indignation, but in general we need to realise that a lot of the nonsense being pushed in the mainstream media is biased, misleading, and simply wrong. But, of course, if you know my opinion of the MSM, there are no surprises there!
First of all don't imagine, as many people do, that Musk has a giant pile of cash in his mansion where he hoards all his wealth. You know, kind of like Scrooge McDuck in those old Disney cartoons (which is about the level of sophistication some people have on this).
His wealth is based on the value of the companies he owns shares in, including SpaceX, which is the company where the IPO generated all this extra value. The companies are doing awesome things, and provide work for 170,000 people.
So by "awesome things" what do I mean? Well, Tesla made the electric car a serious option, and even though it isn't dominant any more (maybe Elon is too interested in SpaceX at this point to pay much attention to it) its importance cannot be denied (well, of course, some people will deny it, but they are ignoring the facts because of their ideology).
But SpaceX is what really matters at this time. What has that company achieved?
According to a University of Cambridge study analyzing the modern space economy, SpaceX captured roughly 75% to 82% of all payload mass delivered into orbit globally. In other words, SpaceX launches over three times as much into orbit as every other company and organisation in the world combined.
And look at the celebration of NASA's recent Artemis mission. The media were all over that in a state of fawning admiration, but the technology NASA used is obsolete. None of the components in that launch system are reusable, and it was hideously expensive. Sure, it was a big improvement on the previous lunar missions, but they happened 50 years ago. Shouldn't we be using reusable rockets by now? Well, SpaceX does, although I admit they're not quite ready to take astronauts to the Moon yet.
By the way, just before the IPO one Falcon 9 booster completed its 35th mission; meanwhile NASA's rockets do one. That's why SpaceX is so successful, although I do concede that SLS is used for different missions than Falcon. Starship is a better comparison, and that isn't quite ready yet.
So what about this headline: "The first trillionaire being announced before the end of child poverty is not a success story. It’s a moral failure."
I can understand that commercial success to this extent while child poverty exists is something that many people would find concerning. But the two things are not really related. If Musk's companies didn't exist, there wouldn't be less poverty, there would probably be more, because all of those employees wouldn't have work.
And don't forget, Musk pays massive amounts of tax: tens of billions of dollars worth. That may not seem much compared to his total value, but remember that is largely in stocks and other unrealised gains, which are not taxed in the US. Whether that is fair or not is debatable, but without Musk the US government would have not received those tens of billions.
Musk also offered to donate billions to the UN if it could say how that could be used to solve world hunger. They couldn't, because hunger exists mainly as a result of politics and cultural practices, not because some companies are extremely successful. Again, some context: I do realise this exchange was about point scoring (on both sides) rather than a genuine attempt to solve a problem, but it makes the point that throwing money at a problem often won't solve it.
Here's a satirical comment I saw on X (remember, that's the platform where free speech is now possible, thanks to Musk): "Elon Musk is about to become a trillionaire. If he agreed to pay just 80% of that as a wealth tax to the EU, the EU government could use its efficient operating experience to fund bicycles with solar panels attached to them for over 40 residents of the Netherlands. Elon is being selfish by not paying the wealth tax."
In other words, handing out money to governments as tax is not necessarily a great way to move forward. Child poverty is something which is worth trying to solve, but Elon is kind of busy with all of those other activities right now, and he can't be expected to do everything.
In the end, a good space program is probably more important than solving child poverty. A controversial opinion, I know, but think about it. Child poverty is a bad thing because we care about other people, right? Now what happens when the next great global catastrophe hits (for example, that overdue asteroid impact)? All the humans die. Elon has a better chance of making humans a multi-planet species (and avoiding global catastrophes) than anyone else. Why can't we celebrate that?
I don't honour people just because they have a lot of money. I don't dishonour people because they don't have much. I support Elon because of what he does, not how much money he makes doing it. Rich people aren't automatically the enemy (although some could be). If they use their wealth for the right things I say let's acknowledge that.
Forget the BS in the mainstream media (I saw a particularly silly article at RNZ recently they had simply regurgitated from CNN). Ignore them, and join me in celebrating true brilliance!
The more I think about it the more I realise that most of the problems we face today are caused by lack of moderation. More specifically, we swing from one extreme to another and rarely spend much time in the "sensible center". Obviously this applies mainly to politics, but I think it happens everywhere.
Wokeism is the most obvious contemporary example. The original definition was something like: "being actively aware of and addressing systemic social, racial, and gender inequalities". Fair enough, when those existed it was quite right to try to fix them, but once that was done the idea should have been abandoned.
Instead, the "woke mob" have demanded more interventions for problems that no longer exist, and now that has reached the point where you could argue that the groups who previously enjoyed the benefits of unfairness are now being inflicted with the exact same phenomenon against them.
People will only put up with being made "second class citizens" for so long, so there there will always be a point in time where there is a pushback against this unfairness, and often that will involve political extremism and violence.
So what are some examples of these modern forms of bias? Well, they are particularly prominent in the areas of race, religion, and sexual identity at this point.
Just to show how fickle these things are though, in the past the main form of woke activism would have been for women's rights, but now women are realising that the processes giving you privileges can be used against you too, and now the feminists heroes of the past are the villains, thanks to the "anti-trans" attitudes (which in general aren't anti-trans at all) of some types of feminists (mainly TERFs).
But the biggest problem today is race activism. Let's look at some examples...
In the US, a young black man, Karmelo Anthony, has recently been found guilty of the murder of a white teenager (this happened last year). But there are currently protests against this because he is black and, according to the woke mob, that means he didn't get a fair trial, even though his guilt was fairly clear.
In the UK, a Sikh man, Vickrum Digwa, has recently been found guilty of the murder of another young white man. The significant issue here though, was that when the police attended the incident they found the victim still alive saying he had been stabbed and "couldn't breathe". The police ignored that and handcuffed him with the intention of charging him with racial harassment against his attacker. Because of this, he died shortly after.
I don't remember a lot of reporting on this when it happened (at the end of 2025) and it was only the guilty verdict against Vickrum Digwa which has pushed it into the headlines now.
Compare this with the death of George Floyd in 2020. He also died, at least partly, because of neglect by police, and that lead to months of news coverage, riots across the US, including arson and murder, and the pathetic exhibition of people with a clear inability to think for themselves "taking a knee" to support the "Black Lives Matter" movement: one of the most corrupt organisations of recent times.
The two white victims I mentioned above were valued members of society with productive lives ahead of them. George Floyd was a disgusting, violent thug whose death, some people might unkindly suggest, improved the world. I personally do not agree with capital punishment, either inflicted legally or by police violence, so I'm not saying I think Floyd's death was a good thing, but if I had the choice between losing him and a "good" person like the other victims, I know which I would choose.
By the way, I also think there were enough extenuating circumstances that Derek Chauvin (the cop who allegedly killed Floyd) should never have been found guilty of murder, but he was white and the BLM protests were in full force during his trial meaning he had no chance of a fair hearing. Instead, he was sacrificed to the mob.
There is no doubt that black people have been treated badly by the law in the past, but there is also no doubt that the opposite is happening now. Police in the UK have even been told to try to avoid arresting ethnic minorities, at the same time as they are arresting traditional British people just for saying something mildly unkind on social media.
This isn't reverse racism, it's just plain old racism. When can we even get the balance right? Can't we just ignore identity and treat everyone the same? Maybe it will happen one day: I have a dream.
I can understand that people cannot be fully informed about every possible subject that exists, so ignorance is not just excusable, it is inevitable. I can also understand that some people might be somewhat immodest in their general demeanour, and in many cases that might be quite justified when their achievements are taken into account, so arrogance is also a natural and often not unreasonable attitude to have.
My problem comes when those two things are combined: when people are ignorant but also arrogant. That is the cause of most of society's problems. And, yes, I am fully aware that I have made similar claims about other common flaws, both personal and cultural, for example: postmodernism, or the left-wing bias of the media, or the education system. But I think the arrogance and ignorance issue is deeper than those, and might underly those more obvious ones.
So I would like to present OJB's Second Law: that by themselves ignorance and arrogance are relatively harmless, but when combined, their effect is far greater than the combination of their parts. By the way, if you were wondering, OJB's First Law is closely related to this, and is: "The people in charge have no idea what they are doing".
The most obvious manifestation of the Second Law is in various forms of governance, that is where one person or group has control over the lives of others. The two most important examples of this are government and management. It also occurs a lot in people who see themselves as experts, whether that belief is justified or not.
If you have ever wondered why our governments - and this applies to all governments, not just those on the left or the right - make so many stupid decisions, and whose policies seem to be so ineffective, then just apply OJB's Laws. First, they don't know what they are doing, and second, they are both ignorant and arrogant in relation to the areas they are making decisions about.
For example, New Zealands's current Minister of Finance, and our previous one, both have no expertise in economics or finance, yet when they talk about their actions they seem absolutely confident that they have done the right thing for the economy: a subject area they know very little about. Clearly they are victims of both ignorance and arrogance.
Of course, they might still get good results, either by listening to real experts, or by considering all opinions and reaching a compromise, or even through pure good luck, but that is unlikely. I suspect that many real experts would be far less certain about the effectiveness of various economic interventions, because they know how convoluted the global economy really is, and understand that unintended consequences are common in complex systems.
So now I need to talk about "experts". Under no circumstances should we automatically believe individual experts on any topic. These people, maybe surprisingly, are also susceptible to my Second Law. While they may know a lot about a particular subject, they are often effectively the victims of ignorance because their area of expertise is so narrow.
After working in a university for almost 40 years, I can confidently report that I saw a lot of truth in this. There were very few academics who genuinely impressed me. Most of them I thought were nice people, but hopelessly out of touch with reality, because they were too deeply involved in their own tiny, frivolous little worlds.
One academic I know is an expert on politics, but is very dedicated to a "rules based" world, even when there is good reason to believe the rules don't work any more. Another teaches politics but identifies as a Marxist. Another thinks she can write critiques of Donald Trump from the point of view of a famous female writer from the past. I'm not saying their opinions are worthless; just that they need to be treated with a certain degree of skepticism.
I think my conclusions here are more or less irrefutable, because they seem to be based on both logic and real-world outcomes. But that really isn't enough, is it, because what is the point in criticising a system without offering an alternative?
First, there is a point in criticising the status quo without offering an alternative, because the implied alternative is to be skeptical of the current system. We can accept the system we currently have as long as we are aware of its limitations. When you see a minister of finance talking, remember that they are ignorant and arrogant, and judge them based on that, When you here an "expert" on climate change, remember that they may not be wrong, but they are also only presenting a subset of the facts based on their preferred conclusions, which are also the result of a form of ignorance and arrogance.
Second, there are alternatives. Direct democracy is the solution which immediately springs to mind. In this, all the major decisions affecting a country (but this could be extended to a city, company, institution, or group) are made by the citizens of that country (with restrictions based on age and possibly other factors).
There are obvious problems with this, both practical and philosophical. For example, from a practical perspective, how is the vote done cheaply, efficiently, and securely? The internet is the obvious answer there. And in a more philosophical context, how do we know the "average person on the street" is capable of making good decisions? Well, we don't, but as I have already said, we certainly don't have that assurance from our current decision makers either. Also, these votes would effectively crowdsource the decision, which means all opinions and approaches are automatically included. Finally, even if a bad decision is made, at least the people who made it can "take ownership" of it, so they might learn from the experience and make a better one next time. The "elites" are rarely affected by the consequences of their decisions, so they are unlikely to learn from their mistakes.
Representative democracy is not working, that's why so many governments around the world are unpopular, and why "populist" parties (Reform, NZ First, One Nation) are gaining in favour. The governments in many countries of recent years have campaigned on one thing and delivered something else. The easiest way to fix this is direct democracy. It's time for a change which will help avoid the curse of ignorance and arrogance!
Human culture evolves occasionally, sometimes slowly, and other times more quickly as a result of major changes in technology, politics, and society. For example, we saw major change during the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.
In general, each of these changes has lead to better living conditions, although that could be quite fairly debated. For example, is working on factory as a labourer better than working on a farm as a peasant? Is having a society primarily lead by politicians better than one lead by monarchs or senior religious figures?
I have generally believed that life is getting better for most people, and that seems to be supported by statistics on life span, health, reduced violence, and wealth. I know there are genuine short term "glitches" where violence or poverty increase, but that doesn't reflect the big picture.
At the current time there are a few issues we need to be aware of: many people feel that they are worse off financially than they expect, and that the gap between the rich and poor is far too wide. They have a point on both of these, but I think the first problem might exist significantly as a result of COVID (or more accurately, the political response to COVID) rather than being an inherent flaw in our economic system.
The rich-poor gap genuinely is more a flaw in the system, but it should be considered on balance, because the "poor" are better off, although the gap is still there, because the rich are a *lot* better off. The question is, is this an inevitable side effect of a system (broadly speaking, let's call it capitalism) which is otherwise the best system available?
Whatever the facts are on the current state of things, we are going to potentially experience far worse issues during the upcoming AI revolution. We currently define ourselves primarily by what our jobs are, and that gives most people their purpose. Even older, retired people like me still tend to do some work, and I now consider myself a self-employed, part-time computer consultant.
But what happens when there is no work? In a recent podcast I heard, an AI expert claimed that any job currently done *with* a computer will soon be done *by* a computer (more precisely, an AI). Other jobs, especially those requiring manual labour like building, will take considerably longer, but they will also go eventually.
So what do we do then? What will be our new purpose? Well, it seems to me that work is not an inevitable part of life. It is just an activity we have to do rather than one we want to do. For those lucky people where these two are the same - what they have to do is also what they want to do - is work really still work? And they could still do that work voluntarily. For example, when AI writes programs for me, I might still enjoy writing unusual programs (maybe games) for my own amusement.
Of course, I will be far less efficient at that than an AI, but who cares, because that doesn't matter. Some people still like to ride horses even though driving is a far better way to get from place to place in almost every case. Horses are an "obsolete technology", but these people ride because they like doing it, not because they have to.
You might think that the economy will collapse because what sort of system works when no one is earning money? Well, with AI there will be virtually infinite wealth, so that won't be an issue. There is one other technology we will need to complete this revolution: unlimited power generation which will be supplied by fusion plants, another technology which does seem to be finally becoming practical for actual use rather than just existing in research labs.
We have a crisis amongst many groups in society now because they lack purpose, but that is largely because we value work too highly, and they either don't have jobs or have unsatisfying jobs. Once we value recreation highly instead, people will be able to do what they want and gain purpose from that. It's not the computer revolution, the fusion power revolution, or even the AI revolution. It's the recreation revolution.
Well, after many years of using computers I have finally done something which might be described as kind of dumb. I was working on some tricky computer issues with a pile of computers, keyboards, and other paraphernalia on my desk, while drinking a cup of tea. Do you see where this is going already? Yes, the tea ended up in the computer, because I sat it on top of a disk dock which had a cover on top which tilted and spilled the tea directly into my main laptop's keyboard.
So the first thing I did was shut down the computer and tip it upside down to drain as much out as possible. In fact, I shut it down while it was upside down, which was a challenge in itself. I left it in a warm spot overnight, then was delighted to see it start the next day. But when I went to log in, it would not accept my password.
Of course, the typed password is not shown on the screen, so it is hard to tell what might be happening, so I tried logging in with a different user name and noticed while typing the name (which was displayed) that I was not getting the characters I thought. In fact I was getting the special characters you get when typing with the option key down, so instead of "w" I got the Greek sigma!
At least this was progress: I knew the option key was jammed (probably electrically rather than mechanically) so I worked on that, but it still insisted that key was down! So I plugged in an external keyboard but you can only do that after logging in, for security reasons (otherwise anyone could plug a device in and maybe steal your data).
Luckily after some persistence I did eventually log in - for some reason the option key was released again - and ran a full backup. Of course, most of my stuff is stored in the cloud as well as on the local disk, and I had run a local backup a few weeks back, but I still wanted to make sure I had everything. During this time the stubborn option key problem returned, and I noticed a few other issues as well. Also, once a computer is water damaged it does tend to get worse over time, so I had to replace my trusty machine.
It cost me $600 in insurance excess and an official inspection fee, but I now have a brand new M5 Pro based MacBook Pro 16 inch (worth over $5000) to replace the old M1 Pro machine. And while the two machines are equivalent models, there has some very obvious progress made in the 5 years between the M1 and M5. The old machine was fast, but there were a few places where it lagged just for a second, but even that is not acceptable to a true computer geek like me! The new one is noticeably faster, and there is no lag anywhere. It really is awesome.
So while the older machine was still working well and had been incredibly reliable for almost 5 years, the new one really is amazing. It has 18 (yes, you heard that right) CPU cores and 20 GPU cores. This is on a laptop with "all day" battery life so it's an awesome feat of engineering getting that performance and efficiency at the same time.
I usually re-build new computers from scratch when I get them, instead of just bulk moving the old data to the new. I had over 500 apps on the previous machine, and to be honest, there probably at least 100 where I had forgotten what they even did. So I just installed apps as I needed them and currently have just 120 on the new one. Maybe the best thing is that after one week I still haven't installed any Microsoft programs, because I just don't need them. I probably will install Office soon though, just to support the poor suckers who still use it!
So I have spent hours getting this laptop to a point where it does what I need, including system enhancements like multiple clipboards, fast launching apps, and doing quick calculations, all of which are provided by my favourite system enhancement app: Launchbar. I also have an app called Fastscripts which allows be to run tasks by pressing key combinations, and iStat Menus which shows various graphs (CPU use, memory use, etc) in the menu bar.
The biggest challenge was probably getting my web development environment working again, because I had to install Apache, PHP, and MySQL and get them all configured correctly. But again this gave me the chance to tidy up some old issues which had crept into the previous install. Now web pages sometimes load 10 to 20 times faster than previously, and some of my timers for checking my code speed are running in tenths of microseconds!
Many people don't care about the speed and efficiency I have been talking about here, but when you use a computer as much as I do it is important. The computer is like a part of my thoughts and if it doesn't do what i want instantly my "brilliant ideas" are sometimes interrupted and I think "now, what was I just about to do?"
During the switchover period I used a laptop from about 12 years back. It was the highest perfomance Mac laptop available at the time, and has 8 Intel i7 cores. But doing an AI enhanced resize of photos in my favourite graphics app on that machine was tedious. It took almost a minute, and I usually just cancelled it. On the new machine it just takes a second or two, and even more impressively, when I look at those CPU meters in the menu bar I mentioned earlier, the system is running at about 10% of its total capacity!
So there has been some stress and cost involved in switching, but it is worth it. I feel kind of bad about destroying the old machine, because my computers are sort of like my friends (I think that way about my cars too: how sad is that!) and I feel like I murdered it, but hey, ces't la vie!
The main party in New Zealand's current government has not enjoyed a great deal of popularity recently, and its leader has also had very limited support. I can see why. The National Party is supposed to be a conservative party, both socially and economically, but it really hasn't fulfilled that role. In addition, the leader, Christopher Luxon, has been rather timid in his interactions with media, making him look both weak and unprincipled.
But maybe that is changing. There were several new policy directions announced recently which seem to indicate that this center-right government might be finally going to do what their voters wanted all along.
Before I discuss these, I have to say that while I wish the National Party success (mainly because the alternative is so terrible, not because the Nats are any good themselves), I am not a conservative myself and don't vote for them.
Also, these changes might not really get the result I would want, because of two things. First, finally doing what they should have done all along about 6 months before an election quite rightly makes people a little bit suspicious of their motives. And second, the types of changes seem to be initiated by, or borrowed from, the coalition partners, Act and New Zealand First, so if National does get increased support, a lot of it would come from their partners rather than their opposition.
So what are these changes?
First, they are abolishing the Broadcast Standard Authority. This organisation is particularly woke and biased, and also seems to want to exceed the limits of its original purpose. For the sake of free speech I think it is important that it goes.
I guess it might have been possible to retain it, and either try to force it to act more fairly, or maybe replace some of the senior staff, but just shutting it down seems cleaner and a more certain way to eliminate the problems we currently have.
Second, the government seem to be more prepared to stand up to the media and call them out for their more outrageous bias, their inane questions, and other frivolous nonsense they are likely to engage in.
It's no secret that I have become increasingly frustrated with the media in recent years so I am happy to see them being dealt with a bit more "vigorously', especially by David Seymour, Winston Peters (who, I admit, never held back in the past) and even Christopher Luxon, who in the past seemed to want to avoid conflict at all costs.
The media don't have the power they used to, because so few people now engage with them as a significant source of news, and even fewer use them as their only source. The more they act this way, the more they fail, and they have no one to blame except themselves. I don't want to see the mainstream media shut down completely, but I do want to see them being challenged on their woke nonsense.
Third, recently the government shut down a legal right to sue corporations and organisations for their "climate harm". I must admit, I don't know the details about this, so I can't discuss it in detail, but it is a good sign that the more extreme climate activism might be starting to diminish.
We still need to be aware of the problems associated with climate change, but in a rational way, not through mindless hysteria and activism.
Fourth, the previous government offered university students a free first year of study, which was changed to a free last year (to complete a degree) by the current government, and has now been abolished completely.
When we see the word "free" we should be immediately concerned, because nothing is free. All the free scheme did was take money from hard working New Zealanders and hand it out to worthless parasites doing nothing useful for the country. OK, I've got to admit, that was too harsh. There are still a few university graduates who go on to do useful things for society, but they tend to get paid well when they do, so why do they need a handout?
And finally, we have the issue which has become symbolic of the divide between the major groups in politics: immigration (yes, I know there is also the trans thing, but I'm avoiding that one in this post!).
The government has tightened immigration laws to try to ensure we will get people who more closely align with our values (whatever they are) and are more likely to provide a net benefit to us. This seems fair and reasonable. Why woud we want to follow the lead of other countries and allow people in who are not only useless, but are specifically opposed to "Western values".
By the way, here are some of those values I think many people from other cultures might not fully embrace: freedom to practice any religion, or be free from one; giving every member of society equal rights (there are exceptions based on age, etc, but the overall idea is solid); making a genuine effort to assimilate into existing modes of living, or at least accepting those norms. And yes, you know which culture I'm talking about, don't you!
Anyway, those are a few signs that the right here in New Zealand has seen what is happening overseas (especially in the UK and Australia) and realised that many of us are ready to go back to more sensible and moderate policies. And yes, it's yet another sign of the impending end of woke! Is this progress, at last?
One of the biggest problems in modern society is poor provision of health services. This is partly to do with the economics of health, including the cost of producing new drugs and medical devices, partly to do with government policies encouraging poor organisation of services, partly to do with incompetent and excessive management structures in health, and partly to do with an ageing population in many countries and the expectation for more conditions to be treated.
There are several approaches which have been taken to try to improve the problem, such as greater investment from health funders, attempts at reorganisations with the intent of gaining greater efficiency, and changing the rules to allow some health services to be delivered outside of traditional hospitals and medical practices.
But, despite all of this, there has never been an obvious and substantial improvement in outcomes, although occasional small successes do seem to occur.
Needless to say, I have the answer, as I'm sure you have probably already guessed. And considering my background, you won't be surprised to hear the answer comes from the world of IT, and especially AI.
One of my favourite podcasts is called "Freakonomics". It covers how economics, especially behavioural economics, affects the real world, and how real people behave in complex societal and economic environments. When I say "behavioural economics" and "real people" I am emphasising that there is an attempt to examine what happens in the real world where people don't necessarily act rationally or logically. In many traditional economic studies it is assumed people will react rationally and for their own greatest benefit. Of course, this is not true, and economics must take account of psychology.
Freakonomics did a series of episodes on AI recently, which increased my confidence in the technology. And yes, you might know based on previous posts, I am already a fan of it. There are various fields where AI might be particularly useful, and medicine is near the top of the list.
So moving on to how AI might be used in health. First, we need to acknowledge that it has only become a useful and widely used tool for most people in the last few years. This means we are really at the start of producing AI tools which are genuinely useful and reliable, and we can expect massive improvements over the next 5 to 10 years.
Second, we shouldn't dismiss AI because of any real or perceived defects without comparing it to the alternatives. For example, a fleet of self-driving cars were tested and were involved in 2 accidents over the time they were tested. These were reported widely and resulted in the program being suspended. But based on statstics, during the same period we should have expected about ten times as many accidents if the cars were driven by humans. Also, in both accidents the automated cars were not primarily to blame.
I'm a "car guy" and I often enjoy driving, but I can see a time (maybe 10 years away) where the idea of a human driving a car is seen as absurd. They will look back at the deaths and injuries we have on our roads and wonder "what were they thinking?"
So can this apparently major improvement be applied to medicine too? Well yes, of course it can. In fact medicine might be one place where AI offers the biggest potential technical improvement. I say technical because it is something which can be done if we act based on facts, but the real problem with be overcoming the bureaucracy and conservatism of government regulation, management, and the health workforce.
Many experiments and trials have shown how good AI is at various medical activities. It can analyse scans, x-rays and other tests better than humans, it can find information in hundreds of pages of medical records instantly and use it in context, it can diagnose some conditions based on simple data better than even the best specialist, in one test is even delivered bad news of a patient's death to relatives better than a doctor!
The tech companies creating the AI tools say they want to produce something that medical professionals can use to make their jobs easier, but I'm sure many of them really think those professionals can be replaced completely.
But what if something goes wrong? We know AIs can make mistakes, and even "hallucinate". What happens if an AI kills a patient after making an error? Who's to blame? Well, doctors already make a pile of mistakes and we cope with that. AIs would also make mistakes, but probably a lot less, so surely some mechanism for assigning responsibility and improvement could be developed.
I rarely go to a doctor myself, in fact I can't remember the last time I did, but I always knew the diagnosis and treatment before I went, thanks to simple web searches using "Doctor Google"! I can imagine I could do a lot better with today's AIs instead (and I will definitely be doing that in future). Do I not trust doctors? Well, to some extent I do, but I would prefer an AI any day!
Why do ideas become popular and, for no particularly apparent reason, become dominant across society? In other words, what is the origin of the zeitgeist? If we look back in time we see various ideas rising and falling in popularity as time passes. What was considered unthinkable at one point suddenly becomes the accepted orthodoxy. Why?
I think it is because most people are not good at thinking for themselves. They lack independence of thought and derive their beliefs from others, especially from others with extra influence, such as teachers, celebrities, and both conventional and internet-based media, especially social media.
I fully understand that a case could be made to say that assimilating other people's opinions, when they are well thought out or based on expertise or experience, is just a sensible and maybe even inevitable phenomenon, but is it, and if it is, should it be?
I guess it's a matter of extent. Everyone (I'm sure that includes me, even if I don't always recognise it) takes on ideas from others, but it's important to be a bit skeptical of other people's ideas, and not to just automatically uncritically perpetuate them.
When I talk to people in person, or discuss or debate with them on-line, I often notice then repeating catch-phrases and reflecting opinions which seem somewhat less than completely original. Sometimes their statements are word for word what I have seen elsewhere. Sometimes their deeper beliefs are equally unoriginal.
So here are some examples...
I recently visited a friend to help with her computer. I launched her web browser and it opened to a news page which featured a picture of Donald Trump. She sort of shivered and looked away, clearly indicating a fairly emotional dislike of him. She commented on this, but I said that I sort of like ol' Trumpy! Needless to say, she was horrified and wondered how an apparently nice and reasonable person like me could like an evil tyrant like him.
So I asked exactly what it was about Trump that caused such negativity, and she really couldn't say. It was just something like he was arrogant and egocentric. I said, sure I agree with that, but what about other self-centered politicians like Jacinda Ardern. What did she think of them? Well, of course, she thinks Cindy was the greatest leader ever, but when pushed could offer no reason why, except she was "kind".
To me, the biggest difference between the two is that Trump doesn't hide his thoughts (even when maybe he should!) but Ardern, while being quite tyrannical and egocentric, portrays a fake image of kindness and generosity.
It seemed that the media loved to attach the label "kind" to Ardern so that's what this person decided must be true, but the same media consistently portray Trump negatively and she also accepted that, without much critical thought.
Now while I "quite like" Trump, I fully understand he has some character flaws. And while I dislike Ardern, I realise she had some good political skills which helped many people during the COVID epidemic.
In fact (I'm sorry to repeat this for those who have heard this before) I suggested her as leader of the Labour party prior to the 2017 election, and voted Labour at that election. But I saw through the facade and realised what a terrible person she really is, and I have never voted Labour since. So it seems that I did form uniquely personal opinions based on the circumstances of the time, unlike many others.
I was scrolling through posts on X yesterday and saw one from a young (22 year old) woman who is having her tubes tied so she cannot have any children. That is an individual choice which she is entitled to make, but it was the reason she did it which I thought was kind of sad. She thinks the world is such a bad place that it is unfair to bring any more children into it.
What made the world bad seemed to be the conflict in Iran and Ukraine, the rise of fascist dictators like Trump, and (of course) climate change. Now, there are genuine problems around the world we need to be aware of, but the general state of the world is actually quite good, with low numbers of deaths from war, overall lower rates of poverty, and generally good standards of living for an increasing number of people.
Looking at the headlines in the media this might not be obvious, but the stats show that things really aren't that bad. Unfortunately this person accepted the grossly exaggerated stories in the media, and those which are no doubt prevalent amongst her friends, without thinking about how true they really are.
Many people I encounter seem to believe that, because of climate change, the world is literally going to end in the near future. What "the world ending" actually means is difficult to establish, because they don't seem to know themselves. When pressed, they will say anything from increased conflict due to some regions becoming uninhabitable, to humans becoming extinct, to all life going extinct, to the planet physically being destroyed in some unspecified way.
When asked how any of these might happen, they have no answer, apart from the "increased conflict" scenario which does have some level of credibility. But they keep hearing about the end of the world so, when you don't think critically, it must be true... right?
So I say, listen to mainstream media, to celebrities, to activists like Greta Thunberg, but don't necessarily believe everything they say. Of course, the same applies to alternative media, and every other source out there. In the end, everything is just an opinion. Be skeptical, and think for yourself!
I said I would discuss the techniques used to establish the size of the universe on the greatest scales after talking about how the distance to relatively close objects could be found in my previous blog post, so let's do this. How far out can we go?
While there is no practical purpose in knowing this stuff for the average person, I think it is interesting to know what clever mechanisms astronomers have come up with over the years, and it is also nice to know that the numbers we often see are based on real facts and the crazy ideas of flat Earth believers and other conspiracy theorists can be safely rejected.
So last time I talked about parallax, and the big picture is that we start with short distances, then get progressively bigger using the previous results. For example, last time we start with the diameter of the Earth (13 thousand km), which was used to give the distance to the Sun (150 million km), which in turn gave us the distance to the nearest star (42 trillion kilometers).
The observations are difficult and only an approximation, but they are all we have, and many have been confirmed using different techniques, so we can be confident they are approximately correct.
After establishing the distance to stars using the mathematical methods I talked about in the previous post we can figure out how bright stars really are. The true brightness and the distance both determine the apparent brightness when seen from Earth. A star that looks bright from Earth could be genuinely bright or maybe just relatively close. Once we know the distance we can take that into account to get the true brightness.
After doing this we notice that certain types of stars seem to have roughly predictable true brightnesses, so a very dim star which we know is actually bright is very distance, and that distance can be estimated. The type of star is usually established by looking at its spectrum which can used to estimate its mass and temperature.
But this is only good as for a rough estimate, is there anything better? Well yes, there is. Some stars vary in brightness, and a particular type, called a Cepheid variable, has the useful property that the time it takes to go from bright to dim and back to bright is related to its mass and its mass is related to its brightness. So measure the period of the variation in brightness ot get the true brightness, compare that with the apparent brightness, and you can get the distance.
Cepheids are also bright (a thousand to ten thousand times the brightness of the Sun) so they can be easily observed at large distances, even in other galaxies. So if we know the distance to a star in another galaxy we know the distance to the galaxy too! This works for close galaxies, which means we are getting out to tens of millions of light years, a billion trillion kilometers.
About a hundred years ago an American astronomer, Edwin Hubble, was doing incredibly skilled work, taking spectra (turning their light into a "rainbow" of colours) of distant galaxies. He noticed the light from these was shifted towards the red end of the spectrum, and that the dimmer the galaxy (and therefore, on average, the more distant) the higher the shift was.
When an object is moving away from you, any wave phenomenon (like light or sound) is "spread out" (so sounds become lower, light becomes redder). You will have noticed this with sound when a fast moving car, train, or plane goes past you: the sound is higher as it comes towards you and lower as it goes past and travels away. We don't notice this with light because light is so much faster that the effect is impossible to detect with everyday objects (sound moves at 1200 kph, light at one billion kph).
Hubble had discovered that redshift (a concept already well accepted) gets greater the more distant the galaxy is (there are a few exceptions for really close galaxies). This is because the universe is expanding and the further apart two objects are the faster they are moving away from each other. So this means that if we measure the redshift we can estimate the distance, and this works for galaxies right to the edge of the observable universe, or 46 billion light years (460 billion trillion kilometers).
There are many details I have missed out here, and I did all this from memory, so I hope I got it right: I was an astronomy educator in the distant past but it's easy to forget details!
The thing I like about this is just how clever it all is, how amazingly precise the measurements are, and how one observation can be used as the basis of the next: the width of the Earth is measured with a couple of sticks, that diameter is used to get the distance to the Sun, which is used to get the distance to a close star, which is used to get the distant to more distant stars, which calibrates the measurements of Cepheids and bright stars, which gives the distance to close galaxies, which calibrates the redshift, which is used to get the distance to the edge of the universe.
Finally, a few associated points...
First, you might say one error in the first measurements might make all the rest invalid. That is true, but we have other methods to estimate distances and they would soon show us if we got this wrong, and that has even happened in the past before the reason was found and the distances confirmed.
Second, some people say redshift can be explained in other ways. This is also true, but that can be allowed for in calculations.
Finally, what is the "observable" universe? Well, because of the expansion of the universe the further away we go the faster the galaxies are travelling away from us. Eventually the speed will be at the speed of light, so the light of that galaxy will never get to us. The universe exists beyond that point (maybe to infinity) but we can never know anything about it directly because no information can travel faster than light.
So yes, thanks to the brilliant work of astronomers and other scientists over many years (starting with good old Eratosthenes), we can see and understand the universe really far out!
I see a lot of weird stuff while on the internet, especially on social media sites (I use Facebook and X a lot). I've got to admit that it is hard to know who is serious and who isn't today, because I honestly sometimes can't tell the difference between serious comments and satire! But I came across one comment recently which did seem serious. It was about "space being fake". The person seemed to be claiming that the universe was really just the Earth with a small amount of space above it, then maybe a solid barrier, although they were a bit vague about that.
So I thought, apart from just taking the word of astronomers, how would we really know how big the universe is? Is there a way the average person could figure it out without investing millions or even billions in fancy, professional level, equipment?
So the answer is yes. I have been an amateur astronomer for many years and I must admit, I have never done these observations myself, because they do take a lot of time and effort, but theoretically I could do them if I wanted to.
So here's how I would do it...
Let's assume the stars are at varying distances from the Earth rather than being holes in that solid sphere which my conspiracy theorist friend thinks they are. In that case we could use parallax to estimate the distance to the star. So we could assume the brighter stars are probably closer and the dimmer ones more distant. Because stars vary in brightness, this isn't always true, but on average it is.
We must also accept that the Earth orbits the Sun once per year. Again, this is an assumption, but like all the others we will get crazy results if the assumptions aren't true, so let's just proceed.
Choose a day, let's say mid-summer, and look at the position of the bright star in relation to a variety of dimmer stars, then do the same thing thing six months later at mid-winter. During that time the Earth has moved 300 million kilometers from one side of its orbit to the other (the Sun-Earth distance is about 150 million kilometers).
To understand parallax, try this: hold your finger up in from of your face and look at where it is in relation to a wall when looking through your left eye, then your right. Notice how it moves? Now move your finger further away, and repeat, then closer to your eye and repeat again. The amount it seems to move is proportional to the distance from your eye. Now substitute your left eye for the Earth at mid-summer, your right eye for it at mid-winter, the finger for the close star and the wall for the distant stars.
The first problem is we cannot be sure that the dim stars are really distant and the bright ones close, but if we repeat the process with enough stars we will get a statistical measurement that we can use. The second problem is that when this was first tried no parallax was seen, but that was because the stars are so incredibly distant that the parallax was small. With better techniques it was observed and the closest star moved 0.768 arc seconds, the equivalent of the width of a coin about 2 kilometers away!
Do the calculations and it turns out that star is about 40 trillion kilometers away. This is just "slightly" more than the "space is fake" person claimed, but he was only off by a factor of about a billion, so nice try! Also remember this is the closest star (apart from the Sun). The most distant star measured with this technique is about 500 thousand trillion kilometers away.
By the way, the more skeptical of you might be asking, how do we know the distance to the Sun, which we need to do the calculation? Well, it was measured quite accurately in 1672 using simple trigonometry from observations from opposite sides of the Earth to estimate the distance to Mars, then a further trig calculation to use Earth and Mars to get the distance to the Sun. It's simple maths which no one would debate, although the measurements themselves need to be very precise. But they got a number just 7% smaller than the one we have today.
Oh, one more thing too: how do we know the size of the Earth, because the "opposite sides of the Earth" observation needs that. Well, that was established by one of my heroes, Eratosthenes, in 240 BCE. He paid someone to step out the distance between the cities Alexandria and Syene, then he measured the length of a shadow at those two points at the same time. The shadow at the city closer to the equator was shorter and by using some more trigonometry he estimated the size of the Earth just a few percent different to the modern figure.
It was utterly brilliant and not only showed the diameter of the Earth, but also proved it wasn't flat, another crazy belief some people still have (I'm not joking, there really are some people who think the Earth is flat).
So everything I have listed here just needs some very simple maths and a bit of effort. To make the parallax observations you would also need a telescope, but a decent amateur level one would be sufficient. There is nothing you need to accept from an authority, everything can be done by any careful, moderately intelligent person.
By the way, even the more distant star I mentioned above is still exceptionally close by the standards of the universe as a whole! How do we know about even greater distances? Well, maybe that's a subject for my next blog post.
The Guardian newspaper hasn't exactly got the best reputation as a moderate and well balanced source of real news. Well, I'm sure the more left oriented and naive (or are those two things the same?) people think it is great, but I don't think so.
Some news sources (and I use that word in a somewhat inexact sense because many of what we might traditionally call news services are really just a place to maintain propaganda and activist opinions) do provide some fairly thoughtful and interesting perspectives, and I'm fine with that, even when they differ from mine. But it's been a long time since I read anything which was even interesting or original in the Guardian, although I have to admit I rarely read it, so no doubt I have missed some of their better material.
Anyway, what is all ranting this leading up to? Well, an article by some silly woman by the name of Zoe Williams, who seems to be against the American space program in general, and especially the Artemis mission which launched recently.
You've probably guessed by now what sort of thing she is saying, because it is the same tired old nonsense we have heard for years: that the money and effort put into exploring space is wasted and would be better spent back here on Earth. Yawn... boring!
Here are a few statements from her article, along with my response to them...
Statement: It is absolutely self-evident to me that space exploration is pointless, and the more urgent the crises besetting this planet we live on, the more pointless it becomes.
Response: At least she starts by saying that this is effectively her opinion ("self evident to me") rather than an alleged fact, so I give her credit for that. But I don't know what these "crises besetting this planet" might be, although I can have a good guess! The fact is there are no major crises besetting the planet, except in the mind of silly, ignorant, hysterical people like her. There are problems we should be alert to, sure, but the state of the world is actually fairly good if you look at the stats.
Statement: there might be little green people out there - who wouldn’t want to meet them?
Response: There are real scientific programs which attempt to find extraterrestrial life and even other intelligence in the universe, but that is not a significant aim of this one, and not an aim of most of the space program. Of course, finding life on other planets would be an amazing discovery, and NASA is very aware of the need to look, but that's not what Artemis is all about. And this "little green people" thing (the original phrase was "little green men" but this is the Guardian so it must be gender inclusive!) is so trivial and childish that you've just got to laugh.
Statement: There’s nothing out there except planets infinitely less beautiful than this one.
Response: This time her ignorant opinion is presented as a fact. How does she know? Who decides what is beautiful? It's just another very naive, ignorant piece of meaningless nonsense presented as if it had some level of intellectual value. Well, it doesn't.
Statement: others act as though I’m opposing innovation and modernity, which I absolutely am not.
Response: Yes, she is. Modernity is not defined by her woke ideology, that is just a temporary glitch in our overall forward progress (at least, I hope so). It's not necessarily just space programs themselves which drive innovation and modernity, but it is the attitude of wanting to explore, to do difficult things, and to take risks which do. Her attitude seems to be reminiscent of the Luddites more than anything else.
Statement: point to all the discoveries that wouldn’t have been made without the space-based wanderlust, most of which seem to involve finding better ways to kill each other.
Response: While there are some elements of the space program which are closely connected to the military, in general that is not so significant. Here are some technologies derived from the space program: memory foam, scratch-resistant lenses, freeze-dried food, cordless power tools, space blankets, CMOS image sensors, cochlear implants, implantable heart monitors, wireless arthroscopes, minimally invasive surgical tools, ear thermometers, infrared medical sensors, advanced water purification, firefighting equipment, fire-retardant materials, shock absorbers for buildings and bridges, aerogel insulation, grooved roads, wireless headsets and comms, laptop computers and miniaturised electronics, robotics advancements, 3D printing, additive manufacturing for habitats, improved personal locator beacons, AI and data tools, rugged video cameras, advanced air purifiers, electrostatic sprayers. I don't see too many related to warfare there, do you?
I could go on, but I've go to wonder why I would waste my time criticising such a stupid person. Why does the Guardian allow such ignorance to be published? Well, I guess it is sufficiently anti-western (especially American) and is silly and hysterical enough that it fits their preferred style. All I can say is: what an absolute moron!
I love a good conspiracy, in fact I love a bad conspiracy even more, but it's important not to take them too seriously. So after that inauspicious start, let's move on to what I really want to talk about here: my own latest conspiracy which I don't necessarily believe.
Amongst my geeky interests is aviation, and especially military aircraft, so I usually go to New Zealand's premiere air show, "Warbirds Over Wanaka". Previously I attended this in 1992 ,1996, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2010, 2012, and 2024. I also attended the Omaka Air Show in 2017. Of course, I have reports on these shows, including photos, sounds, and movies on my web site.
This year I got tickets a few months back and was quite enthusiastic about going, mainly because an F-22 was going to be there. That is a fairly modern American jet fighter, with some stealth ability. I like old planes, but fast noisy jets are my favourite, and this is one I hadn't seen before. Previous shows included an F-111, some F/A-18s, and an F-16.
So a few weeks back it was announced that the F-22 would not attend, and I never found a really detailed or convincing explanation why. In addition, other more modern aircraft, which are currently in use, from Australia and Singapore were also cancelled, and more recently the New Zealand Air Force also cancelled their visit, and the RNZAF has been at every other show I have been to.
Now, it is possible that the Americans needed the F-22s in Iran, but I doubt it. It is also possible that the extra cost of fuel made attendance too expensive, but I also reject this. By the way, those who criticise the show for its use of fuel during a global crisis should know that it uses about 50,000 litres of aviation fuel over five days, but New Zealand consumes around 24 million litres of fuel per day in total, so the use at the show is really just a "rounding error" (0.04 percent of the total).
I remember earlier this year that various activists were commenting that displaying current military aircraft while they were also being used in various conflicts around the world was "inappropriate". This was before Iran, so I guess they were referring to Gaza and Ukraine. By the way, whenever I see the word "inappropriate" I assume we are talking about some major BS, because all it really means is something the activists don't like.
So my conspiracy is that anti-war activists have threatened violence (oh, the irony) or damage of some sort if modern jets are displayed at the show. Alternatively the government has got involved and requested they not attend to prevent any embarrassing connection with current unpopular wars (this would have come from the pathetic National Party, not Act or NZ First).
This seems to make more sense than the aircraft being required in an actual combat role or the somewhat increased price of fuel being a factor. Can I prove it? Well, no, of course not, or it wouldn't be much of a conspiracy theory, would it? The best conspiracies are those where there is some superficial evidence, but not enough to result in any firm conclusion!
Anyway, that's my theory. if you have any better explanations, leave a comment, but I want you to know: all good conspiracies are totally unaffected by the facts!
Well, the conflict in Iran is maybe the biggest global news story at the moment (sorry about that, Palestine, Ukraine, and global warming) so I guess I should present some opinions on it. Needless to say, these opinions will contain plenty of nuance, because that's what I try to do. Anyway, let's get started...
The war started at the end of February, so it has been going for a month now. Is it too early to know if it is a good or bad idea, a success or a failure, a moral necessity or an abomination? It's a bit of all of those, and when the US gets involved with wars it is always terminating them and what comes next which is the problem, so it is too early to judge, but Im going to judge anyway!
The Iranian regime was recognised by almost everyone as a bad one. When a government kills tens of thousands of its own people for demonstrating against it, you know something is wrong.
When a country is not trusted even by its neighbours (and yes, I do recognise the difference in the Persian origin of Iran versus the Arab roots of other Middle Eastern states, and the difference in Shia versus Sunni Islam) that is not a good sign.
When a country is known to be supporting and funding terrorist groups whose intent is the eradication of its ideological enemies (especially Israel) then you can see why we might be right to feel a bit nervous about it.
And when a state is governed according to a religion which some people refer to as a death cult, and that country is desperately trying to create a nuclear weapon, well yes, we have a problem.
There were signs that the Iranian people might have been ready to rise up against the government, so you can understand why the US and Israel might want to use their military option to help that process along. It hasn't worked out that way, but the idea was arguably good, and there might still be some possibility of success.
So looking at these factors you might conclude the war was justified, but for balance, let's list some counter-arguments...
First, there are many bad governments around the world and many would ask why it is up to the US (and to some extent, Israel) to judge which are sufficiently bad that the use of force against them is justified. There is also the unfortunate fact that when the US does try to "fix" these issues it often turns into a complete debacle. Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan were not conspicuous successes, were they?
So we have to ask if there any moral basis by which this can be justified, and practically speaking, will there be a positive outcome, or "will the cure worse than the disease"?
Second, if we are going to criticise the theocratic elements of its culture, should we not also condemn the religious rhetoric from the US and especially Israel? I have often said that I think Islam is a far worse religion than Christianity or Judaism, but I also say "those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities" and that applies to both sides to some extent.
Third, it wasn't so long ago that the US attack on Iran's nuclear enrichment facility was claimed to be a great success, so you might wonder why it is now necessary to start a genuine war against them for the same reason. Sure, I agree that some ability was maintained and they are not going to stop their nuclear program voluntarily, but maybe just additional strikes agains those facilities might have been more justifiable.
Finally, did the US and Israel understand the global repercussions of this war? The world is now suffering from fuel shortages and the associated increase in prices, which is turning a lot of opinion against the war. Did they not realise the tactical use of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran was likely, because they do not seem to have planned ahead to prevent it.
Some people are engaging in more extreme rhetoric and claiming they can see World War III or a nuclear Armageddon being the eventual result of this action, but I don't think anyone with much credibility would believe that. On the other hand, by stopping a genocidal theocracy getting nuclear weapons and very likely using them, maybe those things can be prevented.
If you think the price of fuel is bad now, imagine what it would belike during a nuclear exchange in the Middle East! Maybe now is the right time to attempt a meaningful regime change and prevent a truly catastrophic conflict in the future. I'm not totally sure that is a reasonable idea myself, but it is an idea with some merit.
Maybe we just need to let this proceed and see where it finishes. And if that is not acceptable to people (especially the anti-Trump mob) because of the civilian and military losses, maybe they would prefer to go back to where the Iranian government was killing its own people instead? It's important not to look at just what is happening now, but at what would be happening, both now and in the future, if this action had not been taken.
So those are my thoughts for now. As things progress maybe I will change my mind, but the only way to truly judge this will be how the US exit strategy unfolds and what the new Iranian government looks like. We can only hope that this will be the exception where things turn out for the better!
When debating people it is always useful to have some perspective on where their ideas and philosophical preferences come from. By "philosophical" here I mean in a very generic sense, covering politics, religion, and other fundamental beliefs.
One of the reasons I think I am sometimes quite effective when debating against others is that I have "been there, believed that" myself in the past. For example, politically I used to be fairly firmly on the left and regularly voted for Labour, along with even the Greens on one occasion. And when I left school I was quite credulous about a lot of paranormal claims, and was quite the opposite of the skeptic I am now.
So when I see other people making those same mistakes I made in the past I know exactly where they are coming from, and I am often quite understanding of their position, because I used to have the same ideas myself!
I saw this comment recently on social media: "Everyone starts off as a lefty, and then wakes up at some point... After you start either making money, working, or trying to run a business, you realise what crap ideas they are and go right".
Of course this claim of "everyone" cannot be taken literally. Maybe better would be "most people" or even "every rational person", but even those claims are debatable.
There are also these quite common concepts: "If you don't vote left when you are young, you have no heart; if you don't vote right as you get older, you have no head" and "I still feel I support the left like I did 10 or 20 years ago, but the left has gone so crazy it has left me behind, so the right is now my only option".
I can identify with all of these points. Many people who have more extreme views opposing mine are either very naive (especially younger people), or live in a "bubble" where they don't have to face many of the realities others do (the main example here being academics and teachers), or base their opinions on emotion rather than rationality (dare I mention that many of these are women, especially young women).
Note that in no way am I saying that all young people, or academics, or women are out of touch. This is a purely statistical argument. There are plenty of older non-academic men who believe a lot of nonsense too, just like there are plenty of young people, academics, and women who are very reasonable.
Also note that when I use the word "right" I use it as a convenient shorthand rather than an exact description. I do not think of myself as a conservative, although I think some conservative ideas are good. Currently I think of myself more as a libertarian, although I also recognise many weaknesses in that belief system.
And many of my ideas might be seen by some people as quite left leaning, although I would say they are just common sense and supportive of individual freedoms. For example, I support gay marriage because what harm is it doing me? What right do I have to try to control the lives of gay people? And I am not religious, unlike many conservatives, so I tend to reject the religious ideas of people I otherwise might agree with (Charlie Kirk for example). And I agree with government controls over the worst excesses of capitalism, although I would prefer to see less of those rather than more.
So I fully recognise how ridiculous some of my opinions were when I was younger. I'm not an academic myself but I did work in a university for a long time and I know how many of them think and I agreed with them for years. And I'm not a woman (could I identify as one for a while to get their perspective?) so I guess the point of this post is a bit weaker because of that.
When I see the arguments some people try to use against me, I recognise them for the same arguments I used in the past. I can remember what caused me to change my mind and reject them, and I know exactly what the attraction of them is. This makes it a lot easier to fight against them. Sometimes I even say "been there, believed that"
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.
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