Stray thoughts about my life

Current politics are a bit depressing to write about at the moment. It seems that U.S. voters in November are going to have a choice between Obama and McCain -- both of whom are economic ignoramuses and believers in big government. And Obama wants to withdraw from Iraq and invade Pakistan instead!! Save us! So I will again today write about other things.

I am aged 64 now. My father died at 65. I would be surprised if I had more than another 10 years above ground. So perhaps it is a time for me to look back and review a few things occasionally.

I have undoubtedly had a charmed life. To detail it would be to boast. But I have regrets too. The chief regret is that I have had only one child. My son is however all that a father could ask. He is tall, well-built, socially pleasant and already an academic like me. And he has blue eyes. Since both his mother and I have blue eyes that was a slam dunk.

Having had a lot to do in my life with persons of the female persuasion, I have looked close-up into a lot of blue eyes and I am firmly of the view that blue eyes are the most beautiful -- totally "incorrect" though that view now is. Mind you, I am no fanatic about the matter. I am so pro-Indian that my house is full of them, and almost all Indians have dark eyes, of course.

Because I always speak frankly about race, I am sure lots of people have me tagged as a racist but you show me any anti-racist (let alone a white racist!) who has as many brown men living in his house as I have in mine! I am thinking of renaming my house as "Jai Hind", in fact, so Google that! I have long wanted to go and live in India but family reasons rule that out, of course. When I am in India I feel that this is real life -- that this is in some way how it ought to be. And I am talking there about the attitudes of the people, not their poverty. Lots of people of British ancestry do get that sort of feeling when they go to India. But I have it both ways to some extent. If I cannot go to India, I can have India come to me! And the clatter of spoken Hindi is now always about me.

And because I have explained to him how to make money on the stockmarket, my son should have a financially comfortable future. What millions of people would like to know my son just got told casually one morning by his father. As a certain wise Jew once said: "To him that hath, more will be given him".

I do of course have a few minor regrets as well as the major one I have been talking about in a rambling way. One of the minor regrets is the fact that I have not been given a D.Sc. It is not a regret that I go to bed thinking about, of course, but I HAVE had over 200 papers published in the scientific journals so I am qualified for one. But the D.Sc. (Doctor of Science) is an HONORARY degree. You only get it for being a good guy in some way. And I am NOT that. I keep saying things that upset the applecart -- even if they are also true things.

So,if I ever do get a D.Sc., it will be posthumous. That will do ME no good at all but it might serve to highlight my writings. I am a graduate of the University of Queensland, the University of Sydney and Macquarie University so those are the institutions that COULD award me a D.Sc.

Immediately after writing the above I re-read one of my favourite Bible passages: Ecclesiastes chapters 1 and 2 -- just to make sure I did not lose perspective.

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ELSEWHERE

Leftist hater Jonathan Chait turns on the Clintons: "Something strange happened the other day. All these different people -- friends, co-workers, relatives, people on a liberal e-mail list I read -- kept saying the same thing: They've suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I think we've reached an irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons. The sentiment seems to be concentrated among Barack Obama supporters. Going into the campaign, most of us liked Hillary Clinton just fine, but the fact that tens of millions of Americans are seized with irrational loathing for her suggested that she might not be a good Democratic nominee. But now that loathing seems a lot less irrational. We're not frothing Clinton haters like ... well, name pretty much any conservative. We just really wish they'd go away."

Maybe the real "you" is the person you make yourself: ""Are you the real you? But what is the real you? Were you, you, when you 10 years old? 20? 45? Were you the real you before you had graduated college? Were married? Were a parent? Were you more real when you were shy before you 'came out of your shell' after joining the basketball or debate team? Are you the real you when you drink coffee to boost your concentration in order to finish that new sales report? Or are the real you when you take Viagra to boost your sexual performance? Turn the question around: are people who choose to use Viagra, cosmetic surgery, hair-coloring, propranolol to overcome stage fright, fakes? A strong case can be made that people who take advantage [of] modern technologies are seeking to become more authentically who they believe themselves to be. Demands for authenticity turn out to be just a way for other people to impose their views of your proper social status on you."

Caution is the essence of conservatism:. "In Have You Ever Seen a Dream Walking, William F. Buckley Jr. mobilized a group of writers to set forth certain ideas about the conservative movement for which he and they played such a decisive and animating role. It is telling that they did not seek to enumerate a list of issues on which conservatives must agree. If anything, Buckley, Meyer, Chambers, et al. argued that conservatism is neither an ideology nor an exercise in litmus tests. Buckley spent as much time reading fringe groups out of the conservative movement as he did defining what it was, precisely because he knew that conservatism is as much about temperament and tendencies than it is about a specific position on a given issue".

An embarrassing side-effect of chemotherapy for cancer that you might not have heard about.

"Fascist" as a term of abuse: "Somebody, somewhere, must have called National Review contributing editor and Los Angeles Times columnist Jonah Goldberg, a "fascist." Having had at least one similar experience myself, I have found the most effective retort to be, "Define fascism." The conversation then abruptly ends"

SEVEN new British data blunders: "The Department of Health (DoH) has written to senior NHS managers to remind them to handle data safely, it said today, as it was reported there have been seven new breaches of security involving patient details. Today's edition of The Sun said that in one incident the confidential records of more than 1.7 million patients were lost, while in another a medic Googled a doctor's name and was linked to patients' details. In the first incident, records of patients from the North East Essex region were on a tape that was mislaid by a courier firm, while the second took place in the North West Strategic Health Authority, the newspaper said." [No wonder a national ID card has been put on hold!]

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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