"Parsons always seem to be especially horrified by sunbathing and naked bodies, but don’t mind poverty and misery nearly as much". (Susan Ertz, quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations) In ancient Greece athletes competed completely naked. But then they were not expecting to answer for themselves at the pearly gates. Epicurus …
Continue reading ‘Epicurean morals: the Vicar and the Naked Body’ »
The Bush administration has been famously populated either by the corrupt or by incompetents who couldn’t manage a third class brothel. But the fear is that this is not just bad deciding by The Decider but a more sinister trend: the country is so dumbed down that educated and literate good people (folks!) are becoming …
Continue reading ‘Fine , Mr. Obama, but where will you find the good administrators?’ »
The language used by the pro-war faction in the US is implicitly attacked by an official phrasebook produced by the British Government, which seeks to reverse the impression that the British believe all Moslems are terrorists, and avoids making direct links between the Moslem religion and crimes against the innocent. . It wants civil servants …
An official report by Britain’s interception of communications commissioner has revealed that nearly 800 (!) public bodies are making between them nearly 1000 requests per day for "communications data", including phone taps, mobile phone records, email and web search histories. Britain has the largest DNA database in the world. It is proposed to centralize medical …
Continue reading ‘Epicurean ethics: An endemic surveillance society’ »
Intellectuals. Are there any left? The people who used to be intellectuals are busy dumbing down universities and awarding A’s all round in an effort to boost enrollment. Their colleagues preach deconstructionism and relativism and are proud to have no standards of behaviour, ethics or morals whatsoever. Anything goes and intellectually it seems a lot …
