Category Archives: Social Commentary

Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Simpsons Fail

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A lot have been complaining about The Simpsons going downhill over the past several years. I agree that there have been some egregious moments in the series, but overall, I still have found each episode mostly enjoyable. But not tonight. It may be possible to spoof Mad Men, but they certainly didn’t succeed. It’s the first time I can recall watching The Simpsons and not laughing. And that’s saying something. Whoever the writers were, they clearly don’t understand what they were satirizing at all. They may be too young.

[Monday morning update]

OK, I exaggerated. This was funny: “Why can’t I be funny with just my words? Bill Maher doesn’t put dangerous things near his crotch, except when he’s off work.” – Krusty Clown

Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space

Changing The Conversation

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I agree with Stephen Hawking that it is important to expand humanity into the universe, but…:

Stephen Hawking says the colonization of outer space is key to the survival of humankind, predicting it will be difficult for the world’s inhabitants “to avoid disaster in the next hundred years.”

The renowned astrophysicist explores some of the most remarkable advancements in technology and health with the new U.K.-Canadian series “Brave New World With Stephen Hawking,” debuting Saturday on Discovery World HD.

Before its premiere, he discussed the earth’s most pressing concerns in an email interview with The Canadian Press from Cambridge, England, declaring space exploration to be humankind’s most urgent mission.

“We are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history,” said Hawking, who has Lou Gehrig’s disease, leaving him almost completely paralyzed and unable to speak.

Please stop using the E-word as though it’s synonymous with space settlement. It is not. It is a means to an end, and as long as the focus stays on “exploration,” it is easy for opponents of sending humans into space to say, “it’s cheaper with robots.” Unless you believe that robots will be our mind children (as some do), humanity is not going to settle space with robots. Every time you are about to say the phrase “space exploration,” stop yourself, and replace it with “space settlement.”

As an aside, for those who followed the link to Wikipedia, Jimmie Wales is not Hans Moravec. He’s not a douche, either. Or maybe he is. That one’s a matter of opinion, I guess. Anyway, as The Oatmeal points out, you get some pretty hilarious Wikipedia pages when Wales is doing a fundraiser. He should move his face over to the right side of the page, or something.

Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

What The Occupiers Believe And Why They Believe It

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It’s indoctrination:

During the 2008 campaign, Obama’s critics often called him a “radical,” a “socialist” or even a “Marxist” and were either dismissed as hysterics or condemned for “McCarthyism.” It was not widely noted that, for those too young to remember America’s Cold War struggle against Soviet tyranny, the accusation of “Marxism” doesn’t carry much weight, while “McCarthyism” is at most something they’ve read about in books. (Stan Evans’s Blacklisted by History probably isn’t on the collegiate reading list.) Voters who were 25 in 2008 were in first grade when the Berlin Wall came down. If they have some idea that the Soviet empire was a bad thing, they have little idea of why it was bad. And this ignorance is no accident.

To explain why the Bolshevik experiment failed so spectacularly would require that students be taught the errors of socialism, which would necessarily require an explanation of the superiority of the market economy to the socialist planned economy. And the left-wing orientation of today’s academic establishment — “Down With Capitalist Education!” to quote a sign in a protest today by Cal State university faculty — pretty much prohibits any such explanation.

Seventeen-year-olds taught that they are “the 99 percent” and that advocates of economic freedom are “f–king up our future” have not been merely miseducated, but have been quite literally indoctrinated. But as Buckley said, they would be “outraged by the suggestion” that they have not arrived at their beliefs “by independent intellectual exertion.”

These young people have not been taught Marx and Lenin. Rather, they have had their heads stuffed with nebulous ideas about “equality,” “rights” and “social justice” by teachers (and journalists and movie producers) who cherish romantic mythology about the righteous glories of Sixties radical movements.

The other problem is that Marxism is an emotionally appealing argument, to those who have never been taught how to actually think.

[Update a while later]

“The putrid stench of a century of folk Marxism.”