Archive for December, 2006

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Casanova’s secret revealed

20 Dec 2006

Chapter 3,498 from the ‘nerds attempt to use logic and their allegedly superior brainpower to get women to date them’ school of website is How to make a hot woman unconscious in 30 minutes or less.

That’s not unconscious as in asleep, for which rohypnol is perfectly adequate, but unconscious as in freed from the preconceptions and prejudices of the conscious mind.

What’s wrong with the conscious mind, you ask? The author tells us, as a result of “show-stopping superficial preferences that are mostly perpetuated by their culture and past experiences”, women think ‘I want a rich man’ or ‘I want a muscly man’. Based on these completely unfounded and foolish prejudices, they refuse to date anyone who is too poor or weedy. Such as, I suspect, the author.

But penniless weaklings need be single no longer, thanks to Dan’s highly tuned psychomological nerd brain.

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Posted in nerds, sensitive stuff about chicks, techno-wankery | No Comments »

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Keep the Lord out of the law

19 Dec 2006

The poor old religious right in this country gets a hard time from those lefty atheist communists in the media, Gerard Henderson complains, because they dare to speak about matters of private morality in public. Utter poppycock, and he knows it.

The problem, Gerard me old china plate, is not advocating a position on private morality, it is legislating one.

In the US, and increasingly in this country, the religious right is on a crusade to influence politicians so they will pass laws that strip people of the rights to act in ways the god botherers say is immoral. Banning abortion? Gagging gay rights? Stymieing stem cell research? That is public morality, Gerard old son. It is saying “I consider this immoral, therefore nobody should be allowed to do it”.

It works really well in places like Iran where you can be hanged in public for committing adultery. (Generally only if you’re a woman, though, so not to worry mate.) Don’t start coming over all disingenuous about the poor maligned religious nutters being denied their rights to speak. They can say whatever they like as long as they keep the Lord out of the law.

Posted in filthy kike propaganda, media, politics, violence | No Comments »

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What were they smoking?

14 Dec 2006

While Kerry O’Brien and the regular crew are on holidays, I take it the 7.30 Report has been taken over by a crack squad of “fair and balanced” right-wing lunatic propagandists.

How else do you explain last night’s rabid anti-drug, anti-fact reporting on the Mental Health Council of Australia’s report Where There’s Smoke, a study of cannabis use and mental health?

Technically the MHCA’s report is more of a literature review; it doesn’t contain any original research, just summarises and analyses what other people have already said and makes a series of recommendations. It is, to a fault, conservative and balanced in its findings, using cautious language such as:

  • Cannabis use precipitates schizophrenia in people who have a family history of that mental illness
  • There is a 2-3 times greater incidence of psychotic symptoms among those who used cannabis, however, the epidemiological data shows that cannabis cannot be considered a major causal factor
  • More frequent cannabis use is associated with higher relapse rates for people with psychosis and more severe symptoms were associated with increased risk of cannabis relapse
  • Cannabis can induce schizophrenia-like symptoms in otherwise healthy individuals

The 7.30 Report was not so careful. Where the MHCA report cautiously finds correlation, the 7.30 Report loudly trumpets causation. Will journalists ever learn the difference?!

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Posted in damned lies and statistics, drugs, media, politics, science | 1 Comment »

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I hate agreeing with him

14 Dec 2006

Interviewed on Insiders last weekend, the PM was asked why he was opposed to a federal takeover of the heath system. The obvious answer being, he’s opposed to it because Kevin Rudd suggested it. Whereas when Tony Abbott threatened to do the same thing in months and years past, I never heard the PM calling it a bad idea. But the PM’s answer is odd.

I’m not , Barrie, convinced that a federal bureaucracy would run state hospitals any more efficiently than a state bureaucracy. And I’m also of the view that, with all of its failings, and the Australian health system has a lot of failings, it’s a better health system than just about any in comparable countries around the world. And you have to ask yourself, if the Federal Government takes over public hospitals, why shouldn’t it take over public schools or government schools, and, in the end, you might question the long term need to have states.

Yes! Exactly! Right on! You might question the need to have states. Unfortunately I think the PM was saying this is a bad thing. What’s so bad about it?

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Male bashing

9 Dec 2006

Here we were thinking the main problem with the media, gender-wise, is how it treats women in negative, demeaning and stereotypical ways, when it turns out men are the ones who get rough treatment. So says Jim Macnamara in his media research PhD thesis at the University of Western Sydney, as spruiked some months ago in On Line Opinion and reported a few days ago in the Terror and today in the SMH.

So, is Doc Macnamara’s thesis right-wing post-feminist backlash, pantywaist men’s movement bollocks or a serious commentary on the terrible state of society?

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Posted in damned lies and statistics, media, sensitive stuff about chicks | 1 Comment »

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Confessions of an ex-nerd

3 Dec 2006

Went to see Tripod at the Metro tonight. Now I just thought I enjoyed their musical talents, great harmonies and clever, whimsical and piss-funny lyrics. But judging from the complete absence of fashionably (or even well-) dressed people at the gig, it appears being a Tripod fan makes me a complete nerd.

I will, of course, admit to having been a nerd in high school, although I never needed glasses or owned a pocket protector. I was in the chess and computer clubs, did the lighting and sound at school plays and wasn’t very good at sport. Guilty. But I have outgrown my nerdly ways, aside from liking They Might Be Giants, and am almost never nerdy these days. Or so I thought.

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Posted in music, nerds | No Comments »