Lies ,wrongdoing and asking questions

Its the last day of Parliament for 2012 , and it will be dominated by a frustrating war of words that is all the worse for being so personal.  No one wants this sort of nonsense to be the main game in Parliament  and both major parties will be under scrutiny for their clear role in prolonging it . One it seems by asking questions,  and the other for not answering questions.
Whatever comes to light today (29th November 2012) The Prime Ministers and Cabinets reliance on "lawyer speak" ( cf using a variety of language ) goes down badly with those of us who think the matter is about facts ( did Julia write a letter to defend the setting up of a slush fund) and answering questions.WE can all be pedants but no dispute at home resolves if we do that !
As Nixon, the lawyer,  so famously said " Remember you can always say " I don't remember"  and that expression is today---the theme . Similarly saying "I did nothing wrong" ( or the term "no wrongdoing") can be  a legally acceptable  cover for wrongdoing because in the  Western tradition noone is assumed guilty unless proven guilty - because the question has not been put in a court of law ; therefore because there is no court,  there is technically no "wrongdoing ". "Lies" similiarly
The fact that our society at present ,  like many,  before it has lost sight of the basis for its legal principles ( and its very high sensitivity to the extremely delicate matter of knowledge) is no excuse - and only adds to the importance of "answering questions ".( the basis for responsibility - answer- ability)  Infact, the public confusion ( wrong in principle or wrong in law? ) being used to cover the poor use of words by Labor could be considered an abuse of public trust.
The opposition are allowed and even encouraged to ask questions , Those in power don't have to answer them( noone can force anyone to do anything that isn't against the law in this country or ever - we have a wonderful rights and legal system ) , but if they don't , it reflects badly on those in power .
Sending in the troops to defend someone also doesn't work if the person facing a straight accusation doesn't directly answer it themselves ( we are all perosnally responsible for our own actions and how we explain them is our business) - If someone fails to defend themselves against an accusation they are wasting the courts time - given to them in grace and opportunity . There has been a lot of not answering questions  in Parliament-- of various kinds --Labor
I hope Julia did nothing wrong in principle in this case and can legitimately  use the valid excuse of " not knowing ". If she  has done the wrong she's not alone but a  lawyer in her situation has only one option .To use language to answer questions ------not to hide behind language. Plead guilty or not guilty.

Mere words man

Its just not fair ! The girls were miffed that the mouths of the men kept moving without a break ;  the wise women were not being heard , in the end , on The Q&A panel on Monday night. Maybe they had enough sense to stay out of the game going on at that point .
I wouldn't be too worried .  So few know where equality begins and ends and where quality and diversity and unity start . Pedantry abounds and mere words and mere time given to them are a shallow preoccupation,  if you want to get to the big picture.
Because when they spoke,  the women made sense - we remember not how much time you had,  but how well you spoke .Wonderful,  light and clear.
I don't believe in progress as a religion because until our parliamentary put a qualitative filter on the conversation,  men will continue to be think themselves wise for all their words;  and be seen as fools for removing all doubt by using too many .( Kevin Rudd clearly took the cake on the night)
 Kiss is the principle and Concatenation the guide:  Proverbs 11 provides the ground floor of Parliament just as 1 Corinthians and Matthew 11: 25 should echo politely and succinctly around its walls.

Don't be too greek - its likely to set us ALL back a few thousand years.

Real progress is illusive

“When modern sociologists talk of the necessity of accommodating one’s self to the trend of the time, they forget that the trend of the time at its best consists entirely of people who will not accommodate themselves to anything. At its worst it consists of many millions of frightened creatures all accommodating themselves to a trend that is not there.”

- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
Everyone agrees we need an education revolution in Australia. Greenlabor are afraid that it may only occur if we look more closely at what worked in the past -that's awefully conservative stuff .

ABCTV's reputation on a downhill slide

Re Steam pictures + pollution?  on ABC again today

It would be great in 2020 ,if our once great ABC is still as highly regarded as it has been during its history to date . Some ABC journos are quite happy to risk some of the ABC's hard earned capital ; by carelessly adding adjectives to subjects and images that "say "something that they really don't say . Now in competition with the internet, this is no time for compromise, confusion , preaching or junior school ABC .
As all good Westerners know , the old 8th commandment is not only not known,  but not obeyed by many now whose attitude is " all truth is my truth to tell"  .Worse,"all" means justifying using images and adjectives to carry the case - Mcluhan would have failed some of them . ABC management  need to apply ecological common sense here - short term gain,  long term pain.

The ABC are of course,  like the public,  confused about what is actually coming out of all those stacks some stash infront of us as they try to tell a story about carbon . A proper report on the subject would help!!!!! The product of combustion is actually 2 green house gases . One works against the other so there is some sort of balance that's not talked about. Fortunately,  for all of us, we don't have to follow all the myriad of gas and  electromagnetic equations to decide whether warming will or will not be driven by combustion of composed carbon on earth . We should be free of the stupid fear that just because our car engines are hot the atmosphere will warm . Every night without a fight , the heat it moves off site . We have the history of the earth to tell us the general direction of things but no the media ( how different is the ABC these days ?) captivate and use the people's fear blindly ignoring the need for science ( not talk of what " scientists say" ) to address it . Its about credibility and whose gaining it and whose losing it and who simply is not being heard 
But the ABC don't want to let geologists talk - they disagree with some whose grasp of these issues is through their computers .
Warming , like combustion,  produces more clouds and more rain . That's why kindergarten class run by Flannery have had to move from GW panic to AGW panic to CC panic to get away from their mistaken primary causes . Flannery is of course a father of the year so we hear  - a father of lies? ,because  a good father would confess his mistakes ,  so the family is no longer confused . so should the ABC .

Also , the ABC should stop pushing the story by still calling the 2 products you can see in the picture as pollution . Elementary ecology will tell you that the real wonder of the world is recycling of both. Any politicians or ABC journo who dares mention the word "resilience"  ought to ask themselves whether they really know what it means for the rest of their story - and consult someone who practices in it,  providing real hope for a world of people now in fear of almost any risk or pressure at all .
The real discussion about the real need for a real education revolution has yet to happen.

We maybe alone in the universe,but we may also not be

Whats next in exploring the universe? - the big meet ?The Curiosity is confronted by mere aluminosilicates , the Voyager light years of empty and our place is producing food ,fantasy and fun every second .maybe there is more happening than we will ever see..http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

Equality - some marriages could be more equal than others

The farce of the farm continues amongst our leaders with not even a whisper about great literature from any party.
Literature is that stuff that summaries and points to the substance whereas mere science and philosophy is too cumbersome to come to the point quickly and succintly.

There is a saying that s its better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt . While the polys lapped up the attention this week over talk of their heroes , many of them would have been better off to say nothing . The key offenders revealed that they don't read widely enough and made us think their wisdom comes too much from listening to themselves ( if only) .

John Stuart Mill mentors Hockey and Swan swoons over Springsteen, but no one mentions Orwell.

Those in charge want us to dance again to the animal farm rules of equality. Where all animals talk equality but no one but the pigs in charge know what it really means.  If marriage is to be equal, why can’t a man who can afford them, have as many wives as he likes? And why wouldn’t those of us who insist that marriage best be monogamous be prosecuted for discrimination under equal equality laws? Maybe we live in the land of double speak and just don’t know it?  The older children are certainly in charge, but will the children of the future be discriminated against in a world where even “mum” and “dad” mean different things to different people

 Hockey won the point with  us /many by putting John Stuart Mills name forward as a great thinker of his time. If we are to reach young people,  it seems to me a testimony that relates to the present is critical . Would the mere mention of Galbraith , Ghandi  or Mandella have gazumped the dance 
party atmosphere by those who are now just playing around  ? 

The Violence Inside

Fear of what caused someone to go and kill lots of innocent people this week cuts deep into our psyche . Tragedy triggers some irrational thoughts and responses . We all ask why, but some are too quick to state an explanation. To quick because cause is multifactede and those who truly seek it find more than the wannabes ever wanted to find . Even non religious people want to believe that we are rational and caring  but I  think the evidence is that neither the violent and the non violent are not wholly objective in response .We all have violence lurking within .  The worst response is not to see that inside us all are some very serious occasional violent thoughts that are under some control .
Another really poor projection is to call for better modelling by SOME people who often get angry and sin , because we all do both sometime .
Probably most dangerous of all is to condemn the sinner with the sin. To focus on those persons whose outward anger is more easily triggered,  is to potentially project the problem and not deal with the root causes . I have worked with enough very violent young people to know that one of the  triggers to great danger of  them " not caring"  is the blatant condemnation of their behaviour by others .If they don't know 1  person who really cares for them ( enough to get angry with them  up front and tell them the truth -) they are extremely dangerous !( And don't You say it doesn't happen ( with people afraid to stand up to anger with anger it happens alright- smoking guns everywhere !)

The short fuse angry man knows better than to blame a brain fade- that's the sort of armchair excuse you invent is you listen to the radio too much ,  are always solving other problems, and forget the real people who get angry with you in your presence . Anger is much more real than the calm talk ,  and dealing with it must be real . People need to show they really don't condemn the person because of their behaviour .  Have faith in people to change and You get angry too  because you care enough to try and shake them. The pathetic pursuit of  peace at all costs is VERY costly .
The danger for our society for  is for it  to create a deliberate determination to legislate brain fade  ( an excuse ) INSTEAD of handing out natural ( dummbies ignore adrenalin ) reality therapy :  seeing and accepting  the difference between condemning the sin and the sinner.is also critical.    Theconfused and shallow thinking that welds the 2 together  is putting our families and school's and our work places at much greater risk than they should be .Mere description is  too simple !
Society is not better if everyone complies and is passive,  but if quite natural anger is expressed and observers take seriously the concerns of those who get angry . To smooth over is to create the nanny state pretence that all is well because " noone is getting upset " .
NO--- all is not well because what's smoothed over is about to erupt again -------like night follows day .

Players who see their team member's get mad can best help those players by accepting that the cause is probably fair enough ( anger is not a sin in western culture but it is increasingly seen as such amongst post moderns and determinist's who see nurture as the only issue .
Our society is clearly in a state of depression BECAUSE we are not allowed to show our anger , Michael Carr Greg is in denial , as are lots of people who refuse to see the popular rejection of old distinctions , "wrath is bad "ideas  and their placement of  roadblocks to emotional relief .
What this means is that partners with a longer fuse can condemn those with a shorter - not exactly progress and not exactly liberating .
Natural determination becomes natural condemantion - a very serious  matter that makes the person feel trapped and desperate .  Unpick the logic the idea before you try to remove the log out of someone else's eye . Your anger is real  too . We all best deal with it .learn the lessons the Master taught so well and so clearly.

The great threats to free speech

Victorians are rightly concerned that newspapers entrusted with a independant and reporting profile are under threat. Despite its great history , The Age has been failing to properly represent a number of groups for quite some time . Pressure of space doesn't help but who is prepared to pay for 2 sides esp on environment where progressives think its all on the new age side ?
The Age still comes up with some good reports but not in the area i am interested in and often only tokenistically . The Australian  is less predictable and therefore  worth a listen and  subscription .Where is the "Andrew Bolt "amongst the Age's reporters?
 The real problem then is a growing lack of diversity in newspaper content .
what Internet lacks in quality it makes up in diversity, feedback and undermining the pedantry and predjudice that were always limits in newspaper reporting. 

Evolve or Die is their cry

Such is the cry of the truly desperate .Those who cannot argue -preach .Those failing to addreess the last question rationally  use the words and phrases "move on"  or "let's progress" because theirultimate faith is not intheir own logic but what's around the corner .Their faith in progress, in keeping moving and in some esoteric faith in evolution . This sort of evolution advocacy has now the staus of a god . Such faith is not testable because it can only be proved by change itself . All such advocates have to do is talk about something new being better.
pleased to hear a prominent ABC discussion leader today resist the attempt to conclude a discussion on that religiuos note in their attempt to justify changing history and word meanings - the language is evolving ( and we are leading that evolutionary move ")

Once Categorized - the lesson from the shock is filled away

RE Labor party down to as few as 8 seats in a landslide loss in QLD at the weekend

At bottom of Labor's loss is a con. The Greens con Labor into thinking they know what they are doing. While Labor don't see it, they will continue to fall into deep holes .
In city central Buffers , rules and taxes work to make things work better environmentally.  In the real world Green labor allianaces are simply not credible.
I would be the last person to say exploitation of the earth is NOT one of our biggest challenges BUT  Mere words are not enough.We can all talk problems ,but few there be that know solutions. The greatest evil is done in the name of the best intentions. You must be good at doing environment before you offer solutions to environment. If the Greens were serious about being credible they would study the subject a lot more deeply BEFORE they opened their mouths and sought to prize open our purses.


When something unexpected happens we all ask why ? And just a bit more deeply when the shock is deeper than normal .

Children often don't realise there is a problem with their lives direction until they get shock therapy. What about adults ?
Children might blame asset sales , swings and sickness, the gene pool or even bad advice from someone else ( not normal as so seldom done )  but real cause may go down unnoticed. Adults might blame their neglect of oikonomia is due to their commitment to bringing the bread in  but really its still bad personal balance. The more we believe in the righteousness of our reasons for stubbornly refusing to address the problems of oikomia  the more we seem to not wanna budge;  child or parent . Best intentions are the smoke screen we put up to hide ourselves from the truth.
Blyth , in her result speech mentioned her best intentions but few picked up on their significance  as one of the key causes for her governments loss of credibility.

The trouble seems to be that , unless the shock is personal , we tend to be happy with shallow answers . We can con ourselves about our lack of complicity . Blame someone else.
Many of the audience are happy with  any answer  that's not personal because it avoids the most painful thing - the role of the personal . Even the critical important question for pollies - how much was I conned , often neer gets properly addressed ? QLD labor people need to cut their ties , reflect and repent of the half truths they perpetuated . Such rebuilding takes time
People who practice science ( cf those who talk science) know that its a tedious business to check "why"
The result is that most of the people who talk too early on the subject of " something outside them" talk too shallowly and tend to project blame on an institution or a cause out side the personal . This of course is crap because the con is real . After all , last straw is not the important factor or the secondary loss may not be the primary loss factor . Labor's loss has
Julia Gillard is right to mention deep rebuilding but will the party dig deep enough . At least she like the new QLD leader recognises  the danger - in power the tendency to think "we know what we are doing" can be overwhelming  .
If you never get beyond the SMD,  you never realize that describing the problem is nothing compared to describing the solutions . The Greens can't even get the problems right, so what business is it of Labor to listen to them .
YOU never move on if you build on sand . You never move on if you don't recognise where you were conned and conned yourself .
We are afraid,of course,  when threatened like Blyth must be , that we have believed a lie. Admitting we have believed a lie is not to die or fall into the abyss,  but to find a foundation . To admit we have been part of the lie is the same .WE are never rich when we know what to do,  only when we are poor in the spirit .  The problem is , if we don't get to the bottom of the problem,  others who love and care for us may also wait a lifetime till we do.  Do good -do better next time

Dumbed down Australia

Julia is concerned about  "education" . Joe Hockey is preoccupied with  "productivity" and Penny Wong likes, this week at least , the word "resilience" .(ABCqanda 6 Feb 2012)  Pack of dummies the lot of them .
Just throwing these words around,  as carelessly as they do,  shows they can't be trusted to unpick the processes that would cause them to cut deeply on these subjects  .
Some may argue that they are appealing to the ignorant,  or some bottom line in the audience understanding of issues . Q&;A format doesn't help; just like it doesn't answer questions (but speculates on motivation )but allows Jones to dumb down any deep issue.  Judith Sloan  at least got a few words in edgeways (explaining them) .
I say , don't do it too often or you'll only reinforce the view amongst thinking Australians that this tribe of wannabes don't think ; by treating us as dummies - becoming dummies yourself
Everyone must unpick the word or kill the spirit of the idea:
Otherwise the idea that they don't know what they are talking about will dominate: as it does amongst children trying to watch Q&A

Nothing in recent days proves the dumbing down than the silly and simple consensus  that a piece of paper and a particular word ( W1, W2 or W3) should identify the scapegoats for the OLD floods (Blame is  never allowed to be a poly) - the flood managers of Wivenhoe dam.   (I know the media  think W1 is a process but that's still the sort of stupid limits we put on ideas these days .

 Let the pedants rule and we spend our last dollar fighting each other in the courts

 Scientists shouldn't be judged on compliance with guidelines they draft , but on decisions they make. Q&A and pollies are not credible when they speak for scientists but don't LET them speak for themselves.
An all party problem - that's how deep the dumbing down is going 

Fighting off disaster

Nothing breaks up the parties of wannabes and their worrier friends than a real environmental event. The chooks are all amok because of floods.   Rural people are used to wavering fear dread and disaster talk from the left field . What Australia,  that country of innovators and planners don't seem to see  is that while the wooriers are in charge noone is safe .
If the worriers are not looking in the right places  (eg science in practice focus) , so the tax effort and all the bells and whistles are all wasted.
The key clue to the disaster in crude old Canberra  is that, like Captain Bligh the latter ,  they think that good decisions come from a piece of paper,  not a person . Personal responsibility is the be all , end all of Western politics and many of our pollies don't even know it .
We need not fear being physically overtaken by the east , we are already been overtaken by it by the way we think /don't think .

Marriage, democracy and other sacred objects

The above 2 words are losing their value . Being treated as sacred  isn't helping revive interest in the best way to keep their original meanings alive in our culture and keeping sense of their importance as ideals .
The hypocrisy of not allowing a discussion is more obvious, it seems to me , if we observe the phenomenon in another culture.
Why for example are PapuaNG ( esp this week )leaders both keen to look like they are running a democracy,  when one or many parties don't respect the spirit of it . ( NEWS  ALSO  /Syria/ Iraq/ Thailand) Truthfulness about " a no talk situation "would help us see the truth and how to keep the spirit alive . No talk prevents discussion and allows abuse by religious isolation and veneration.

Is the hypocrisy evident in  current PNG politics ( 2 leaders claiming  to represent the people ) something we TOO could be excused of .
Marriage is observed  (Both leaders claim parliamentary support ) but family breakdown is obvious.  These dumb observances, mere description  and talk of mere numbers  fail to deal with the hypocrisy and key disease of "allowing everybody to  do your own thing as morally right" .Good governance becomes by default bad governanace if you don't define governance better that the rule of the majority ( The Greeks knew this,  why don't we?The Greeks knew that information is power (Aristocracy) why don't we?    The real status of any  marriage amongst political leaders is obviuos -often  only just a piece of paper .Worse,  it can be plain hypocrisy on the part of parties;  less than worthless,  plain distracting .
Marriage and democracy isn't a problem to those who know what it really means . Refusing to discuss what it means can mean that a new generation won't know what it really means !
In our own culture,  Marriage equality is made out to be a big ambition that we must and haven't achieved to date. Surely such an ambition, if achieved ,will be a hollow one  because redefinition will kill the spirit of the word just as technofix over it now ,when marraige no longer works for most people, has killed the interest . My point is , the spirit is more easily lost by seeking to shore up some silly sacred view of it .

Finding Happiness

If we knew , we could be millionaires; so why aren't I ? I won't go there just yet but , in truth I have "moved on"  far enough to know its not about money .
So there  goes the value of a democratic survey - most people are not "there yet"  so you can't trust them to know about being millionaires .The majority may also still believing the TV or the group , the talk or whatever ; unlikely to say No to status they haven't yet got ; an exoperinece they haven't had  .
BUT It must be something else . You only have to ask for money from the rich to know that the mathematics of happiness does not include the joy of giving for most of them (statistically poor people do enjoy giving more (so put that in your excel chart and smoke it )

The Australia Institute are on a search for happiness sources ( Well being survey ). If its as fruitful as the search for comedy at the moment,,  they might have to think a bit more laterally to actually ask for the right descriptors " .
me thinks AI's  ambition is infact a sign of the disease in our society - most people aren't prepared to look widely enough to answer this question .
The answer is clearly that it's a bit spiritual- and spiritual doesn't sit well with many .The herd is not a good modelling agent AI
Jesus is quoted as saying Happiness is actually to do with NOT having things .( Matthew 5:3) He's a bit weird; right out there even.
But is He right? He claims to be God and if he's right this might be the big picture universe picture.