Year: 2014

Entering the Age of Fictional News

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

A reader in British Columbia told me yesterday that the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. has been shaping the recent AirAsia plane crash into a “narrative.”

Other news agencies worldwide have been blaming the crash on bad weather–hasn’t bad weather caused many airplane crashes, over the years?–or even “unique,” or extra-bad, weather ( http://www.newsdocument.com/news/airasia-flight-qz8501-unique-weather-may-have-caused-plane-crash-says-ceo-sydney-morning-herald ).

Logical reasoning is built on syllogisms. Example: If an animal has feathers, it is a bird; a buzzard has feathers; therefore a buzzard is a bird. But CBC reasoning is based on what we might call silly-gisms. Like so:

Really bad weather is caused by Climate Change.

The plane crash was caused by bad weather.

Therefore Climate Change caused the plane to crash.

Note: if you can’t see that this is silly reasoning, you have good cause to worry about your intellectual capacity. But here are some hints to help you. 1. There is no such thing as a global climate. 2. The climates found on the earth are constantly changing. 3. There has always been bad weather, even really bad weather: long before there were any airplanes.

As the year draws hourly to its close, the sheer idiocy of Global Warming arguments continues to deepen.

What causes Global Warming?

Your car, but not Al Gore’s private jet. Your home air conditioning, but not the ruling class’s mansions. Also involved as causal factors are Income Inequality, Homophobia, Racism, Binary Gender Definition, White Privilege, and, of course, the crime of Climate Change Denial. In 2010 a poll taken by Enviro-something-or-other, paid for by “eight advocacy organizations,” reported that 80% of Canadians believe Global warming is caused by “consumerism” ( http://www.cbc.ca/news/consumerism-causes-climate-change-poll-1.953486 ). Nothing phony about that, kimosabe–even if an 80% consensus is more like an old Saddam Hussein re-election number than anything from the real world. But the CBC reported it with great enthusiasm.

They want to redistribute your money, take away your freedoms, reduce your standard of living, and feed their own insatiable appetites for power for its own sake–all in the name of Saving the Planet.

May God deliver us out of their hands.

P.S.: My thanks to all the visitors and readers who made 2014 such a successful year for this blog. See you tomorrow! Which will be next year.

The Global Warming Fantasy Factory

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I write fantasy novels, and one of the purposes of this blog is to try to get people interested in my books.  I write stories about people who do not exist, living in an imaginary world. My work is fiction.

Which is to say, it’s getting kind of hard to tell the work I do from the work done by various “journalists” and politicians. But there is a difference. My work is plainly labeled “fantasy.” Their fiction is labeled “news” and “public policy.”

Lately they’re  calling it “narrative journalism,” which is a euphemism for “not true.” Somehow plugging in the euphemism makes it ethical and respectable to tell lies. Hey, the lies are in a good cause–the furtherance of the howling-at-the-moon Far Left political agenda.

The crown jewel of that agenda is Global Warming. It is fiction packaged as “science.” If they can only make it stick, the world’s ruling class will justify anything they do, and I do mean anything, as necessary for Saving The Planet.

No matter how many times they get caught lying and cheating, the Global Warming “scientists” just will not give it up. Nor will the global big shots. The payoff is just too dazzling. And so we have the United Nations, that weird collection of socialists, Islamofascists, dictators, and clowns, gearing up to hold a great big Global Warming confab.

And all the lefty journalists are breathlessly reporting that the Pope–the Pope, mind you!–is even now preparing an encyclical exhorting Roman Catholics, as a moral imperative, to “fight Global Warming” ; and he’s gonna show up at the big UN pow-wow to lead the charge.

This is narrative journalism.

It is not true.

Official Vatican sources show there is no such encyclical in the works ( http://godfatherpolitics.com/19450/pope-call-action-global-warming/ ). This is not the first time lefty “journalists” (an oxymoron) have put words into the Pope’s mouth. But he brings it on himself by playing footsy with them.

My fantasy is written to edify and entertain, and there is not the slightest risk that you will believe one of my books is factual.

The Global Warming fantasy is put out there to separate you from your money, take away your freedom, and make fantastically rich people even richer.

I think you’re better off with my stuff.

 

2014 in review

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 21,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 8 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

My Generation Ruined America

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It was a pretty nice United States of America that my father’s generation handed us: stable, strong, prosperous, greatest country in the world. But my generation, my peers, the damned fools who went to college in the 1960s–we’ve wrecked it.

What have we done?

We are governed by the slimiest crew of cretins that ever crawled out from under a rock, and “educated” by life-forms even lower on the scale. Not that we deserve much better. We are thoroughly convinced that there are inalienable “rights” to practice sodomy, loot grocery stores, use the bathroom reserved for the opposite sex, and to stretch out one’s hand to receive money that someone else worked for while the recipient sat around playing video games and getting high.

How did we come to this? It happened right under our noses, in the light of day; and yet I can’t tell you how it happened, and I’ve never met anyone who can. All I can tell you is that this most definitely is not the America I was born and raised in. I don’t know what it is. A freak show, I suppose.

For the sake of ten just men, God would have spared Sodom. How many do we have to come up with?

Pray, pray, and pray some more. God hears us. If we can’t see what He’s doing about any of this mess, then it must be that He’s working in a way we cannot see.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1). Go to bed in faith, rise up in faith, walk through the day in faith. Wait upon the Lord; for the judge of all the earth shall always do right.

Wow! What Great TV!

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Don’t you love it when something you haven’t seen since you were a kid turns out to be every bit as good as you remembered it, when you finally see it again, 40 or 50 years later? (And don’t think I ever dreamed I would one day be writing that sentence!)

As a boy, one of my all-time favorite TV shows was Wagon Train. It had a long run, 1957-65, and such a strong, elastic format, that it even survived the death of its star, Ward Bond, in 1960.

How could it miss? You start with a bunch of people from all different backgrounds, stuck with one another on a wagon train; and the train has to cross up to two thousand miles of dangerous, untamed country.

Add to that the truly brilliant concept of focusing each episode on a different person, and enlisting the best actors in America to play those characters. The guest star is the top banana in the episode; the regulars are on hand to provide continuity from week to week and to keep the overall story moving. For example, the episode entitled “The Joshua Gilliam Story” stars Dan Duryea as a psychopathic con man posing as a beloved schoolteacher, and joining the wagon train in that disguise.

Imagine a TV show today with guest stars like Bette Davis, Peter Lorre, Ernest Borgnine, Mickey Rooney, Claire Trevor–aw, heck, you can’t even get a feature film with stars like that anymore.

Maybe you think I’m talking through my hat. “C’mon, it’s only a western! Bang, bang, gotcha!” But really–the Wagon Train format allowed the show’s writers to do any kind of story they pleased. It never got stale. Drama, comedy, confrontations with the unknown, psychological study–you’ll find ’em all in this show.

I received for Christmas this year the complete Season 3, 37 episodes, released by Timeless Media Group and available via amazon.com–1,900 minutes of just about everything. The Western setting is just the background: the business at hand is the characters.

And yes, it’s as good as I remember it, if not better. And all done without having people leering at each other before they tear off their clothes to fornicate. You actually have to have a few functioning brain cells to appreciate the sometimes-subtle nuances of a Wagon Train episode.

Ugh–the thought of trying to make this series today, with what we laughingly call “actors,” uttering lines written for them by certified idiots… Fap! Now I’m gonna have bad dreams about that.

 

A Great, Thumping Lie

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Let’s see… We’ve got riots all over the place, protesters chanting “Waddawe want? Dead cops,” and waddaya know, two cops get murdered… “flash mobs” looting stores, gangs of “teens”–that means they’re all black–battering and sometimes even killing elderly, defenseless white victims in games of “knockout”…

And our glorious Community Organizer-in-chief, in the sixth year of the first job he’s ever held, says race relations in America have gotten a lot better since he took office.

I know I have to be careful, writing about this: but, gee whiz, what planet is he on? He’s spent six years jumping feet-first into every racial controversy in the news, and always on the side of the black party. Always. And so has his attorney general, who used to be Bill Clinton’s bagman back when that departing president was selling pardons.

Race relations are getting better? Where ought we to look, if we want to see that? Or is it just another one of those broad, sweeping lies that this worst-president-ever excels in? He says the economy’s looking good, too. And Obamacare’s a great success.

The combination of deep-rooted evil and rampant foolishness is a potent one, and that’s what we’ve got in the White House.

We just had an election in which the voters demanded, in no uncertain terms, “Stop him!” And he’s acting like it never happened.

I don’t enjoy writing about politics on this blog. But “race relations have gotten better since I took office”?

I wonder that the very stones don’t cry out against this lie.

UK Doctors Ordered to Rat Out Patients Who Gain Weight

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The National Health Service is going to go all out to fight obesity in Britain; and the campaign will begin with doctors snitching on their patients if they put on weight ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/11295265/Doctors-told-to-report-patients-who-put-on-weight.html ).

So much for the confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship. Makes it kind of hard to trust your doctor, if you know he’s going to tattle on you.

The story in The Telegraph does not tell us what the government intends to do after they hear that Joe Blow has gained five pounds.

It’s all for their own good, of course. Socialism has so thoroughly infantalized the Brits that the government must literally guide the spoon into their mouths. Supposedly, Britain is “now the second fattest nation in Europe, with almost 25% of Britons classified as obese–compared with a European average of 16.7%,” according to the news article. The head honcho of the NHS says schools, parents, the NHS and the food industry must all “work in unison” to change “attitudes” and whip up a new “national programme” to make people healthier. Get their employers, the honcho suggested, to give out prizes to employees who lose weight.

And if that doesn’t work… well, again, they aren’t saying.

No one seems to be asking why so many Britons are overeating. Is it just because food of all kinds, including sweets and snack foods, is so easily and abundantly available, and it’s a pleasure to consume it?

Is it not so easy to come by other ways of experiencing pleasure?

Are people in this socialist paradise spiritually starving, and trying to assuage this hunger by gulping down food?

Ah, what the heck–whatever it is, government will fix it.

Just like it fixes everything else.

P.S. Thirty-eight years ago today, Patty and I had our first date. In early February I proposed marriage and she accepted. In August we were married. Our employer said, “Can’t you do that on your vacation?”

On Christmas Day

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No, I’m not really working. I’m way too tired to work. Patty and I hope to rest today, on Christmas Day.

It’s not that there’s nothing to write about. If anything, there’s much too much to write about. But it’s not getting through my door today. Today belongs to the King of Kings.

I’m only writing this to say hello and Merry Christmas to you, my readers.

But if you really do want to read something meatier than that, see my Christmas Day column on News With Views, http://newswithviews.com/Duigon/lee282.htm . Don’t worry, I wrote it several days ago. It’s a look at Christmas through the lens of 1 Corinthians Chapter 1.

Meanwhile, the sun has finally come out. I think I’ll go outside.

See youse all tomorrow.

Christmas Eve Greetings

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Here it is, Christmas Eve, and when I get up from this computer, I must begin the long labor of setting up our Christmas tree. Hours later, when I’ve finally finished, and sit back to drink my iced tea and listen to a little more Christmas music, my wife will take the duck out of the oven and we’ll have Christmas dinner.

Hey, as long as you’re here, have a seat and talk to me while I grapple with these ornaments and warn off the cats.

We have shut the door against the world today: no one allowed in but family, friends, and angels. And memories. People and places we have loved. The people have moved on to glory; the world has swallowed up the places. But there is a place the world can’t swallow up, and that is where the people are now.

May the Holy Spirit be with you all this Christmas Eve.

Lee and Pat

 

The World’s Smartest Spider

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Believe it or not, this is not a real spider. It’s a model of a spider… built by a spider.

As our civilization gets torn apart, mostly by the very people who are supposed to hold it together, there are hundreds of disheartening news stories out there today that I could blog about.

But not with Christmas coming. The good news, that the Word became flesh, that our sins are covered, that God has imputed Christ’s righteousness to us who believe in Him–that dwarfs all the bad news. The news of this fallen world doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the Incarnation.

So instead, I’m going to write about spiders: a special kind of spider.

Two years ago, explorers discovered, in the jungles of the Amazon, an itsy-bitsy spider who does something a lot more complicated than to climb up a water spout.

This spider builds a lifelike dummy ot a spider, many times its own size, and positions it so that it will move around when the real spider jiggles the web from a safe distance ( http://www.wired.com/2012/12/spider-building-spider/ ). The dummy is anatomically accurate and probably fools a lot of predators.

Really, you’ve got to see this. If the link above doesn’t work, just search “spider makes dummy spider,” or something like that, and you’ll get pictures and videos galore.

How does a spider, with a brain so small as almost not to count, know to create a convincing model of a spider?

Of course, the petrified mind immediately trots out the magic word, “Evolution!” As if that told us anything. Yes, blind chance, yatta-yatta, gives us a spider that can do sculpture, just like it gave us Shakespeare’s plays and Houdini’s great escapes.

But if you’re too old to believe in fairy tales, enjoy the sculpting spider and rejoice in the infinite variety of God’s creation.

Two more days till Christmas.