Fuck Jew!

I haven’t permanently abandoned CD. Honestly, it’s just that I’ve been struggling to do any blogging at all recently. But while I’m passing through, here’s the first of a couple of quickies for you.

This is old, but probably still current:

Following is a table of the offensive language, this year’s ranking and its chart position two years ago…

WORD	2000	1998
Cunt	1	1
Motherfucker*	2	2
Fuck	3	3
Wanker*	4	4
Nigger*	5	11
Bastard	6	5
Prick	7	7
Bollocks*	8	6
Arsehole	9	9
Paki*	10	17
Shag	11	8
Whore	12	13
Twat	13	10
Piss off	14	12
Spastic	15	14
Slag	16	18
Shit	17	15
Dickhead*	18	19
Pissed off	19	16
Arse	20	20
Bugger	21	21
Balls	22	22
Jew	23	24
Sodding*	24	23
Jesus Christ	25	26
Crap	26	25
Bloody	27	27
God	28	28

The list can be divided into two groups: expletives, such as “fuck!” and “Jesus Christ!”, some of which have acceptable non-expletive uses; and epithets, such as “Nigger”.

But where does “Jew” fit in? I’ve never heard of it being used as an expletive, for Jew’s sake! So it must be an epithet.

But if we can’t call a Jewing Jew a “Jew”, what the Jew can we call him?

Coercion And Advocacy: One Billion Bulbs

I’d like to participate in this site that aggregates people’s purchases of compact flourescent bulbs, the way Instapundit does. (His readers have just about reached the 10,000 bulb mark.)

Unfortunately, the people running it are apparently virtue fascists of a sort a little too extreme for my  taste. Check out the first sentence of their self-description:

The goal of OneBillionBulbs.com is to convince, coerce and cajole millions of people to replace standard incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs.

(My emphasis.) There are things worth coercing people over. Lightbulbs aren’t one of them. I doubt that Glenn knows of this attitude on their part, since he’s been consistently a voice for voluntary action, not bans.

I’ve tried the CFL bulbs and they work pretty well. There are sizing issues with some fixtures, and I don’t find the CFL light to be as warming as incandescent bulbs, but they’re fantastic for offices, porches, closets, rumpus rooms, etc. I doubt they’ll end up taking over the marketplace, but they should make a big dent in our use of electricity for residential lighting.

Let’s not get bossy about it, though.

Are We Anti-Muslim?

According to a survey by Pew Global Attitudes Project, not really.

British Government Sure Is Smart

The British government is rising the Council Tax for some localities.

People who live in areas with good schools, clean streets and low crime rates face huge increases in their council tax bills.

Home owners and tenants will be charged hundreds, and possibly thousands, of pounds extra if they live in a “locality” deemed by ministers and officials to be more desirable than others. The rises could be as great as four times, sending some bills spiralling from £1,000 to £4,000.

In other words, if your kid does well in school, if you or your neighbors don’t throw garbage (or urinate, defecate or puke) in the streets, and if you don’t commit crimes nor does any of your neighbors, you pay more taxes.

Conversely, street-litterers, parents whose kids don’t get good grades, and criminals essentially get a tax cut.

Leaving aside the pure lunacy of that, what is really interesting about this:

For the first time, data provided by the national census, school exam results and crime statistics will be fed into the calculations. Householder income, cohabitation and, in what many MPs will regard as a highly contentious move, ethnicity will be taken into account. The information being used by the Government distinguishes between “farming communities”, for example, and “multi-ethnic, crowded flats”.

Suit to Strike Pointless Law

The Salt Lake Tribune picked up an Associated Press report that “Salon.com, Nerve.com and other plaintiffs backed by the American Civil Liberties Union are suing over the 1998 Child Online Protection Act.” This is one of many laws that rely on “community standards” to determine when a particular behavior, especially those associated with unpopular though protected free speech, crosses the line and becomes criminal. Such a nebulous definition has always been a recipe for highly selective enforcement, and the AP reports that the Child Online Protection Act has yet to be enforced. However, it gave politicians at the time it was passed the opportunity to line up behind the intention to “protect the children” and enact a pointless law that in fact doesn’t protect anyone from anything.

The chill in the air the Child Online Protection Act creates, however, reminds me of recent brouhahas over an expletive let slip on air, a dramatized rape or sex scene broadcast on network TV (always in poor taste), and the flash of a boob during the Super Bowl halftime show. Those instances resulted in damaged or lost careers and hefty fines for the broadcasters, which also protects no one but does create an atmosphere of low-grade hysteria in public electronic forums. One wonders what sort of world the FCC lives in, where foul language, sex, crime, war, and/or various other atrocities aren’t already replete in the information environment. If we wish to protect children from that reality (itself a suspect motivation), it’s foolhardy to try to choke it off at the source rather than filter it out in the home.

The Child Online Protection Act deserves to be struck down or repealed. I for one hope that some common sense is applied to the issue and that fair-minded thinking prevails.

Who Is Oppressed By The Hijab?

About that feministe…. Following Jill’s previous post covered by bobhayes here, I’ll make some pointers on the headscarf debate matter. Or rather, a single extended point. It is pointed out that wearing a hijab frees religious women to act on the public sphere and:

What we shouldn’t do is support policies which, in the name of “modernism,” only serve to limit the mobility and the public rights of certain women and girls.

(on banning hijabs)

But, on the other hand, should we, in the name of “religious tolerance” support a behaviour that sends a message: “I am pure. I choose to not provoke men with my hair.” When in reality, such behaviour has de facto created a class of women* who are considered to legitimate targets for sexual harrassment by Muslim men (in Muslim countries, and in Western countries with significant Muslim minorities, where Imams encourage this behaviour) After all, if they didn’t want to be treated like whores, surely they would cover up like decent women, right?

Expecting Muslim Employees to Do Their Job: “Bigotry”

Jill is up in arms regarding Aisha Azmi, the Muslim teacher’s assistant in Britain in danger of being let go because she refuses to teach without a headscarf if there could be men around.

Ordinarily I would side with Ms. Azmi. Although I hold no brief for Islam, and my response to the idea that we need religious diversity is “why?”, she’s a citizen (I assume) and so has the same right to religious expression as any other Briton. (Unfortunately, that quanta of rights is apparently diddly-squat if you want to wear a cross. But there OUGHT to be such a right.)

However, Ms. Azmi teaches English to immigrant children. Anybody who has ever learned a foreign language can tell you that being able to see the mouth of the person teaching you is critical to the process. Language acquisition is partially visual. Being able to see the face of your teacher is a bona fide occupational requirement for teaching English.

Jill either doesn’t know this (which, given that her source for the story is another feminist blog which reports Azmi’s assertion that no student has complained but leaves out the statements by the school that students have complained, is not impossible) or she doesn’t care because “evil Western civ oppresses defenseless Muslims” is already congruent to her views. (Or, although I’m reluctant to think it, Jill participates in the surreptitious liberal racism of lower expectations for Others.) Either way, bad show.

(Updated: removed an unfairly generalized “standard” prefix for liberal racism and replaced it with “surreptitious”.)

Goodbye

Ilkka at Sixteen Volts has apparently quitted blogging, and took down all his previous posts. There was a scandal/investigation about some of his postings and sexism in them. I hope this was his own genuine choice. I couldn’t find the article, it was linked in Sixteen Volts, which is now defunct [found via Steve Sailer -Tuomas]. He will focus on his teaching career, which hopefully won’t suffer from the fallout.

In the online world and the blogosphere, it is just too easy to forget the real world and the people in it, especially for an introvert such as me. The whole thing just seemed to gradually escalate until I got this sudden wakeup call. Even for the times when I was right and did present many good ideas and observations, what good did there ever come out of it? When I add everything up, my online writing really did not make the world a better place, as a whole.

[…]

I am deeply humiliated and ashamed by this experience, and at least I understand my place in the whole world much better. This will therefore be enough of the virtual world for me. I will now sign off permanently, thanking everybody for bearing with me, and once more apologizing for everyone who I have hurt or insulted in my thoughtlessness. When I go out next time, I will be looking at the whole world in a very different way.

He was sometimes an insightful blogger, a prolific linker, and a good writer. His flaw was an increasing nasty undercurrent and commitment to schadenfreude, which sometimes overshadowed the points he presented, and tended to cultivate comments that were far more genuinely sexist and nasty than his own provocative points.

Ilkka always seemed to me a generous, critical and intellectually honest person who perhaps got caught in little too many flaming arguments.

[update: Of course, it is entirely possible that this is just until things calm down. Hard to know]

[update 2: Considering the credible threat to Dr. Kokkarinen’s career and reputation, I am even more convinced that this is an apology under the barrel of a gun. It appears that Canada’s commitment to Free Speech has given away to political correctness, and I urge you to give him support, no matter what you may think of his opinions]

[Update 3 : Never mind update 2. Tough call.]

[Update 4 : I removed 16 Volts from the blogroll, as it is now basically a tombstone]

The Left and Islam

I have to break the hiatus briefly just to show this.

Have you ever wondered why does the progressive left seem to treat Islam with far more nuance than it gives to Christian fundamentalism? It is a constant source of exasperation to me, at least. Wonder no more. I see someone translated an excellent article by Jussi Halla-aho in English, complete with percentages of immigrants and votes to left (from Sweden, which has numerous immigrant ghettoes).
Baron Bodissey even has a graph:

For Kista the figure is slightly lower because of the relatively high percentage of immigrants from other EU countries, but otherwise the multicultural suburbs are significantly more interested than average in the state of the working class, women’s rights and environmental issues.

Right. I love the sarcasm. But read the whole thing (and don’t get scared by the site, I’m not asking anyone to agree with the politics of the folks at Gates Of Vienna, but Mr. Halla-aho’s facts are solid).

[edited to remove some generalized left-bashing]

What The …?

Due to all the little nasty bastages running two seperate denial-of-service attacks on Jeff Goldstein‘s blog (Thankfully, his site is back up. May the DoS-ers end up with rabid ferrets shoved down their pants. Rabid ferrets on PCP and LSD.), I had absolutely no idea that this was going on.

We all know that lefty trolls can be a real inconvenience at times, but a very special troll named Deborah Frisch has taken trolling down a very dark road. Jeff Goldstein is the very insightful conservative blogger who writes at Protein Wisdom and Dr. Frisch (did I mention she’s a psych[o] professor at the University of Arizona?) has repeatedly and quite disturbing levied DEATH THREATS against Jeff’s 2 year old child.
[Emphasis original.]

Turn-signal to Punchy’s comment here on Balloon Juice for the heads-up.

Now, I admit. At first, I thought this was mere poetic licence being performed by Froggy. After all, this was posted on BlackFive, which does not really have the highest of reputations on my side of the double-yellow line. But then I kept on reading and… To be perfectly honest, I had to stop eating before I lost my appetite. And then, just to be sure I wasn’t hallucinating this whole thing, I read my way further into the belly of the beast. Alas, it is reality.

This person, one Dr. Deborah Frisch, is perhaps one of the most socially inept, intellectually self-dishonest, and culturally clueless people on my side of the double-yellow-line I’ve had the displeasure to run into. (So sayeth the man who was once a regular attendee of Green Party meetings in a university town. That should give you some concept of scale.) In other words, a pure product of Politically-Correct thought run rampant. If your opponent is on the non-PC side, you can say whatever you want about them and still claim to be on the moral high ground.

Pardon me while I break the one rule I set for myself when blogging (Rule is: No cussin’.) below the fold.

G’head, Blame the Victim (some)

Comments on another post have attempted to separate the behaviors of the victim from those of the victimizer as though they aren't or at least shouldn't be related. The frequently repeated trope is "don't blame the victim." I thought the discussion should have its own post, so here are my thoughts.

Diversity? Please.

I'd like to take the time to mock this article, with no offense to Ampersand.

We have a president with the most ethnically and racially diverse cabinet in history, and when the people he hires or fires tips the balance in the other direction, then he is clearly a racist?

Come on.  There is plenty to criticize Bush for, but this is just absurd.  The man appointed the first black secretary of state, followed by the first black woman to be secretary of state, and replaced a white male attorney general with a hispanic one.

But all of this should be irrelevant.  Why are we measuring the proportions of any given ethnicity?  Why can't we just criticize the choices we feel are bad ones, without these self-indulgent race-based smears?

When idiots like Rush Limbaugh make offensive comments about a football player only making it because he is black, we rightly marginalize him and give him the boot from the gig he had picked up.  So how is it that we can stand out in the open and call someone a racist for appointing white people without much fear of being considered politically incorrect or prejudiced?