It looks like after the Tony Nicklinson case the government might actually take a look at those ‘right to die’ issues again. In the least, the UK’s newly appointed health minister had said that it’s ridiculous that people have to go abroad to be able to kill themselves, which is true. She also said she wasn’t for euthanasia however, which is confusing. Are we not talking about the same issue here? Isn’t a natural ally of the right to end one’s life a way for people to be able to seek assistance to end their life humanely?
Perhaps I misunderstood, there’s usually someone who thinks I have with any post I do in any case. I really hope that I have, and that euthanasia will be recognized as something humane. I really hope that one day people will see putting people out of their misery as a good deed rather than equivalent to murder.
Although I suppose the real difference between this case and euthanasia in general is that people who go to places like Dignitas sometimes are able to make a noose, cut their throat etc.
But a lot of people don’t want to die that way, they want it to be as painless and peaceful as possible.
Is that not understandable?
Shouldn’t this be allowed too?
I’ve heard people say that this could lead to people murdering under the guise of euthanasia but really, that argument at least is as fallacious as they come. Just because something is not allowed doesn’t mean that the worst possible consequence of that idea is likely to unfold.
Ugh, maybe I’m crazy, but I think that the fact that this is illegal is stupid as all hell.
So, what do people think is going to happen on December 21st?
You probably know what I think by now, but just in case you don’t, let’s just say that were it possible for me to be surprised in death, if I wasn’t alive on December 22nd I would be pretty surprised.
But I’ve been hearing much less of the impending apocalypse scare-story phenomenon that we’ve seen time and time again (anybody remember the two raptures and the large hadron collider black hole scare of very recent history?) and I’ve been hearing more and more of the new age approach to this.
Perhaps that’s because I’ve been a lot more active in skeptical circles recently, perhaps that’s because people are comforted about the apocalypse by the fact that nobody’s doing anything to try and stop it. I’m pretty sure that if a catastrophic event like the planet X idea was actually in our near future that there’d be a global effort to stop it. Some of you might call that optimism, I call it a trust in self-preservation. Politicians can barely admit that they’re wrong, if they’re that worried about their image you’d think they’d want to make sure that they still have an image come December 22nd.
But the new age-y side of this dubious prophecy tends to proclaim that there will be some sort of shift of our minds/enlightened minds to a ‘higher plane of consciousness’.
That terminology in itself really makes my eyebrows rise, mainly because it doesn’t mean anything, but also because so many people seem certain that they know exactly what it means.
To talk about planes of consciousness is to misunderstand consciousness as a phenomenon and to ignore its place as a product of brain structure and output, at least as far as neurology has taken us so far.
I would also suggest that there’s some astrology woven within this strange fabric as well, not just because we have a vague prediction about the future, supposedly from people looking up at the sky and misunderstanding the cosmos, but because this sounds very much like the age of Aquarius, transition of ages shtick that forms the basic template of many religions.
Astrology’s got its tendrils in our culture embarrassingly deep.
It is a very, very poor tale when the sanest statement in a video is the quote from (King of the nutjobs himself) David Icke.
That sorry case is from a video posted on reddit’s r/skeptic section 14 hours ago, a video made in September last year that is essentially claiming that we have enough energy to power the world because aliens put in there in crop circles to show us how to make perpetual motion machines.
Needless to say, to explain how none of this has played out yet, the narrative of this (God forbid) movie trailer transitions into a scare story about the new world order and the suppression of these energy breakthroughs by this controlling faction of humanity so that oil and pharmaceutical companies make lots of money.
Take a look at this, and gasp as David Icke’s almost philosophical ‘whoever has the money controls the world’ statement is uttered, a phrase that isn’t literally true, as this video implies, but has a little truth to it in the fact that governments need money, and with financial collapse now a recent memory or reality it’s hard to deny that we need the economy to be a priority.
Wait, did I just dismiss my own point?
Taking the advice of one of the commenters I checked out their ‘solutions’ video, which (surprise surprise) begins with a false premise: ‘the road we are on leads to total world tyranny and a global police state, the other leads to peace, respect and liberty on the planet’.
Well I’m glad the commentator knows the future absolutely and isn’t creating a false dichotomy there at all, that would be irresponsible of someone who’s apparently reaching thousands of people with his message.
I was supposed to be listening to what he said after that, but I’ll be honest with you when I say that I almost fell asleep. It was a nice daydream though, it’ll undoubtedly speak more sense than the idea this speaker has that these unscientific ideas can create a world where no-one is exploited.
I’d really like for no-one to be exploited in the world, I’d really like for human lives to be put before businesses, but to control the world to that level would ironically enough, require a global police state, a new world order.
Under the website’s liberty solutions tab, it is explained that the basic premise of their advised culture is a mixture of a free market and an entirely voluntary society.
Do any of you agree with me here that those two don’t exactly mix?
When you make the argument that big businesses need to be taken down, surely a free market will only enhance their powers, increasing the exploitation they are able to get away with? What are government regulations for if not to protect the public? And the idea that people will volunteer for the many roles needed is far too ideological to be realistic. People want rewards for their actions, and with a combination of a free market where it is possible to make money from working for the big companies it enforces, carrying out the many scams that are possible when regulations are taken down (and that many people will buy into, something that even the most optimistic person should be able to understand, we’ve all been scammed before) why would they want to work for no reward but a pat on the back?
It’s unrealistic, and combined with the pseudo-scientific premise the trailer gave me of this movie I don’t have many high hopes for the thirteen thousand people who took the time to clickity-clack the like button on this trailer.
Perhaps I should watch the whole movie and give you guys the lowdown…
Just to follow up on the little Alex Jones request from yesterday, if you thought yesterday’s video was bad, there’s a nice alternative I found floating around the internet that you may find, if not interesting for its idiocy and paranoia, at least fascinating in a sadistic fashion as the radio host reveals in even more depth just how many of his marbles he has lost over the years.
So what can we learn from this video?
Well, apparently the US government is trying to turn their citizens gay by ordering juice cartons to be lined with thin metallic films, putting MSG and fluoride in foodstuffs and that we are all blind to the truth, even Alex Jones, who apparently is disgusted with himself for eating Kettle Chips.
Shame on you Mr. Jones, with your potato snacks, next thing you know, you’ll be bombing local churches and burning flags in the name of the new world order.
Seriously though, how cynical do you have to be that you think everything around you is designed to harm you in one shade or another, whether it’s vaccines, food, drink, government, toothpaste, healthcare or babestation’s ten minute preview, surely there must come a point where you stop and think… perhaps I’m over thinking this? Perhaps, there is another explanation for why these things exist rather than for purposes of a worldwide government controlling our minds.
And then when you think about it, it would seem that with Alex Jones’ fan base and large media outlet that he would be the perfect person to spread government propaganda and lies.
Think about it Mr. Jones, if we use your methods of reasoning it leads to the obvious answer that you, yes you Mr. Jones, are a member of the illuminati.
Here it is, the post with the most, blog entry number four hundred and something… probably… I haven’t really been counting since two hundred came around for all I know I could have contributed half of the internet’s data by now, but the fact still remains, that I’m writing it.
Just for a second, do me a favour and google search ‘Lady Gaga Illuminati’ if you haven’t read it before, because it is a laugh riot, once you start seeing all seeing eyes everywhere it starts to become a little bit ironic no?
Because yes the new world order conspiracy theory will never die and while it lives we might as well poke a little fun at the insistence of ‘vigilant citizen’ that the illuminati act like villains in saturday morning cartoons, always blurting out their evil plan to the hero, and yet it still remains top secret? Please.
Or you could just take a look at old Baphomet here and read his name a couple of times, for some reason that gave me a lot of amusement, but I was reading it in a terrible Indian accent despite the fact that most people in India are probably about as ignorant about Baphomet as I.
The name alone makes me happy, I can imagine the goat-headed, man-boobed demon in Jackie Chan Adventures, and in fact, I’m not quite sure whether he wasn’t in there, he could have been one of the characters they brought in after series one…
If I’m being honest I’d almost forgotten about this tired old topic completely, with its tangled mess of empty promises and the lack of people actually intending to keep them.
But really there’s no reason why we would need to give things up at a certain point, I can see in many cases, that if people lack the strength to give up something they truly enjoy all year round, it’s not going to suddenly click into a different gear when we add one number to the Roman calendar.
If you really want to change, it takes a lot more than just making a promise to yourself, it takes courage, commitment and most of all it takes really wanting the change to happen.
For example, if you want to give up chocolate because it’s fattening, but you don’t want to give up the taste (terrible example I know but I’ve started now so I’ll just keep on going), chances are you probably won’t be all that up for giving it up in reality, you might go without it for a few days or weeks sure, but once Easter rolls around and there are chocolate eggs on the shelves for a pound someone’s going to have to chain you to a pole in your basement to stop you breaking that resolution.
If you enjoy your life, there’s no reason why you would have to give up anything if you don’t want to, if you believe you have a major problem you need to strike out of it then be my guest, purge away.
But long term solutions to problems don’t come with a split second decision, lifestyle changes need more than just a whim to get themselves moving, and it would be just as valid to give up that whatever it is when it’s not winter and you still don’t have a whole ton of that stuff lying around in the post-Christmas debris.
I’m feeling quite under the weather today so I’ll just try to keep this brief in case my spleen escapes from my throat and starts trying to gain its own birth certificate and rights.
Firstly I’d like to point out, in preparation of the year ahead of me, as a primer, that the Mayan people (or at least their descendants) are still around as an ethnic group, and in fact, there’s a nice episode of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit you can watch on the ‘end of the world’ in which they actually track one of these people down, who dismisses the whole 2012 apocalypse brouhaha as well.
And although I’ve never actually seen the movie ’2012′ I’m pretty sure that the scenario from that movie isn’t going to play out either. Neutrinos don’t mutate, and as Dara O’Briain pointed out in a recent stand-up tour, that’s about the same level as saying that ‘the electrons are angry’.
So just in case this year becomes the year of the crank I thought I’d make a couple of statements to start the ball rolling, maybe try and get some commenters from the new world order conspiracy theory crowd now that the whole NWO/assassin’s creed/2012 story will undoubtedly come to a head this year, in what will undoubtedly be known as: Assassin’s Creed 3: Desmond Jumps The Shark, which I believe, considering the protagonist’s incredible powers of breaking the laws of physics wouldn’t be that much of a push for the franchise which I actually love.
And finally, I heard from a couple of people that there were a few who actually thought the end of the world was going to be at the dawn of 2012, and although I couldn’t verify that myself, mostly because I’ve been too ill to attempt the research, I sincerely hope that if people did think that, perhaps as the year comes around and the planet’s still intact, they’ll consider the fact that they are still alive and perhaps question their thought process?
This year, the year of our lord 2012, the world will not end.
I am willing to bet my left arsecheek and a fistful of sperm that that will be the case even.
You know, the best thing about this bet is that if the world does end by some ridiculously ironic coincidence after all of the time people have spent trying to debunk the whole planet X/mayan calendar flavours of craziness, I won’t be around to uphold my end of the bargain, and there will be no-one else on the planet to hold me to it.
The concept of new year I suppose is a nice little tradition, albeit one without a real necessity, the calendar only ends on December 31st because we decided it did and nothing much changes when the clock hits twelve and January 1st rolls around.
Perhaps, if we’re going to be going with more intuitive ways of measuring the passage of time the new year should come around at the start of spring? Flowers bloom and babies are born and things start moving again, doing it in the middle of winter seems, well, counter-intuitive.
Admittedly I am biased in this opinion being in a country where it would seem winter follows us all the way through to the end of March, certainly February’s always a bit of a monster, and we would have to change the date based on climate change etc. so it’s not entirely practical.
But still it would probably be a better starting point for calling something a ‘new year’.
Perhaps the Chinese have it better, perhaps their yearly cycle makes more sense than ours, or perhaps they’re both as frivolous as each other.
Either way I enjoy the idea and the celebration, I just like to play devil’s advocate to these things within my own mind, and although debating myself isn’t exactly the kind of thing a sane person would do, I believe in some instances it helps to keep me sane.
Hello and welcome to the late show with me, your humble host.
Sorry for scaring you with my face yesterday, that was uncalled for and deserves a public apology.
Consider this the public apology.
And considering that there are probably many people who have accidentally stumbled upon this blog that would probably like an apology I should probably address it to all of them.
So here’s to you, one and all, all levels of paranoid and everything else.
I apologise for letting you know my opinion on matters that may be close to your heart.
I also, in a similar vein (no pun intended), issue a heartfelt (no pun intended) apology to the new world order; just because I don’t think you exist does not mean that I don’t love you. Send my regards, a fruit basket and some lovely white roses to the illuminati for me, although from what someone told me the other week Kanye West runs that so good luck trying to take over the world with him in charge. Seriously he can’t even make a stage appearance without going on suicide watch the next day, but that’s what happens when Obama calls you a jackass.
And though I believe that if you’ve been trying to take over the world for thousands of years you should probably give up, I appreciate your fictional attempts at a totalitarian regime across multiple continents, well done you fictional people, I salute your lack of reality and your fictional efforts.
So after that, I think I must publicly apologise for that statement.
I also publicly apologise for this public apology, because by no means will it meet anyone’s expectations, for I cannot go inside your head and find out what you want me to apologise for.
Coincidentally I apologise to the couple of psychics I pissed off while writing these. I may not believe in what you’re doing but I do think you all have very cool names, although the medieval fantasy character naming system probably won’t catch on in the majority of the public.
