Here is a graph that tells you why our electricity prices have gone from being the cheapest in the developed world to amongst the most expensive. Yes it is the “unreliables”- solar and wind.
The 1970’s through to 2005 suddenly look like a golden age.
You may have seen this ad which Gillette produced.
It has polarising in its reception. On youtube down thumbs are about 2-3 times the number of up thumbs.
Gillette, along with many feminists, justifies the ad as being important to raise discussion about “toxic masculinity.”
What has happened is far different, with many men expressing a feeling that the ad is in fact blaming them or demeaning them, even shaming them. Not a good response for a company whose main business is selling products for men.
As the debate has unfolded in social media, it has become, as usual, a war of name-calling. People on one side saying “I’m offended” or “I find that ad problematic”, and people on the other side calling the men “snowflakes” and “he-sterical” (Ha ha good one that. Try calling a feminist “hysterical” when they get worked up). I saw one person who described any attempt to express disagreement as “violent abuse.”
We are at a very dangerous state at the moment. “Toxic masculinity” is a bit of a catch phrase that tries to capture some of the bad behaviour of some men. For example, the antics of some footballers, drunkenness, sexual harassment etc. However there are some people who believe that all masculinity is toxic, and the world would be much better off if men could just be women, or better still not be here at all.
We are told that the traditional masculine traits of physically intense activity, “rough housing”, courage, and stoicism are dangerous.
On the one hand men are told to get in touch with their feelings and learn to express themselves instead of bottling it all up. But the minute they do that, the oh- so compassionate women launch into full blown shrieking harridan mode telling them to “toughen up, snowflake.”
As long as that goes on, men are going to continue to try to soldier on alone, not talking to anyone, trying to work out what worth they bring to the planet.
It’s no wonder that many men who have not been able to find a purpose to live for end up concluding that their lives mean nothing and top themselves.
As for me, I took the rational step of buying a Schick razor today.
Bella d’Abrera16 January 2019 , IPA TODAY, PUBLICATIONS, In The News, RESEARCH AREAS, Ideas and Liberty
If your only way of finding out about what’s happening in this country is either by listening to ABC or reading the Guardian, you’d think the entire country is embarrassed about being Australian, wracked with guilt about Australia’s history and overwhelmingly opposed to celebrating Australia Day on January 26.
Indeed, you’d likely wind up mistakenly thinking that there is a groundswell of anger from mainstream, everyday Australians who believe that Australia Day is by far the most pressing issue facing Australians in 2019.
However, a poll commissioned by the Institute of Public Affairs and which was conducted by Research Now, has revealed that this is exactly the opposite to what mainstream Australians really think about themselves as Australians, their history and their values.
In fact, Australians are fundamentally optimistic and positive about being Australian.
The results of the poll show that 87 per cent of Australians are proud to be Australian, while a tiny 3 per cent are not.
When it comes to Australia’s history, 76 per cent of the respondents believe this country has a history to be proud of, while only 11 per cent did not.
The polling also found that 75 per cent of Australians think that we should continue to celebrate Australia Day on January 26 while only 10 per cent actually want the date to be changed. Chances are that if you polled the Canberra Press Gallery with the same questions, the numbers would be significantly different.
These results expose the massive divide between the majority of Australians and the minority of vocal individuals who continually push the narrative of national self-loathing and self-flagellation on to everyday Australians.
The results simply reveal that there is an enormous disconnect between what Australians think about themselves, and what we are being told Australians think about themselves.
Every year, when Australia Day comes around, elements of the media, the political class and a small but noisy group of activists on Twitter, pull out all stops to impose their own version of Australia’s history on the nation.
They are, however, completely and utterly out of touch with mainstream Australia.
Not only are they out of touch, but it seems that the more strident they are in their opposition and the more they obsess about changing the date, the more that Australians want to keep the date.
When the Institute of Public Affairs asked the same question about Australia Day in 2018, 70 per cent of Australians were favour. This year, the number has gone up to 75 per cent. The poll also shows that young people are not being drawn to the divisive argument of opposing our national day.
The more this vocal, activist minority pushes its agenda down their throats, the less inclined everyday Australians are to go along with it.
The poll found that last year 17 per cent of young Australians between the ages of 18-24 said that Australia Day should not be celebrated on January 26. This year’s poll shows that, that number has plummeted to just 8 per cent. They, like the majority of Australians know that there are more important issues to think about.
The incessant hounding of the public by activists is having the opposite effect than they intend.
Similarly, our political class likes to present the issue of freedom of speech and freedom of religion as fringe cultural issues being pushed by a small number of conservatives.
Yet again, the poll reveals that the opposite is true.
When asked what they thought about these values, a whopping 92 per cent of the respondents considered freedom of speech to be an important Australian value while 77 per cent said freedom of religion was an important Australian value.
Again, this exposes the disconnect between mainstream Australians and our political class.
Many of the left-wing activists that will be taking part in protests on January 26 have moved on from the change-the-date campaign and are advocating the abolition of Australia Day all together. These activists will never be happy until there is no celebration of our successful, liberal, prosperous, modern nation.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is right when he says there is a majority of “quiet Australians’’ who aren’t obsessed with the issues pushed by the Canberra bubble or a noisy minority. He was right to come down hard on radical local councils who are refusing to hold citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day.
The Federal government is correct to insist that citizenship ceremonies should be celebrated on the 26th because it is the federal government that gives councils the power to hold them.
The government is perfectly entitled to take away that power from rebellious councils such as Darebin in Victoria, which last year actively encouraged people to go to work on January 26 and take another day off.
Critics of the Prime Minister’s decision have said this is a “public relations stunt designed to further divide this country’’ but the refusal to participate in celebrating Australia as a united country is the truly divisive force.
January 26 marks the foundation of modern Australia and it should be celebrated by all Australians. Rather than being ashamed of it, we should be proud of it.
On January 26 the majority of Australians will be rejecting the overwhelmingly negative rhetoric about this nation’s history.
They will not be out in the streets in force, but they will be with friends and family, celebrating what it is to be Australian.
Read the story here
It’s generally accepted that early Christians adopted December 25th as the day of Christ’s birth to co-opt the pagan celebration of the winter solstice. Some believe this fact undermines Christianity.
But according to Professor William Tighe, this “fact” may actually be a myth.
Based on his extensive research, Tighe argues that the December 25th date “arose entirely from the efforts of early Latin Christians to determine the historical date of Christ’s death.” He also goes so far as to claim that the December 25th pagan feast of the “’Birth of the Unconquered Sun’… was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance of Roman Christians.”
Tighe explains…
In the Jewish tradition at the time of Christ, there was a belief in what they called the “integral age”—that the prophets had died on the same days of their conception or birth. Early Christians spent much energy on determining the exact date of Christ’s death. Using historical sources, Christians in the first or second century settled on March 25th as the date of his crucifixion. Soon after, March 25th became the accepted date of Christ’s conception, as well.
Add nine months—the standard term of a pregnancy—to March 25th, and Christians came up with December 25th as the date of Christ’s birth.
It is unknown exactly when Christians began formally celebrating December 25th as a feast. What is known, however, is that the date of December 25th “had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time (Roman emperor from 270-275), nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.” According to Tighe, Aurelian intended the new feast “to be a symbol of the hoped-for ‘rebirth,’ or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire…. [and] if it co-opted the Christian celebration, so much the better.”
As Tighe points out, the now-popular idea that Christians co-opted the pagan feast originates with Paul Ernst Jablonski (1693-1757), who opposed various supposed “paganizations” of Christianity.
Of course, to Christians, it really doesn’t matter that much whether or not they co-opted December 25th from the pagans, or vice versa. The Christian faith doesn’t stand or fall on that detail. But it’s nevertheless valuable for all of us to give closer scrutiny to shibboleths—such as that of the pagan origins of Christmas—which are continually repeated without being examined.
This post The Myth of the Pagan Origins of Christmas was originally published on Intellectual Takeout by Daniel Lattier.
From The Babylon Bee:
Sodom, Gomorrah Wondering Why America Hasn’t Been Obliterated YetDecember 19th, 2018
AFTERLIFE—Former residents of Sodom and Gomorrah, speaking to reporters in the afterlife, recently questioned why the United States hasn’t been wiped off the map by Almighty God yet.
Those who once resided in the notoriously sinful cities are beginning to complain that America is still in existence, despite its senseless slaughter of the unborn and unquestioning acceptance of activities that were considered unthinkably perverse just a decade or two ago.
“Yeah, we were pretty jacked up—but have you seen some of the stuff that goes on in America nowadays?” one man said, shaking his head, which was on fire. “People are letting their kids dress up as drag queens and dance for money in gay bars. They literally kill hundreds of thousands of babies a year. They bomb foreign countries 24/7. We did bad stuff, sure, I’m not denying that—but come on! Even I can see the nation needs a hearty helping of fire and brimstone.”
“I mean, He can do what He wants, but if I were in the US right now, I’d be heading for the hills,” he added, shrugging. “And I wouldn’t be salty about it either—wouldn’t even look back.”
They also pointed to the fact that The Big Bang Theory has been running for over ten years.
As a community we are sleep-walking into the most dangerous, demented, suicidal period in our history.
There is a culture war under way for the souls of our children, and most adults, even christians are utterly clueless.
From lifesitenews.com
LAFAYETTE, Louisiana, November 27, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Drag queens are deliberately “grooming” the next generation to accept LGBT ideology when they read to children in public libraries at drag queen “story hour” events, a U.S. drag queen admitted.
Dylan Pontiff, a drag queen who helped organize one of these story hour events for children as young as three at the Lafayette Public Library in early October, is shown in a video making that shocking admission to the Lafayette City-Parish Council in Louisiana during a Sept. 17 meeting.
“This is going to be the grooming of the next generation. We are trying to groom the next generation,” said Pontiff, who when dressed in drag goes by the name Santana Pilar Andrews.
Pontiff said that as a drag queen he has performed in shows for adults that he compared to an R-rated film. He argued that he should be able to have access to children because, as an adult, he knows how to “filter” himself and make his content PG-rated.
“I can go in and entertain adults in a club and also entertain a group of students and young children. I’m able to do that because I’m an adult and able to filter myself,” he said.
Citizens of that community in Louisiana shook their heads in bewilderment behind Pontiff as he made these comment.
“Unfortunately, the Drag Queen Story Hour program is turning public libraries into platforms to advance the transgender revolution, places where pro-homosexual activists are given access to children as young as three,” said John Ritchie, director of TFP Student Action, in an interview.
“Instead of protecting the precious innocence of our children with wholesome stories, libraries are misusing our tax-dollars to harm their innocence,” he said. “To attempt to dismantle and destroy the distinction between male and female is not only biologically ridiculous, but also a direct attack against God’s plan for us and for the family. Everyone who loves the family should wake up, pray and push back.”
The public meeting by the Lafayette City-Parish Council in September was to consider a motion to denounce the drag queen story hour proposed for the local library on October 6 as not being age-appropriate.
The motion, derided as “hateful” and “discriminatory” by its opponents, would not have been binding on the public library. But it never got that far. The majority of the Lafayette City-Parish Council declined to vote on it, effectively scuttling the motion.
Leslie Alexander, a member of the community, said that the library should not have approved the drag queen story hour event without consulting the public.
“This is not about tolerance or anti-bullying,” she told the Lafayette Daily Advertiser. “It is a direct and intentional effort to create gender confusion and doubt among very young children at the very time they need solid guidance and understanding. The intent is to plant a seed to make children more likely to question their sexuality or gender at a later age.”
According to Ritchie, the seeds of this indoctrination of young children in public libraries was sown when marriage was legally re-defined.
“When homosexual ‘marriage’ was legalized back in 2015, the naive told us not to worry because the decision would never affect us,” said Ritchie. “Marriage is just a word, they said. But for those who understand history, the redefinition of true marriage by the U.S. Supreme Court contained a string of ugly consequences.”
“What was unthinkable yesterday is tolerated today: Transgender drag performers are allowed to explicitly target children in public buildings,” he said.
A number of LGBT activists have highlighted in recent years that the movement’s goal is to “indoctrinate” children into accepting the normalcy of the LGBT agenda.
“I am here to tell you: All that time I said I wasn’t indoctrinating anyone with my beliefs about gay and lesbian and bi and trans and queer people? That was a lie,” wrote Canadian gay activist Sason Bear Bergman, a woman who identifies as a transgender man, in a March 2015 piece titled “I Have Come to Indoctrinate Your Children Into My LGBTQ Agenda (And I’m Not a Bit Sorry).” Bergman holds nothing back, stating she wants to make children “like us” even if that “goes against the way you have interpreted the teachings of your religion.”
In 2011 U.S. gay activist Daniel Villarreal penned a column for Queerty.com stating that the time had come for the homosexual lobby to admit to “indoctrinating” schoolchildren to accept homosexuality.
“Why would we push anti-bullying programs or social studies classes that teach kids about the historical contributions of famous queers unless we wanted to deliberately educate children to accept queer sexuality as normal?”
“We want educators to teach future generations of children to accept queer sexuality. In fact, our very future depends on it. Recruiting children? You bet we are,” he added.
Homosexual activist Michael Swift wrote in 1987 in the Gay Community News that school children would become explicit targets for homosexual indoctrination. “We shall seduce them in your schools…They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us,” he wrote at the time.
RELATED STORIES:
After pro-family campaign, library drops drag queen storytime for kids
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The latest LGBT lunacy: ‘Transgender’ puppet to teach kids about ‘gender issues’
Tim Blair writes about the “Cutting Edge” Chaser Boys:
The Chaser boys*, Australia’s official state comedy troupe since 1999, have been denied funding for yet another election year slab of mortgage-covering satirical sedatives.
And the boys aren’t happy about it:
“First time since 2001 that the ABC has declined to fund it. Perhaps Sky News provides enough satire nowadays?” the group’s tweet read.
It’s bad enough that we’ll be missing another Chaser series, but must they rub it in with this scorching reminder of their effortless comic mastery?
For [member and founder Charles] Firth, the ABC’s decision – “They just said they didn’t have the money,” he says was the ABC’s reason behind the rejection – is further proof the public broadcaster is conceding to government influence.
“The ABC is an institution in crisis, and it’s a very deliberate thing that’s happened,” he says.
“This decision, along with lots of other decisions” – the recent axings of controversial comedy shows The Checkout and Tonightly, for example – “should leave everyone in no doubt that the Liberals have done their work on the ABC and it’s not the institution it once was.”
When you’re celebrating the virtue of “institutions”, it’s probably time to hand in your edgy outsider badge. But there’s a problem with Firth’s version of events. According to the ABC, the Chaser middle-aged adults forgot to actually propose their new show:
A spokesperson for ABC has denied that the group made a pitch to the broadcaster to make a new election special and says that the group had already begun negotiating with commercial rivals.
Oh, well. Let’s hear more from Firth about institutional greatness:
“The moment you start being safe is the moment you start losing audiences, and you enter a downward spiral where you become irrelevant.
“It hasn’t happened yet, but that’s the problem – they’re in a death spiral where they’re getting safer and safer and they’re going to lose more and more of their audience.
“There are very few decisions in the ABC at the moment where you go, ‘Wow that’s interesting, that’s innovative, that’s really going to push the boundaries,’ which is exactly what you need from a public broadcaster.”
Yet he also wants the ABC to run the same material by the same crew who’ve been doing the same thing during every election for the past 17 years.
Signing the Chaser cis males for 2019 would have been, as Firth puts it, “safe”.
*Youngest original member: 41
Those pesky facts do get in the way of a “good” social change program.
From lifesitenews.com
Tired of left-wing media manipulation, liberal researcher declares: ‘Science shows sex is binary’
After The New York Times leaked a memo describing how the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to reverse the Obama administration’s guidance allowing students to use restroom and locker room facilities of the opposite sex based on which sex students “identify” as, media outlets and activist organizations unleashed relentless attacks on the Trump White House, claiming it seeks to harm “transgendered” people.
In two recent articles, one written for RealClearPolitics and the other for Playboy, Debra W. Soh, who holds a Ph.D in sexual neuroscience research from New York University, doused the raging firestorm with facts.
“As much as I understand the public’s concern, it’s important to offer a fact-based approach to the issue,” wrote Soh, a self-described liberal, in her Playboy essay.
Playboy✔@Playboy
In light of the news that the Trump administration is seeking to define sex on the basis of genetics, writer @DrDebraSoh explores the importance of having “difficult, honest & fact-based conversations instead of derailing potentially meaningful progress.” http://ply.by/f4rMmC
“It isn’t necessary to redefine ‘sex’ in order to facilitate the acceptance of people who are different,” said Dr. Soh in her RealClearPolitics commentary. “Pushing for social change for the sake of change, as many of those on the left seem wont to do, only leads to misguided policies and unnecessary confusion for the public.”
Humanity: 10 fingers, two sexes
Soh points out that the inflammatory New York Times article incorrectly sought to use the existence of a very small minority of people who are “intersex,” i.e., born with genitalia of both sexes or otherwise ambiguous genitalia, as proof that sex is on a spectrum, not binary.
Certainly, research has shown that as many as 1 percent of the population is intersex, a medical condition denoting that an individual possesses anatomy characteristic of both sexes, such as a combination of vulvar and testicular tissue. Statistically speaking, however, this means that the vast majority of us fall into one category of sex or the other.
It therefore becomes a question of whether a statistically rare occurrence in the general population should be considered typical. An analogy that is commonly used to illustrate this is the fact that most of us have 10 fingers. There exist individuals who possess fewer or more than 10 digits on their hands, but this hasn’t called for a re-conceptualization of how many fingers a human being has.
Ironically, the term ‘transgender’ implies that sex is binary
“This argument has been extended to include the transgender community, with its proponents contending that transgender people defy male and female categorization, and offer proof that sex and gender are a spectrum,” said Soh. “But in reality, the term ‘transgender’ means that a person identifies more as the opposite sex than their birth sex — which still operates within a framework of sex being binary.”
Left-wing media incite outrage, falsely accuse Trump administration of bigotry
According to Soh, the HHS memo suggesting that governmental agencies define sex as being “either male or female, unchangeable and determined by the genitals that a person is born with” is an accurate statement based on science.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ clear statement on defining sex “left most of us with a half-hearted understanding of human biology confused exactly why people are outraged, as there is nothing factually incorrect with this definition,” said Soh. “And yet, left-wing media has been treating it as bigotry.”
Trump administration has it right
“Indeed, a single definition of sex should be reinstated across the U.S. government’s agencies,” asserted Soh. “This is basic demographic information that shouldn’t be seen as controversial or difficult to attain. Don’t get me wrong: acknowledging a transgender person’s sex at birth feels insensitive, especially for those of us who aren’t transgender. But the solution to ending discrimination against gender-variant people is not to adopt the position that biological sex doesn’t exist.”
“To suggest that this group proves that gender is completely unrelated to anatomy, or that a person’s sense of gender in the brain somehow operates in a way that is distinct from the rest of their body, is foolish and erroneous,” she added.
Tired of left-wing media’s manipulative tactics
Soh, who is a supporter of equal rights for “transgender” people, nonetheless views the stances of left-wing activists and media as unsupportable, arguing that important differences between females and men who identify as female certainly do exist. “We should be able to advocate for equal rights for transgender individuals while also acknowledging that differences exist between trans women and women who were born female.”
People should not “deny science” or “make sweeping claims in order to ramp up the backlash,” said Soh in her Playboy essay. “In our current climate, heightening political polarization is reckless and only serves to frustrate and alienate well-meaning people who would otherwise be sympathetic to the cause.”
“Rather, they must contend with whether they are being manipulated by the media,” continued Dr. Soh. “These changes have no doubt been a wider response to the left’s increasingly extreme views on gender; some liberals, including myself, have become tired of its nonsensical ideas, including the concept that self-identification supersedes everything else, and that shaming and silencing someone is the only acceptable reaction should they question the outrage.”
If you thought this was OK
And if you were not offended by this
You do not have the right to be offended by this
If the so-called “iconic”, sails of the Opera House are “sacred” as one commentator put it, then they were “sacred” when you approved of the cause being promoted.
You don’t get to pick and choose what you are outraged about according to the particular image being promoted.
This is the biggest problem in our society today. Very few people believe in principles that are unchanging. We just want to cheer or boo the cause of the day.
Despite all the chest thumping, only 1000 people turned up to express their opposition. But at least it gave the ABC something other than climate change and Tony Abbott to get worked up about.
From the ABC:
Updated
A British man has died after being bitten by a sea snake while working on a fishing trawler off the Northern Territory coast.
Northern Territory Police said the 23-year-old was bitten while pulling up a net about 12:00pm on Thursday, about 70 nautical miles south of Groote Eylandt.
A CareFlight helicopter crew and ships in the area rushed to help but were unable to save the man.
Craig Garraway from St John Ambulance said there was little emergency services could do to help the man.
“A trawler off Groote Eylandt had reported that one of their male crewmen had been bitten by a sea snake,” Mr Garraway said.
“The Groote Island health clinic and police responded to the trawler, but unfortunately the male passed away at some point yesterday afternoon.”
The man was declared dead after the trawler arrived at the town of Borroloola in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
The British High Commission has been informed of the man’s death.
Police are investigating and a post-mortem examination will be carried out.
NT WorkSafe said in a statement it had been notified of the man’s death and had begun an investigation into the incident.
It is not the first death involving a young British man aboard an Australian fishing boat in the north.
Twenty-year-old Ryan Donoghue was electrocuted on a prawn trawler in the Gulf of Carpentaria in November 2013.
NT Coroner Greg Cavanagh found his death was needless and a tragic waste of young life.
“It would have been prevented if there was even a modicum of compliance with the law,” Mr Cavanagh said.
Earlier this year, Darwin fisherman Peter Davis nearly had his finger amputated after being bitten by a sea snake that was snagged on his line.
Sea snakes are “equally poisonous if not more poisonous as things such as our tiger snakes and western brown [snakes]”, Charles Darwin University honorary fellow Dr Michael Guinea said at the time.
While sea snakes were rarely aggressive underwater, if caught by a fisherman Dr Guinea said cutting the fishing line could be the safest option.
Anyone bitten by a sea snake should bandage the wound and immobilise it, before seeking medical attention, authorities advise.
