Loose Ends

Quite a thought provoking statement, after all it was a well respected French philosopher of the enlightenment who wrote it. Except it isn't a Voltaire quote at all, it was actually lifted from a 1993 essay written by Neo-Nazi Kevin Strom. Now, try reading it again and the whole meaning feels very different. Language is a very powerful thing, its created civilisations our ancient African ancestors would never be able to comprehend.  So when we look at language, its worth remembering where its come from, who is using it and what agenda do they have? But most importantly, are they providing any balance? Every critical thinker should have his or her own personal devils advocate looking over their shoulder. So with that in mind, I stumbled across an article from the far left extremist group hope not hate. Its about as one sided an argument you could possibly get, so I thought I would provide some much needed balance. Now you could easily be forgiven for thinking that organisations like...

I love the internet.com. Everything is just right there at ones fingertips. So much information a mere click of a button away. Its not all good though obviously, there is probably a lot more bad than there is good. I have my interwebs browser set up in a very specific way. One bunch of links labelled left wing thinking and another for the right wing. Its by no means infallible, there is plenty of overlap. But it isn't a bad rule of thumb. So I was looking through my left wing list to find something interesting when I found this link on the Huffington post from 2016. I had a shrewd idea where it was going to go, and I normally give up reading something from an extreme left wing media outlet if it doesn't grab my attention. But I was immediately swept up in how well crafted this article was. I must doff my cap to the author. It highlighted rather succinctly how historians study the past, and although it missed out a few key elements, for its length, he made his argument very wel...

"If fascism ever comes to America, it'll come in the name of liberalism" Ronald Reagan: 60 minutes 1975 Of course, its very easy to quote from the past and attach it however liberally you like to pretty much anything you want in order to back up your beliefs. Just take a look at how many people quote Orwell out of context or any host of eminent academics of the past. Yet having devoured Douglas Murray's latest book "The War On The West" my mind was immediately drawn to this Reagan quote from almost 50 years ago before I had even finished the introduction. Divided neatly into 4 easily digestible chunks and 3 very interesting interludes, the final conclusion leaves not only Murray admitting he has no definitive answer, but to leave the reader in the belief that at this point even token resistance is futile. In fact, what I found was most interesting about the whole book was one could imagine Murray typing himself into a depressed stupor and leaving the book al...

In 1976 little known US female Tennis player Renee Richards was outed publicly as a man by local Tv anchor Richard Carlson. It caused such a stir that it prompted the USTA, WTA and the USOC to require all athletes who wish to compete in the female category of sports to subject themselves to the Barr body test of their chromosomes to ensure that they were biologically women. (Fun fact: Richard Carlson is the father of Tucker Carlson) In the 1976 US open, Richards applied to compete as a woman but refused to take the test so was not allowed to compete in that years open, Wimbledon or the Italian open. In 1977 Richards sued the USTA in the New York courts alleging discrimination by gender. On August 16th 1977 Judge Alfred M. Ascione found in Richards favour. While her tennis career never quite hit the heights that many predicted, a precedent had been set and nearly a half century later sport is still struggling with this difficult legacy. How much of an advantage do transgender women have...

Mark Twain once said "History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes" Now as quotes go, this is one of the better ones used on social media these days. There is more than a hint of truth in these 7 words. The path to an authoritarian/totalitarian regime does echo hauntingly through mankind's long and very often turbulent past. Godwin's law (an informal internet rule by which the first person to mention the Nazi's loses the debate and thus ends the discussion)  has been around since the very birth of the internet. While it's an interesting "law" to invoke it does also stifle discourse however. Sometimes its more than reasonable to introduce such a terrible regime by want of backing up your argument. To put it bluntly, making analogy to the Nazi's is not always a lesson in hyperbole. Now most of my posts by my own admission have not been related to something I have decades of knowledge in. Things such as CRT and intersectionality barely scrape a d...

I rarely use TikTok.  In actual fact, I rarely use any social media platform. But TikTok is the one I rarely use the most. It's one of the platforms I may fire up when I'm sat on the bog. Why? I don't know, even casually scrolling it's either full of young women showing off their pneumatically enhanced assets or people talking about racism (maybe It suggests more about me than I dare admit). Talking about racism is definitely a hot topic on whatever platform you browse, but it rears it's head mostly there. So anyway... I did discover one young black lady (who I sadly scrolled past and instantly forgot her name as I was hit with yet another woman flashing her devastatingly deep cleavage at me. But she did leave a mark on the 2 video's  I did look at.  The first video was an interesting look at why black people should care about the war between Russia & Ukraine and that was a topic rarely mentioned (probably because it isn't sexy enough) and that was about...

I was going to steer clear of the subject of trans women competing in women's sport, but I have just read the most ridiculous tweet of all time so I feel compelled to react (this will be long) So I'll start of by breaking down the tweet, then I'll just highlight some truths and you can make up your own minds. Tweet Begins: I have been hearing more frequently the narrative that women's sport apparently exists as a 'protected category' so that women can win (because on this account without it no woman will ever win again) This is: a) *not* the reason why women's sport exists as a category, and b) it is *not* true that women will never win again. Now this is predicated by "which sport you choose to select." However, category for women's sport is very much a "thing" and while a reasonable argument can be made for some mixed sport, It is shameful to suggest that there aren't sports where mixing the sexes will never offer up a female ...