Afternoon music
Saturday quiz
Well, a modest 5/10 this week, narrowly beating political journalist John Rentoul, who scored 4/10. I knew the answers to questions 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9. I should really have also known or brought to mind the answers to numbers 2 and 10, but did not.
Tweets seen
The situation in the UK is getting out of control.
[“At least five girls under 14 have reportedly been treated in Ceuta after suspected rapes.
This comes just days after thousands crossed from Morocco, overwhelming shelters and leaving authorities struggling to identify and protect minors.
We still don’t know who committed the assaults. But this is what border chaos looks like.
When a government loses control of the border, ordinary people, and the most vulnerable, pay the price.“]
Looks like both the Spanish and the British need a few walls, squads, and ends…
How brave “our” police are (when facing those too weak to defend themselves). Disgrace.
[“For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn!
With all due respect to the Americans, Israel must make it clear to the entire world that the blood of our sons and the security of our citizens are not forfeit. All of Lebanon must burn. Our supreme duty is to protect the citizens of Israel and the soldiers of the IDF, and this commitment takes precedence over every other consideration.
I told the Prime Minister, even in our private meetings: For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep.“]
A tweet from crazed sadist/psychopath Ben Gvir, an Israeli Jew-Zionist government minister.
Not all Jews, even in Israel, are as bad as that, by any means, but the fact is that such horrible attitudes run through the Jewish-Zionist mental state. You only have to read the Old Testament to see that.
Needless to add, perhaps, Gvir himself never served in any military force. Indeed, even the Israeli state regarded him at one time as a potential or quasi-terrorist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itamar_Ben-Gvir#Early_life.
Untermensch.
Milei, another lunatic.
[“Robin Hood is more than an outlaw in green. He is one of the great figures of English folklore, a legend passed from generation to generation for centuries.
Whether he was a real man or a blend of many stories, Robin Hood became a national myth – the free English archer beneath the oaks of Sherwood Forest, standing against injustice and living close to the land.
His story reminds us that a nation is held together not only by recorded history, but also by the legends, songs and traditions that shaped the imagination of our ancestors. These old tales are part of our inheritance, connecting us to the England that came before us.
To know the stories our forefathers told is to know something of ourselves.“]
[“Sadly, Oldspeak Bookshop is closing its physical shop doors. Over time, it became increasingly difficult to maintain a welcoming environment due to the constant hostility I experienced. The uncertainty around which customers were genuine, made it hard for me to greet everyone warmly, and my customer service suffered. To every one of you who has supported me, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’m sorry for letting you down, but we can still stay connected!! I am remaining fully online and will be offering a wider range of harder-to-find books, imports, and similar. I’ll still be available for events, of course, and I look forward to meeting both new and familiar faces there. I am also searching for premises in a friendlier location. If you know of a place that might suit, please do get in touch. Special thanks to
@davidmoore2283 for your invaluable support along the way.“]
I recall that, in the 1970s, the Black Flag anarchists under Stuart Christie relocated to Orkney, where harassment (in their case, from the State directly) was more limited than in the large cities.
Ha ha! Brava!
“TFR” = “Total Fertility Rate”: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate.
“From antiquity to the beginning of the industrial revolution, around the year 1800, total fertility rates of 4.5 to 7.5 were common around the world.[2][1] After this TFR declined only slightly and up until the 1960s the global average TFR was still 5.[3] Since then, global average TFR has dropped steadily to less than half that number, 2.3 births per woman in 2023.[1]
The United Nations predicts that global fertility will continue to decline for the remainder of this century and reach a below-replacement level of 1.8 by 2100, and that world population will peak in 2084.[3]“
[Wikipedia]
Fertility is still high only in parts of Africa and in some parts of Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan etc).
Wall. Squad. End.
[“Jason Arday was never trained as a sociologist.
Jason Arday has no degree, no Master’s and no PhD in Sociology. None. Zero.
His entire formal academic training is in Education and Physical Education: BA in Education Studies and Physical Education MA in Education and Pedagogy A second Master’s in Education PhD in Education — specifically on peer-mentoring among student teachers training to become PE teachers.
That is a doctorate in physical-education teacher training. It is not sociology. It contains no sociological theory, no sociological methods, and no sustained engagement with the core literature of the discipline.
Yet within a few years the same man was: Appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Durham. Put in front of students teaching modules called Sociology of Education and Societies in Transition. Then made Professor of the Sociology of Education at Glasgow. Then made Professor of the Sociology of Education at Cambridge.
Students were paying close to ten thousand pounds a year. Some of that money was buying teaching and supervision from a man whose highest qualification in the subject he was employed to profess was nothing.
He had never studied sociology as an undergraduate, never taken a Master’s in it, and never written a doctoral thesis in it.
The word “Sociology” appeared only in the job title. Institutions simply accepted the re-description. A PE-and-education academic was re-labelled a sociologist and students were charged elite university fees to be taught by him. That is not an academic career progression. That is a category error that successive universities chose not to notice.
My mind has been blown by this revelation. No wonder his students report him leaning on desks talking about celebrities and inequality! He appears to have known absolutely nothing about the subject he was teaching!“]
You can see the enemies of the people embedded in places such as the University of Cambridge; they were gleeful (until recently) that a total n*g with a joke “degree” (indeed, series of degrees) had been appointed “Professor” at the supposedly “elite” “white” university…
The whole society needs a purge akin to those of some countries in the 1930s.
Not least, the educational sector needs a purge.
Late tweets
[“Professor Ted Postol, advisor to the Pentagon on nuclear issues, physicist, and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT):
The warheads of Iranian “Fattah” missiles generate enormous kinetic energy.
The “Fattah” warheads possess such destructive power that the United States is not prepared to counter.
The explosive effect of a “Fattah” impact is similar to that of a warhead containing 4,000 or 5,000 pounds of powerful explosives.
Impacts at extremely high speeds, exceeding 3 kilometers per second, multiply the destructive energy, which means that “Fattah” warheads weighing 1,000 kilograms have more power than larger missiles, such as the “Horramshahr.“]
Surprised that the Czechs are nowhere to be seen.
Well, that certainly lays it on the line…
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 