A Merry Christmas to All My Reader

This magnificent figure is the Mammoth of Frost from Tomtor in the Oymyakonskii Region of the the Sakha Republic.

Every Time We Say Goodbye

So the world didn't end on Friday...

Readers: Fools

...but here in the Soviet Union on Sea something died a little, and is now - like unto a kipper sewn into the lining of the Master's chair of

Readers: Get on with it

Women are now charged the same car insurance rates as men, despite the fact that they tend to do dints not damage. And men now get the same annuity rates on their pensions as women, despite the fact that they tend to croak sooner.

Readers: You're about to say that in a free society it is reason, not ideology, that is the prevailing spirit

And it

Readers: And a proposition founded upon actuarial tables is a rational one, open to challenge and discussion by the demos

What I

Readers: Whereas laws founded on undefined and non-reasoned terms like "Equality" baffle any attempt by the aforesaid demos to make sense of them, let alone debate about or change them

Yes but

Readers: And Friday 21st December 2012 marks a small step on the road to that unreason, one might say anti-reason, that is the hallmark, once of a primitive, but these days of a totalitarian society

What the

Readers: But you are not about to hit Caps Lock and start ranting about "ever closer fascism union" because it is only Pensions and Insurance so nobody would take you  seriously

I AM F

Beacon of the Rational Now

 

The Beacon Of the Rational Now (as advertised in the New Scientist) has a countdown to the Winter Solstice of 2021 (Final Countdown) and another to the Spring Equinox 2013 (Quest).

All very informative, but what was the point of kicking it off this Winter Solstice (at 11:11) after so much advertising? Maybe there's one B.O.R.N. a minute. The timers are at least 12 hours fast by my reckoning. Is this significant?

Nice Emily Dickinson poem though.

A kind anonymous contributor points out that 2020-21 is the next Chinese Year of the Rat in keeping with the RATional theme. To be precise, since that is what we are doing, 24 January 2020 – 11 February 2021.

For some reason I am getting to like the Beacon of the Rational Now a lot. It cheers me up and that takes something these days.


Update: the creator seems to be photographer Megan Axelsson. The B.O.R.N. site has closed, well in advance of the Final Countdown. One hopes all is well.

The site originally linked to a pamphlet "Being or Nothingness" by Joe K. An investigation (with links to it at the foot) by Luke Muehlhauser.

There is also a discussion of Joe K in Lucid Dogs.

Those Mayan Prophecies

Blogista: Only four days to go, eh, readers.

Readers: What, to the end of the world?

Blogista: No, to my next washday and the disappearance of another sock.

Readers: Oh lawks that's eerie.

Nom Nom Nom

For what is a TV Chef profited, if he shall eat the whole world, and lose his own soul...

The Previous, Illustrated

Readers: What's with the third one then.

Blogista: Old-fashioned English pronunciation.

Readers: Ah.

Your Government at Work

From today's Grauniad:
It also tried to appease more than 100 Tory MPs planning to vote against the legislation by outlining a new "quadruple lock" that will make it illegal for gay marriage ceremonies to be conducted by the churches of England and Wales.

Start with a simple proposition of no interest whatever to 80% of the population, turn it into a burgeoning bureaucratic-political snarl-up complete with its own Terminology and in a very real sense make the situation much worse than it was before.

I cannot find a picture of an Utter Cake and Arse Party on the interwebs.