Why marry and have sprogs? For me its about a division of labour within the 'family firm', with love essentially representing the mechanism that minimises costly bargaining. The bloodsucking kids then become about a splice of altruistic enjoyment, with an additional long term investment (i.e. 'blind hope') that- when the nursing home finally demands my membership- they'll at least make sure the bullying 'guards' wipe my backside correctly between nappy changes. But to a woman? Crittenden (2001, ...
I'm accused. I'm attacked. Nah, I'm very slightly aggrieved. The bile bellowed from the raucous right is unwavering in its 'you're liberal' salacious syndicate sneer. The apparent rallying call? Why, just not perusing a mixture of gun fancy magazine and Fox news is sufficient for these bovver-booted bullies. But hang on chum, I'm not a liberal nor have I ever voted liberal. Indeed, I'd rather cut me knackers off with a rusty blade than vote for that shower of slop. Being a lilly-livered ...
Nationalists are on the march. They are unleashed by the recession, set free by political disintegration and in party town singing hate-haunted hallelujahs. And the very first commandment I was given in the Mount Inn in Sinai Street? Try not to be overpowered by the smell of the resulting wretched bile. The nationalist brown shirts of course come in different shades. A quick summary... 1) Rusty Liver Economic nationalism is a curse. The bastard son of mercantilism, ...
Creationism is just one example of how easy it is to restrict information flows in order to support a position deemed to be righteous. That can be very exotic. I know of one god botherer, for example, who believes god created man and then wiped them out with a flood and then decided to go with dinosaurs and other assorted cunningness just to test the scientist's faith. I don't want to attack religion mind you. My missus is terribly ...
In the bad ole days when I didn’t exist, Keynes in his essay “The End of Laissez-Faire” noted that, although the jolly ole folk such as Smith, Ricardo and Malthus were blighters in their failure to use the term, the economic understanding of laissez-faire goes back to Marquis d’Argenson. I’m not referring to that in the hope that the BBC funds another bleedin’ costume drama. We do not need the BBC to find another excuse to continue their failure to create original telly material. No, I’m ...
How much should we donate to charity? Pin money or shed loads? If we are too tight we run the risk of inhibiting the sublime satisfaction generated by altruism. Indeed, we might actually find it difficult to sleep as we cry “what about the nippers and the homeless kittens?” and splatter soak our pillows with shallow tears. On the other extreme, perhaps we become victims and give away too much? Harassed continuously by the pleas- on the street, the telephone and the box- we cave in and set ...
Academic analysis into religion has tended towards bile, encouraged by the sociologist’s use of the secularisation thesis. The general attack on religion is summed up nicely by Stark and Bainbridge (1985): ”At least since the Enlightenment, most Western intellectuals have anticipated the death of religion...The most illustrious figures in sociology, anthropology, and psychology have unanimously expressed confidence that their children, or surely their grandchildren, would live to see the ...
Clinker? I’m not trying to fling fine-tuned forge fetishism. I’m doing something much more disagreeable: applying that beast known as American slang. It’s not as inane as taking an episode of Friends and assuming it is a good representation of comedy. No, it serves the purpose of characterising capitalism as “an error, a failure and a dud”. I’m going to do this by avoiding the traditional snotty-nosed snivelling favoured by the net nerd neo-socialist. There is no reason to blubber about execrable ...
Recent Comments
