Liberty News Central

Some reflections and lessons painfully learnt in the interregnum

2012-07-16T18:23:00.001+05:30

Dear readers,
due to a personal tragedy and its aftermath there has been an unexpectedly long interruption in services here.

Past few months have often found my mind involuntarily meandering on such deadends as the meaning and purpose of death, on the widely held belief in some sort of life after it, on the purpose of life or lack therof and other such futilities.

Why are we born and to what end we die? While both life and death may be entirely puposeless, yet it is human to pine for a reason of existence of self other than being a chance occurrence.

It is human to reflect on being human. And it is human to struggle with scanty and pitiful answers one comes up with. The feebler minds are not able to cope with this struggle and turn to the sedative("opium" according to Marx) of religion with its ready made and seductive myths. Those who know better (or rather, know that we don't know much better- agnostics or atheists like myself) are tormented by questions that seemingly cannot ever be resolved. Not by philisophers or saints or prophets or even by modern scientists with their giant particle-colliders and Theory of Everything.

Gustave Doré - Death Depicted as the Grim Reaper on Top of the World from an edition of Poe's The Raven

We know that we don't know- but, heck, it is so hard to let it go at that! Therein lies the torment. While we may fashion a purpose conciously(to write a novel, become a millionaire, become the preident) or by default(to raise a family, make a career, somehow pass through life without trouble), there is that almost subconcious and constant vexation, like the background radiation of soul - is there something more? Are we born to some cosmic purpose, to some greater calling that we, in our helpless inadequacy, are unble to grasp and fulfill? We live and sure, we will die -but is that all?

If there was God and if one could face Him -one would ask:
"Anything else, my Lord?"

It may be, of course, meaningless to seek a meaning - my mind accepts this despite its resistance; yet it also feels almost a pity on the thought of it being so.

Is it all futile?
Gustave Doré- Hoarders and Wasters
Dante Alighieri's Inferno
Plate 22

To veer off, among my other forced ponderings was to question the many common assumptions and presumptions-
No, death and taxes are not inevitable!

I am optimist that science shall one day make us immortal. The thought will horrify the huamnity-hating environmentalists, no doubt. But these pestilential specimens will be long dead by the time immortality arrives- otherwise imagine the horror of an undying Al Gore or the never ending scourge of an immortal Rajendra Pachauri! And no there shall be no shortage of space -imagine all the millions and billions of planets waiting for us.

Living forever may be hundreds or thousands of years away - but life without taxes is possible right now. It is a tragedy of humankind not to be able to live with each other without forced servitude(which is what taxes are). But I shall write much more on this later.

There were also some painful lessons I learnt in recent months. Painful and surprising despite my natural cynicism and despite the fact that I anticipated most of what happened. One lesson is that your close ones in their greed of pelf and property will stab you in the back with nary a thought. Brother will deceive brother and sister will twist the knife. Another lesson is that the one doing the stabbing will loudly proclaim himself the victim. Such are the ways of the world.

I might blog on this later.

So dear readers, I am glad to be back and will continue to blog, all my troubles and travails permitting. And a warm thank you to those who wrote in to ask after me. Your mail comforted me in some dark times. Thanks.

Crossposted at-
What the Heck is Art?

From the LNC Quote Shop " "

2012-02-02T00:48:00.001+05:30

Vaclav Klaus:

“Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.”

Blue Planet in Green Shackles

Difference between phony and true rights

2012-02-01T19:20:00.001+05:30

It is the pathetic state of current discourse that something as obvious as this needs to be explained-

Your article Saturday on CSU Monterey Bay students who are unhappy with a private company's inspections of the student housing they live in contains a telling quote. Student spokesman Michael Frederiksen states, "We all deserve safe and secure housing." But to say that someone deserves something is to say that others have a duty to provide it. Who has that duty? Frederiksen thinks that taxpayers owe it to him and his fellow students. But why do students' decisions to attend a heavily subsidized Cal State University automatically impose a duty on taxpayers who do not attend?

Frederiksen is advocating a "phony right." What's the difference between a phony right and a real right? A real right is, say, my right not to be murdered. The only responsibility that imposes on you and others is not to murder me. In other words, it's a responsibility not to do something. The "right" to good housing, though, is a phony right because it implies that someone else has a positive duty to provide it. And let's not hide behind government. The only way government can provide things is by forcibly taking from others.

More the phony 'rights' are created, more the real rights are trodden upon.

India is embarking on a very large scale expansion of phony 'rights' in the Right to Food Bill that is likely to pass sometime this year. Foolishness on a massive scale - but par for course for a government run by an 'eminent' economist.

Obama -the Indira Gandhi of America

2012-02-01T17:55:00.001+05:30

You must be doing something right if you are on Obama's enemies list.

Yes We Can Screw America

Also observe the disturbing behavior-

In this country, we regard the use of official power to oppress or intimidate private citizens as a despicable abuse of authority and entirely alien to our system of a government of laws. The architects of our Constitution meticulously erected a system of separated powers, and checks and balances, precisely in order to inhibit the exercise of tyrannical power by governmental officials.

Our Constitution even explicitly prohibits bills of attainder so that Congress may not single out individual citizens or groups for disfavored treatment or unequal application of the force of government. Prosecutorial power is rigidly constrained and judicially supervised so that government may not accuse private citizens of crimes or investigate them without good cause.

Whoever may be the victim of such abuse of governmental authority, the press and public almost invariably unify with indignation against it. If a journalist, labor-union leader or community organizer on the left can be targeted today, an academic or business person on the right can be the target tomorrow. If we fail to stand up against oppression from one direction, we abdicate the moral authority to challenge it when it comes from another.

This is why it is exceedingly important for all Americans to respond with outrage to what the president and his allies are doing to demonize and stigmatize David and Charles Koch. They have been the targets of the multiyear, carefully orchestrated campaign of vituperation and assault described above—and much more. It has been choreographed from the very top. When the president personally takes leadership, his political surrogates and army of allies in the press and Congress quickly and surely follow the direction and tone he sets.

The misuse of government power to damage or demean one's political enemies is abhorrent and the very antithesis of a free society and a government of laws, not men. It is time for the public to ask those engaged in these practices, "Have you no sense of decency?"

Decency is lost on Obama.

At the time of Obama's election, when there were euphoric celebrations in the streets and TV studios, I remarked to a close member of the family ( an enthusiastic Obama supporter, alas) that the Americans have elected their own Indira Gandhi. Just as she royally screwed India - I well remember her long years of state caused poverty, inflation, corruption, vendettas and oppression, a legacy that continues- I predicted that Obama would do the same to America.

Not to toot my horn, but the prediction has come true even more than I imagined.

No warming in 15 years!

2012-02-01T17:27:00.001+05:30

Well, this is getting some attention and protests from the warmistas-

World Average Temperature to 2012

Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years

The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.

The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

The alleged 'scientific consensus' is breaking down every day.

Let the fun begin-

Frost fairs on the River Thames during the Little Ice Age

River Thames frost fairs were held on the Tideway of the River Thames at London between the 15th and 19th centuries, during the period known as the Little Ice Age, when the river froze over. During that time the British winter was more severe than now, and the river was wider and slower.

During the Great Frost of 1683–84, the worst frost recorded in England, the Thames was completely frozen for two months, with the ice reaching a thickness of 11 inches (28 cm) in London. Solid ice was reported extending for miles off the coasts of the southern North Sea (England, France and the Low Countries), causing severe problems for shipping and preventing the use of many harbours. Near Manchester, the ground was frozen to 27 inches; in Somerset, to more than four feet.

(Source- Wikipedia)

The drudgery of importing Haloscan comments into Disqus

2012-01-29T16:28:00.000+05:30

Ok, I have tried everything but this brain surgery equivalent suggested here to import the old Haloscan comments into the new Disqus system. And all I can say is, as the French would put it-
J'en ai marre!
and
Je m'en fous!

The only way out now is the long way round - to manually paste in the old comments into the new system. Which is what I'm, alas, have to do.

To identify the these comments, there will be a footnote for each comment pointing out the original comment date and a link to this post. E.g.-

Why don't those jholawalas get together and go to some socialist hellhole country, if they love them so much. First to go should be Arundhati roy

Original comment date- 2009-10-29. See -http://libertynewscentral.blogspot.com/2012/01/drudgery-of-importing-haloscan-comments.html

Let the drudgery begin!

Update-
Whew, done! Anybody notice anything missing, you tell me, OK?