It was twenty years ago today that NOT PC began.

 

It was twenty years ago today that NOT PC began, with that short post above.

Twenty years!

Crikey!

No, don't clap. Just throw money. ;-)

It's interesting, to me at least, to see what I wrote that first week, and whether any predictions came right—or if any ideas the blog promoted took hold. It turns out that...

• John Tamihere wasn't heading for political oblivion after all
• the Toy Love album is still great in any guise
• Nanny State, in every guise, has only got worse
• bloggers aren't quite as collegial now as they were then, but
• anonymous commenters are still mostly cowards
• lazy politicians are still mostly A Good Thing
• it's more true than ever that state and school be separated
• its more true than ever that the revolution libertarians and Objectivists are trying to foment is inside people's heads—even if most of them have forgotten that
• we still need property rights embedded within the Bill of Rights —and even mentioned in the RMA!
• we still desperately need a National Party that understands property rights—or even what their own Dancing Cossacks were all about
• the Herald knew more about rights then than almost everybody does now
• we still await a device transmitting signals direct from brain to 'puter —though it is one of many Musk promises
• increasing ignorance of the Holocaust does indeed "run the risk of history repeating itself"
• the IRA and other paramilitaries have still, mercifully, mostly given up the gun
• as another Pope heads to the out door, the reputation of his Church is if anything in even poorer health

In that time I've written about 4.5 million words words across nearly 15,000 posts, which have attracted 54,639 comments (thank you).

Over those twenty years, those 15,000 posts have enjoyed precisely 15,742,467 page views.

And my Top Ten posts of all time (below) features quotes from Stephen Hicks, Steven Pinker, architecture by my teacher Claude Megson, and guest posts by sundry others. My sole personal contribution to the Top Ten however is my Family Tree of Economics. Of which, to be fair, I am very proud—decent "trees" are still a rarity.

PS: Credit again to Richard Goode for calling my bluff when I told him I should start blogging—a few taps of a keyboard and he turned around and said "There you go." So I did. (Thanks Richard.)

Projects, Day 3: Bank fitout

So I told you the other day I’d give you some idea of some of the things I’ve been working on recently that have kept me away from blogging.

This one is part of a mostly interior conversion project, converting an elegant mid-century commercial building into a new life as a funky urban pad.

It’s been fun.

Projects, Day 2: Office/Showhome

So I told you yesterday I’d give you some idea of some of the things I’ve been working on recently that have kept me away from blogging.

This one is a small, experimental, stand-alone office and training centre for up to 15 people — that doubles as a show home (which itself is a whole other story) ...

“So how come you haven’t been blogging?”

“So how come you haven’t been blogging lately?” a friend asked over the weekend. ”It’s not like there’s nothing to blog about!"

“Too busy,” was the reply. “Too many jobs; too much work to do."

“So how about you show us what you’ve been doing then.” It sounded like a demand — and also like a pretty good idea.

So to help support my alibi, here’s a pic of one of the things I’ve been working on feverishly over recent weeks (I’ll post others over the next few days), about which I can say no more. But a few of you may recognise the general location ...

How things have changed

 

It’s easy to forget how many things have changed so very much in so very few years. Those of you especially who have grown up with the internet might look askance at this story a friend plucked out from his archives this morning; a story from a London newspaper about my former West London footy club.

It was considered “a “story because, wait for it, the club was connected to something called “the internet.” This, at the time, was considered impossibly exotic. Explains the unofficial archivist and former official webmaster:

Twenty one years ago today, we launched the third Australian Rules football club website in the world* which made a grand total of eight sites on the planet devoted to Aussie Rules.
    In the initial days, our email was faxed to us because unbelievably, none of us had an email address in London … and if you tell that to the young people today, they won't believe you....

* Pipped by Essendon and Collingwood.

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Has “online harassment” become “a scary norm”?

 

Via RNZ:

A parenting columnist says she’s been told she “should be raped” and sent photos of dead babies – and other women with an online presence say harassment has become a scary norm.
    A new study led by security company Norton, in which 500 women took part, has found 72 percent of New Zealand women under 30 experience online harassment.
    One in four women said they had received threats relating to death, rape and sexual assaults.

I got a death threat myself just yesterday, my moderator-of-comments tells me. It may have included a threat of sexual assault as well, although it’s hard to know:

This, sadly, is the kind of fetid garbage that pollutes the comments sections of most online fora, and why most of those comments sections are now either moderated or non-existent -- RNZ and Spinoff being just two who’ve turned off comments recently.

But we should all be aware that Norton here are just talking their book. Keyboard warriors writing this unhinged slime are not active activists, they’re just sad and pathetic. A threat only to themselves, not anything for Norton to get any new business over.

But you can understand why comments evverywhere are heading for the high jump.

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New blog by an old troll

 

You already know and love this entity (and you may even feel that you know it only too well!). Yet I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that the unacknowledged genius that is my troll calling itself socialist hashasin needs a much wider audience if it is going to achieve the fame and fortune its rich learning and thoughtful and abundant commentary thoroughly deserves.

To date you have only seen a very small sample of this entity’s great wit and wisdom, its tart insights, its artful use of capitalisation, its creative sense of spelling and grammar. I have come to realise however that the genius of the troll’s tender and moving contributions should no longer be ignored or travailed, and since they sit so uncomfortably here at NOT PC against my own pale unaccomplished work, I have started a blog for the entity so its talent may be properly and lovingly showcased in the sort of space it deserves – and will be updating it both from the archive, and as new contributions come in.

Even with the few compositions on display, it is already a thing of wonder.

Who could fail to be moved by its thoughtful intelligently-argued positions on world events. Who could not be persuaded by the sparkling wit and single-minded focus on display.

Visit now, and sit back in awe at the scale of its profundity, and the breadth of its many insights.

You can find its site, loving tended, at http://fetidgarbage.blogspot.com .

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Deluded, deranged, defeated [updated]

If you’re feeling a little aggrieved that I’ve had to apply comment moderation here for only the second time in the blog’s ten-year history, settle back and understand the reason why.

By way of example, and frankly for your own reading amusement, I have to share with you just some of the bleatings of madness—i.e, just a few of the many, many interjections from one particular loon posting from L.A. over the last two weeks who’s been commenting continually, spamming the comments (or trying to), with no hope of the spam ever rising to the surface and being published. (White supremacists can publish their trash elsewhere without me providing them with a megaphone.)

You have to laugh, really. But as entertained as I have been by the bile, it’s still annoying for you lot to have to endure the moderation until the loathsome loon decides to linger no longer. In the meantime be entertained while being simultaneously repelled ….

Similar to Redbaiter’s bile when he came here on a tear a year or so ago, but not even half as entertaining. And that’s just a small part of a couple of week’s worth of lunacy now sitting in my spam filter, most of it emanating from this entity in Irvine, California:

UPDATE: Just some of the droppings from this morning’s sackload of shit . . .

Against anonymous commenters

Mark Steyn attacks anonymous commenters too timid to put a name to their opinions.

Kathy Shaidle and Gavin McInnes have been discussing online anonymity. I agree with them. You’re not in the battle unless you put your name to it – and don’t give me that Scarlet Pimpernel stuff: you’re not riding out after dark on daring missions, you’re just reTweeting some bloke’s hashtag.
    Mr McInnes is withering about the cyber-warrior ethos – the butch pseudonym, the graphic-novel avatar. But, cumulatively, it’s making the Internet boring and ineffectual for everyone other than Isis…
    There are alwaysrational reasons for not flying under your flag. But cumulatively and objectively they have a corrosive effect. McInnes cites the stand-up mommy who, in response to the arrest of a parent who let her children walk home from the park unaccompanied, organized a "Leave Your Kids At The Park" day - to demonstrate to the statist control freaks that they can't arrest us all. Her name is Lenore Skenazy, not "WarriorPrincess437"

Frankly, if you can’t take your own ideas seriously enough to put your name to them, then why the hell should anyone else? That’s the lesson from the likes of Lenore and Steyn.

Yes, it’s true (as Steve Kates responds) that “free speech of unpopular opinions – meaning opinions that are unpopular on the left – is not so free after all, but comes with a huge potential cost.” That “the anonymity of the net allows many of us to say things in public that we are very aware may have us receiving modern versions of being burned at the stake or sent to the gulag.”

But while “there are always rational reasons for not flying under your flag … cumulatively and objectively they have a corrosive effect.” And it remains true that for every opinion coming from an avatar, one from someone using their own name is more genuine.

Because one of us is real and the other isn't. Which means that one of us has his own skin in the game, and he doesn't want to waste his time trying to figure out whether the other one's deranged obsession is simply the usual basement blowhardry…

It is also true that virtually without fail every single scurrilous or cowardly attack online comes from some anonymous blowhard hiding behind a self-fantasising nom-de-plume. Like the current loony from Los Angeles who’s been spamming the comments section here at NOT PC for the past week with links to white supremacist websites and claims about something called Tavistock—which I had to Google to discover is among the internet’s 4th-most popular bizarre conspiracy theory among loonies who still haven’t learned to tie their own shoes.

So until the spamming stops, or slows – or until shops in Irvine, California run out of tinfoil—I’m afraid I’ve had to apply moderation to all the comments here.

Which won’t bother most of you, since you don’t often bother to comment anyway, whether anonymously or pseudonymously or not.

Is this what we need for blog comments?

Well, clearly not this blog since the comments rarely get above the tepid. But some swamps sure could use them.

[Hat tip https://twitter.com/doctorow]

Not PC 2.0: Whither liberty?

Yep, as you may have noticed this morning, after ten years of torrid action, and no dirt to speak of, the blog has had a face-lift, a tummy tuck and a very modest boob job.

Long overdue. After ten years without any update whatsoever, the wrinkles were starting to show.

So now you can easily link to every post from the header.

You can easily post my posts to your Facebook, Twitter, whatever.

You can enjoy the posts in a much wider format – much easier to enjoy art and architecture.

You can easily reply to any post, or to someone’s comment.

You can also tell me with just one click whether a post is cool or crap.

You can see, days before, which posts will end up in your Friday Ramble.

You can easily find older posts, by either month or by subject. (So I’d better become more disciplined about subject labels.)

I can more accurately measure stats now.

And it should all look shit hot on whatever mobile device from which you might want to hook in.

“How cool is all that!” I hear you cry.

Sure, we’ve lost a few things. Like all the clutter. And muh links. (Let me know if there are any you need back.)

So you can now enjoy the same acid voice and pithy commentary in a much slicker, more easily negotiated and promoted home.

See. How cool is that.

Biggest loss, I think, is the Statue of Liberty who has graced our pages for the last ten years. But, sadly, our beloved beauty no longer symbolises liberty as she once did, does she.

In my own lifetime the liberty she once represented when commissioned in France has been perverted beyond recognition – not to mention how the perversion has accelerated since this blog began.

I’d be delighted to display a universally recognised symbol of liberty but – sadly, and possibly tellingly – there are few to none to choose from.

There are plenty of symbols for tyranny and dictatorship, but few if any for liberty. (What might that tell you, gentle reader?)

Mind you, I’d be happy to be proven wrong. What do you suggest I might use as a symbol or logo for liberty that might grace the blog for the next while?  What’s our best symbol?

Tell me in the comments. And then tell me how easy it was to comment.

(And, of course, happy to hear whatever other comments or suggestions you might have.)

Top reading at this top blog

So these were the most popular posts here on NOT PC this week. Did you miss any?

• Quote of the Day: “The Greens are as dead in the water as Labour…”
• What Led to the Magna Carta? War and Taxes
• So why would you want to amalgamate councils anyway?
• LEAKY HOMES, Part 2: What’s going on inside your walls?
• Quote of the Day: On traffic jams
• “Real wages are, virtually to their full extent, the product of past labour”

And this was the one I most enjoyed myself:

• Technology Needs Capital To Produce Economic Growth

A jolly January

To give me a gentle start into 2015 blogging – and to help those of you currently enjoying computer and internet  access to catch up with things you might have missed here last year – I’m going to post some of the best posts from last year.

These were NOT PC’s top five still relevant (or still pointed) posts for January last year…

1. So how much of the "Paleo Diet" is based on an actual Paleolithic diet?
   Since I still have this conversation about this fad diet with someone at least once a week (sigh), here’s TED Fellow Christina Warinner, an expert on ancient diets, answering the question:
           So how much of this "Paleo Diet" stuff is based on an actual Paleolithic diet?
   The answer is not really any of it…
   
2. Skousen celebrates new non-destructive growth measurement
   As I mentioned the other day, mainstream economists are talking up New Zealand as a “rock star” economy on the basis both of expectations of greater demand from China for our milk products, but also because of greater consumption spending.
       The latter can only figure as “growth” if the way you measure growth is based on consumption rather than production, which is exactly what so-called Gross Domestic Product measures – measuring spending on retail goods or by government (which is all consumption spending) as production, but ignoring most of the production that makes this spending possible.
       It’s like judging a rock star’s success not by how many great records he’s produced and sold, but by how many lines of coke he puts up his nose.
       It’s this sort of nonsense that allows unthinking alleged economists to utter nonsense suggesting consumer spending drives more than two-thirds of the overall economy, and giving vote-buying governments the cover to issue shopping subsidies and central bankers to talk about dropping helicopter-loads of money whenever they see spending fall.
       This is not just nonsense, it’s dangerous nonsense….
   
3. Councils’ “experts” among the last still drinking Al Gore’s Kool Aid
   Al Bore’s absurdist 2006 film also showed alarmist maps and videos of sea levels rising 20 feet by the by the year 2100 – a rise that would bury a big two-storey house under the sea.
       None of the UN’s IPCC reports ever supported this surreal fantasy (or his entirely made-up claim that “New Zealand may be refuge as rising sea levels displace hundred of millions of people”). Indeed the latest UN IPCC report continues to dial back its alarmism, with figures showing sea level rise exhibiting no rate of acceleration at all: rising over the last 100 years at the roughly constant rate of 1.7mm. For those without a calculator, that’s  a rise of just 170mm, a level that would only be able to just barely put a strip of 6 inch thick flooring under water…
       Indeed, the UN does offer scare stories suggesting accelerated rises from 410mm to 640mm for their most likely “projections.” Yet GPS and satellite measurements, only used in the last decade, indicate that “Relative Sea Level,the distance between the level of the sea and the level of neighbouring land, … frequently [shows] little sign of change during the recent decade,” even in those places like Stockholm, Pago Pago and San Francisco highlighted by the UN’s report as being especially scary¹.
       San Francisco, by the way, is where Al Gore owns seafront property.
       So why, you might ask, are Christchurch’s “experts”² now planning to limit what people can do on their property on the basis of guesswork suggesting seas will rise at double the rate of even the scariest of scenarios dreamed up by the UN …
   
4. Pete Seeger: “If I had a hammer and sickle”
   America’s most famous, and most influential, Communist has just died.
     Pete Seeger, folk singer, banjo player, successful communist recruitment tool – the man some dubbed Stalin’s Songbird – was 94.
       “The conventional wisdom holds that it was ever so—that American popular musicians have always been leftists, and that music-as-radical-politics has stretched across the decades, expressing the nation’s social conscience…  Yet this “native tradition” is a myth. Until quite recently, popular music’s prevailing spirit was apolitical … The politicisation of American pop … grew out of a patient leftist political strategy that began in the mid-1930s with the Communist Party’s “Popular Front” effort to use popular culture to advance its cause…”
   
5. Kim DotCon takes another scalp
   It seems Kim DotCon is political kryptonite to anyone he touches…

Comments CAPTCHA

You know, according to Blogger’s Blog Stats I had 5,129 pageviews yesterday … but only nine comments.

Go figure.

Maybe when Google’s new replacement for that horrible anti-spam CAPTCHA system finally filters down to this humble blog’s comments system, it will be so much easier for everyone to comment that the boards will be lighting up.

I can dream, can’t I?

[Hat tip Greig McG.]

Lady Liberty

Last week I posted saying the United Police States now no longer represented liberty, so I would be taking Lady Liberty down from my blog.

A friend however had a better idea, and he sent me a slight but subtly appropriate modification to Our Lady.  (Can you see it?)

Thanks Paul.

Google Reader, off in 3, 2, 1 …

If you read NOT PC via RSS on Google Reader, then hopefully you’re already aware Google’s Reader is going to be defunct any minute now.

Promising alternatives to Google Reader include Netvibes, Yoleo, Digg Reader and Feedly. ReplaceReader.com lists most of the alternatives, sorted by popularity.

Most of the alternative readers have tried to make the transition simple. But don’t forget to make sure NOT PC is in your subscriptions list.

Because I know where you live.

[Hat tip Gus Van Horn]

Test

Test from Blogsy.

 

Posted with Blogsy

GUEST POST: The absence of PC explained

Dear readers of Not PC,

Peter suffered a herniated disc. He's in a lot of pain, and hasn't been able to update his blog; or do much of anything really.

Stay tuned; hopefully he'll be back online soon. In the meantime have a look at the 'REGULAR READS' links on the left of the blog for some excellent writing from elsewhere on the Web.

Cheers
Julian Pistorius

P.S. I blame it on the vegetarianism.

P.P.S. There is no substance to the rumours of an assassination attempt by a rabid Ron Paul fan.

Watch out, there’s a (new) watchdog about [updated]

The Law Commission has been dreaming up ways to “regulate” bloggers, and new ways to regulate mainstream news.

Their proposal includes a new “code,” and an “independent regulator.”  “Independent” in the sense of being being an agent of government, but paid for by those it regulates. And “voluntary” in the sense of “do what we suggest, or we’ll make you.”

Naturally, the bigger bloggers are  generally happy with the suggestion—in the same way and for the same reasons that bigger companies are generally happy with more regulation.

They’re happy because the more regulation there is, the more difficult it can be made for their smaller competitors.

And because they generally get to write the code.

So expect a new watchdog to be announced once the pretence at “consultation” over this is completed.

And free speech, once again, to diminish.

UPDATE: Russell Brown is less enthusiastic than the Blue Team bloggers. But still concludes

Not everyone will be comfortable with the proposals in the paper, but the Law Commission has, I think, admirably fulfilled its brief of providing a basis for discussion.
    And, finally, the role of a free and robust press in a democracy is strongly and repeatedly emphasised in this discussion paper. Given that the minister who commissioned this review did not think to say so, I am particularly glad the Commission has.

Word cloud

Every now and then it’s fun to see what a word cloud of recent posts throws up. Like this one. Hmmm. Interesting.

Do your own word clouds with Wordle.