How the Jim Crow laws can be updated to meet the needs of the 21st century
God-loving Republican politicians across the USA are still reeling from the discovery that despite all previous gerrymandering, voter suppression, and outright intimidation, it’s still possible for a traitorous liberal baby-eating god-hating Democrat to garner sufficient votes that even the USA’s gloriously dysfunctional Electoral College system can’t prevent disaster befalling our great nation.
Obviously something must be done. And that something is to bring back much-needed Jim Crow laws. Across our land, more than 258 separate pieces of legislation are being promoted by patriotic Republican politicians to ensure that never again can such a calamity befall the greatest nation on Earth…
What you believe depends on where you grew up
We humans are evolved to believe whatever we’re told by purported authority figures. Hardly anyone, even today when information is no more than a click away, can be bothered to do any research. Consequently we all tend to believe whatever it was we were told when we were growing up.
Raised in Texas? Evolution is a myth invented by Satanists. Raised in Arabia? Allah is the only true god. Raised in France? Humanist values emanate from the most cultured nation on the planet. Raised in Scotland? John Logie Baird invented the television.
Alas for our beliefs, they are rarely accurate.
…
How this modest car is almost the perfect vehicle for Brexiteers
These days we expect cars to be reliable and, even in the dire UK climate, to resist rust. Toyota has built its reputation on rock-solid reliability over several decades and although other manufacturers have to a large degree caught up, it’s still the gold standard for everyday get-in-and-go. So what makes the harmless Corolla estate car an almost-perfect mode of transportation for the UK’s sizeable population of folk who think it was a smart & stable genius idea to leave the greatest union in Europe since the collapse of the Roman Empire?
It starts from the outside.
Nowadays, most electronic…
How magnetic fields and photons synergistically produce the highest-energy flashes in the universe
Almost a year ago, on April 15th 2020, a wave of gamma rays blasted through our solar system, having traveled 11.42 million light-years across space from a source in the Sculptor galaxy. In other words, an event that actually occurred 11.42 million years ago, hundreds of trillions of kilometers away, finally reached us. Fortunately, by the time the gamma rays got here they were sufficiently diffused that they didn’t cause us any harm. But if we’d been up close and personal, we’d have been destroyed because gamma rays are the most powerful emissions in the universe.
Let’s start with the…
Why we don’t need machine-brain interfaces to control human beings and turn ourselves into drones
The only two characteristics that distinguish humans from other animals are not what many people imagine. Forget about using tools: plenty of other animals use tools too, and some species are more sophisticated tool-users than we are. For example, studies on New Caledonian Crows have demonstrated they can solve 21-step puzzles by shaping and using tools in a wide variety of ways. Personally I don’t know any human being who can solve a 21-step puzzle. …
Local newspaper vows to get to the bottom of things
Kansas City Reporter, February 10th 2022
For days now, Kansas City residents have been talking about nothing else but the rumor that FBI agents were involved in the abduction and subsequent probing of Billy-Joe McIntyre, a well-known local Caucasian man aged seventy-four. According to a deposition sworn by Billy-Joe in front of three of his drinking buddies, he was seized by four FBI agents as he left the Green Coyote saloon at 02.27 on the morning of 2nd February this year.
The agents hustled him into an unmarked black SUV…
How our disposition towards magical thinking always makes us the butt of the story
On the rare occasions anyone is compelled to read a school textbook on the topic of History, and in particular on the subject of past beliefs, it’s often the case that reactions vary from amusement to incredulity. How could people back then believe in the nonsense that was delivered earnestly by priests and physicians alike? How could entire countries succumb to mass hysteria over witches and stone, hang, burn, and drown thousands of harmless women as a result? How could anyone imagine that bleeding would cure disease, or that herbs would be an efficacious prophylactic?
It’s easy to laugh at…
A cut-price alternative to a Land Rover Discovery or Defender
There are very few off-road capable SUVs being made these days. As practically no one takes their supposedly go-anywhere 4x4 onto terrain more challenging than a damp supermarket carpark, manufacturers long ago learned to prioritize comfort and convenience at the expense of actual rough-road capability. The modern SUV is all show and no go.
As a result, anyone wanting or needing to take their 4x4 off road has a very limited range of options to choose from. Ford makes the excellent F150 Raptor but if you don’t need a pickup truck it’s rather excessive. The new Ford Bronco promises to…
How our folly will cause us to smash everything we rely on, in the name of self-sufficiency
There are few sights more indicative of the power of human intelligence than the heartwarming sight of anti-globalization protestors gathering outside a summit meeting. Clutching their iPhones (which depend entirely on a complex global network comprising forty-nine different countries around the world) and sipping their designer lattes (which depend entirely on a global network of at least ten different countries, depending on whose brand they happen to be sipping) and wearing clothes that likewise are entirely the product of globalization, these joyous protestors earnestly declaim the evils of the system that has given them absolutely everything they have.
Invariably these…
Why I’d never buy an Audi S3 despite it being a perfectly adequate car
Volkswagen Audi Group (VAG) has a typical Large Automobile Corporation business model: have one or more brands producing very serviceable vehicles that are affordable for modest middle-class and aspirational blue collar customers, and have a “halo effect” luxury brand that includes one or two entry-level vehicles for those of modest middle-class means who nevertheless want to indulge their own slightly grander aspirations.
The Audi S3 sportback is in this entry-level bracket, being a bit more psychologically desirable than a VW or Seat or Skoda of the same size and capability, and is thus pitched at the same kind of people…
Allan Milne Lees
Anyone who enjoys my articles here on Medium may be interested in my books Why Democracy Failed and The Praying Ape, both available from Amazon.
