TV Will Save the World

Forget Twitter and Facebook, Google and Kindle. Even forget the latest sleek iGadget. Television is still the most influential medium around. Indeed, for many of the poorest regions of the world, it remains the next big thing...poised, finally to attain truly global ubiquity. And that is good thing, because the TV revolution is changing lives for the better.

Across the developing world, around 45% of households had a TV in 1995; by 2005 the number had climbed above 60%. That's some way behind Australia and the U.S.. Five million more households in sub-Saharan Africa will get a TV over the next five years. In 2005, after the fall of the Taliban, which stupidly outlawed TV, 1 in 5 Afghans had one. The global total is another 150 million by 2013--pushing numbers to well beyond two-thirds of households.

Television's most transformative impact will be on the lives of women. Cloistered in Muslim countries with severe restrictions on clothing, shopping, credibility in law courts and respect in the home and limited in determining their destiny. Now TV viewing is opening their eyes to how their sisters in other countries live. Oprah Winfrey has a helped women every where gain a measure of self-respect and assurance in their inborn abilities beyond having babies, cooking and being a sex-toy for an arrogant husband. They will be a rising force for gender equality in the next 10 years, a force that will push Muslim men into the 21st Century.

In India, researchers found that when cable TV reached villages, women were more likely to go to the market without their husband's permission and less likely to want a boy rather than a girl. They were more likely to make decisions over child health care and less likely to think men had the right to beat their wives. TV is also a powerful medium for adult education. In the Indian state of Gujarat, a hugely popular show that plays Bollywood song and dance clips, the routines are subtitled in Gurjarati. Within 6 months, viewers had made a small but significant improvement in their reading skills.

The Way I See It....in the West, too much TV has been associated with violence, obesity and social isolation. But TV is having a positive (some call it civilizing) impact on the lives of billions worldwide. As the spread of mobile TV, video cameras and YouTube democratize both access and content,it will become an even greater force for humbling tyrannical governments and tyrannical husbands as well. That can't come soon enough!

Global Warming Turns Into a Joke

The great global warming scare is dying not with a bang, or even a whimper. Try a great horse laugh!! Early this month, 20,000 activists, watermelons, politicians and carpetbaggers met in the Mexican resort city of Cancun. They were there for the latest United Nations conference on how to make everyone also cut the emissions caused by, for instance, flying a population the size of a small city to a Mexican beach. Did anyone hear of Tele-Conferencing?

These are the emissions we're told are heating the world so dangerously that Europe is now gripped by one of the coldest winters in a generation. Today, my friends in New York emailed saying they are expecting a blizzard with an 18 inch snowfall in the next few hours. Indeed it was so bad that Vicky Pope, a warming pundit from Britain's Meteorological Office, was trapped in London by the snow that the Met's own climate models failed to predict and couldn't fly to Cancun to explain how hot the world is becoming.

Remember, this kind of thing dogged the UN's climate mega-summit in Copenhagen a year ago. The heavens dumped 10cm of snow on the city in one night alone, while blizzards threatened America's eastern seaboard down to Florida. Now, presently, in our case here on the eastern coast of Australia we are, for the past 3 weeks, getting continual torrential rain that our own warmist-leaning Bureau of Meteorology didn't see coming either, having predicted a drier Spring.

Never mind the weak predictions. Fresh off their jets and cooled by the resort's airconditioners, the Cancun evangelists are learning of cheery plans to put the rest of us on rations to restrict our use of such things as planes, air-coolers and that filthy gasoline all the while listening to Salsa bands flown in from Acapulco. Indeed, our own warmist-deadshit Prof Gary Egger from Southern Cross University has proudly told the summit-fest that's he's got $390,000 from our Gillard Government to test the first rationing scheme on Norfolk Island. (See my November posting: "Watermelons invade Norfolk Island")

How did we ever succumb to this madness? Actually, WikiLeaks may help us to understand, having now published leaked US diplomatic cables revealing Obama's socialist Government finances whole nations to give in to the warming faith. In February this year, an ambassador from the Maldives told US deputy for climate change envoy Jonathan Pershing that if the US handed over "tangible assistance", other nations would realize "the advantages to be gained by compliance" with the accord agreed to at the Copenhagen summit. He mentioned a figure of $50 million!

The Way I See It....does the Maldives Government REALLY believe warming will drown its island nation? You'd think not, given it's building a brand new airport right by the sea, so even more tourists can fly in. Everyone from cynical scientists, environmentalists, greenie-leftists, and politicians with hands in subsidized green technologies are using climate change/global warming as a cash gravy train.

It's man-made, all right, this Climate of Opinion----made by an army of salvation seekers, grant seekers and pleasure seekers, that were doing the samba in Cancun while we sandbag towns from the floods they told us not to expect again in this strangely, madly over-heated world.

Fluoridated Water Meets its Waterloo!

Major congratulations are in order for the Canadians! The residents of Waterloo, Ontario stopped adding fluoride to their tap water at noon, November the 29th, 2010 at four water treatment sites, after 33 years of fluoridation.

Wisdom finally won over ignorance and greed and an important step has been taken toward safeguarding the health of their children. Two years of advocacy and hard work by anti-fluoridation community members led to a winning campaign. The battle over fluoride, which was introduced to the water supply in Canada in the 1940s, is part of a growing movement across North America. In the early 2000s several communities in British Columbia voted to get rid of fluoride, as did Whitehorse in 1998.

The battle rages on and appears to be gaining traction as more health-conscious people, world-wide, become more educated about the dangers of fluoride to their health. A number of books on the subject have come out in recent years, particularly, "The Case Against Fluoride" by environmental chemist Paul Connett, Ph.D. He shows that many dentists are simply seriously stupid or misinformed about fluoride, warning that cavities and public health costs will rise and that low-income children are at special risk. Yeah right, like the little buggers will give up drinking soda now that fluoride is in the water. Reducing the rates of cavities requires education, not fluoridation!

The American and Australian Dental Associations have had tunnel vision on the fluoride issue for decades, paying no attention to the ample evidence of the damaging systemic health effects of fluoride. It's time for them to grow up and face the facts. First of all anybody with a lick-of-sense realizes that the closest your teeth with get to fluoride is the fluoridated water passing your lips. Down it goes to be absorbed into your interstitial fluids and blood stream with its toxicity touching every part of body tissues where it stays and not one molecule gets on to your teeth. It's not rocket science..there is no BENEFIT, it is just so obvious. Dental topical "painting"or toothpaste is the best direct option.

The bad affects of fluoridated water starts with the fact that the type of fluoride added to your water supply is NOT pharmaceutical grade fluoride, but rather an industrial waste product. If pharmaceutical grade fluoride were added to municipal water it would be cost prohibitive. So they came up with a cheap substitute....a toxic waste product cleverly marketed as a health product. It's a byproduct of phosphate fertilizer industry called hexafluorosilic acid. It's against international law to dump it in the sea but if someone buys it, it's no longer hazardous waste. Bizarre!

The Way I See It...it's not how much future you have but what's in your future? The more you drink the greater are the effects. Evidence shows that arthritis-like symptoms with an increase in bone brittleness. Fluoride also lowers thyroid function. Over 30 studies show the damage fluoride inflicts on your brain. Even more with a child's immature blood-brain barrier allowing more fluoride to flow into and accumulate in their brains. There are 23 studies showing a lowing of of a child's IQ. Yet no one informs the parents to refrain from using tap water for making infant formula.

If you are convinced this future is not for you or your young family, join an anti-fluoridation society in your area and go out and have a Reverse-Osmosis Water Filter System installed under your kitchen sink or where ever you have easy and regular access to pure, safe water.

Don't Pretend Green Jobs will Save Us

Australians have been told it is time to call out Greens Party leader, Bob Brown, for his wild claims that whacking the country with a huge carbon tax will create a "green jobs revolution". Green policies in fact tend to kill jobs, not create them, not least by diverting huge amounts of taxes from more productive parts of the economy.

Americans have seen the Obama Administration channeled 90 billion of the 870 billion dollar stimulus package towards the new Green Economy. The hope was that a national move from fossil energy to green energy would not only be good, long term, for the environment, but that transition could also be a jobs driver, which would help resuscitate the overall economy.

But two years into Obama's administration, the White House has reported it's helped create 224,500 green jobs, far short of the 5 million it had openly predicted. That's $400,000 of government help for each green job. Now economists are saying that Obama's promise at the recent Cancun Climate Conference to reduce to 60% the United States' emissions by 2030 will actually subvert the country's economic productivity to 1905 levels! At that time household electrical needs were mainly for lighting. Pure crazy!

Even then, that's cheaper than the green jobs 'created' by Spain's mad flirtation with green power, that's brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy. A study calculates that since 2000 Spain $1.03 million to create each green job, including subsidies of more than $1.8 million per wind industry job! I have personally seen the vast stretches of windfarms across southern Spain. The study also calculates that programs creating those jobs also resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy, or 2.2 jobs destroyed for every green job. What a mess watermelons can get you in!

The Way I See It....Resources Minister Martin Ferguson has rightly accused the Australian Greens of seeking to derail mining approval processes. He has vowed he will not be ''intimidated" into putting politics ahead of jobs and any other Labor economic development projects. He was relating to Bob Brown description of the proposed liquefied natural gas processing plant in Western Australia as a "blight" on the Kimberley landscape disregarding that the project would create thousands of jobs and guarantee $1.5 billion to the surrounding Aboriginal communities. Being in bed with Julia Gillard's minority government, the Greens will continue to flex their voting muscle. Hopefully their cockamamie policies will be held in check.

Time to Profile Terrorists at Airports

Americans are the first to sample new enhanced security measures at their next visit to the airport. It has travelers feeling that the terrorists have already won in inhibiting their free way of life. Pre-flight screening has moved from safety to comedy. Before it devolves into tragedy, officials should say ''damn'' to political correctness and start profiling the obvious suspects.

After al-Qaeda's attempted bombing of FedEx and UPS cargo jets, any package from, say Somalia to a San Francisco synagogue likely will get close scrutiny. This is profiling. Now, obviously, packages are not people. Boxes have neither civil rights nor emotions. People do, and we always must be aware of and sensitive to that.

Unfortunately, the majority of the uneducated TSA agents (thugs is a better word) seem to think everyone from children to little old ladies are easy targets for their highly personal pat-downs. The crotch grabbing and breast feeling are relentless...unless you agree to be irradiated in a full body scanner that easily shows if you are anatomically correct. So being forced, on pain of arrest, to take out your breast prosthesis, your full urine bag (urostomy) or child's artificial leg * is really too much to ask. This is besides watching (as an eye-witness) the Hispanic and Black "thugs" not requiring their kind to take off belts and shoes and letting them pass through. A sort of undercover profiling I guess, but white folk are fair game. America must focus its finite capabilities on those who crave the destruction of planes and the people who ride them.

What would that profile be? Today's threat comes almost exclusively from militant-Islamic males between about 18 and 35 who hail from the Middle East and predominantly Muslim African and south Asian nations. This profile was not drawn by anti-Muslim bigots, nervous Jews or paranoid Southern Baptists. The terrorists themselves created this profile. Aviation has obsessed them for years. "Bring down their airplanes," demanded Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who inspired the 1993 World Trade Center attack. "Slaughter them on land, sea and air."

The Way I See It....not everyone named Mustafa should be waterboarded beside the first-class lounge? But if he's between 18-35 from a Middle Eastern country and a Muslim, it might be wise to ask him a few extra questions, carefully peruse his papers and inspect him and his possessions. While officials need to respect the rights of innocents who fit this profile, passengers also have an overarching right to land at their destinations intact. Continued political correctness eventually will kill innocent civilians. It's time to stop the offensive pat-downs and body scanners and finally employ terrorist profiling to shield all travellers from those who want to murder them.

* Actual confirmed incidents

Blood on their Hands !

Four days ago a number of residents of Christmas Island (an Indian Ocean territory of Australia) watched in horror as an old fishing boat crammed with 84 Iraqi and Iranian asylum seekers was thrown against the island's cliffs in rough seas. In an agonizingly short time the boat was smashed to pieces and the many onlookers attempts at throwing ropes and life jackets proving fruitless. Women frantically clutching their children were torn apart on the sharp rocks and their husbands suffered the same fate as they tried to rescue them. The graphic video footage of this tragedy was soon shown on every television station around Australia, and no doubt the world, and instantly sickened everyone seeing it.

Eventually, 42 were managed to be rescued in the raging sea but 30 were found dead and another 12 are still missing with no hope of finding them. Shock and horror soon gave way to universal anger. One islander was quoted as saying, ''this damn Labor Government has blood on its hands." This damning indictment was also printed by journalist Andrew Bolt the same day in the Herald Sun saying, ''One year ago I warned the government it was luring people to their deaths.'' I said then, "Twelve more dead! Now will the Rudd Government finally see that its "compassion'' kills? This brings to 54 the number of boat people who have died this year trying to reach us. That's the price of the ''compassion'' Rudd and Gillard showed last year by weakening the laws that once deterred boat people from risking their lives like this. More will die too, unless this deceitful and opportunistic Prime Minister undoes the mischief he has wrought!''

My YELLOW dot on the Immigration Department graph above, marks when John Howard turned back the Tampa and introduced the Pacific Solution, in August and September, 2001. The RED dot marks the 31st of July, 2008, when Kevin "Crudd", having abolished the Pacific Solution four months earlier, announced a dramatic weakening of Howard's other boat people laws. Rudd was following a blueprint largely of Julia Gillard's own design. Oh and by the way....Ms Gillard interrupted her holiday to join Oprah Winfrey on stage in Melbourne for a photo opportunity and the Federal Government on that same day did not respond to this shocking shipwreck.

Five months ago in my posting, Human Flotsam and Jetsam, I warned that with over 3400 asylum seeker's arriving in the 7 months previously, we were in dire need of reinstating the Pacific Solution with a willing Nauru ready to reopen its processing centre. But no, a recalcitrant Julia Gillard spitefully refuses to accept John Howard's Nauru facility and wastes time looking at East Timor and elsewhere. Will these needless deaths prompt her into repealing her ineffectual immigration reforms, like abolishing temporary protection visas, softening mandatory detention and the false promise of swifter processing. I sure hope so. However, being a true-to-form politician, she is already asking for a number on government inquires into this tragedy that will divert attention away from her culpability.

The Way I See It....it's not too early to blame the Gillard Government for these Christmas Island deaths. Andrew Bolt was pilloried for mentioning this fact the following day and was told ''It's not the right time to discuss this'' But why? And if not now, when? Before the next boat sinks, or after? When can the Australian public and the ''lamestream'' media be allowed to point out that these deaths, as well as the others, were CAUSED BY a Government that recklessly weakened our boat people laws, despite repeated warnings, it would lead to just this kind of tragedy?

It's never been the right time for the Left to hear it's their socialist politics and the new laws they cheered, have come back to bite them. They shake their heads and wring their hands and continue to lie that their immigration approach is "'doing fine'. They play down the fact that within months of these ''reforms'', the boats were back...soaring from three a year (over the previous six years) to almost 200 since! The Australian people have had enough! At least the graph doesn't lie.

The Scientific Case for Masturbation

I came across a very informative article written by Sharon Begley in NEWSWEEK last month. It might not be everyone's topic of interest but I'm sure at one time or another we all had a "hand" in it. But to ignore the latest findings on masturbation would be a mistake: the stakes are simply too high, going all the way up to the very survival of the species. While we all were admonished against toying with the organs of procreation that would somehow undermine baby making, the facts are to the contrary. Evidence from elephants to rodents to humans shows that masturbating is----counter intuitively---an excellent way to make healthy babies and lots of them.

The science is straightforward. Whenever a behavior is common in the animal kingdom, biologists suspect it has an adaptive function. That is, the behavior enabled individual animals to survive better and leave more offspring than animals that did not engage in the behavior. As a result, genes for the behavior spread throughout that population until it became essentially ubiquitous. And so it it is with autoeroticism, which is common...really common.

When you think about it, with "spanking the monkey," "charming the snake," and "freeing willy," you have a remarkable number of slang terms for pleasuring oneself referring to animals. That reflects reality: the practice has been documented in Japanese macaques, gibbons, baboons, chimps, elephants, dogs, cats, horses, lions, donkeys and even walruses that manage to "flog the bishop" with their flippers. (To prove a point, Ms Begley mentions that clicking this blog http://www.scienceinseconds.com/blog/Spanking-the-Monkey you'll see an excellent photo of an elephant in flagrante dilecto.)

What then, might be its adaptive function? How can a male's autoeroticism help him triumph in the war of survival of the fittest? Lucky for us scientists have come up with four basic theories, each with some support in one or another animal species. Here they are:

1. Masturbation removes old, damaged sperm that are passed their Use-by-Date from the reproductive tract. That would increase the fraction of healthy, speedy sperm, improving the male's chance of becoming a father. Notes biologist Jane Waterman (University of Central Florida), in her paper in the journal PLoS One, "In humans masturbating decreased the number of sperm a man delivered the next time he had sex but not the number of sperm that woman retained." She concluded that "masturbation is a male strategy to increase sperm fitness." Result: healthier and possibly more babies.


2. Masturbation might be a form of advertising. According to this theory, males that engage in autoeroticism signal to possible mates as well as competitors how much they have to offer. Result: more mating, more babies, bigger families.


3. Masturbation might be a sort of Victory Lap. Some animals masturbate after they mate. Since other members of the group know this, then this act signifies to other females looking for a mate that, "if he was good enough for her...." Result: more mating, more babies.


4. Masturbation can serve a hygiene function. According to this idea, males engage in autoeroticism because it cleans the reproductive tract and reduces the chance of acquiring a sexually transmitted disease from a female he mated with and who had other recent partners. Result: a lower incidence of STDs, better sexual hygiene, more mating, more babies.

And what about females??? There have been far fewer observations of the females of various species. Instead, primatologists conclude, in the case of females the purpose is simply to produce enjoyable sensations...with or without batteries.

The Way I See It....all in all and across great and small, autoeroticism (at least among males) is a cornerstone of procreation and thus the formation of families. If religious fundamentalist views of the practice were to dominate, it would be a worrisome threat to family values and to our species. It seems that the church is always pushing for pain while males are always pulling for pleasure. Oh well...