They say one bad apple spoils the barrel; one rotten apple will quickly affect a whole bunch. The same is true of government controls. One control is introduced to 'correct' something that's making some legislator unhappy, following which economic imbalances occur; new controls are pretty quickly called for to try to correct them, following which more are introduced to correct the dislocations that occurred from those controls, and so on. Control follows control, as dislocation follows imbalance.

The history of government controls is like the story of the Emperor's New Clothes in reverse:

NZ Greens' co-leader Russel Norman (left) has been reading Thomas Malthus (right), and he's feeling really scared. Who exactly is Thomas Mathus, I hear you ask, and why should you care? Let me tell you.

I hear people complaining that "Christ is being taken out of Christmas." In fact, the Vatican, poor dears, have "accused some western countries of waging "a war against Christmas" by removing Christian values and symbols from the holiday."

So what? Christ was never in Christmas, except in fiction and by order of the Council of Trent. Jesus wasn't even born in December: he was born in July*, which makes him a cancer -- just like religion.

The first thing you notice through the fog of sleep is a loud, ringing sound. As you rise up through the fog of sleep you recognise it as an alarm of some sort. Your alarm clock. You focus further and realise that it's not going to turn itself off. As you force yourself awake you direct your focus to your limbs, lifting yourself out of bed, and you turn off the clock on your way to the bathroom, making yourself shake the sleep from your mind as you go. It's the start of another day.

Jesus! What a nut!

Who? Pastor Becky bloody Fischer, that's who, the former head of the 'Jesus Camp' documented in the film of the same name (hold on to your head, here's a trailer), and still head of KidsInMinistry.Com -- tagline, "redefining children's ministry in the 21st Century"! The exclamation mark, by the way, is mine. You'll understand why quite quickly.

Reposted from SOLOHQ due to the popularity of Daniel's recent thread.

I spent this last week in some of the world’s great Opera Houses.

Quote for today:

Contemporary society is dominated by a widespread pessimism about science; a pessimism which can only be understood within the context of developments that began in back in the 1980s. Though the churches may have been increasingly emptied, society has not developed an enlightened scepticism or a free-thinking culture; not even agnosticism.

The new Free Radical is out today!! The Free Radical with the free speech cover, and the inside word on the latest threats to free speech and freedom in New Zealand and around the world is out now, and in shops and letterboxes from Monday.

What happens when an atheist with a rather 'disintegrated' philosophical world view debates a religionist with an integrated but factually incorrect worldview about the foundations of science and the scientific method?

Senior Skeptic Michael Shermer has a look at the many delusions afflicting too many people, "from alien encounters to Virgin Mary sightings on pizza pies, to hidden messages revealed while playing "Stairway to Heaven" backwards - and explains the evolutionary and cognitive basis for these lapses in reason."

A new Frank Lloyd Wright building has almost been completed -- at least, there is controversy as to what extent it is still a Frank Lloyd Wright design.

According to the sternly sanctimonious Stern Report, well over one-third of contributions to CO2 emissions are due to deforestation. And what do you think is the best way to minimise deforestation? To get rich.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -H.L. Mencken

There's money and power and headlines aplenty in scaremongering (and much less and many fewer in good news), but how often is the scaremongering accurate? And does it matter? Disaster sells.

Many people have been surprised at the alliance of George W. Bush and Tony Blair, men respectively of the right and the left but who share an obviously genuine friendship. The answer to the apparent paradox is to be found in their respective philosophies. The so-called 'philosophies' of the left's 'Third Way' and the right's Neo-Conservatism' to which these two subscribe share more than their promoters might like to concede.

Free Radical 72 is out now, it gets beneath the news, and it's ready to hit your letter box today. SUBSCRIBE NOW. In this issue:

Now, I'm not one to boast -- quiet at the back! -- but I just thought I'd let you know I've been invited to participate in something pretty exciting.

Edward Schatz is an archivist and photographer who travels the world documenting what he describes as Modern Masters of Art and Organic Architecture from around the world. His recent round of interviewees includes Douglas Cardinal, Gregory Burgess, Laurie Virr, Bart Prince, Robert Crumb, Daniel Lieberman and Eric Lloyd Wright ... and me!

Tomorrow in Melbourne thirty-six high-performance athletes will chase a pointy ball around an oval field with 120,000 fans screaming them on in the stands, and millions more around the world yelling at them through their TVs and big screens -- yes, it's time once again for the annual showcase of the world's most libertarian sport: It's AFL Grand Final time!

We are at war. We, the people of the west are at war with people who wish to destroy us. It's a different war than we're used to, an asymmetric war -- a so-called fourth-generation war -- so it's one some people still don't recognise (or still don't want to recognise) but we are under sustained attack. We are at war.

If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere, It's up to you, New York, New York!

This was a declaration of war—but a declaration by whom, and against what?

2,500 people were killed in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. Today, in mainland USA, many many more have been killed in appalling scenes as America was left defenceless. Airline security was exposed. The Pentagon was breached. The glory of the New York skyline was rent asunder; the twin towers of the World Trade Centre—shining spires of capitalism and twin symbols for man's achievement—are no more.

Now we're at the halfway point of our architectural debate over at my main blog 'Not PC,' here's a brief meditation on what architecture is all about. In five words or less: giving meaning to our lives. To quote the late Claude Megson, "If it doesn't have meaning, then you're just wanking."

Read on now for the thousand-word meditation...

Art. On the subject of art, ain't there a lot of misunderstanding about -- as this still ongoing and fascinating thread at my main blog shows if nothing else does. But isn't it odd how something we've all experienced and enjoyed is somehow so widely misunderstood?

All of us have felt, after watching a film or having indulged in a DVD marathon of a favourite TV show, that our thinking has somehow been changed by the experience -- having been immersed in the world of CSI or House for example we might imagine ourselves to have become more analytical and more attentive to detail (or more cranky); after a Prisoner marathon we might feel particularly astute and mistrustful; and after hours of reality shows (if you can stomach that) you could feel intensely competitive and 'loaded for bear.'

All of us have been touched at some time by a painting, a film, a piece of music or a work of architecture or sculpture. If we hadn't, we just wouldn't be human. Anything that affects us like this can't be causeless, and indeed it isn't.

The man's a genius. An artistic and engineering genius.

I've only had the the pleasure of being in one of Santiago Calatrava's magnificent buildings -- many of which bring to architecture the novel concept of seeing buildings as mechanisms, or as organisms that change as a living thing would during the course of the day -- so the film on Calatrava and his work I've just seen at the JASMAX Architectural Film Festival was a delight. A real delight. (That's him above, by the way, with another of my heroes, architect Felix Candela.)

Anyone remember the passage below from Atlas Shrugged?

We are in the train's cab at the opening of the John Galt Line.

THE TIMES: Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, has called for all Israeli troops to be withdrawn from southern Lebanon as soon as an international force earmarked for the area reaches 5,000... Under UN Resolution 1701, signed earlier this month and agreed by both Israel and Lebanon, provision was made for a international force of 15,000 to act as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah... The UN Secretary-General claimed that the Lebanese authorities yesterday assured him they were taking measures to stop the flow of weapons from Syria and Iran to their ally Hezbollah via sea and air...

Oh right. Well if the UN thinks everything's fine and dandy, then I guess it must be. If the hero of UN successes in Rwanda and Somalia and Bosnia informs the world that he has been "assured" by "the Lebanese authorities" that they're "taking measures" to stop Hezbollah being re-armed, then who would doubt this third-hand information passed on to a bumbling fool by provenly toothless "authorities" -- why would anyone think it might actually need people with real guns to effect a real blockade, one with proper confirmation of disarmament ...

About four-thousand years ago when great buildings were erected they were mainly either funerary monoliths or fortresses. Such was the nature of the world four-thousand years ago.

Back then, war and death and disaster were still largely the order of the day and the focus of much of daily life, and life for the most part was seen as simply a small part of the more important journey taking place after death. (Think for example of the Great Pyramids and the Egyptian death cults, and the Sumerian and Chinese fortresses of this period. Such was the architectural expression seen under the sun.)

Not in Crete however, under the King Minos of legend.

'The Scream ' has been found. The painting by Edward Munch was stolen two years ago, and was recovered this morning (our time). A shame. A great shame.

You see, here's an example of something that is good art -- very good art -- that I don't like at all. If anything better expresses the dis-ease and dislocation expressed by twentieth-century 'thinkers' -- the nausea and helpless angst of Jean Paul Sartre; "things fall apart, the centre cannot hold"; "alone and afraid in a world I never made"; etc; etc. -- then it is this piece.

Someone tells me that today has been decreed "random acts of kindness day" -- in New Zealand at least.

Perhaps if that was to be combined with Casual Sex Friday ... ?

"Give me liberty, or give me death!" That impassioned speech by Patrick Henry still rings down the years from a man who would rather die on his feet than live on his his knees. It is among the top speeches from all history in defence of taking action in defence of one's liberty.

A thread begun by Kelly Elmore with a picture of her baby, just off to Montessori school, was interrupted by a contributor with the breathless exhortation that "Maria Montessori was a genius, but unfortunately she became a Fascist in her old age, and some 'Montessori Schools' teach a Fascist version."

So often so short of perspective, once again this contributor put in his contribution and came out with a lemon. What drives people to cut down heroes and heroines with snide onliners I'll leave as an exercise for the reader. What drives a so-called Objectivist who should know better I'll leave as another exercise, one for which the Objectivist literature itself provides a useful clue.

So what’s the truth about Dr Montessori?