Author: Kim du Toit

Check This, Assholes

Behind Enemy Lines, Two-Minute Hate

Here’s something to brighten your day:

Miller was contacted following a complaint by an offended party about a poem he shared on social media which was deemed transphobic. The officer explained that, although not illegal, this nevertheless qualified as a ‘non-crime hate incident’.
Why, Miller asked, was the unnamed complainant described as a ‘victim’ if no crime had been committed? More to the point, why was he being investigated at all?
To which came that ominous response: ‘We need to check your thinking.’

So we’re all clear, this happened in Britishland, where the fuzz (I prefer the British term “filth”, myself) have been playing reindeer games like this:

Now I’m not one to advocate violence against the pigs (such as these);  I don’t believe in firebombing cop cars, or ambushing police officers, or anything like that.

But I would be hard-pressed to condemn an action where some free-speech-advocating malcontent might put a couple rounds of birdshot through this sign — as long as there weren’t any cops standing around, and nobody was hurt, or anything.

Note to the fascist Wokistas on this side of The Pond:  don’t even think about it [sic].  And if any of the local fuzz ever accuse me of an “offense” like this, they’d better have the relevant statute ready to quote, along with a large number of other cops.

I need to cut down my morning intake of gin, but bullshit like this doesn’t help.

Monday Funnies

Funny Stuff

Egads!  it’s Monday…


…as long as they’re low-fat (the nudists, not the waffles)…

So, to help you on your way into the week:

And when those sidebar ads just can’t be tolerated anymore:

I don’t care what you say, that’s pure genius (says the guy who has taped his laptop’s power cord into place, and covered his impossible-to-disable touchpad with thick cardboard).

 

And still on those nether regions:


…and as this piece is useless wifout pichurs:

Never mess with South African chicks… they are as tough as old biltong, and they take shit from nobody.

Now try to get that picture out of your mind as you make the weekly supermarket trip.

Relaxing Shooting

Hunting, The Gun Thing

As it’s Sunday, what better way to while away a little time than to watch the peerless Dave Carrie’s tours of various birdshooting estates?  So load up a large mug of coffee / brandy, and enjoy.

Trump Turnberry

Yorkshire Moors

Belvoir Castle (pronounced “beevah”)

Hunting With Beefy (Sir Ian Botham is one of the greatest cricketers England has ever produced)

Llechweddygarth

Videos made before the Chinkvirus screwed it all up, of course.

And as always, a lovely way to pass the time.

And just to show what UK hunters have to put up with, here’s Rachel Carrie (no relation to Dave) and the reaction to her activities.

Innumeracy

Numbers & Statistics

Oh FFS.  This simple question has apparently caused all sorts of mayhem among the innumerate:

The answer is of course “FALSE” — and to think otherwise is to be ignorant of two of the simplest definitions in mathematics, i.e.

  • “A right angle is defined as two straight lines meeting at a 90-degree angle”, and
  • “There are no straight lines in the circumference of a circle.”

And in the above picture, there’s only one straight line.

That anyone can even be fooled by the question means that math education has been completely screwed up.  I agree that it’s quite a tough question for a seven-year-old child (as posed in the article), but nobody with more than a seventh-grade education should be stumped by it, let alone a professor of mathematics.

By the way, ignore the red herring that a straight line consists of two right angles:  that’s only a partial definition of straight line.  (“The shortest linear distance between two points” contains only implied angles, not actual ones.)

And by the way:  the correct spelling is “two right angles”, no hyphen necessary.

I need another gin.

Update:  Oh FFS-squared.

For the above diagram to contain two right angles, one would have to add a third radius, thus:

Now the question “There are two right angles” has the answer “True”  (A0C, B0C).  If you were to answer “False”, giving “because there are four right angles” as your reasoning, you would (rightly) be given an “Incorrect” because there are only four right angles in the imaginary world (i.e. Thales’ Theorem et al.).  However, we are not in an imaginary world because we are not talking concepts, we are talking about an actual diagram.  And to cap it all, we are talking about a question posed to a seven-year-old child, for whom Thales has no existence.

As I explained to a Reader in an email on this very topic, it always pays to remember that mathematics has little basis in reality, e.g. where a line can have direction but no thickness and a point has a position but no size.  And I’m not even going to touch on division by zero… [eyecross]

Because That’s Why

Bad News, Business

As Britishland begins to emerge ever so slowly from its Chinkvirus lockdown foolishness, businesses are being allowed to open, one sector at a time.  Which leads to squeals like this:

Gym boss spending £20,000 a month furloughing staff slams Boris Johnson for reopening pub beer gardens before fitness centres as she asks ‘why isn’t health a priority?’

Here’s my problem with arguments like this.  Instead of arguing the unfairness of pubs opening before gyms and wanting gyms to be given preference, she should be asking why gyms and pubs shouldn’t  open at the same time.

And it’s all about the definition of “health”, isn’t it?  I for one resent the assholes who think that we should all be physically healthier — whereas there’s an equally- or even more-important “social” health, that of companionship and shared good times that would be improved by the opening of pubs.

Moreover, just from a pure numbers perspective, I bet that there are untold millions of people all over Britain lining up to go to their favorite pub — or any pub, for that matter — whereas there are only a few thousand (largely) urbanites waiting to go and hit the treadmills.  If there’s a utilitarian argument (which seems to be what the unkempt Boris Johnson is following), it’s that opening pubs will give pleasure to the greatest number of people — and that if there’s a priority, it should be to the general public rather than a relatively-small number of smug and self-satisfied health-obsessed scolds.

Here are the two arguments:  “Go to the pub and have a good time” vs. “Go to the gym because you should be fitter (unspoken:  you overweight slob).”

No prizes for guessing which argument will (and should) win, every time.