PROBLEMS AT "TONGUE-TIED"

The site for Tongue-Tied has been down (unavailable) for a lot of the last 24 hours so I am putting up below the posts that you would be reading there if the site were available. Apparently the site that hosts Tongue Tied also hosts a lot of other conservative blogs so often comes under attack from Leftist hackers who manage to shut it down from time to time. So bookmark this site as an alternative for when that happens.




"Grandma" and "Grandpa"

I thought readers might like to know that I have had heaps of emails from people who are PROUD to be called "Grandma" and "Grandpa"!

I any case, how people address one-another within the family is surely a personal matter that busybodies should keep their noses out of.

If people want their family to address them in some particular way, I am sure they would be capable of letting that be known. But getting your family to do what you want them to do is another matter entirely of course!




"Mullah" and "sheik" now incorrect?

It seems so. A bank went into a frenzy when one of their senior experts used those terms. Excerpt:

"Mr. Rubin is chief economist for the World Markets division of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Every month he issues a research report on world trends that is aimed at the bank's sophisticated investing clients. Monthly Indicators, as it's called, is distributed to a few thousand select readers, and is posted on the bank's website.... The offending passage appeared last April 5, in a report predicting that oil prices would keep rising: "The first two oil shocks were transitory, as political events encouraged oil producers to seize full sovereignty over their resources and temporarily restrict supply," Mr. Rubin wrote. "This time around there won't be any tap that some appeased mullah or sheik can suddenly turn back on."

A few days later, the bank received a letter from CAIR-CAN. The organization keeps a close watch on the media, as well as on government agencies, businesses, universities and other institutions, for signs of bias against Muslims. It says it received several calls complaining about the passage in Monthly Indicators. "We are gravely concerned that Mr. Rubin is promoting stereotyp-ing of Muslims and Arabs in a CIBC publication," executive director Riad Saloojee wrote in a letter to the bank. "We request that Mr. Rubin and CIBC World Markets issue a letter of apology and undergo sensitization training regarding Muslims and Arabs."

Source

I guess the correct phrase would have been something like: "some rightfully offended Muslim gentleman" instead of "some appeased mullah or sheik". A pity that a lot of rulers over that way do seem to be mullahs or sheiks, though. And if everybody is not bending over backwards to appease them, then I for one don't have a clue what appeasement would look like. And the bank concerned seems to be a prime example of such appeasement. Anybody with guts would have defended their employee as telling the plain truth.




Confederate Memories Expose Sham Tolerance

Leftists never cease to preach the wonders of tolerance and diversity. But it is all a sham. They want uniformity, not diversity. Just listen to how much tolerance was extended to the diversity shown in the household described below:

""Mizzerable", in Texas, invited two African-Americans over for a dinner party. "On a tour of my home, I thought nothing of taking them to my study/library upstairs. Along with many other things, I have displayed on my wall three flags - the U.S. flag, the Texas flag and the Confederate flag. My medic friend gasped and asked why I had a rebel flag. I replied that it was a part of my heritage and I was proud of that. The pained look on her face reminded me of someone who had been fatally wounded. To her credit, she let me explain that I had two Confederate officers (in my family) who had died fighting for what they believed in. "I don't believe that the reason for the Civil War was primarily slavery. I have researched my genealogy and can find no evidence they had slaves of any race. Never mind all that - my friend was offended and said she guessed she didn't really know me at all. I was deeply wounded, but did my best to understand. They left in a huff"

Source

I am not criticizing the particular blacks above who got offended. They were just reacting the way their liberal mentors have encouraged them to react -- seeing "racism" under every bush (or Bush!). But if their liberal mentors had REALLY been teaching tolerance, such a huge historical issue as the North/South war would have been the first issue they would have turned to as an area in which to preach that tolerance, understanding and forgiveness should be practiced and old antagonisms buried or forgiven.

And forgive an ignorant Australian if I have got it all wrong but when I read the original documents (e.g. here), it seems to me that while slavery was an undoubted element in the North/South dispute, Lincoln always stressed that the war was fought to save "the Union". And slaves are not mentioned once in the Gettysburg address. Whether we think half a million dead Americans were a worthwhile price to pay for preserving and extending the power of the U.S. Federal government is an issue for Americans, not for me. I would however think that the view that the price was too high might at least be treated with respect, rather than intolerance.

In thinking about that price it may be worth reflecting that Australia managed to free its slaves (convicts) and create a lasting Federation without a drop of blood being shed. Two of my ancestors were among the convicts concerned. So my ancestors came to my country chained up in the holds of sailing ships. Hey! Where are my reparations?




Tough image for sporting team now incorrect

Once upon a time it was considered manly to be tough and not the sort of guy anybody would dare to push around. Such male virtues are now condemned, however, as we see in the excerpt below:

"A poster intended to promote a suburban high school football team has landed the "Battlin' Bulldogs" in the doghouse.Players posed with knives, sledge-hammers and axes. It was meant to intimidate opponents but angered some parents instead. Although the poster may have been laughed at decades ago, recent incidents of school violence have forced the team to punt the poster.In Batavia, there are high school traditions, such as the annual corn boil and the football team's rough and tumble calendar photo.In the past, the Bulldogs have been pictured with a tank and "a big snow plow - plowing the competition," said Quarterback Ben Braunsky.This year's poster features the Bulldogs' offensive and defensive lines wielding a sledgehammer, a crow bar and a couple of knives. Some say this poster - the team's 21st - has crossed the line".

Source

If they had been holding bunches of pansies, however, that would have been fine. Feminine good. Masculine bad.




Megafauna extinctions: Clarification

In my recent post under the heading: "Another "insensitive" book about American Indians", I referred in passing to the American Indians (Yes. I know they were really East Asians, not Indians, but I am NOT going to use the current politically correct term) and the usual view that it was Indian hunting which caused America's prehistoric large animals ("megafauna") to become extinct. I was NOT of course referring to the Bison, which survived the arrival of the Indians but went close to extinction because of white hunters, not Indians.

What exactly happened during prehistory will of course always be a matter of some dispute. If Fox News was not there to record it, how can we be sure what went on! But the latest scientific paper I know of on the subject is in The Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. I reproduce below the summary from it:

" After centuries of debate, paleontologists are converging towards the conclusion that human overkill caused the massive extinction of large mammals in the late Pleistocene. This paper revisits the question of megafauna extinction by incorporating economic behavior into the debate. We allow for endogenous human population growth, and labor allocation decisions involving activities such as wildlife harvesting and (proto) agriculture. We find that the role of agriculture in deciding the fate of megafauna was small. In contrast, the presence of ordinary small animals that have been overlooked in previous non-economic extinction models is likely to have been much more important.

There are however other theories such as this one

No more comments on this particular issue please (I have had heaps already) as it would take us too far off the track of what this blog is about

Update:

There is a fuller extract from the scientific paper summarized above on my Greenie Watch site.