Saturday, June 25, 2011

Kronic-al

It makes sense that just as there is more attention on Kronic, the government steps in to ban it.

Not so Good Lord

I'm currently working on a blog post on that other lauded vaudivillian, Lord Jesus. But while I give that the attention it deserves, thought I would rush a quick comment on another Lord. I speak of Lord Monckton who is soon to disgrace our shores.

Not versed with Godwin's Law, he rushes to Nazi comparisons when describing his political opponents. Oh he's not so hot on Strawman Fallacy either. The thing I find most singularly exceptional about the whole farrago though, is his outrageous disregard for methodology and measured response.

It doesn't stop at Godwin either. Perhaps another saying/maxim/ he's not familiar with 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone'. I take this not to mean that if you cheat on your taxes you can't talk about violent erotica, but that you should be very careful about making the kinds of comparisons that can backfire when a big enough audience starts looking for those shortcomings in the guy making them.

A certain callousness is present but that's a harder case to make than to point out how Lord Monckton is an enthusiastic practitioner of the Big Lie. This was Hitler's infamous notion that, if the lie was truly outrageous then people would respond by embracing it under the thought that no one could make such a claim if it didn't have some credence.

Saturday, June 04, 2011

Seven Summat

From the Himalayan region there is some drop when considering the highest mountains in each of the seven continents, though the 22,834 feet/6960 metres of Aconcagua in Argentina is impresionante.

McKinley (Denali) in Alaska sits at  20,320 feet/6194 metres making it the highest mount in North America

Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is the highest African mountain

Gora El'brus in Russia is the highest mountain in Europe

Puncak Jaya in the New Guinea region is the highest in Oceania

Vinson Massif in Antarctica is 4,900 metres high

Mount Kosciusko is the highest mountain in Australia at 2,228 metres