On Internet (and Economics)
Sydney Morning Herald is normally much better than news.com.au so I was disappointed to come across Jessica Irvine’s opinion piece:
On Advice
Most of the time I agree with Kate De Brito (aka “Bossy”) on her Ask Bossy advice blog. Here is an example of why her advice wins compared to the advice less enlightened people would give:
On Intro Philosophy Part 1: Descartes
I’m tempted to quit here. I have no credibility. Even if I get 7s in my first semester of philosophy (which I will) no one will care. But on the off-chance that this saves a life, I will put up with the inevitable knee-jerk criticism of writing something that is contrary to popular thought.
Rene Descartes, George Berkeley and David Hume are three of the bravest philosophers I know. I don’t agree 100% with any of them, and that not the point here: they deserve their arguments to be given proper consideration by all of us. We should put aside our popular prejudices and consider their points of view so as to expand our own minds and our perception of the world (agreement is unnecessary and irrelevant, testing out their theories will improve your mental abilities regardless).
Clear translations (that you can read for yourself) of their Meditations, Three Diologues and Enquiry: Human Understanding (respectively) can be found by CLICKING HERE
Here is my attempt:
Ramblings #1
As the excerpt says:
“Ramblings about my plans (academic and employment) for the future, including Teach for Australia and the philosophy of Ian Hinckfuss, and a critique of UQ’s academic tutors (everything else about the uni is fantastic).”
However due to lack of sleep and lack of Kieran to talk to I am pouring out my ramblings here (instead of keeping this journal [I hate the word "blog"] exclusively for treatises, for example “On . . .”) but I’ll try to make sure my next post is back to my usual higher standard.
On Politics
I just reread my “Read Me” (About) page, and noticed that I said I’d never vote Liberal. Well, on Queensland’s election on Saturday I did (as a second preference to Greens, of course), because I think for myself and my loyalty towards a party only lasts as long as they actually deserve it.
Labor lost me on two key issues: removing the children’s hospital from the Royal Brisbane, and persisting with the travesty of Traverston dam. Not to mention that they are prepared to keep running Queensland into debt (hey we need some savings for the yearly cyclones and floods that always seem to take the QLD Labor party by surprise and they react to them as a “disaster” instead of already having emergency money set aside) and their answer to when they think they will start paying back their billions of debt is “when we can” (how many banks would accept such a vague answer?). Essentially they are taking a dangerous childish approach (an approach that gets many young people into financial trouble in the first place before they learn to save and budget): spend, spend, spend even though our state is already in debt (What if those in our society already struggling under debt took that advice? They will be even worse off and have less of an emergency savings buffer). (I am so against their policies that I am not even going to tag Anna Bligh or Labor in this post.) Also, why doesn’t Anna smile in her posters?
Springborg had pages and pages of itemised budget showing exactly how and where he was going to cut costs to save Queensland a billion dollars each year and get us both out of debt, and with a savings buffer to survive recessions and disasters. Springborg talked to economists who told him that the predict the recession (and people unlike what Labor scare-mongered you into thinking, right now unemployment is at 5% whereas in the Great Depression unemployment was at 40% - so yes it’s a serious problem that needs to be addressed, but it’s not an absolute disaster) to last three years, and his plan is four years long.
On University
I feel like I need to get this out of my system so I will. This is purely my personal subjective opinion (and in this situation I am only trying to praise one thing, but am not remotely interested in criticising its noble competitors who are still good secondary options if my first preferences did not exist) so unfortunately you can’t take my words as scientific fact and its up to you to decide to what degree I am biased and thus whether my words have any importance to you at all. You do not have to accept everything I say here, I admit that some things I say here have more backing behind them than others, so feel free to pick and choose which advice helps you and which does not. I won’t be offended if you decide to ignore my words, and I’m not interested in arguing my points further beyond this argument. As I said, this rant is more for the emotional health of my brain and perhaps after I have gotten these passionate words of advice out of my system I can chill out and stop seeing this as such a crucial issue for year 12 students.
On Values
Or perhaps this post should be titled “On Tolerance” or “On Acceptance” or even “On Supporting Other People In Their Lives Without Judgement”. It’s in the “God” category because, guess what, I think God gave people their values. And because people are different, it follows that God gave different people different values, so that hopefully they wouldn’t all live their lives exactly the same way and thus he wouldn’t end up with a bunch of teachers or a bunch of artists etc.
On Weddings
So I got engaged, and finally allowed myself to buy those wedding magazines. I hate to admit this but I did not naturally question all the things you are told that you need as part of a wedding. The things advertised in wedding magazines are really expensive, but also quite repetitive. First thing I realised was that almost every wedding dress was strapless and had a train, and most of the men’s suits were plain black.
I thought I would enjoy the process of going wedding dress shopping. Nevermind that I normally hate trying on clothes (let alone metres and metres of fabric), finding a fairytale dress is the dream of most little girls. We went to The Bridal Centre in Queen St Mall (I am not going to link them as I do not recommend them). I said I didn’t want a strapless dress, and they behaved like I was almost asking the impossible. I found a style of dress I liked, asked how much it would be to order it in, and they told me they couldn’t order it in.
Finally I tried on a fairly simple white dress, and it just did not suit me at all. We then went to Elizabeth de Varga in Broadway on the Mall. I tried on the first dress that fit my criteria, and it was perfect. Having realised that I was not having fun shopping, I was sold and had no desire to try on another dress. Elizabeth de Varga I do recommend because the price includes everything (they do six fittings and alter details of the dress in any way you like) whereas some places you order the dress in in the closest size and then pay hundreds extra to have it altered to fit. It is cheap compared to the dresses in wedding magazines, but you can definitely find dresses for a lot less.
Then thanks to God my path crossed with Definatalie who recommended that I visit the website OffbeatBride.com and, now having been there, I will stay as far away from other wedding sites as possible. And if I ever find out a friend is engaged, I will tell them “before you do anything else, visit offbeatbride.com” and I’ll buy them Ariel (the site owner)’s book. I am not exaggerating when I say (in agreement with other regular readers) that Ariel’s site set me free.
On Economics
I am a fan of philosophy because it encourages questioning what you are told, rather than just blindly accepting what “everybody knows”. Galileo, Copernicus and Einstein would have all been labelled as crazies simply for having questioned “science” and come up with a different conclusion that has more evidence behind it than the current accepted answer. Over time the majority have accepted their conclusions as truth, and the next person who dares to question their premises and discovers overwhelmingly contradictory evidence will again be labelled as a lunatic until people are educated in a new way of thinking.
This irritates me no end. Rather than labelling anyone who dares to question something accepted as an idiot, particularly if they’ve bothered to do some research and are happy to provide their evidence and logical reasoning for their opinion, perhaps we should pay them enough respect to question our own beliefs along with theirs.
I love economics but I unfortunately can’t think rationally about whether or not any of these handouts are a good idea now that I’ve been told that I might be receiving $900. I think I’m scared to question this policy because I sense deep down that it might not be in line with my economic values of the past, when all I really want to do is be grateful and celebrate free money (compared to the amount of work I’d normally have to put up with to make $900). Before anyone jumps down my throat and declares that because the government came up with the idea it must be more right than my opinion because they’ve had more formal training in economics than I have (without even bothering to question the government’s idea), well I recently read Henry Hazlitt’s famous Economics in One Lesson and was relieved to discover that his opinion is what I’ve always suspected was the real truth:
On Religulous
Kieran and I just watched Religulous (a documentary by Bill Maher). As critics have pointed out, he successfully found the people who could not give rational reasons for what they believe, and thus assumes that rational reasons cannot exist.
In the eyes of mainstream Christianity I’m probably labelled as a heretic because I don’t blindly accept what the person up the front of the church says but I consider things for myself. Some of my views are fundamentalist, some are liberal, some are from experience, some are from non-Christian sources, and some of them are from my own personal logic made up by me.
My responses as a self-defined bible-believing non-denominational Christian (had Bill bothered to interview someone that has considered the beliefs fed to them from their parents and community):