Saturday 9 February 2013

Link Tank 09/02

The weekly selection is now into a fourth year involving over 1,500 links.

E-cigarettes are not your father’s smokes

Some charitable institutions are a lot more interested in government hand-outs than our good

Pregnant women who smoke are easy targets for the morality police

Australian McDonald's offers waiter service, plates and cutlery

Hey NSPCC, when a parent smacks his child, it is not 'violence'

Using beer to generate electricity, and then using that electricity to brew more beer

"The anti-Big Food story suits the outlook of a certain kind of middle-class food campaigner"

It's finally legal for women to wear trousers in France

Watching porn boosts support for same-sex marriage

Drink diet mixers, get drunk quicker

Talking ants


4 comments:

nisakiman said...

The "Pregnant women who smoke" thing is a bad joke. I have four kids by two different women, both of whom smoked throughout their pregnancies, and all the progeny were normal birth-weight, none of them had any post-natal problems and all of them are now healthy adults. Indeed, most of my (and the following) generation were born to smoking mums. I haven't noticed that they produced generations of weak and sickly children. It's just more of the same old bullshit churned out on an industrial scale by the smoker-haters. I do get so tired of the lies...

Single Acts of Tyranny said...

when a parent smacks his child, it is not 'violence'

Er, yes it is. Calling a physical impact a smack doesn't make it okay. It's not okay to 'smack' the old lady in Tesco customer services because she can't see reason (and they never can), so why is it okay to smack a three or thirteen year old?

Simple, it's just an ex post facto attempt to justify losing control and lashing out. And please spare me this "you can't reason with a three year old therefore scream at/smack them" The boy (i.e. my son) is three and he reasons perfectly well, has a moral compass and knows when he has been naughty*


(* we discuss it, he says sorry to the injured party and if there is a realy serious infraction which thus far there hasn't been, it's no treat activity the next day etc)

nisakiman said...

Give it another eight to ten years and then see how effective 'reasoning' with a rebellious and disobedient child is. Children don't have a moral compass. It's your job to instill that in them. and that sometimes requires punishment to drive home a point. They will hate you more for a long, drawn out punishment than they will for a short, sharp admonition.



You don't actually need to hit a child very often, if at all, but if the threat is there, it makes discipline a whole lot easier. And no, it doesn't make the child into a violent person. I have four adult children, so I know. They are all well adjusted and socially adaptable people, and three of them have children of their own, who they are bringing up in exemplary fashion to be similarly well adjusted and socially competent. I can take my grandchildren anywhere in the sure knowledge that they will be a credit to me, and their parents. And not through fear; through a good and loving upbringing.

Single Acts of Tyranny said...

Violence just teaches 'em you don't need to be right, you just need to be stronger. Shouting teaches 'em you just need to be louder and bigger. This is the basis of all coercion and if we 'normalise' it from childhood they will accept all kinds of statist bullshit, whereas if we reason with 'em, not only will they have higher IQ's (check the stats) they will themselves resort to reason not violence.