Sanctificetur Nomen Tuum

Down in the Crypt half the morning going through my operating procedure notes. Well, it is just a step from the barrels that I have to hook up. But such chores do give me the opportunity to get on my knees. One runs a Tavern according to routines and SOPs. 

It is essential to know one's place in the scheme of things and that others have 'gone before'.  They have given us a wealth of guidance.  SOPs. What good is a Knight that does not know humility or its essential stabilising role; what use one that does not see the higher purpose to which his profession calls? Even a retired Knight who only occasionally puts his old armour on and then just to see if it still fits. (It doesn't, I am sad to say, such is old age and avoirdupois).

I am not a bit embarrassed to say that I pray daily.  Morn and night. Indeed, often during the day too. It is a duty.

Many of the several hundred thousand visitors to the Tavern have seen me busy and listening to all the conversations of others  (and what a great bunch of customers they are too. Some are far better men and women than I and I am happy to hear what they say ) as I pull pints and wipe tables, without realising that prayer takes up much of the thought that goes on at those lower levels of  my consciousness. When my own daily doings thoughts quieten, I can hear the Rosary being recited, and not just by me. 

But down in the quiet of the Crypt I hear it very clearly. And there, at the start, I say that which my Supplier gave me to say.

That is on Page one of the SOPs, listed under 'Start Here'.

Of course over time there have been variations on the theme. I say it in English. Of course. But also in Latin. The Pater Noster. It is the language of the Church and has been for nigh on 2000 years.  It is a beautiful language too. 

In Church, where I attend a Traditional Latin Mass, it is often sung. I don't sing out loud there as I have a dreadful voice, but I do quietly to m'self so as not to put off those around me. In the Crypt, alone, I can let rip. 

There are other Traditions though, especially in the 'Eastern', or 'Orthodox' Church. 

The Pope was in Georgia (not the US State one) recently for a superb ceremonial featuring a big hairy Monkish priest and a young, clear-voiced girl leading the standing congregation. They sang in Aramaic. The same, eternal prayer given to us. 

 It must move you. Surely.

Some say that my Supplier, who always sends me notes in English as he knows my limitations, spoke Aramaic, and perhaps He did. But He was a Jew, and today's Jews speak Hebrew (when they are not speaking English or other languages). So I am pleased that someone explained how to me, as one would to a seven year old in a classroom.

A Good Knight, even one turned Tavern Keeper, prays morn and night. He is a warrior in a Great Battle. 

Just as a modern aviating knight goes through his check-lists, so he must also have his prayers to check off before going into battle or on the practice joust.

The habit is essential.

We are so prone to error that care has to be excercised constantly. 

So he will attend to the Manufacturer's Operating Manuals and His Operating Procedures. We listen to the guidance of better men. Especially that particular better One. And he will cross himself before letting the brake off.

And he will find me, often, on my knees in the Crypt (the Briefing room?) below the hubub of the tavern's many room. There is a small sign on the door.

Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.

Pax

Green Gold for Oz

Australia ought to be paid massively for our nett negative contribution to greenhouse gas CO2 emmitting. Yes, you heard that right. Nett negative. And so did I as I stood pulling pints today. We are ruining ourselves under our ridiculous Federal and State Government policies and the even worse, corrupt International policies foisted upon us by morons.  We give away billions to green crooks. President Trump was quite right to say that the 'Paris Agreement' was a load of horse manure and he was not going to have a bar of it, and Oz should say the same. 

Oz is green, clean and sustaining far better than most and....

Greenbacks should be flowing Oz way.

More.... we are not even telling everyone the facts of the matter so that they can see through the Greeny cant, whether we go along with the idea of AGW or not. 

But if AGW is real as the Green-deluded Politicians think then we should be being paid compensation by the UN and the International 'community', from the vast promised funds flowing into corrupt pockets, for cleaning up the atmosphere of other nation's backyards.

Oz is a Greeny deluded place but should be paid the Gold it is due.

But not because of Greenies or ther lackies and running dogs.

We had a couple of chaps in today to spell it out for us. First Ian Pilmer who likes to look into these matters, and who made the claim for compensation: and then Justin Campbell who has tasted the rotting fruits.

One lonely molecule…

The 24 million people in Australia generate 1.5 per cent of annual global human-induced CO2 emissions. USA emits 14 times and China emits 26 times more CO2 than Australia. 

Australia has 0.33 per cent of the global population.

 https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/06/climate-notes/

Our high standard of living, a landmass of 7,692,024 square kilometres with a sparse inland population and greenhouse gas-emitting livestock, combined with the transport of livestock, food and mined products long distances to cities and ports, and the export of ores, coal, metals and food for 80 million people, result in high per capita CO2 emissions. 

Australia’s exports of coal, iron ore and gas contributes to increasing the standard of living, longevity and health of billions of people in Asia.

If Australia emits 1.5 per cent of global annual CO2 emissions, 3 per cent of the total annual global emissions are anthropogenic: and as the atmosphere contains 400 parts per million by volume of CO2, then one molecule in 6.6 million molecules in the atmosphere is CO2 emmitted from humans in Australia.   

This molecule has an atmospheric life of about 7 years before it is removed from the atmosphere by natural sequestration into life and limey sediments.

Australia has far greater economic priorities than to change a whole economy, increase energy costs, decrease employment and decrease international competiveness because of one poor lonely molecule of plant food in 6.6 million other atmospheric molecules. 

It is a very long bow to argue that this one molecule of plant food in 6.6 million other atmospheric molecules derived from Australia has any measurable effect whatsoever on global climate. Furthermore, it has yet to be shown that human emissions of CO2 drive global warming, so why even bother with a Renewables Energy Target?

Australia exports a significant global share of refined aluminium, zinc, lead, copper and gold and hence takes a per capita emissions hit for countries that import and use Australia’s metals, because smelting and refining in Australia result in CO2 emissions. Neither smelting nor refining of the metals for other countries could take place without burning fossil fuels. For example, a steel mill uses coal to reduce iron oxide into iron metal and the carbon in coal is oxidised to CO2. A modern economy cannot rely on sea breezes and sunbeams to generate base load electricity for industry and a decarbonised economy would be a deindustrialised economy.

Annual Australian per capita CO2 emissions are in the order of 20 tonnes per person. 

There are 30 hectares of forest and 74 hectares of grassland for every Australian and each hectare annually sequesters about 1 tonne of CO2 by photosynthesis. CO2 is plant food. On the continental Australian landmass, 

Australians are removing by natural sequestration more than three times the amount of CO2 they emit. 

Crops remove even more CO2 from the atmosphere. Australia’s net contribution to atmospheric CO2 is negative and this is confirmed by the net CO2 flux estimates from the IBUKI satellite CO2 data set.

Australia’s continental shelf is 2,500,000 square kilometres in area. Carbon dioxide dissolves in ocean water and the cooler the water, the more CO2 dissolves in water. Living organisms extract dissolved CO2 and calcium from seawater to build corals and shells. This natural marine sequestration locks away even more Australian  emissions of CO2 and adds to the negative contribution of atmospheric CO2 made by Australia.

Using the thinking of the IPCC, UN and activist green groups,...... 

Australia should be very generously financially rewarded with money 

....from populous, desert and landlocked countries, for removing from the atmosphere its own emitted CO2 AND the CO2 emissions from many other nations. 

By this method, wealthy Australia can take money from poor countries. This is, of course, normal for the green industry. For example, the subsidising of wind and solar power takes money from the poor and passes it on to companies making a fortune from the government’s RET.

It ain't going to happen, of course, as our politicians are just as in Thrall to stupidity and lies as the politicians of all other nations.

Stupid Rules.

But by my own quick pencilled calculations on the back of a beer coaster, for every 20 tonnes of CO2 our population of fine OzFolk produces, we gobble it all up plus 75 tonnes of the stuff produced by others in our region: and instead of us shelling out billions of OzBucks to them in Furrin' Aid, they should be filling our treasury.

And we experience the consequences right through society, even down to young Justin, for whom I had a pint ready when he stood. 

Why do you hate the environment?

Whenever I object to the government banning plastic bags or tripling my electricity bill, I’m always asked, “Why do you hate the environment?” 

The truth is: I don’t. 

What I do hate is environmentalism. I hate its eco-austerity, its quasi-religious demands for penance and its anti-human rejection of progress. 

I love the environment, its eco-diversity, clean air and its beauty. What I’m not prepared to do is give up on human progress and economic development for some vision of an environmental nirvana.

Last year, I travelled to Sydney for the Australian Libertarian Society’s Friedman Conference. My original Airbnb cancelled last minute and as a last resort I booked a room in “Sydney’s sustainability house”.

 To rent  $1500 a week: 3 bedrooms, 1 office, 1 bath, restful garden.

This inner Sydney terrace is offered as a whole house for lease from the month of June, 2018.

https://www.realestate.com.au/lifestyle/off-grid-house-costs-300-year/

It is Sydney’s Sustainable House, one of Earth’s first inner city off-grid houses, a famous model of how to keep our lovely oceans and air clean.

Since 1996 four people have lived here for energy and water bills less than $300 a year.

You can, too.

(see what the owner says. Let him show you around. Click the link)

The Ultimo terrace house was completely off the grid, it generated its own solar electricity and stored it in batteries. The house used rainwater that my host informed me was cleaner than Sydney’s tap water. He told me that I was welcome to flush the toilet, but he chose to use water from a bucket he kept in the shower instead.

To say the amenities were basic is an understatement. The shower was cold and the lighting in my room was extremely dim. The experience reminded me of my trip tracking through the mountains of Nepal with its shack-like guesthouses. 

To my host’s credit he was practising what he preached 

....and was living the eco-austerity lifestyle demanded by environmentalism. I suspect most of Australia’s 24 million inhabitants are unwilling to do the same; even those who claim to support environmentalism.

My experience in Sydney contrasted starkly with environmentalism’s propaganda. On YouTube, I follow a British environmental technology channel, Fully Charged. The show’s focus is to test new technologies that allow environmentalists to go off the grid. 

One episode focused on a home that generated solar energy that was stored in Tesla batteries. The stored energy was used both to provide electricity to the home and charge an electric vehicle. While impressive, at no point in the show did it ever focus on the practicality of investing the best part of $100k to achieve what fossil fuels make affordable to even the poorest households.

What’s entirely absent from the policy discussion of environmentalists is any acknowledgement of their class privilege. Much of the cost of environmental policies fall on the poorest households. The poor subsidise the solar panels of the rich through their ever increasing electricity bills. 

When government mandates higher environmental standards it’s the poor who are disproportionately harmed through higher prices. 

It’s the poor who are harmed by the banning of plastic shopping bags being forced to buy expensive ‘green’ bags. 

The rich get to feel virtuous while the poor get higher prices.

Growing up in Queensland one of the most significant benefits of economic growth and globalisation was the increasing affordability of home air conditioning. Despite Willis Carrier inventing the modern air conditioner in 1902, until the 1990s few work class homes enjoyed such a luxury. I still have memories of being stuck in sweltering school classrooms while ceiling fans mockingly blew hot air down on us. Now many homes have air conditioning installed but the poorest homes can’t afford to turn it on due to rapidly increasing electricity prices.

Nowhere is the environmentalist rejection of human progress more apparent than in the case of coal. Carbon emissions can be reduced through improved energy efficiency, replacing old coal power stations with newer less emitting coal-powered technologies, nuclear power and via using renewables strategically to meet peak demand. Instead, the environmentalists demand the replacement of all coal power stations with expensive unreliable renewables.

The obsession with abolishing coal has resulted in increased energy prices, the de-industrialisation of Australia and less reliability in the energy supply. 

The effect of these policies was seen in South Australia after the Playford B power station was mothballed leaving the state at the mercy of wind power. Predictably South Australia experienced blackouts and higher energy prices. The state soon announced a $550 million energy package that included the purchase of the world’s biggest lithium battery farm from Tesla and the building of a new gas power plant. 

One must wonder how much cheaper a more rational attitude towards coal would have been.

One doesn’t have to be an environmentalist to care about the environment or to be concerned about climate change. 

There’s a difference between good policy and ideology 

– one weighs the costs vs the benefits of any policy change; the other is driven by quasi-religious devotion. For too long environmental policy has been driven by ideology and emotion. Australia deserves better than to have its future ruined by green ideologues. Through rational unemotional policy Australia can have a cleaner future without destroying the economy and imposing eco-austerity on the masses.

(Justin works in technology and has degrees in accounting and economics. He lives in Brisbane, Queensland. He is a reformed leftie having previously been a member of the Australian Democrats and the Australian Labor Party. Justin is passion about protecting free markets and a free society. He is interested in free speech advocacy, social liberties and free market economic reform.)

He and Ian were given the finest Ales on the house.

Drink up and Think up.

Pray for Oz.

We need it.

Pax 

Teachers: The Red Cent Rules.

There are older teachers around today that are as depressed about modern education as many of the Tavern's customers. Most ordinary punters, both dads and mums consumed with work, send their kids to what passes for schools, whether they like it or not, to have their little chaps and chapesses spend more time with a (very possibly) uneducated moron than they do with themselves. It is a bleak picture. Older folk remember many of their early years' teachers with affection and gratitude, but few kids today will have such pleasant memories.

The big cities have schools of a wide variety of dismal and deceptive  'performance indicators', but to find a school with 'sound', mature, adults in charge of the shebang or the classroom needs an armed posse. The more 'rural' areas may be on a better footing. There are good teachers and bad, but Gresham's Law affects more than simply the vast amount of 'government' money poured into the system, along with curriculum directives, as some sort of curative.

Mark Evans had something to get off his chest

Teaching the History of Nothing

Many who emerge with a Bachelor of Arts degree rightly earn and confirm the poor reputation that degree now confers. They come out knowing nothing, and many plunge black into the schools, this time as teachers, to pass on nothing. It is a depressing sort of carousel.

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/04/teaching-history-nothing/ 

How we teach history

“We are not concerned about the narrative of events, or the retelling of history,” I have heard so many times I have lost count, “we are interested in skills.”

Thus, history teaching is not about content—a dirty word among the ACARA curriculum gurus—but is instead about skills. What good is knowledge to students? Who cares if they can recount the events of 1066, or the fall of the Roman Republic, or the Pacific Campaign? What relevance will it have to their daily lives, to their future role in the workforce? 

But skills: now, there’s a word we can get behind. Everybody likes skills. What could be of better utility?

We have become, even among our educated classes, a post-learning society. Ostensibly, the internet has been the vehicle of this shift in consciousness; with information on anything easily obtained, we have no need to carry it about in our own skulls any longer. Of course, information is not the same as knowledge, and without knowledge, wisdom is difficult to obtain. 

Sending unformed young minds to the internet for knowledge is like sending them to a sewer for fresh water. 

I am no longer startled by the abject lack of general knowledge among everybody under the age of fifty. Once, we might have said they knew a lot about a little, or a little about a lot; now it seems they know very little about very little. 

ACARA’s unwieldly response to this shift is to turn learning history into the learning of abstract skills, transferable everywhere—the best response to the interconnected world. It is, in essence, to swallow more of the same poison. The antidote is rigour, but rigour won’t be found in the utilitarian and progressive model of teaching.

He had a great deal more to say after setting the dismal scene on this dismal profession. (follow the link, for more)

Part of that 'progressive model' of teaching involves driving men from the classrooms in case they fall into their supposed and mal-anticipated base, patriarchal instincts and sexually abuse the children, and stuffing the staff rolls with young women who 'know their rights'. But very little else. 

The Education departments in Oz are fiefdoms run by Marxist-feminist lackies who do not find it difficult to herd all the catty girls who pass as teachers. Those moronic drones are quite comfortable with 'teaching' the most outrageous, anti-scientific, marxist, gender-drivel in order to turn small boys and girls into small girls and boys at best and intersexed, confused and dismayed 'trans', gay, lesbian, polyamoritic clones of the most rabid voices in our worst Universities, at worst. 

The worst is winning.

The mind and soul wreckers use 'bullying' as a foil to fool. Their aim is nothing to do with reforming badly behaved children, but how to make them even more badly behaved, confused and guilty teens and adults. They say so themselves. 

The filth mongers like Mz Roz Ward know full well that the materials they devise  will be implemented by wishy-washy, morally bereft young female teachers, who will themselves be tittilated and recommend the prescribed 'internet sources'. Too few of those young women will say 'NO', nor even 'what part of NO don't you understand?'. They are in the sisterhood, like it or not.

Voices get raised when the drivel comes back to the parents in homework assignments. Then the parents start to grumble: the politicians and ex-pollies stand up, some like Mark Latham to condemn - after the horse has bolted - and some to defend their incompetence and spending profligance.

The kiddies do not have to delve into the internet to be poisoned, but directed thereto they are anyway. To homosexual sites. To LGBT-perversion sites which are so pornographic that even a hardened cop fresh from marching in the gay Mardi Gras would blush.

The influence of sound lady teachers wanes. But some still speak out fearlessly to an audience that refuses to listen any more.  

The dumbing-down of the intellectual potential of our children is going on hand in hand with dumbing-down their moral potential.

It not only mum and dad barely see their kids compared to teachers, but that the whole of the decaying society portrayed on TV gets more attention than either. Our kids have little chance.

All the 'sound' older teachers are almost spent now. Treasure them while you may. 

Drink to them and weep for your kids.

And Stand Up to the wreckers.

Pax

Putting a Foot Forward, Pays.

Blokes and Ballet. I don't think about them much but I do like to see some girly ballet in the Tavern. When I shed my armour and bar-keeper apron I can scrub up well in a Dinner Jacket and watch the pretty girls prancing...er, dancing. Its a feminine bizzo, ballet. Girls in tiny or whispy skirts, gracefully - and I have to acknowledge, athletically - leaping around on the restaurant stage area is a real treat. But the blokes? Hmmmm. Still, during the rehearsals for this evening's show, I learned a few things. For instance it seems to be a good gig for the lesser competent chaps who like to cavort with girls. 

Not that the blokes are not athletic in their own way, just lesser 'skilled' than the gals it seems, and less 'appealing' to a girl in the manly department, but I am not a dancer m'self. Oz does not have the American entertainment history of 'musicals' where jackaroos dance in from from the outback from herding cows or knife-wielding Somali thugs sashay down Collins street Melbourne to confront an equally hilarious mob of  leaping Lebanese 'skins' or 'jets'.  Nor coloured street gangs in Wagga Wagga who 'rap' and spin, trying to convince onlookers that they have a bit of manliness about them or even that they can dance. They don't. They can't. Michael Jackson just looked silly most of the time. 

One has to wonder about their genders though and there are so many these days. 'Man' does not figure highly. So we do not have that many of them nor many manly ballet dancers. But for some in the Tavern (I won't name names) who are always looking for me to say something about Manliness, let these ballet-guys serve as negative examples.

A very brief display of femininity from Anna Sysoeva seems to underscore the point.

Ballet seems short of manliness somehow, and would you believe short of feminists too!  But apparantly it pays well. Pays men well, that is.  Not a peep or a point from the 'wimmin' who are usually magnavocal about pay gaps.  Have you ever given that a passing thought?  Me neither. 

I shared a table with Madison Breshears as the rehearsals progressed. 

Feminists don’t care about the gender gap in ballet. 

Why should we care about the one in tech?

What, if anything, do ballet and tech have in common? The obvious answer is that both fields show highly disproportionate gender distributions.

Less acknowledged but no less relevant is this uncomfortable commonality: Both are industries where it pays to be in the sexual minority. I know, because I was a ballet dancer for 16 years.

In the ballet world, men’s unfair advantage in hiring and casting is as widely understood and as rarely acknowledged as is the rampant anorexia.

 https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/feminists-dont-care-about-the-gender-gap-in-ballet-why-should-we-care-about-the-one-in-tech

A less skilled male dancer is more likely to land a role or get a job than a female dancer of comparable skill. Due to the scarcity of men, the hurdles to a professional career are distinctly lower than they are for most women.

Anyone who says something similar about women in the tech industry does so at their own peril. It is assumed and unquestioned that pervasive sexism and systematic discrimination against women are to blame for their underrepresentation. But then, how did a field like tech, once dominated by nerds regularly bullied by their more athletic and popular peers, suddenly become replete with toxic masculinity?

The answer? It didn’t.

I was born in the mid-nineties, and I’m still old enough to recall a time when demographic trends by sex weren’t a titillating subject of conversation for anyone other than advertisers interested in strategic marketing, let alone a source of widespread concern. 

Today, gender patterns once regarded as the facts of life elicit outrage, investigation, and legislation across our country.

Particularly telling was the 2017 controversy over Google employee James Damore’s infamous memo. As you might recall, the widely-circulated manifesto made headlines for its subversive use of statistical trends, psychology, scientific data, and several well-placed bullet points. His thesis? The underrepresentation of women in the tech industry may not necessarily be the result of sexism or discrimination, but of differing interests, choices, or personality trends seen between genders on average. 

Damore went on to say that the tech giant’s programs and practices intended to eliminate the gender gap in question were manifesting in unjust treatment of men within the company.

This seems like common sense to a lot of people, but it certainly upset the prevailing assumptions at Google. The well-researched but socially suicidal document led to Damore's termination, catapulting Damore into an overnight viral sensation as the antichrist of the feminist Left and the champion for the politically-incorrect everywhere.

I was sitting in a ballet studio, warming up before class, when I was unexpectedly prompted to revisit the idea of the “gender gap.” 

Surrounded by that standard 20:1 female to male ratio, I asked myself, where is the public outrage? 

If we tend to assume that occupational gender disparities are invariably the result of injustice, then, by all accounts, ballet was suffering from an epidemic of anti-male sexism.

Lucinda Dunn, the artistic director at the Tanya Pearson Classical Coaching Academy, addressed the question of whether there were more boys going in to ballet.

But Dunn, a former principal artist at the Australian Ballet, said there was one reason why men would always be important for classical ballet.

"The reality is you can't be a female ballerina if you don't have someone to stand behind you."

So, most often he is just a 'prop'.

Looking at Auditions and the wannabees can illustrate for us. A point to note is who is in charge! 

But that obviously isn’t the case, and you don’t need to launch an investigative campaign into casting or hiring practices to know why. 

Men, on average, simply are not as interested in ballet as women. 

It isn't even close, and thus neither are the numbers of men and women in ballet.

I remember distinctly from my youth the tinge of jealousy and injustice I felt watching my less talented male peers win medals, receive scholarships, and land company positions that I never did. I understand Damore's point from a deeply personal perspective.

But there is one crucial caveat: While my experience and those of women like me in ballet are an unfortunate but inevitable fact of the industry, Damore and other male Google employees are, in fact, suffering from blatant sex discrimination.

Ballet, after all, can't be done without male roles. 

Its canonical repertoire demands opposite-sex partnering choreography. There is no analogous constraint in the tech industry to excuse its discrimination in favor of one sex over the other. There is no inherent reason why women need to work in tech; coding is as colorblind as it is sexually indiscriminate. 

Notice him, back there?

Yet, Google is employing discrimination against one sex and in favor of the other to combat an assumed problem — latent sexism supposedly causing the enormous gender disparity in tech — for whose existence the evidence is elusive.

The selective outrage of feminists over disparities like the one in tech is revealing. 

There is a conspicuous shortage of school programs, campaigns, marches, and hashtags to end the gender gap in, say, teaching, or counselling, which according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics are professions overwhelmingly dominated by women. 

Nursing is a pretty good gig — it pays well, is flexible, and nurses can find work anywhere. So, where should we look for the anti-male bias that made it so that more than 90 percent of nurses are women?

Meanwhile, you will search in vain for the calls to eliminate the overrepresentation of men in mining, trucking, sewage, and garbage collecting. The reason for all this is that the feminist Left isn't so much a political movement for equality with a consistent philosophy as much as it is an expression of rage over the fact that men and women tend to make different career decisions.

They are, however, right about one thing. Perhaps the only feasible way of totally eliminating their favourite misread statistic and rallying cry, the “gender wage gap,” would be to strong-arm the nation's most prestigious companies into discriminating against men, or alternatively, to coerce very large numbers of women into professions and career paths that they consistently opt not to pursue when given a free choice, in spite of the incentives.

I salute women who work in fields where they’re outnumbered, but I don’t appreciate or support policies that patronize women at men’s expense for the sake of “diversity” in any occupation, under any circumstances. 

My female friends in STEM agree, and they aren’t the ones pushing for these ridiculous reparations.

As for the radical feminists, you might ask them, if they feel so strongly about equal representation, why didn’t they themselves pursue a degree in engineering? Expect to hear something like, “well, I did always prefer English, and calculus was such a bore.”

While all that chat was going on, some girls were taking the stage to do what a military chap like m'self might call 'Drill'.  And as ever, there is always one!!

We like a bit of fun with our arty evenings.

But I sat back to watch the rest of the show, which you could see if you came by in person this evening. I am open to learning about the bizzo.... and watch pretty girls. The 'Chorus' girl was always a fantasy but in Ballet they work hard.

It isn't as though they get paid all that much. They are paid on gigs and rehearsals. Often just 38 weeks of the year. Your superstar can pull in big bucks but the rest?

Many ballerinas have been training for most of their lives to become a principal dancer, usually starting classes around the age of seven. Dance students can train between eight-to-10 years before landing professional work.

https://bizfluent.com/info-11384173-much-money-principal-ballet-dancer-make.html

Professionally, dancers start out as apprentices before moving to the lowest level of their company, the corps de ballet. There, they can be promoted to coryphées, where they may be given small solos. 

The next step is becoming a soloist, who often learns principal parts as an understudy should the principal have to miss a show. 

Principal dancers or senior principals are the highest-ranking in every company – the stars of the show. How much do ballerinas make throughout this process?

 It varies greatly but generally sticks to the following range: (US$)
• Apprentice (New Dancer): $125 – $800 per week
• Corps de Ballet dancer: $325 - $1,500 per week

• Principal Dancer: $53,000 - $150,000+ a year for the top companies

Pay gap? 

At 20 gals for every chap, it is surprising the chaps want any pay at all. !

Maybe feminists and their acolytes who like to be the only gals in a man-work place, should consider the 'side-benefit' aspects of the pay differentials too.

I can hear the outrage already. Hahahahaha.

I gave all the guys drinks on the house.

All the ladies too, of course.

I leave you with one more. The very famous. Yes, Nureyev and Fonteyn. I was never impressed by his attempts at manliness. An oversized cod-piece does not convince. But you assess for yourselves.

Pax

No one Listened to Cassandra

'What could possibly go wrong', said very few when making their plans, especially those plans to make things go so well. 'The best laid plans of mice and men oft gang aglay' reminded Robbie Burns, and who listens to a Scotsman?  Poor Cassandra, Princess of Troy, was not believed or even listened to when she warned that it was not going to turn out well. To the dungeons with her, just like warners today are sent to the jails.

"The Greeks are coming": now, "the Muslims are coming. Both. "You will all die".

Not that many these days even remember the gal; not the millenials who take their ancient history only when presented by a hunky actor who writes her out of the best scenes (older portrayals do better); not even by those who have paid megabucks for a degree in Wimmins Studies. You would at least think they might have paid some attention to her tale of woe.

Ah, ah! Oh, oh, the agony! Once more the dreadful ordeal [ponos] of true prophecy whirls and distracts me with its ill-boding onset. Do you see them there—sitting before the house—young creatures like phantoms of dreams? Children, they seem, slaughtered by their own kindred, their hands full of the meat of their own flesh; they are clear to my sight, holding their vitals and their inward parts—piteous burden!

This is the Kassandra that tradition gives us and is foremost in our minds: a half-mad character, hysterical, helpless to escape her doom, shaken, seeing visions of horrific things no one else sees. But by crikey, Emilia Fox as Cassandra works beautifully. In the scene below, Cassandra tries to warn about Troy's  fall. In greek mythology, Apollo grant to her the gift of prophecy. But when she did not return his love, Apollo placed a curse on her so that no one would ever believe her.

We try to plan ahea...d. Generally we make a real pig's ear of it. Few of us have the gift of foresight and most often narcissistic belief in the superiority of our 'self' renders us blind to the 'unforeseen'.  We are ignorant, despite coming so far.

Several Cassandras (not female) gathered in the bar to outdo one another in the prognostication bizzo. Not one told me that one of the barrels in the cellars would spring a leak and I would put my back out manhandling it. Ah well. It came to pass and I shall pass over that.

The scene was set by Walt Williams. He looked back at looking forward for us.

How Ignorant We Are

Here's a question for you: In 1950, would it have been possible for anyone to know all of the goods and services that we would have at our disposal 50 years later? For example, who would have thought that we'd have cellphones, Bluetooth technology, small powerful computers, LASIK and airplanes with 525-passenger seating capacity?

 https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/walter-e-williams/how-ignorant-we-are

This list could be extended to include thousands of goods and services that could not have been thought of in 1950.

In the face of this gross human ignorance, who should be in control of precursor goods and services? 

Seeing as it's impossible for anyone to predict the future, {apart from Cassandra} any kind of governmental regulation should be extremely light-handed, so as not to sabotage technological advancement.

Compounding our ignorance is the fact that..... 

much of what we think we know is not true. 

Scientometrics is the study of measuring and analyzing science, technology and innovation. It holds that many of the "facts" you know have a half-life of about 50 years. Let's look at a few examples.

You probably learned that Pluto is a planet. But since August 2006, Pluto has been considered a dwarf planet. It's just another object in the Kuiper belt.

Because dinosaurs were seen as members of the class Reptilia, they were thought to be coldblooded. But recent research suggests that dinosaurs were fast-metabolizing endotherms whose activities were unconstrained by temperature.

Years ago, experts argued that increased K-12 spending and lower pupil-teacher ratios would boost students' academic performance. It turned out that some of the worst academic performance has been at schools spending the most money and having the smallest class sizes. Washington, D.C., spends more than $29,000 per student every year, and the teacher-student ratio is 1-to-13; however, its students are among the nation's poorest-performing pupils.

At one time, astronomers considered the size limit for a star to be 150 times the mass of our sun. But recently, a star (R136a1) was discovered that is 265 times the mass of our sun and had a birth weight that was 320 times that of our sun.

If you graduated from medical school in 1950, about half of what you learned is either wrong or outdated. 

For an interesting story on all this, check out Reason magazine. Ignorance can be devastating. Say that you recently purchased a house. Was it the best deal you could have gotten? Was there some other house within your budget that would have needed fewer extensive repairs 10 years later and had more likable neighbors and a better and safer environment for your children? What about the person you married? Was there another person available to you who would have made for a more pleasing and compatible spouse?

Though these are important questions, the most intelligent answer you can give to all of them is: 

"I don't know." 

If you don't know, who should be in charge of making those decisions? Would you delegate the responsibility to Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Donald Trump, Ben Carson or some other national or state official?

You might say, "Stop it, Williams! Congressmen and other public officials are not making such monumental decisions affecting my life." 

Try this. Suppose you are a 22-year-old healthy person. Rather than be forced to spend $3,000 a year for health insurance and have $7,000 deducted from your salary for Social Security, you'd prefer investing that money to buy equipment to start a landscaping business. Which would be the best use of the $10,000 you earned — purchasing health insurance and paying into Social Security or starting up a landscaping business? More importantly, who would be better able to make that decision — you or members of the United States Congress?

The bottom line is that ignorance is omnipresent. 

The worst kind of ignorance is not knowing just how ignorant we are. That leads to the devastating pretense of knowledge that's part and parcel of the vision of intellectual elites and politicians.

He is right of course, but no-one is going to abandon making plans and decisions, despite the very strong liklihood that we will be wrong. And shown to be wrong soon enough.

But a person making their own decisions will at least have the consequences sheeted back to them and not onto the rest of us.

Unfortunately with Troy, the launching of a thousand ships over a pretty face was a decision taken at 'the highest levels' of the day and the consequences fell on all within sight and sound.  Things have not changed. Those who are not following their father's footsteps onto a Regal throne somewhere still manage to get voted into positions of power somehow that would make an ancient King turn green. (With envy, not environmentally). They can launch cruise missiles these days. 

And they can have a terrible consequence for whole populations who had no part in the decision.

Take the current consequences of Mutter Merkle's rash and entirely blind decision to invite armies to invade. "Come in", she said. "Ve heff vays of taking good care of you". 

Funny how things change and remain the same. Troy was in modern Turkey. The Greeks were never going to 'fit in' well in Troy and neither are the 'refugees' flooding in from Turkey into modern Greece - and onward into the heart of Europe.

We had Cassandras shouting the warning way back. One such, back in 2011, some seven years of bad luck ago, warned of the terrible things that were going to happen. Pat Condell was and remains alarmed.

But does anyone listen?

But many could see what was happening and what was going to happen. Many would not.

A lady piped up. She called herself Helluminati.

How did we come this far? How is it possible, that in the name of religion and belief, that benefits only violence, we have abandoned our civilized laws and regulations? How is it possible, that we suddenly feel the need to protect and help those who want to destroy us? Why do we have special treatment for those who want human rights, yet fail to deliver those human rights to others? Why is it needed to bring an aggressive and horrific culture to well developed and civilized society, when those 2 can NEVER exist in harmony? As I see, we have Europe, where: 

1.Speaking truth is considered criminal act 

2. Where rape is called "cultural enrichment". 

3. Where criminals of other race, ethnicity or religion go unpunished. 

4 Where you are racist, when your opinion differs from what politicians say. 

5. Where criminals and religious fanatics are prioritized over hardworking law abiding citizens. 

6. Where democracy is non-existent. 

7. Where laws are changes to fit outsiders. 

8. Where violence and aggression is considered "cultural right"

And she is just looking over her shoulder at the consequences we see all around us. 

The powers that be, the new Kings (and Queens, Chancellors, Presidents etc) with ships and egos, cruise missiles and sad, mad, bad hearts can read, if they wish. They can read the words of the enemy writ in bold and flowery squiggles. Their plans are all laid out in the Koran and associated 'unholy' scripts.

But let David Woods tell of that. He takes France as an example of what is not only happening but will get worse and worse.

What can possibly go wrong?

One's only sardonic smile is raised by the knowledge that the Islamic's plans can gang aglay too.

We Hope.

But we Christian folk have an assurance that includes Hope.

So a more authentic smile can be raised. We can pray for a racing certainty for a change.

I shall drink to that.

Shall I pull a few for you too?

Pax