Category Archives: Ayn Rand

A new report says that the alternative meat industry, plant-based products designed to look and taste like meat, raised $8 billion even during the pandemic. That's a big success.

They want more but oddly lament that most of their money comes from the private sector. They want the trillions of dollars in subsidies that solar and wind have gotten, claiming it will fight climate change. That's a big problem.

I am a fan of the industry, which is why I don't want them chasing government subsidies. If you look at the solar industry or cable, you see the problem government meddling creates for everyone but the wealthy. Instead of viable products that survive the rigors of the consumer market, we'll have garbage companies being propped up by political allies. We'll have public funds wasted like we have with solar and wind. I like science, I like technology, and alternative meat is both. I have no particular attachment to nostalgia about ranching or farming or any segment of agriculture. I am someone who, if I had my way, I would kill kill, grow, and process everything my family ate, with no one involved but me, but I recognize that it's no way to feed the world.

Neither are mandates and subsidies. They have done as much harm as good to farmers who are not allowed to compete in the private sector, and while it does prop up hundreds of thousands of small farms, it is a hard life for them, and one they stick to for reasons that are their own - but those reasons are not reasons for government to be involved.(1)

So I like the science of substitute meat, from lab grown to GMO organisms, but Ialways ask the awkward questions. Even about science I like. So here are some concerns and thoughts.

Government mandates and subsidies hold back progress.Ethanol is a running joke in the energy industry, and despised by car owners, because from the moment Vice President Al Gore broke a Senate tie (he later admitted he only did it to appeal to Iowa corn voters because he intended to run in the 2000 election) and forced this stuff on consumers, it has been held back by no need to innovate. Solar panels are the same way. If your company is being paid to make a product that is based on 1990 technology, you don't need to innovate because you are only competing on cost.

Alternative meat products are okay but anyway who claims they 'can't tell a difference' is fooling themselves or a terrible cook.

That is not to say they are bad, and the price is usually only a dollar or two more than real meat, but for mass uptake they need to be replacements, not alternatives, and government is the worst way to create that. Innovation is the best way.

Will this really fight climate change? Like epidemiology, which can tell you meat cures or causes cancer, even in the same data, it is easy to find cosmic claims about the 'emissions impact' of dairy and meat, but when you look deeper you find these are just guesses with misunderstandings of animal respiration and wild exaggerations because they know people in their political tribe will repeat it anyway. While we know agriculture has emissions, so does breathing and not freezing to death, and the emissions from one climate conference is equal to food grown for millions of people each year.

Defense lawyer pleas to citizens are not science but that is what more aggressive claims about emissions and meat are - calls to action, magnifying reality by 500 percent.

Whether meat alternatives fight climate change or not is irrelevant. That is right, irrelevant. My cell phone does not fight climate change but I don't still use a Motorola StarTac anyway. Anyone who uses an electric car thinking they are saving the planet is likewise deluding themselves because trillions of dollars in subsidies for solar power have not changed conventional energy usage at all.

And it is dangerous marketing. By noting their climate change benefit and asking people to buy it despite the high cost, their market is clearly skewing left, where the Whole Foods crowd claims to care more about everything than everyone else and believe overpaying for food makes them better people.

The problem is the left-wing demographic hates science. These companies are not pressing plant mulch into patties, they are using genetic engineering to create meat without animals, they are using science to replace meat and seafood. It is a spectacular feat but their target market believes oral tradition about food production, myths about farming they read on a phone or believe that their grandmother ate something she still would have eaten given a choice.

Companies hold themselves back trying to cater to people who claim on surveys to care more about emissions (in behavior, they do not) while showing in practice they hate the science that goes into a product.

Food is a necessity. Making it about anything else sounds like a money grab.

The founder of Whole Foods skews somewhere to the right of Ayn Rand politically. He understood two important things; left-wing people are richer and they will more often spend a lot extra if you convince them it is a "values" issue.(2)

I get marketing is selling the sizzle, not the steak, there is a reason people in it get paid so well, but just like Wild Turkey claiming their grains are Non-GMO(3), so scientifically uneducated hippies will want to buy it, it opens you up to criticism from the people most likely to otherwise embrace this. After progressives in science academia turned on Chiplotle for claiming they were non-GMO, the company lost a lawsuit claiming they were non-GMO, when the only thing non-GMO was the burrito. The soda, meat, and cheese were no different than any supermarket product - conventional food, which means GMOs for a lot. They got scientific criticism for that plus the suggestion that being non-GMO meant healthier; a weird stance when you are selling a high-calorie heart attack wrapped in aluminum foil.

But that's just it. When it comes to their own products, Chipotle denies epidemiology altogether. Ask a representative of theirs about IARC's processed meat claims and Chipotle becomes so pro-science they could write here.

A government grant is only validity to a particular demographic

If you are an academic of a certain age in America, you were steeped in the notion that only academic science is real science and the private sector is distasteful. Government grants mean legitimacy. Well, not really.(4) Government grants are often given to people who have had incremental success. If you do a bold experiment with an R01 grant and fail, your career is probably over. If you do a modest experiment and succeed, your chances of getting another grant go way up.

One of the key scientists behind the mRNA vaccines that just saved millions of people during the COVID-19 pandemic eked out an existence on half the salary of a tenured professor. The government did not think it was worthwhile to fund her. A few years ago, when Ebola was tearing through Africa, the NIH trotted to Capitol Hill and asked for more money to start working on Ebola. I noted that numerous successful candidates had been denied government funding while the NIH spent $330 billion on things like a video game to tell kids not to eat too much. And for $10 million that video game never got past the demo stage.

I have had to deal with government contracts, government grants, and venture capitalists and I can tell you the least arbitrary and most agreeable process is the venture capital route. They know a good idea when they hear about it and they want you to succeed. A government committee is often going to pick academics for all the wrong reasons and they're no smarter about private sector food, as Obama era mandates politicizing school lunches (more mandatory vegetarian meals, which meant more food thrown in the garbage) proved.

Solar and wind-type mandates sound great, and they are if you are a politically connected company, but this food technology is opposed by the politicians who want more money thrown at solar power. When a demand was presented by Congress to put warning labels on GMOs, it was by Democrats, with two Republicans in Democratic states added in to pretend it was bipartisan. Banning science is not bipartisan at all. It is stupid and both sides do it. So is holding back your business hoping the others in your tribe suddenly embrace genetic engineering.

NOTES:

(1) I am not against subsidies. Food is a strategic resource and competitors will use it strategically. Russia gets belligerent when oil prices are high because they made Europe reliant on eastern oil and food. Europeans were able to coo about their solar and wind and whatever else because the emissions from Russian gas are not 'charged' to Europe. The same goes with "organic" food. Russia has no external testing of any kind, and without a $50,000 machine no one could ever tell the difference between conventional and food grown using organic certified toxic pesticides. Environmental NGOs don't want to know if Russian food is really organic or not.

Mandates sometimes being necessary for a strategic resource like food does not mean mandates and subsidies the way they are done now are good.

(2) On money, it is clear. Here in California, a lot of people are griping that their taxes went up. The reason they went up is because the Trump tax changes impacted the wealthiest the most and helped the middle class and poor. When Biden undid it, and gave the middle class and poor a "credit" that was taxable last year, he hit them with a double penalty. 7 of the 8 states most impacted by the Trump tax changes were the wealthiest - and vote Democrat.

(3)When European conglomerates buy American bourbon companies, it's expected they will try to use the same anti-science gimmicks that Europeans choose to believe.

Alcohol is a legitimate class 1 carcinogen, determined long before the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) was overrun by kooky epidemiologists "consulting" for environmental groups and trial lawyers, and it directly kills nearly 100,000 Americans each year. In over 40 years of use, GMOs have killed 0.

(4) Millennials (and Canadians) are so practical now they are old school. Before Reagan created the modern science academia problem (ironically, by being the most pro-science president of the 20th century), universities, armed with unlimited student loan money courtesy of Democrats in Congress mandating every child could go to college, began to aggressively promote that university science was ethically superior, and government did the same, spending $7 billion in taxpayer funding since 2000 to encourage college students to stay in college and get a PhD and do academic research.

The result has been 6X as many PhDs as there are academic jobs, the average age of an R01 grant recipient has gone up into the 40s, and post-docs are competing to work for nearly nothing just to stay at a university. Some academic labs will even only 'hire' a PhD if the PhD brings their own funding.

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The Alternative Meat Industry Wants Solar Power Style Mandates And Subsidies - Science 2.0

Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of RUSH recently sat down for an interview in Toronto for "House Of Strombo", a free-form radio talk program hosted by Canadian television and radio personality George Stroumboulopoulos. In this exclusive conversation, Lee and Lifeson talked about the 40th anniversary of their eighth studio album "Moving Pictures", the loss of RUSH drummer Neil Peart, grieving in public, their new perspective on time, the music industry today, being booed off stage, getting high before rehearsals, Taylor Hawkins and more.

Reflecting on how he processed the fact that he would never play with RUSH again after the completion of the "R40" tour, which commemorated the 40th anniversary of Peart joining the band, Geddy said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I'd say Al and I have different ways of dealing with that. Al threw himself into little projects and bigger projects and he kept working throughout the whole thing, and that was a real tonic for him. And I can relate to that, 'cause when we went through our first set of tragedies with Neil, back when he lost his wife and daughter, I did that I threw myself into my solo album, and it saved me in many ways; it fed me, let's put it like that. And so for myself, I turned to writing and I turned to book writing, and that was a way for me to not compete with that moment and those feelings, but a way to take stock and recharge my batteries in a different way. So we handled it quite differently. But at the end of the day, it was a difficult thing to put aside. I mean, I don't think there are many bands that had a 45-year career that were as close as we were."

Alex added: "I know right after the tour, both Ged and I felt like we still had a lot of gas in the tank. The show looked great; we were playing really, really well. If we could just squeeze out another 150 shows."

Geddy continued: "Let's be honest: it was frustrating to end when we ended. I was frustrated, because I worked so hard on that tour in terms of design and putting it all together and the whole concept of going backwards, a chronology that exposes itself or exploits itself while going back in time. And so I was really proud of it. I wanted to take it to Europe to play for the European fans, I wanted to take it to South America, and that wasn't gonna happen. So it was truncated in my view, in my mind, and I had to swallow that because I had to think of my friend's needs and what he wanted. But it was frustrating. So we walked away from that, and we went to do our other things I went traveling, Alex was golfing and then Neil got sick. And so what do you do with all those feelings? You just throw them away, because they don't mean anything anymore."

Asked if he initially thought after the last show of the "R40" tour that there was a chance that RUSH would play again, Geddy said: "Yeah, I thought maybe [Neil will] have three months at home and get sick of that and wanna come back on the road and play with the boys. You never know. Of course, I had a feeling that wouldn't be the case, and I think Al did as well, but you never know. Regardless, we just went on with our lives, and then he got sick and everything changed."

Lee also talked about having to grieve in a public context after Peart died in January 2020 following a three-year battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. He was 67 years old.

"That's why [Neil] didn't want anyone to know [about his illness]," Geddy said. "He just didn't. He wanted to keep it in the house. And we did. And that was hard. I can't tell you it was easy, 'cause it was not easy. And it was ongoing. His diagnosis was He was given 18 months at the most, and it went on three and a half years. And so that was a constant flow of us going to see him, giving him support. What his family had to live through was really difficult. So it was a lot of back-and-forth. And when you're in that state, it's very hard to function normally, because you can't talk to anybody about it, 'cause no one's supposed to know. And so people hear rumblings and they bring things up to you, and you deflect it. And so that feels, on one hand, it feels dishonest, but on the other hand you're being loyal to your friend. So fuck the dishonesty part. That wins. I would say that was the most difficult time for us to move forward, during that whole thing, because we were in this bubble of grief sort of walking towards an inevitable and terrible conclusion."

Lifeson previously reflected on RUSH's final tour, which concluded on August 1, 2015 at the Forum in Los Angeles, during a June 2021 appearance on SiriuxXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk". Peart indicated at the time that he wanted to retire while he was still able to play well, along with a desire to spend more time at home with his young daughter.

"We were in our early 60s when that tour ended," Alex said. "After the number of dates that we did do, which was about half of what we would normally do, we were all starting to feel the fatigue, as you normally would. And had it been a normal tour, we have gone out for probably another month and then taken a month off, or maybe a couple of months off, and then picked it up for another three or four months.

"I think personally, and I think the same for Ged, we were really excited about the show, the presentation of the show, the whole concept of going back through our history," he continued. "I thought we were all playing really, really well, and I probably could have continued to do another 30 shows, and I think Geddy felt the same way. But it was becoming really difficult for Neil to play at that level, and unless he could play a hundred percent at that level, he really didn't wanna do any more shows, and he didn't wanna be that person that should have taken it. And it was hard for him a three-hour show playing the way he played. It's a miracle that he was even able to play. And he had some issues through that tour he had an infection on his feet and he could barely walk, never mind playing the bass drum the way he did. And he never complained or anything like that. So, it was time. And in retrospect, it couldn't have been better, because we were playing great, and we finished on such a high note. The fans were so happy I mean, with the performance. All things were right. That was the great way to ensure our legacy and be remembered for those guys, for being that band that played that way. I honestly would hate to be working now, for example, and not being able to play a song because my fingers are just killing me and not playing as well and making all these mistakes. I made enough mistakes way too many. So, all in all, it really turned out to be the opportune time for us to end a long career. Not a lot of bands lasted 40 years of that regular touring and many, many, many albums and all of that stuff."

RUSH waited three days to announce Peart's passing, setting off shockwaves and an outpouring of grief from fans and musicians all over the world.

Peart joined RUSH in 1974. He was considered one of the best rock drummers of all time, alongside John Bonham of LED ZEPPELIN; Keith Moon of THE WHO; and Ginger Baker of CREAM. Peart was also RUSH's primary lyricist, drawing inspiration from everything from sci-fi to Ayn Rand.

Excerpt from:

RUSH's GEDDY LEE Says NEIL PEART 'Didn't Want Anyone To Know' About His Illness: 'He Wanted To Keep It In The House' - BLABBERMOUTH.NET

This story is part of diSConnected, an occasional series from South Carolina Public Radio that looks at how South Carolinians are coping with loneliness and connection after two years in the COVID pandemic.

Brad Morris doesnt want your pity. He doesnt want your guilt. He doesnt even want you to think about other people. He wants you to save your own butt, because if you put all your efforts into saving yourself, you just might save him by accident.

You should ventilate, you should wear a mask, you should vaccinate not because you care about anyone else, screw everyone else, he says. You should do this because its going to help you not contribute to incubating variants that are going to come back and bite you in your ass.

He does think theres still plenty of room to appeal to the kindness of others; plenty of people are good and kind and want to do right by people, he says. But for the ones who just dont seem to get it that walking around carrying and incubating a virus that preys on weakened immune systems is a bad thing, his messaging has changed: Forget about helping others on purpose and embrace the value of selfishness.

Angry as his sentiment might be, theres actually a lot of selflessness in it. Morris, a power-wheelchair user whose physical disabilities can lead to potentially dangerous respiratory problems if he were to contract COVID-19, doesnt want people to get the virus and end up in their own wheelchair nor to end up having to turn to GoFundMe, as he did, to raise the money to buy one.

He worries that people are not thinking of the possibility of being injured or disabled by long-COVID. Thats a sentiment shared by Scarlet Novak, another power-wheelchair user who, despite staying masked and largely removed from the company of others these past two years, got a flu from (they suspect) a few seconds at the doctors office when they were both unmasked.

I just feel like a lot of people are not taking [COVID] as seriously as they should be, Novak says. There are still people who could get sick and be hospitalized because of it.

In February, the Center for American Progress reported that COVID-19 created 1.2 million more people with disabilities in the United States. The article cites U.S. Board of Labor Statistics estimates that roughly 496,000 of those people newly defined as disabled because of COVID complications are in the workforce.

But people are tired of COVID stories. Sources and casual friends alike have told me dozens of times that they no longer listen to or watch the news because its all about COVID. Out in public, few people still wear masks, and mass gatherings and events are proceeding like its 2018 again. And Morris says the world sometimes seems eager to look past people with disabilities as everyone turns back to a normal that a lot of people cant join in on.

He suggests efforts towards harm reduction, not mandates and laws; on getting people to think of simpler things, like considering masks, not because you might get sick, but because someone else might.

But hes not bothering to appeal altruism anymore.

Step one seems to be coming across as human so people will listen to you, he says. Maybe we cant do that and our only, our last, our best hope is to find ways of appealing to peoples self-interest.

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diSConnected: Is Ayn Rand or Mother Teresa better for protecting South Carolinians with disabilities? - South Carolina Public Radio

A foundation of the folklore of the American right is the story of how National Reviews William F. Buckley, in the early- to mid-1960s, cast the John Birch Societyand by extension the entire kooky, conspiracist wing of the rightout of the conservative movement.

This was part of a larger struggle for the soul of the right. Older conservative publications such as the American Mercury, which had once been the home of such luminaries as H.L. Mencken and Henry Hazlitt, had turned into a forum for antisemitic conspiracy theoriesbefore eventually being taken over outright by neo-Nazis. The response was an effort by Buckley and other conservative thinkers, with the help of political frontmen Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, to create a conservative movement with more ideological and philosophical substanceone based not on conspiracy theories or mere reactionary emotions but on ideas. (Too bad he also tried to get rid of Ayn Rand.)

Looking at American politics today, it sure looks like this seminal conservative achievement is unraveling. The Birchers are back. And theyre winning.

The John Birch Society, to refresh your memory, was started in 1958 by a conservative businessman who thought President Eisenhower was secretly a Soviet agent. It had a certain kind of cracked appeal as an easy explanation for various setbacks in the early years of the Cold War. The Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, the Communist takeover of China, the Soviet development of nuclear weaponsthese werent the results of Western mistakes, or large and difficult-to-control social forces, or just the fortunes of war. No, it was all a secret plot, and THEY were lying to you.

This worldview was tremendously popular, more popular than todays conservatives would probably like to admit. In 1962, Barry Goldwater complained, Every other person in Phoenix is a member of the John Birch Society. Im not talking about commie-haunted apple pickers or cactus drunks. Im talking about the highest cast of men of affairs.

The Birchers had such a big following on the right that Buckley, Goldwater, and Reagan hemmed and hawed for years before breaking with them. Even then, it took repeated denunciations, combined with the Birchers increasing notoriety as a national laughingstock, to eventually reduce their appeal and relegate them to the crazy fringes.

Consider the elements of this history:

We have a conspiracy theory that explains everything conservatives think has gone wrong in the world by positing the machinations of a secret cabal that controls everything from the intelligence agencies to the schools.

We have the rapid spread of these crackpot theories to otherwise normal and respectable people in the rank and file of the movement.

We have an attempt to make the conspiracists into the ultimate representatives of opposition to totalitarian communism, and a corresponding attempt to dismiss any conservative critics of the conspiracists as weak-kneed appeasers handing over the country to its enemies.

We have the uneasy balancing act of conservatives in the media and in politics who dont want to denounce the crackpots for fear of angering their partys base.

Isnt this also precisely the state of conservatism today?

We tend to think that our culture war is something new, rising out of the unique challenges of our own era. But youd be surprised how much of it is just the same old culture war being endlessly rehashed.

Todays equivalent of the John Birch Society is the QAnon conspiracy theory, an online grift that got out of hand and became a worldview. It posits its own spectacularly implausible conspiracy theory: That there is a global network of pedophiles who secretly run the world and control our politics so that they can abuse children. This conspiracy theory has in turn spawned other conspiracy theories which claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. It is currently being mainstreamed in attacks on Disney as a corporation bent on grooming children to prepare them for exploitation by pedophiles.

And where are todays conservative leaders, the intellectuals and politicians, the Buckleys and Reagans, who have the authority to shut this down?

Well, Ben Sasse wrote a piece once. But most of todays conservative and Republican leaders are actually trying to hitch themselves to the new John Birchers.

Donald Trump famously refused to denounce the QAnon crazies, describing them only as people who are against pedophiliathe most flattering possible description of the group. Its like saying that the John Birchers were against communism. In both cases, the actual salient characteristic of these groups is their wild, paranoid, evidence-free conspiracy theories.

Trumps sympathy for QAnon helped ease it into the conservative mainstream, and we can see the results in two recent incidents.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is the leading candidate to become the sane Trumpa Republican who can harness Trumps populist appeal, but in a disciplined and calculating way. But after DeSantiss defenders rushed out to assure everyone that his bill targeting teachers was not a Dont Say Gay Law and was not animated by anti-homosexual bias, his press secretary Christina Pushaw declared that the bill would be more accurately described as an Anti-Grooming Bill, adding, If youre against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer. A groomer, for those who are fortunate enough not to know, is a child predator who manipulates his victims to prepare them to accept abuse.

So much for being the sane Trump.

The idea that gay teachers are predators preparing to groom children is an old trope with a history in Florida. You may recall that previous iterations of the culture war attempted to ban homosexuals from teaching jobs. But more significant is the way this claim taps into the QAnon conspiracy theory. The whole base of QAnon is the dangerous delusion that their enemies are all secret pedophiles. This is the line that has been taken up by conservatives and endlessly repeated, including in a conservative campaign to boycott the Walt Disney Company (and also to subject it to land-use and antitrust regulations) as a political reprisal for opposing the Florida law. And why not if, as authoritarian conservative Rod Dreher puts it, Disney has gone groomer?

Taking a bill with many serious problemsa vaguely worded restriction and an enforcement mechanism designed to facilitate legal harassmentand characterizing any criticism of it as grooming and as support for pedophiles and predators has created an atmosphere of constant, vicious defamation aimed at any and all opponents. This is being egged on, of course, by the usual unscrupulous carnival barkers.

This mode of conspiracy thinking was also reflected in the scurrilous conduct of the Senate hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, when Senator Josh Hawley pandered to the QAnon vote by trying to portray the judges past sentencing work as soft on pedophiles. Many people, including conservative authors such as National Reviews Andrew McCarthy, have debunked the smear, showing that Judge Jacksons sentences were in line with the consensus view of other judges.

But once given this talking point, the crazies will chant it forever as if it is the gospel truth. Except that practically everyone is one of the crazies now. Hence the spectacle of Mollie Hemingway, of the Federalist and Fox News, trying her hardest to imply that Mitt Romney is a secret pedophile.

Which makes as much sense as Eisenhower being a secret communist.

From the top down, the Birchers have won. They now own the conservative movement and the Republican party.

Conspiracy theories have consequences. If you have been arguing these issues on social media, you will find that in among the groomer smears lobbed around carelessly there is an undertone of menace, with reminders that we know what to do with pedophiles. Before this is all over, someone is going to take this groomer and pedo talk literally. There will be blood.

We should also remember what conservatives accomplished by purging their crazies the last time around: By basing the movement on substantive ideas and having the courage and self-discipline to purge the kooks who claimed to be on our side, we achieved a few little things like pulling the U.S. out of the national malaise of the 1970s and winning the Cold War, followed by a period of peace, prosperity, and the spread of free societies across the globe. It wasnt just good for the movement, it was good for the country and the world.

If we want to experience anything like those triumphs again, we need build new institutions defined by pro-liberty ideasand we need to push the conspiracy theorists back to the fringes.

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Did the John Birch Society Win in the End? - The Bulwark

Matthew Taylor, who leads the NHS Confederation, rightly points to the consequences of the governments living without restrictions ideology (Covid threat being ignored in England for ideological reasons, say NHS leaders, 11 April). Boris Johnson sympathises with the libertarian ideologues in his party who like to invoke Ayn Rand. Perhaps they should note the warning attributed to her that we can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.

The insulting response from a No 10 spokesperson to Taylors accusation that the NHS feels abandoned shows that Johnson hopes to defy reality, as he has throughout the pandemic. To add further insult, the No 10 spokesperson adds that we are now able to manage [Covid] as we do with other respiratory infections, despite the NHSs daily experience blowing a hole in such Bolsonaro-esque bravado. Calum PatonEmeritus professor of public policy, Keele University

Having followed the progress of the pandemic in the UK closely, I am amazed at the relaxed attitude the government has to a death toll that equates to a Lockerbie disaster daily, or the total number of UK deaths in the Falklands conflict. I am appalled that the governments response is to close their eyes and put their collective fingers in their ears while all the time humming la-la-la-de-da. Public interest has waned to an unfortunate level.

The press should be making more noise. Perhaps refining the death statistics to show the age distribution of the current deaths would personalise the numbers. Perhaps people would then feel vulnerable and act more cautiously, to the benefit of all of us.David HastingsBalbeggie, Perthshire

Have an opinion on anything youve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication.

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Boris Johnsons Covid bravado insults the NHS and the public - The Guardian

In 1968, Judith Merril and Kate Wilhelm planned to run an advertisement in a science fiction magazine with a list of authors announcing their opposition to the Vietnam War. But when they reached out to fellow members of the Science Fiction Writers of America to add their names, Merril and Wilhelm were shocked. There were significant numbers of vehement pro-war authors in the community, and they also wished to share their views with the science fiction-reading public.

When the advertisement ran in Galaxy Science Fiction, it covered two full pages. On the right, the names of authors including Ursula K. Le Guin, Philip K. Dick, Thomas M. Disch, Samuel R. Delany and dozens more appeared under the statement We oppose the participation of the United States in the war in Vietnam. On the page to the left was another list of names, including Robert A. Heinlein, Leigh Brackett, Jerry Pournelle and Jack Vance, the undersigned who believed the United States must remain in Vietnam to fulfill its responsibilities to the people of that country.

While there were more traditional science fiction writers in the anti-war section, like Ray Bradbury, Gene Roddenberry and Isaac Asimov, the two petitions broadly signaled a generational split: Golden Age science fiction and the writing that happened next. The legacy of those who departed from the mainstream continues to this day, but at the time, these writers were emerging and relatively obscure: Le Guin published her first novel two years before, and Delany was only 26 years old. Science fiction, to these writers, was the ideal vessel for [] refusal of established power and social relations, Iain McIntyre and Andrew Nette write in the introduction to a new anthology they edited, Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950-1985. In the wake of Hiroshima, and as outer space became a frontier for the Cold War, these writers understood that scientific breakthroughs could be militarized. They were concerned with threats to the environment, and their stories were more likely to explore technology as a ruinous force, as well as address issues of race, class, sexuality and gender. Unlike the Golden Age gee-whiz stories of white male heroes conquering space and solving problems with gizmos, theirs was science fiction infused with the countercultures pansexuality, communal lifestyles, hallucinogens and radical politics. An outlaw sensibility runs through the work featured in the bookwhich ranges from genius to campyand audiences were receptive to it. Even the most extraordinary and strange writing could be commercially successful (Delanys Dhalgren, for example, has sold more than a million copies). The breadth of this anthology underscores what unites these disparate authors: Each writer expanded the genre itself and what material might be considered science fiction.

Key figures featured in the book have strongly influenced writers and filmmakers working today. The Babadook director Jennifer Kent is working on a project based on the life of Alice Sheldon, who wrote science fiction under the pen name James Tiptree Jr. The influence of Ira Levin, author of The Stepford Wives and Rosemarys Baby, is apparent in Jordan Peeles films. Ted Chiangs Story of Your Life, adapted into the film Arrival, appears heavily influenced by Delaneys Babel-17, and the author studied with Disch at Clarion, the revered science fiction writing workshop. Contemporary writers, including Neil Gaiman and China Miville, speak frequently about the influence of the New Wave on their work.

Likewise, Octavia Butler has ascended from cult writer to legend in our time. The author, profiled by Michael A. Gonzales in Dangerous Visions and New Worlds, wrote far-out science fiction in an earthy and grounded style. Butler was shy, dyslexic and thought to be slow as a child by her teachers; in adulthood, she worked minimum-wage jobs and was a self-described hermit. But she contained universes and flourished on the page, dazzling readers with her confident yet unpretentious voice, her humane gift for rendering complex characters and the sheer marvel of her imagination. Butler wrote about racism and structural inequalities with force as the most prominent Black woman science-fiction writer of the era. In recent years, Butlers 1993 novel Parable of the Sower has come to be regarded as a twentieth-century speculative classic on par with George Orwells 1984 and Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale. The novel movingly depicts community resilience during societal collapse with startling prescience, including a fascist leader who pledges to make America great again. The author hit the New York Times Best Seller list for the first time in 2020 with Parable, and A24 has a film adaptation in the works, with Garrett Bradley set to direct. Thats just one of a number of Butler projects, which also include Wild Seed, in development with Viola Daviss production company, JuVee, and Dawn, with Ava DuVernays ARRAY Filmworks. A series based on Butlers Kindred is forthcoming from FX, with a pilot directed by Janicza Bravo.

The influence of Damnation Alleyboth the 1969 Roger Zelazny novel and its loose film adaptation, directed by Jack Smight in 1977is explored in an essay by Kelly Roberts. The novel is a blend of Hells Angels culture, western and nuclear holocaust tale. Like its contemporaries Mad Max (1979) and A Boy and His Dog (1975), adapted from the 1969 Harlan Ellison novella, it presents the desert as a natural post-apocalyptic backdrop. The premise, in which a criminal is offered a full pardon if he should successfully make his way through a wasteland and save the world, likewise influenced Escape from New York (1981). The Landmaster created for the film is a fully operative vehicle that is regularly displayed in car showswhen it isnt parked in the lot of a Southern California auto body shop as a roadside attraction. Teslas Cybertruck looks like it was drawn with the vehicles menacing geometric form in mind.

The title Dangerous Visions and New Worlds is a nod to two notable publications of the era: the magazine New Worlds, edited by Michael Moorcock from 1964 onward, which published edgy, genre-crossing material by J.G. Ballard and others, and the two Dangerous Visions anthologies edited by Harlan Ellison. (A final installment, The Last Dangerous Visions, announced in 1973, has become legendary for its lengthy and rancorous delayseven after Ellisons death in 2018, his estate has claimed it will still be published.) Norman Spinrad, quoted in the book, says that in the Golden Age, science fiction was edited as if it were stuff for teenagers, or more accurately, what librarians thought teenagers should be able to read. Ellison and Moorcock, however, were open to experimentation and wild ideas as editors.

But the next generation wasnt a free-for-all, either; Moorcock was clear about what he didnt want. In his 1977 essay Starship Stormtroopers, the New Worlds editor identified the crypto-fascists from which his writers had made a break: There is Lovecraft, the misogynic racist; there is Heinlein, the authoritarian militarist; there is Ayn Rand, the rabid opponent of trade unionism and the left, who, like many a reactionary before her, sees the problems of the world as a failure by capitalists to assume the responsibilities of good leadership; there is Tolkien and that group of middle-class Christian fantasists [] To all these and more the working class is a mindless beast which must be controlled or it will savage the world.

The Golden Age didnt have a function; it wasnt attacking much, Moorcock said in February 2022, when he appeared at a virtual symposium for the anthology hosted by the City Lights Bookstore. We were trying to change science fiction to something that was more political, the author Marge Piercy said on another panel, noting that she was first drawn to the genre as a college student in the 1950s. We thought we were all going to die, she said, and science fiction, unlike mainstream literature, addressed these anxieties.

Our presentthe future in these books cited in Dangerous Visions and New Worldsis no utopia. Piercy, in her 2016 introduction to Woman on the Edge of Time, says that in the years since her 1976 novel was published, inequality has greatly increased [] more people are poor, more people are working two or three jobs just to get by. But the genre itself has improved in time: These writers expanded our imaginations and forged a path for intergenerational fellow travelers.

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Science Fiction in a Time of Crisis - Filmmaker Magazine

As dishy Rishi loses his sheen and glow, his enthusiastic champions group and defend his reputation.

The Independent broke the story last week about the complicated (and murky and secret) tax and citizenship arrangements of the Chancellor and his wife Akshata Murty, the daughter of a multimillionaire. In brief, she had non-dom status to keep down tax bills; its claimed he was listed as a beneficiary of offshore trusts (though he denies any knowledge of this) and he held the coveted American green card until October 2021.

After days of bad press, she has now decided to pay UK tax on her overseas income and he has referred himself to the Rt Hon Lord Geidt, the independent adviser on ministers affairs, that same establishment toff who decided that Boris Johnson did not break the ministerial code when he accepted 58,000 from a Tory donor to refurbish the flat at 10 Downing Street.

Sunak and Murty loyalists are attempting to discredit those who put out the story and to attribute unsavoury motives to those who are rightly scandalised.

Last week, a furious Indian-British friend rang me to say that the Sunaks were being picked on because they were brown. I told her they were tax-avoiders and his policies punished the poor. She called me a race traitor.

I tweeted about this insulting exchange and had a vile email from a supporter of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, accusing me of being an anti-Hindu Muslim. On the BBC news on Saturday night, an erstwhile Tory press officer said that the uproar was caused by the politics of envy.

Time to take on and see off these groundless and dangerous perceptions. What is happening to Mr and Mrs Sunak is not an example of racism or ethnic or religious prejudice; it is not proof of sexism, nor an example of class envy. Finally and most emphatically, it is not a sinister plot by officials to oust a brilliant politician.

Sunaks assertion that, like Will Smith, he was a husband trying to stop his wife from being disrespected, sounded manipulative and hollow. Envious communists are not behind the scandal. The most bitter politics of envy are found in his rarefied, high-brow world. Those with far too much perpetually envy those who are higher up the rich lists.

Now it has been reported that Sunak wants the authorities to catch and punish the insider who leaked this information to the press. This suggests that he is irredeemably vindictive and entitled. Apparently, the financial affairs of the powerful and rich have to be tightly guarded secrets. The lower orders have no such expectations or rights.

In my view, this is a salutary tale of insatiable, extreme greed, of how those at the top of the social pyramid are forever looking for ways to pay the least possible amount of tax into the public purse; of the ruling Tories really believing that they have no duty to the nation and, even more offensively, that ordinary people must be squeezed and terrorised by fiscal prudence while the richest Cabinet members we have ever had, and their loaded mates, are exempt from any kind of fiscal accountability.

Sajid Javid confessed this weekend that he too was a non-dom during the years that he was raking in millions as a City banker. Why did he need to do that? Read above. He, like other hard Tories, is an ardent fan of Ayn Rand, the US philosopher who disdained collective rights and propagated ethical egotism or the virtue of selfishness.

Sunak voted against tightening financial regulation to combat abusive tax avoidance and either abstained from or voted against human rights and equality laws (check out the website TheyWorkForYou.com).

Did he support Brexit because the EU was clamping down on banks, law and accountancy firms which facilitated offshore tax-avoidance schemes? Just asking.

Now Murty has announced that she appreciates the British sense of fairness and will pay UK tax on all her income. But questions remain. Will Sunak and Murty now offer full transparency about all of their financial affairs?

Such people need to learn they cannot have it all. But such people will never learn that lesson. Sunak will get over this. He may even be Prime Minister one day. Being this rich means never having to take responsibility.

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The criticism facing Rishi Sunak has nothing to do with race, and all to do with greed - iNews

By Douglas Helm| 9 seconds ago

Zack Snyder has a new Netflix movie in the pipeline and it looks like he just landed an interesting new addition to the cast. Cary Elwes, known for his beloved character in the Princess Bride among other notable roles, is set to join the cast of Rebel Moon.

Rebel Moon is Zack Snyders stab at a Star Wars-esque sci-fi epic. The movie depicts a peaceful colony that is threatened by the armies of a despot names Regent Belisarius. The small planet sends out an emissary to seek out aid from neighboring planets to fight back against the invasion. This will be his next project following The Army of the Dead and his directors cut re-release of Justice League.

While we have a brief plot description for Zack Snyders Rebel Moon, along with the casting details, theres no information yet on who Cary Elwes will be playing. We do know that Sofia Boutella will be playing the young emissary sent to call on the help of other planets. We also know that Rupert Friend will be playing the tyrant Regent Belisarius. At this point, Elwes could be playing for the good side or for the bad guys. Well have to wait for more information about the cast or maybe a trailer to come out before that can be determined.

In addition to Cary Elwes, the cast for Zack Snyder in Rebel Moon seems pretty stacked. Sofia Boutella, Charlie Hunnam, Doona Bae, Rupert Friend, Ray Fisher, Stuart Martin, Corey Stoll, Michael Huisman, and Alfonso Herrera are all onboard as well. Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad handle the script.

Before Rebel Moon hits, well be getting another Zack Snyder project in 2022, with a TV series based on The Army of the Dead. The show is called Army of the Dead: Las Vegas and depicts the initial outbreak of the zombies in Vegas. That wont be the end of Snyders new zombie-focused cinematic universe, as a sequel to the first movie has been announced titled Planet of the Dead. He also has a movie announced called The Fountainhead which is based on an Ayn Rand novel.

In addition to starring in Zack Snyders Rebel Moon, Cary Elwes has plenty of upcoming projects as well. Hell have a role in the upcoming seventh entry to the Mission: Impossible series. That movie wont be hitting until July of next year, but it has a stacked cast as well. Elwes will be starring alongside heavy-hitters like Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Hayley Atwell, and more. Mission Impossible 7 will be directed by Christopher McQuarrie.

If youre looking forward to Zack Snyders Rebel Moon, you might have a little while to wait. The movie is just entering pre-production, so theres no news yet on a potential release date. Judging by how busy the cast and crew are, it might be a year or more before we can check out Zack Snyders latest take on the sci-fi genre. Stay tuned for more news and well keep you updated about Rebel Moon.

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Zack Snyder's Star Wars-Themed Movie Recruits The Princess Bride Star - Giant Freakin Robot

Debate has been sparked after activists at the University of Bristol held a protest against a speaker who was invited to attend a private event. Protesters barricaded the door of a university society's event at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, at which libertarian Yaron Brook was scheduled to appear.

Brook was asked to speak by the university's Liberty Society about the causes of war in relation to the conflict in Ukraine, and the event was also used as a fundraiser for the Ukranian war effort. But the door was barricaded by activists, who played loud music through speakers, banged on doors and chanted, which caused the event to be shortened slightly.

The protesters have accused Brook, who is the chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute, of having "hateful" and "sinister" politics due to his views on US imperialism, Islam and Palestine. Brook has previously advocated for a ban on Muslims immigrating into the United States of America and Europe on the basis that the western world is "at war with radical Islam". He also supports Israel in its conflict with Palestine, which lead to the deaths of 5,600 Palestinians and 250 Israelis between 2008 and 2020, according to data published by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Read more: Police called as protesters 'blockade door' to Bristol University lecture

Student Action Bristol, who organised the protest, declined to be interviewed for this article. But in the aftermath of the event, they claimed they had "no choice" but to block Brook from speaking. In a statement posted on social media, they wrote: "Yaron Brook represents a sinister politics, one which harms the most vulnerable students in our university.

"He wears a suit and speaks the language of power - but his ideas are no different to those of Tommy Robinson or Nick Griffin. Should he or his kind attempt to speak at the university again, we will be back and in greater numbers."

But Brook told Bristol Live that he does not agree with the attempt to "silence" him, and says the students should have tried to engage him in a debate instead. He said: "I completely accept the fact that people have a right to protest, they don't like what I have to say.

"They don't like me, they don't like something I've said in the past, that's fine. What I don't think is acceptable, and what I don't think the university should allow, is the disruption of an event.

"Students have put a lot of time and effort into organising an event, I came out from London to do the event. To disrupt it, to attempt to stop an event from happening and to attempt to silence a speaker should be unacceptable and there should be ways to deal with it by security and police.

"We invited them in to ask questions but they didn't want to come in under those terms. Their whole goal was to silence me and I think that's unacceptable." Brook also denied having "hateful" views on Israel or on Islam, and said that the claims that the protesters have made about him are "ridiculous".

He said: "Is it out of the mainstream to be pro-Israeli? I guess it is in UK universities, but that's a little nuts and a little crazy. I'm pro-Israel and I think the Palestinians have been betrayed by their leadership, and have gone down a path that is not in their interest.

"I think it's sad what's happening in Israel and among the Palestinians and I think Israel is in the right in the conflict. I don't think my views on Islam are that out of the mainstream and I don't think my views on Islam are that radical.

"I'm not particularly fond of any religion, I'm hugely critical of Christianity and Judaism and Islam. And in the context of 9/11, I've said things about jihadism or totalitarian Islam that are pretty harsh, but they deserve it given their terrorist activities.

"But Islam? My views on Islam qua religion? They don't know what my views on Islam qua religion is."

And he added: "The fact is, my views are not mainstream, but if we only accept mainstream views I think we'll be doing a huge disservice to the culture in which we live, and I think particularly the universities where were supposed to be challenged, we're supposed to be thinking a bit outside of the box."

Following the event, Brook wrote on Twitter: "Tonight a group of Leftist students tries to Cancel me at Bristol University in the UK. In spite of their threats and the obnoxious noise they created my talk on the Roots of War proceeded as planned. I will not let thugs intimidate me into silence."

Some other students at the university have criticised the activists' decision to try and 'cancel' the event. Eshaan Badesha, who is the treasurer of the university's Labour Club society, says that he "despises" Brook's views but did not agree with the protest.

The 20-year-old said that, while he might have supported direct action if Brook had been invited to speak publicly, such as at a rally, he does not support trying to shut down debate at a private event.

He said: "If the SU thought it was acceptable to have then we don't think we should allow students not to have their right to have that speaker talk. The difference would have been if he was there to give off the views that he has before on things like American foreign policy, Islamic extremism.

"But in this sense he was there as a libertarian promoting his philosophy and promoting his view on the Ukraine crisis, and I feel like that was perhaps a step too far, to try and no-platform him. The issue we have as well is, the people attending that event might not necessarily know that much about him, and they might have gone in good faith to learn more about his views.

"When they see people on the so-called left perhaps trying to shut down the views of someone like that, it's only going to consolidate the views they already hold. Ideally our politics, as members of the Labour Club, our views are that we're trying to bring people on a journey and tell them, 'this is what we stand for'.

"When you go to places where there's a private event, and a small group of people tells them, 'we're going to no-platform your speaker' and they intimidate those members who aren't as aware, are you actually benefiting your cause there? Because now all the news is going to be not about Yaron Brook and his awful views, it's going to be about a bunch of students causing security problems, and it doesn't actually help the cause that you're fighting for either."

And, following the event, the Liberty Society wrote a lengthy statement on its Facebook page condemning the actions of the students. It said: "The UoB Liberty Society aims to provide an environment which facilitates the free exchange of ideas, and hosting external speakers is one way of doing so.

"The society does not necessarily endorse the views of our speakers and we encourage debate and discussion between students. We are saddened to write this statement but do so as attempted censorship on campus is no longer looming in the shadows but is vividly on display in one of the most prestigious universities in the world."

This is not the first time that a speaker at the university has been targeted by activists. The university is currently being sued by Raquel Rosario Sanchez over claims that the institution failed to protect her from harassment and bullying by activists.

It is alleged she was targeted over her involvement with campaign group Womans Place UK after trans rights activists protested against a talk she was holding and labelled her a terf (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). A spokesperson for Bristol SU said: "As a charity we are bound to uphold the law and allow freedom of expression, even where our views may differ from the speakers invited."

A University of Bristol spokesperson said: We are aware that a protest took place at an event last week held by the Liberty Society. The University adheres to the principles of free speech and all views, including those that can be difficult to hear for some, should be able to be expressed and heard with tolerance and mutual respect.

The University respects the right to protest, however we recognise that we also have a duty to ensure this is carried out in a safe manner which doesn't endanger others. Our Security Team were in attendance to ensure that the event was conducted safely. They identified that around 12 protestors were sitting in front of a fire exit from the room where the event was taking place and that they had linked arms and wouldnt move.

This was carefully managed by our Security Team. Due to the health and safety issues associated with such actions the Police were called to attend and the protestors were escorted out of the building after the event.

"We understand that the event went ahead as planned. If any individuals felt personally threatened, or have concerns about any aspect of the event, we would encourage them to report this.

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Debate sparked after University of Bristol students try to 'cancel' controversial speaker - Bristol Live

Rishi Sunak is the man most likely to be our next prime minister.

Just kidding.

While the rest of the country is weighing up if they can save on heating costs by putting their head in the oven, the chancellor has swanned off to his 5m house in Santa Monica.

The man responsible for tackling the cost of living crisis is taking a well-deserved break in a house with a pet spa. Whatever that is.

Sunak has had an almost unparalleled fall from grace, suffering a public wrath usually reserved for Love Island contestants and immigrants.

The BBC photoshopped him into superman for gods sake and now hes a byword for Tory cruelty.

His approval ratings have fallen a staggering 38 points since 2020, going from being one of the most popular chancellors in memory to radicalising money-saving expert Martin Lewis.

So, how did the Oxbridge-educated public schoolboy who worked for a hedge fund get so out of touch?

The story starts, like all good villain narrative arcs, in the City of London.

You wont find much about this on Sunaks website, dear reader, but after stints at 40,000 a year Winchester College, Oxford, and then Goldman Sachs, the chancellor worked at TCI.

TCI is a hedge fund that played a significant role in the collapse of RBS.

I wont get into the details, Ill just encourage you to revisit Margot Robbies bath scene in The Big Short.

Sunak and a TCI colleague went on to found their own hedge fund. That colleague was landed with an 8m tax avoidance bill.

The chancellor has denied any involvement in this matter, or the TCI scheme.

The point is, hes a born to rule Lord of the Manor.

And despite what you might have heard about the collapse of feudalism in your history lessons - we are all still very much living on his estate.

In fact, we never left.

You could see Sunaks mask slipping when he was challenged about his wifes continued involvement in Infosys, a company operating in Russia.

Sunak had called for investors to divest from Russia but said he was surprised he didnt go all Will Smith on the people criticising his wife for profiting from Putins regime.

And now he's overseeing a cost of living crisis that it's estimated will push 1.3m people into absolute poverty. Skyrocketing energy prices are about to make households 1,000 worse off a year.

And what is Sunak doing about this?Hes not taxing the energy companies that have recorded "bumper profits" and have "more money than they know what to do with" to offset the prices.

Hes loaning every household just 200 that theyre obliged to pay back in the next five years. It might actually be more cost-effective to burn the 200 instead of turning the radiator on.

The chancellor has also devised a cunning plan that essentially taxes people for voting Labour.

Sunak launched a scheme meaning that social care will be paid for by a rise in National Insurance.

National Insurance is a tax on workers' earnings. People who work pay National Insurance but dont need social care - and they largely voted for Labour in 2019.

Whereas old people, who do need social care but dont pay National Insurance, are more likely to vote Tory.

Tory voters are no longer the slick city boys of the 80s that would have caved their own skull in if Mrs Thatcher asked.

Theyve moved to the shires and will need their arses wiped for them in a few years.

And theyd still cave their skull in if it would bring back Thatcher from the dead.

Lets go back to how fishy Rishi became dishy. When he wasnt being fawned over for being conventionally attractive, the superhero chancellor sent the publics hearts a flutter by launching the furlough scheme, where the government paid 80 per cent of peoples wages who otherwise would have had to be laid off.

The government spent a huge 70 billion on this before it was abruptly ended in September 2021 to widespread concern.

This was a hugely generous package but there was a real oversight. Three million people were simply excluded from government support, by virtue of various self-employment quirks.

Old school Tory Sunak consistently claims that hes a low tax Conservative, despite the public facing the largest tax burden for close to 100 years.

While people confront the biggest fall in living standards since the 1950s, the UK is the only major economy actually increasing the tax burden on its citizens.

For years, Sunak got to play politics on easy mode.

He pursued massively popular schemes like furlough and eat out to help out. The country needed help and was welcome to receive it.

This exposes the hollowness at the heart of fishy Rishis brand.

Vulnerable people are making impossible choices between food and fuel, just so Sunak can role play Ayn Rand.

To paraphrase Lord Farquaad, some of you may freeze but thats a chance hes willing to take.

And whys he willing to take that chance?

I hear a mansion is a pretty easy place to stay warm.

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Rishi Sunak is a terrible bloke, regardless of his wife's finances - JOE.co.uk