Yorkshire wisdom

Today, the incomparably incomprehensible indolent Mrs. B sat waiting in Skypeland for a while, reportedly hoping I would come in. I asked why he was not painting, and he said he had to be in the right mood for painting. If Mrs. B were painting portraits or artwork, I could understand, but not when he is painting one room. I guess that is why it is taking so long to paint that room; several months have gone by so far since he started to paint.

Mrs. B always seems to be full of "Yorkshire wisdom" (which I guess is translated in the Yorkshire dialect as "bullshyte"). He tried to tell me that there are no historical roots to any current wars or disputes worldwide, or that historical backgrounds to conflicts are irrelevant. Mrs. B believes that we should ignore history in places like the Balkans or the Levant. I do not think that the Palestinians or the Israelis or the Bosnians or the Serbians would agree with this viewpoint, but that is what Mrs. B claimed; one can ignore the past. In the words of Mrs B, "today is today, tomorrow is future,and yesterday is past ". Well very profound, but not very compelling.

In spite of this attitude about history, Mrs. B and his sidekick, the "muck expert" Mucus, got themselves all worked up about an event that occurred in the past in the UK. Seventy three years ago, a couple of hundred people walked roughly 300 miles from Newcastle to London as a protest. According to these two bumbling bubble brains, 300 miles is a huge distance, and this march was allegedly an important event, "particularly at that time" (as Mucus proudly stated).

When I and others tried to point out that 300 miles is not very far, particularly on American scales, Mrs. B trotted out the same tired old excuses; "Well you can't compare because England is just a tiny little island" (somehow when talking to Mrs. B and Mucus there is some confusion as to what England is; a part of a country, a country or an island). However, distances are pretty much the same everywhere, and unless the English were of Lilliputian proportions 73 years ago, walking 300 miles is not really that big a deal and not particularly remarkable. Even a fairly small US state like Pennsylvania, which is only the 33rd largest US state, is 307 miles from its easternmost point to its westernmost point. [1] Sorry Mucus and Mrs B, you are spewing irrelevant horse pucky once again. Others do it when they are drunk or stoned. What distinguishes Mucus and Mrs. B is that they do it stone cold sober.

The continuing problems Mrs. B and Mucus seem to have with concepts like fractions, proportions and percentages are similar. Suppose that in some Skypeland discussion, someone tries to compare baldness in the US, with a population of about 305 million, and the UK, with a population of about 65 million. Mucus and Mrs. B will always confuse the issue so badly and get themselves so tied into knots that they convince themselves that no comparison is possible. However, even though comparisons are impossible, Mucus and Mrs. B will always assert extremely aggressively that the UK is superior in all respects, no matter what the facts and the evidence.

For example, suppose that baldness is claimed to be a negative attribute. If 20 % of the US is bald and 10% of the UK is bald, Mucus and Mrs. B will claim this proves the UK is superior since fewer are bald in the UK. However, if instead 20% of the US and the UK are bald, Mucus and Mrs. B will claim that the UK is superior because there are fewer bald people in the UK. If 10% of the US is bald and 60% of the UK is bald, Mucus and Mrs. B will still claim that the UK is superior because supposedly one cannot compare the US to the UK since the US is so much larger (it does not matter if it is larger in population or area or in GDP; all this is irrelevant when dealing with morons).

Last night, Mucus and Mrs. B were frantic to jump in to explain what the Nation of Islam is. It is amazing to me how they are willing and anxious to give their ridiculous opinions about things they know nothing about, particularly things in some other country they have never visited. They even demand that they be allowed to do so when someone else who is trying to explain something is trying to talk. They talk over others and spew completely uninformed claptrap. Any conversation on any subject is fair game; Mucus and Mrs. B will interrupt and then refuse to shut up. Numerous discussions die a premature death in a profusion of self-satisfied stupidity spread by the smug Mucus and Mrs. B because of their undeserved self-confidence. This is compounded by the repeated assertions by Mucus and Mrs. B that they are uneducated, which they are, and know nothing, which is also quite evident to all observers. This does not seem to stop them from butting in to demonstrate how little they know, over and over, and even belligerently cutting off those who do know something. How impressive...

Mrs. B said today that atomic bombs "work by fusion" (I guess he has never heard of fission; he was dismissive when I tried to explain the difference) and that the US should arrange for all countries to have their own nuclear arsenals. Although I understand that this idea might be attractive in a certain abstract sense, I suspect that the likelihood that some madman or fanatic is going to use nuclear weapons in the future is greatly increased by this approach. This depth of analysis is beyond Mrs. B, however. Mrs. B displays an amazing naiveté when it comes to the threats the West faces.

However, as I have repeatedly asserted, perhaps we need a huge disaster with a nuclear weapon as a wake-up call. It is possible that it is necessary to kill a good 500,000 people in one fell swoop, perhaps because of a nuclear accident, or an attack by some terrorists or a rogue state. This might serve to galvanize the legions of people who have forgotten the horrors of nuclear warfare, or who are in denial about the dangers of Islamic fundamentalists' desire for nuclear armaments, or who believe that 911 was an inside job and that no Muslim radicals mean any harm to the US, or the West, or to Israel, or to their fellow Muslims.

I have run across numerous Islamic clerics who proudly claim that Arabs are superior in all aspects because they believe that the US used nuclear weapons against Sadam Hussein. These Imams and Mullahs assert that Sadam stood up to the most powerful weapons in the Western arsenal and survived unscathed, and this proves how superior Islam, Muslims and Arabs are. I think a demonstration of what a nuclear weapon is and can do might be necessary once in a while to refresh memories. The US offered to demonstrate the atomic bomb to the Japanese first before Hiroshima, but the Japanese turned down this offer. Perhaps a similar demonstration might set a few Muslims back on their ignorant posteriors, although it might only increase their frantic thirst to acquire such weapons for themselves so they can kill "kaffirs". Is there really any doubt that some Muslim radical would use these weapons if they got ahold of them?

It is a good thing that this world is not reliant on someone with "Yorkshire wisdom" to protect international security, and deal with the world economy. This never seems to stop Mrs. B from weighing in, extremely aggressively, on every issue.