Themes are subversive
Unless they're from Google.
This country is pathetic. Really pathetic. I thought it was about time I changed the theme on my iGoogle page and started looking through what was available. At first I could see all the themes, and then I could only see the ones from Google. Everything else was getting blocked. I can't believe that every non-Google site from which the themes were coming was somehow offensive to Nanny.
I tried one of the offending themes in case they were available in spite of their innate subversiveness, but it completely screwed up my home page and I had to choose one of Google's own themes.
I'm largely not bothered about Internet censorship. As I said somewhere long ago, most of the things that really get Nanny having a tantrum aren't things I'm remotely interested in and thus blocks on such sites don't matter. I'm bothered when the block affects some site which is innocuous, and irrelevant to Nanny's petty paranoia. What reason can there be for Omniglot to be on the proscribed list? It's a language site. How is information about Occitan on the Internet an affront to the nation?
The nation likes to boast (in truth, somewhat inaccurately) about its 5000 year old history, but it's never grown up. It's all part of the culture. For centuries, governments, professing benevolence, have invariably been remote, unaccountable and megalomaniacal. The people who have done all the work for these governments are pigs with their snouts buried deeply in the trough. People's lives have meant little or nothing to their rulers. Regimes come and go, but their philosophy is always the same: don't trust the people to think for themselves. Why not? Because the people will, sooner or later, overthrow the old regime, usually at the behest of someone who wants to be the new remote, unaccountable and megalomaniacal ruler, who finds that he can't really trust the people because they might just as easily dispense with him and install a new megalomaniac.
The government always acts in the name of the people, but really it's just acting in its own self-interest. It doesn't want the people to think for themselves. I can decide what Internet sites I'm going to visit and which ones I don't. I don't need someone to decide that for me. Of course, this is all well and good because I'm not one of the soggy-brained youths of this nation who are so easily likely to behave hysterically at the slightest provocation, but we're looking at a vicious circle. Young people, unable to think (rationally) for themselves, behave irrationally. The government, fearing the consequences of irrational behaviour, try to direct how people should think, but the result is that they can't think for themselves. So round and round it goes.
I've seen consequences of this recently. Sometimes it's necessary to make an executive decision. As much as you might like to inform the drooling imbecile higher up the food chain, that person isn't around. Such a decision was made recently, but Dowager Empress Cixi just couldn't get such a notion through her thick skull. Another consequence is the inability to think about something before reacting to it. Logical consideration beforehand would obviate invalid conclusions, but no one's trained to do this because no one's trained to think for themselves.
I get really sick of this stupid place at times.
This country is pathetic. Really pathetic. I thought it was about time I changed the theme on my iGoogle page and started looking through what was available. At first I could see all the themes, and then I could only see the ones from Google. Everything else was getting blocked. I can't believe that every non-Google site from which the themes were coming was somehow offensive to Nanny.
I tried one of the offending themes in case they were available in spite of their innate subversiveness, but it completely screwed up my home page and I had to choose one of Google's own themes.
I'm largely not bothered about Internet censorship. As I said somewhere long ago, most of the things that really get Nanny having a tantrum aren't things I'm remotely interested in and thus blocks on such sites don't matter. I'm bothered when the block affects some site which is innocuous, and irrelevant to Nanny's petty paranoia. What reason can there be for Omniglot to be on the proscribed list? It's a language site. How is information about Occitan on the Internet an affront to the nation?
The nation likes to boast (in truth, somewhat inaccurately) about its 5000 year old history, but it's never grown up. It's all part of the culture. For centuries, governments, professing benevolence, have invariably been remote, unaccountable and megalomaniacal. The people who have done all the work for these governments are pigs with their snouts buried deeply in the trough. People's lives have meant little or nothing to their rulers. Regimes come and go, but their philosophy is always the same: don't trust the people to think for themselves. Why not? Because the people will, sooner or later, overthrow the old regime, usually at the behest of someone who wants to be the new remote, unaccountable and megalomaniacal ruler, who finds that he can't really trust the people because they might just as easily dispense with him and install a new megalomaniac.
The government always acts in the name of the people, but really it's just acting in its own self-interest. It doesn't want the people to think for themselves. I can decide what Internet sites I'm going to visit and which ones I don't. I don't need someone to decide that for me. Of course, this is all well and good because I'm not one of the soggy-brained youths of this nation who are so easily likely to behave hysterically at the slightest provocation, but we're looking at a vicious circle. Young people, unable to think (rationally) for themselves, behave irrationally. The government, fearing the consequences of irrational behaviour, try to direct how people should think, but the result is that they can't think for themselves. So round and round it goes.
I've seen consequences of this recently. Sometimes it's necessary to make an executive decision. As much as you might like to inform the drooling imbecile higher up the food chain, that person isn't around. Such a decision was made recently, but Dowager Empress Cixi just couldn't get such a notion through her thick skull. Another consequence is the inability to think about something before reacting to it. Logical consideration beforehand would obviate invalid conclusions, but no one's trained to do this because no one's trained to think for themselves.
I get really sick of this stupid place at times.
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