November 2008

As it is Thanksgiving in the US tomorrow (although we don’t celebrate it here in Australia), I thought it might be an appropriate time to discuss how I feel about Christmas, especially as I am an atheist, along with the fact that the launch of my new online store and DVD have obviously been timed for it.

First of all, there are the obvious practical and commercial considerations: this is the time of year when sales will be maximised, and my fans simply want and expect new stuff to be available from me at this time, so I obviously have to respond to that. However, even though I don’t personally believe in Christmas itself, I still think it is a good thing to have something like it at this time of the year. Indeed, I’m sure that even if humans never invented religion, we would still invent something like Christmas. I think many of us need some time off at the end of the year to take a break from work, and reflect on the year that was. I also think it is appropriate that many of us will wish to spend that time with family and friends. However, this is where I start to disagree with Christmas as it is now.

For one thing, the natural desire of many people to spend time with their family at Christmas has become an obligation. This not only takes the fun out of it, but also potentially generates enormous amounts of stress—we don’t all get along with everyone in our family, and Christmas is often the one time of year when we are forced to come together. Even worse, it makes those people who don’t have a family to spend Christmas with feel left out, lonely or even rejected by society. This potentially creates enormous stress as well, particularly as the modern world is becoming increasingly single. Read the rest of this entry »

This is just another quick post to let you all know that we’ve just posted a promo video for my DVDs on YouTube—check it out! It is also available at my online store in a much higher quality version.

This is just a quick post to let everyone know that my new online store has just been launched!

Also, as negotiations with publishers for my health and beauty book have taken far longer than we ever anticipated, we have decided to release the Exercise and Yoga DVD we shot to accompany it as a separate product. Because this DVD is intended for the general market, it is non-nude, but I wear some very sexy, exposing outfits, and get into some remarkable poses! Plus of course, it is a great guide to healthy and sustainable exercise that will keep you slim and fit, yet is also very low impact. In addition, I demonstrate the full range of yoga poses I perform, from simple and basic to quite extreme and advanced (of course, you don’t need to perform all of these poses yourself to stay fit—you only need to do what you feel comfortable to do). Although we still aren’t sure at this stage what the publishing arangements for my book will be, if it turns out that we do end up packaging the Exercise and Yoga DVD with the book, then we will give anyone who has already purchased the DVD a credit toward the book and DVD package. So you can but it now and enjoy it in the mean time!

Wow! After eight long years, the reign of the neo-cons is finally ending! And with a college vote of over 2:1, a popular margin of 6 points, and more total votes than any other Presidential candidate in US history(!), it may even be emphatic enough for the Republicans to re-think their position, and get rid of the religious right and neo-conservative cancers upon their party. Sadly however, I doubt it—early signs are that they may go even further to the right. If they do, I can only imagine they will lose by an even bigger margin the next time around, and maybe that will do it. We can only hope.

Although Obama’s victory speech was quite impressive, I was if anything even more impressed with John McCain’s very gracious concession speech. It’s almost as if he secretly wanted Obama to win—perhaps after butting heads with the religious right throughout his campaign, he really did think it would be for the best! I now understand why he didn’t try to use Pastor Wright in his Obama smear campaign (which surprised me): it seems he really is sincerely anti-racist, unlike much of his party.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to come up with an appropriate way to celebrate the win, and I’ve also been wondering what I can bitch about now that the neo-cons are gone. Actually, not really—I still have plenty of things I want to write about! But I thought some funny and creative answers to these two questions would make for a good, fun competition for my readers and fans, so I’ve decided to do the following: whoever can come up with best answer to one or both of these questions wins a kiss from me! That’s right—I will do a video where I blow a kiss to you with your name on it, which I will publish here. And if you’re a member of my main web site, I will do an adult version for you as well! Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just had this email forwarded to me from Doug Ross:

Dear Red States:

If you manage to steal this election too we’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.

We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss.

We get 85% of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama.

We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share. Read the rest of this entry »

In my last two posts, I dealt with the myth that Democrats are bigger spenders than Republicans (in fact the Republicans have been all-time record spenders since Reagan), as well as the improbability that Libertarians represent a viable political alternative in the real world. I have also written about the folly of basing your vote on your religious beliefs, and the hypocrisy of the Republicans’ claims to the “moral high ground”—by lying in order to fabricate smears against their opponent—while they knowingly engage in infinitely greater corruption themselves. It is unbelievable that Republicans are still trying to smear Obama for his perfectly innocent associations with William Ayers and ACORN, while at the same time Sarah Palin is actually convicted of violating the public trust, and worst of all, George W. Bush sent thousands of Americans to their deaths and stole trillions of dollars from future generations of Americans, on a lie about supposed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Yet in spite of the astounding magnitude of all this corruption, dishonesty and irresponsibility, many Americans still see fit to tar the Democrats with the same brush, even though they have never been known to have engaged in anything like this (and don’t try to tell me Clinton’s blow job was “corrupt”!). Many of these people are actually quite liberal leaning in terms of their politics, yet they have become so disillusioned with the whole political process, that they don’t even want to vote Democrat any more. Read the rest of this entry »

A graph of US government revenue and spending vs. President since 1964—click for a larger view.

In my previous Why Does Anyone Vote Republican Any More? post, I exploded the commonly held myth that the Republicans are more fiscally responsible than the Democrats: indeed, with the rise of neo-conservatism since Reagan, they have been by far the most fiscally irresponsible governments in US history. Perhaps even more remarkable though is the fact that the Clinton administration was actually very fiscally responsible: by the end of his term, he had brought increases in debt down to almost zero (0.32%), and if the Democrats were elected for another term, we very likely would have seen the first decrease in national debt since 1961. But instead of course we got George W. Bush, who has brought debt up to such an astronomical level, that 10% of the US budget is now devoted to servicing it—one can only imagine what will happen if and when interest rates go up significantly.

In spite of these facts however, there is still a hard core of Republicans who will continue to vote for them, no matter what. I doubt there is anything anyone could do or say to turn these people around, but fortunately, they will not decide the outcome of the November 4 election. Nor for that matter will hard core Democrats. The people who will decide it are those in the middle: the swinging voters, and those who might vote independent or for a minor party. Amongst these, perhaps the most significant group are Libertarians. It seems they are basically made up of two types of people: disenchanted Republicans who are not happy with the extreme fiscal irresponsibility the neo-conservatives, and idealists looking for an alternative to the major parties, as they are disenchanted with both of them. Read the rest of this entry »