Prince Harry’s penis admission
I used to think Harry was just dumb. His mother was undoubtedly dim. But this latest admission suggests another diagnosis: autism. There are many degrees of autism but lack of sensitivity is a hallmark of it. A normal person would not have made Harry's admissions. It would have been too embarassing.
I too have a degree of autism and am almost totally unembarrassable. Autism does get you into trouble and Harry has certainly dug himself into a deep hole
I expected plenty from Harry’s book, but I didn’t foresee him describing his penis. Clearly, Harry is living, and no one can shut him up now. You know when you go through a break-up and suddenly post sexy photos on Instagram? And everyone’s like yes, girl! But also are you okay?
Well, that is what it feels like to read snippets of Harry’s book, Spare. He has broken up with the palace and he is pretending he is living his best life, but it might also be his worst life. I mean the man has sunken to clearing up rumours about his penis. Stories that no one has really discussed since his birth but good to bring them back up, I guess! (Pun not intended.)
In the book Harry writes, “My penis was a matter of public record, and indeed some public curiosity. The press had written about it extensively. There were countless stories in books, and papers (even The New York Times) about Willy and me not being circumcised.
“Mummy had forbidden it, they all said, and while it’s absolutely true that the chance of getting penile frostbite is much greater if you’re not circumcised, all the stories were false. I was snipped as a baby.”
Harry doesn’t stop there. He then goes on to share an anecdote about his penis. I can’t even imagine how the royals will react to that. Surely, Fergie is hanging out with the corgies and enjoying a nice glass of wine to celebrate the fact she is now looking like an angel in comparison.
Anyway, back to Harry’s penis. So, Prince Harry writes about a time when he got “frostnipped” during a trip to Antarctica before William’s wedding to Kate Middleton.
Harry writes: “The pre-wedding dinner was pleasant, jolly, despite Willy visibly suffering from standard groom jitters,” he says.
“I regaled the company with tales of the (South) Pole. Pa was very interested and sympathetic about the discomfort of my frost nipped ears and cheeks, and it was an effort not to overshare and tell him also about my equally tender penis.”
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Does having children make you more politically conservative?
In American presidential elections, married women vote much more conservatively than single women
Becoming a parent – rather than simply getting older – is more likely to make you socially conservative, a team of international scientists has found, and the more kids you have, the more likely you are to be against abortion and promiscuity.
Using a combination of surveys and archival data from the World Values Survey – a global research program that has interviewed more than 427,000 people over 40 years in 80 countries about their social, political, economic, religious and cultural values – the researchers found that even making people think like parents results in more socially conservative thoughts.
Lead author Dr Nicholas Kerry, a psychology researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, says the team surveyed people in 10 countries, including Australia, about their feelings towards kids, as well as conducted a series of experiments encouraging participants to recall or imagine certain parenting and childcare experiences.
“We asked people to talk about either real or imagined experiences of childcare and reflect on how they felt at the time,” Kerry explains.
“For those who didn’t have kids, we asked them to imagine a child and then put them in different situations. We then compared this group to a control group, who were asked to think of similar positive experiences but without a child involved.”
They found that even thinking about scenarios like a child crying or playing ball fundamentally shifted the way people viewed the world, especially in relation to issues such as abortion, immigration and sex.
“Because socially conservative values prioritise safety, stability and family values, we hypothesised that being more invested in parental care might make socially conservative policies more appealing,” Kerry and his colleagues write.
“In light of rapidly changing global birth rates, the current findings could have profound implications for the future political landscape.”
Yet for former Labor campaign strategist Kosmos Samaras, social conservatism has less to do with being a parent and more to do with the company you keep.
“It’s called political social contagion – if a group of people, for instance, live in a particular community that is progressive, they are likely to be progressive too,” he says. “We find that community has a more profound influence over individuals, irrespective of whether they’re having kids or not.”
Wealth, too, is a strong predictor, with richer parents tending to stay progressive no matter how many children they have.
“The less capacity parents have to deal with cost living pressures and take care of their kids, the more conservative they become, and less tolerant and engaging on social issues,” Samaras says.
Life becomes more complicated and expensive when you have children, and Samaras says parents – especially parents of younger kids – tend to be motivated by economic issues such as access to childcare and the health system over others.
“We find that it’s more economically practical things that change people’s mindsets rather than their social outlook on life,” he says.
Interestingly, Kerry’s research did not find this to be the case when it comes to parents.
“Parenthood didn’t make people more conservative on these [economic] issues – indeed, there is some evidence from other studies that parents can become more liberal on some economic issues, to the extent that these policies favour parents.”
The research has political implications, especially in light of falling birth rates across nearly all the developed world (and even much of the developing world). While globally it’s been predicted the planet will host 9.8 billion people by 2050, many countries – including Australia – are dealing with decades of sub-replacement fertility, which means a total fertility rate below the 2.1 required for a woman to replace herself and her partner.
Kerry believes that more research needs to be done into the process of becoming a parent and the changes that come about as a result.
“Parenthood is the biggest thing that happens to most people in a reliable way, but historically, most research in psychology has tended to focus on young people and childhood development,” he says.
“People have overlooked the other end of parenthood.”
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Elite over-production leads to parasitism
Since the Academy in ancient Athens, universities have been engine rooms for human success through the discovery, recording, sorting and propagation of knowledge. Something however has changed in the past two generations. Not for the better. Government policy is again a key contributor.
Peter Turchin is a Russian-American complexity scientist whose field is the statistical analysis of historical trends. Turchin describes ‘elite overproduction’ as a factor contributing to political and social instability that nations and empires experience between their zenith and downfall. He argues that an excess of elites was a contributor in the fall of Rome and the Ancien Régime in 18th century France. Elite overproduction occurs when a society becomes so affluent and arrogant that it produces more elites than it can absorb, let alone needs.
Elite overproduction occurs in two principal ways. The first is biologically where, for example, a fertile royal family procreates faster than positions can be created for new royals. The other way is through economic and educational upward mobility.
It needs saying upfront that elites are a natural phenomenon. In a meritocracy, there will be an informal and fluid elite based on excellence where members are looked to for leadership. Inherent in the definition of an ‘elite’ however is that very few meet the criteria. When there is an unnaturally large elite, society becomes top-heavy and ripe for toppling.
As societies get wealthier, more people seek tertiary education, and as they secure an increasing allocation of resources, universities are morphing from centres of knowledge into factories for producing a less meritorious elite credentialled with great expectations.
It is considered ‘sound government policy’ to shovel as many youngsters into university as possible, subsidised by the taxes of the many who will never attend university. As usual, government subsidies result in over-production, in this case, of graduates with fancy qualifications. And when they cannot be absorbed into the economy, the surplus elite seeks to capture institutions which provide the pay and prestige of the elite without the prerequisite achievement.
What then occurs is a turn to leftist politics to distort institutions and create new ones for a never-ending list of elite causes. This necessitates an expansion of government beyond society’s needs. Corruption generally follows.
Rather than striving for excellence for the benefit of all, the elites of 4th century Rome and 18th century France were fastidious about buttressing their exalted lifestyles. Similarly, during the Dark Ages there was an over-supply of clerics and in the Soviet Union, an oversupply of apparatchiks.
Public sector employment traditionally involved a trade-off between wages and job security. Wages would be a little below those in the private sector, but public servants were largely immune to recessions and the risk of lay-offs. Today, the public service still offers high job security but higher than market wages. And when bureaucratic benches are full, excess elites move into corporate administration and compliance, the corollaries of bureaucratic expansion.
Once in their roles, it is these elites who design and implement policies to reduce competition and market-risk to benefit incumbents and their progeny. The public service is replete with multi-generational family dynasties out of public view.
The policy intention in seeking to expand the ranks of the tertiary educated was honourable but miscalculated. Graduates generally earn more than non-graduates, so the state calculated ‘more graduates, more tax revenue’. But producing more graduates did not change the structure of economy to absorb additional graduates.
Australia, with a workforce of 13.8 million persons counts (conservatively) 2.2 million public sector employees (one in six). And within universities (whose workers are not counted as public sector employees) the number of administrators is breathtaking.
The Group of Eight (Go8) represents Australia’s oldest and most prestigious universities. In 2021, total wages and salaries in the Go8 totalled $8.5 billion. Of this, a meagre 53 per cent was spent on academics. Almost half of Go8 university salary expenditure is on people who don’t participate in the core business of universities: teaching or research. Canberra’s Australian National University leads the way spending 51 per cent on non-academic staff.
The product and purpose of universities seems to be subtly changing from the discovery of truth to the enforcement of dogma. The university-originated assaults on Western civilisation are but a means to entrench a meritless elite – the most dangerous kind.
With excess elites claiming more and more public resources (for example middle-class welfare and corporate subsidies), a date for social disturbance is set when there are insufficient spoils to sustain the increasing numbers. Elites get grumpy, blame the system, and then work to overthrow it by whipping up the masses.
The initial skirmishes have already been seen with the public policy response to recent shocks like the Global Financial Crisis and Covid. In both cases, the elite members of the financial sector and the laptop-ocracy, not only survived but thrived at the expense of the general citizenry.
Turchin’s theory also neatly intersects with that of Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter to possibly explain the assaults on Western civilisation and the general growth of grievance studies. Schumpeter wrote in the 1940s that capitalism had the seeds of its own destruction in its DNA because it gives rise to an intellectual class that can only be sustained by the wealth created by liberal capitalism. Schumpeter proposed that intellectuals were hostile to capitalism, and hence liberalism, because they believed they would not win the rewards they felt was their due in a competitive society.
With a new year, another batch of Australian high school graduates are being channelled into universities. For many, it is the right and best path. For others it is not. Too many will become over-qualified, highly indebted baristas, burger flippers and administrators, overly compliant with the latest dogma and angry and bitter at their lowly station. They will focus their ire on the ills of capitalism rather than the real culprit.
https://spectator.com.au/2023/01/elite-revolt/
***********************************************Jordan Peterson: I will risk my licence to escape social media re-education
The Ontario College of Psychologists wants to retrain me to behave properly — and this should concern everyone
The practice of psychology in Ontario, and in many other North American and western jurisdictions, is subject to regulation by “professional colleges” — essentially governmental organizations with a mandate to protect the public from misconduct on the part of physicians, lawyers, social workers, dentists, pharmacists, teachers, architects and many others, including (and most relevant to me) clinical psychologists.
Anyone anywhere in the world can levy a complaint to these regulatory bodies for any reason, regardless of whether the complainant has had any direct contact with the professional in question. The respective colleges have the responsibility to determine whether each complaint is serious and credible enough to warrant further investigation. Complaints can be deemed vexatious or frivolous and dispensed with. When the college decides to move forward, it is a serious move, essentially equivalent to a lawsuit. The Ontario College of Psychologists in fact recommends legal counsel under such conditions.
The Ontario College of Psychologists has levied a multitude of such lawsuits against me since my rise to public prominence six years ago (although none at all in the 20 years or so I practised as a psychologist before that). These have multiplied as of late, and now number more than a dozen. This may seem like a lot (and “where there’s smoke there’s fire,” or so people think), but I might point out that it is difficult to communicate with as many people as I do and to say anything of substance without rubbing at least a few of them the wrong way now and then.
For my crimes, I have been sentenced to a course of mandatory social-media communication training with the college’s so-called experts (although social media communication training is not a scientific and certainly not a clinical specialty of any standing). I am to do this at my own expense (some hundreds of dollars per hour) and for a length of time that is to be determined only by those retraining me and profiting from doing so. How will this be determined? When those very re-educators — those experts — have convinced themselves that I have learned my lesson, and will behave properly in the future.
If I agree to this, then I must admit that I have been unprofessional in my conduct, and to have that noted publicly, even as the college insists that I am not required to admit to any wrongdoing. If I refuse — and I have (of course) refused — the next step is a mandatory public disciplinary session/inquiry and the possible suspension of my clinical licence (all of which will be also announced publicly).
I should also point out that the steps already taken constitute the second most serious possible response to my transgressions on the part of the college. I have been placed in the category of repeat offender, with high risk of further repetition.
What exactly have I done that is so seriously unprofessional that I am now a danger not only to any new potential clients but to the public itself? It is hard to tell with some of the complaints (one involved the submission of the entire transcript of a three-hour discussion on the Joe Rogan podcast), but here are some examples that might produce some reasonable concern among Canadians who care about such niceties as freedom of belief, conscience and speech:
I retweeted a comment made by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre about the unnecessary severity of the COVID lockdowns;
I criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau;
I criticized Justin Trudeau’s former chief of staff, Gerald Butts;
I criticized an Ottawa city councillor; and
I made a joke about the prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern.
I did all that “disrespectfully,” by the way, in a “horrific” manner that spread “misinformation”; that was “threatening” and “harassing”; that was “embarrassing to the profession.” I am also (these are separate offences) sexist, transphobic, incapable of the requisite body positivity in relationship to morbid obesity and, unforgivably of all, a climate change denialist.
Every single one of these accusations (and now accepted evidence of my professional misconduct) is independent of my clinical practice — which, by the way, has been suspended since 2017, when my rising notoriety or fame made continuing as a private therapist practically and ethically impossible. Every single accusation is not only independent of my clinical practice, but explicitly political — and not only that: unidirectionally explicitly political. Every single thing I have been sentenced to correction for saying is insufficiently leftist, politically. I’m simply too classically liberal — or, even more unforgivably — conservative.
For criticizing our prime minister and his cronies and peers, for retweeting Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the official Opposition in Canada, and for holding and for daring to express reprehensible political views, I have now been convicted by the College of Psychologists of “harming” people in some manner serious enough to justify my forced re-education. Now that I have refused, I will definitely face further exceptionally public, demanding, time-consuming and expensive disciplinary action, including the suspension of my licence. This, despite the fact that none of the people whose complaints are being currently pursued were ever clients of mine, or even knew clients of mine, or even knew or were acquainted with any of the people they claim I am harming. This, despite the fact (and please attend to this) that half the people who levied such complaints falsely claimed that they had in fact been or currently are clients of mine.
It may be of some interest to note that I wrote to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this week, informing him of this situation. Here is the letter, for public consideration — which by necessity repeats some of what I have just covered in this introduction:
Dear Prime Minister Trudeau:
I thought it my duty to inform you and your office of the following proceedings against me.
The Ontario College of Psychologists, the provincial government-mandated and supported professional body charged with regulating the practice of clinical psychology, is requiring that I undergo a lengthy course of “media training” so that I “more appropriately” conduct my online communication. This is occurring, by the way, despite my 20 years as a research psychologist at Harvard University and the University of Toronto (with an unblemished behavioural reputation), my extensive clinical experience and my history of bringing psychological knowledge to people around the world.
Some 15-million people currently follow me on three main social media platforms, and the overwhelming majority of them appear to regard my words and the particular manner in which I formulate them as interesting, helpful and productive — some real evidence to the contrary with regard to the college’s accusations.
I have rejected this forced re-education request, and will in consequence soon be required to appear in front of an in-person “disciplinary hearing” to bring me into line — with the threat of the revocation of my clinical licence, and the public exposure and implied disgrace that would accompany that, hanging over my head.
It may be of interest to you to note that all of the complaints against me: (1) were brought by people with whom I had zero clinical contact; (2) have nothing whatsoever to do with my function as a clinical psychologist (except in the broadest possible public sense); and, most importantly with regard to this letter, (3) that half of them involve nothing more than political criticisms of you or the people around you (with all the remainder being complaints generated because I dared state some essentially conservative philosophical beliefs).
As the enclosed documentation indicates, I am being investigated and disciplined for, among a few other reasons not germane to my present communication with you:
retweeting Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada’s official Opposition;
criticizing you, your former chief of staff Gerald Butts, New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern and an Ottawa city councillor; and
objecting to the Ottawa police threatening to apprehend the children of the trucker convoy protesters.
I am not suggesting or even presuming that you or any of the people associated with you had anything directly to do with this. However, the fact that it is happening (and that physicians and lawyers have become as terrified as psychologists now are of their own regulatory bodies) is something that has definitely happened on your watch, as a consequence of your own conduct and the increasingly compulsion-based and ideologically pure policies that you have promoted and legislated.
I simply cannot resign myself to the fact that in my lifetime I am required to resort to a public letter to the leader of my country to point out that political criticism has now become such a crime in Canada that if professionals dare engage in such activity, government-appointed commissars will threaten their livelihood and present them with the spectacle of denouncement and political disgrace.
There is simply and utterly no excuse whatsoever for such a state of affairs in a free country.
Jordan B Peterson, PhD, C. Psych (for now), Professor emeritus, University of Toronto
Why should Canadians who read this care? Perhaps those reading in this country (and elsewhere) might ask themselves the following questions — and in all seriousness, painful as it might be do so; requiring as it does the almost unbelievable admission that something has gone dreadfully wrong in our lovely country:
What makes you think that something similar won’t happen to you, or to someone you know and respect or even love?
What makes you think you are going to continue to be able to communicate honestly with your physicians, lawyers and psychologists (and representatives of many other regulated professions) if they are now so terrified of their regulatory boards that they can no longer tell you the truth?
What are your children going to be taught when all their teachers (that’s a regulated profession, too) are so afraid of the woke mob that they swallow all the ideological lies that are now required of pedagogues — regardless if they believe what they are saying?
Where are we going to be if we allow criticism of the public figures charged with the privilege of our governance to be grounds for the demolition of not only the critic’s reputation but their very livelihood?
How far are we willing to go down this road, without forthright resistance?
In any case: I’m not complying. I’m not submitting to re-education. I am not admitting that my viewpoints — many of which have, by the way, been entirely justified by the facts that have emerged since the complaints were levied — were either wrong or unprofessional. I’m going to say what I have to say, and let the chips fall where they will. I have done nothing to compromise those in my care; quite the contrary — I have served all my clients and the millions of people I am communicating with to the best of my ability and in good faith, and that’s that.
And to the College of Psychologists, I issue this challenge: I am absolutely willing to make every single word of this legal battle fully public, so that the issue of my professional competence and my right to say what I have to say and stand by my words can be fought in full daylight. I would and could post all the correspondence with and accusations levied by those who complained about me and the college itself public, and will do so, if the college agrees.
But I can’t, on legal grounds justified in normal times but rendered specious by the dominion of the politically correct and radical. I can’t, because of this, and because it is not in the interest of the college or the complainants they are sheltering and abetting to allow it. They’ll cite confidentiality concerns for their refusal, because it’s 100 per cent OK for them to come after me publicly while they and those who complained hide cravenly and cowardly behind a wall of self-serving and self-protective silence.
And this of course does little but embolden those who have learned to weaponize college disciplinary processes, and to give the accuser and his or her lackeys the upper hand, practically and legally. And such weaponization risks placing all our once justly trusted institutions firmly in the hands of those willing and able to manipulate them for reasons both political and personal.
The sad and sorry state of this once-great Dominion at the dawn of 2023 … and it’s still going to get worse before it gets better.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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