I'd like to state for the record that Singaporeans reproduce asexually or via IVF. Sex is not condoned in the island republic, even on their aircraft, and should not be undertaken by anybody. Furthermore, sex between two same-sex individuals could cause the economy to collapse.
This is not a laughing matter.
Sometimes I wonder if there is or should be a standard of how to classify depths of mistakes. I was somewhat shocked to read that the Met was found guilty in shooting goof. A goof? If Charles de Menezes had survived a minor wound, perhaps it would have been a GOOF. This was on the scale of major FUCK-UP. OK? You don't fucking shoot someone without FIRM EVIDENCE that he is who you think he is. Suspicious actions a terrorist does not make. I know there was a great deal of pressure to crack down on potential terrorist threats. But shoot-to-kill MUST have a firmer basis before being ordered. A shooting of an innocent is not a goof. Not in my style book.
Honestly, you lot on the interwebs can't be left alone! I spend some time away from the keyboard and this sort of shit happens. Now, where have I heard that name Nadine Dorris before? Honestly. Is that woman for real? She's definitely NO sister.
And what's her bag with Ben Goldacre? I read both his posts on the science committee's recommendations on amendements to the Abortion Act and the subsequent brooha about "leaked" memos and failed to detect anything out of the ordinary. What a palavar! Only an self-important idiot would think that the select committee's discussions were "closed meetings". Add that to the initial charge of her ridiculous stance on abortion, and she's in my mind: a lying COWard.
UK scientists defend Gore film following a judge's finding of Gore climate film's 'nine errors'. The background as quoted:
Mr Justice Burton was asked to rule on whether An Inconvenient Truth could be shown in UK schools. He agreed that it could, provided the "one sided" film was accompanied by guidance notes for teachers.
The case was brought by school governor Stewart Dimmock, from Dover, a father of two, and who is a member of the New Party.
Mr Dimmock did not want the movie distributed to schools. He called the Oscar-winner a "shock-umentary" and objected to children being "indoctrinated with this political spin".
I remember vividly reading a National Geographic magazine about greenhouse gases and how increases in said gases have caused global warming1. This was back when I was a very impressionable child, and it spurred me, along with my peers, to action. From then on, we damn well switched lights, computers and TVs off whenever we weren't abusing our gawd-given right to electricity. It didn't make me a tree-hugging eco-warrior, but it made me very aware of humans' actions on their environment. Photos of polar bears will usually do that.
Nonetheless, it started a lifetime of being careful and making the greenest-possible choices with my limited willpower and means. Damn right I was an impressionable child. Who knows how my life would have been different if National Geographic had been more responsible and published guidance notes to temper the one-sidedness of the greenhouse gases->global warming message. I ought to sue! They denied me decades of swanning about in low-MPG SUVs like the Glorious Humvee, sleeping by the glow of my 200-inch TV and banks of computer monitors, commuting by plane every week from Asia to Europe. And it would have saved me countless hours of sorting my glass from plastic from paper from metal waste. Hours I could have spent swanning about in my Glorious Humvee.
Publicity-hungry toe rags like Stewart Dimmock can go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.
1 Incidentally, this is now known to be an overly simplistic view, but the take-home message is still the same.
Menzies' leaving is not much of a surprise. The timing was probably not to his own plans though. But hey, if a general election is a year away, the Lib Dems probably want to get their leadership battle out of the way and all the nasty words forgotten by the time voters cast their ballot.
As a sign of how little I read outside science these days, it's taken a full week for this debacle to reach my consciousness via the sharpener. And without launching into is-he-or-isn't-he 1, the Sharpener article's comment about prevalent mud-flinging attitudes reminded me of a recent Doonesbury comic [clicky the linky; I don't want to break copyright law and reproduce it here]. LOL all you want. It's sad but true that we are headed towards an era of smear2.
1 For what it's worth, I really don't think Dawkins can be accurately named and shamed as an anti-semite. If anything, as a devout atheist, he's just anti-any-religion-you-care-to-name. Call him an anti-religionist if you must. Anti-semite has overtones of picking on a particular racial and religious group that we all know has been very badly treated by the world in general lately. Bad choice of example. But then again, can you choose any example of religious dominance in state-run affairs and not offend anybody? Hell no.
2 And I don't mean PAP smears. No, those are good things. If we were headed into the era of free PAP smears for all women, that would be much better...
Curious Hamster is back to posting1, and as usual, I'm nodding my head in agreement with much of his observations on the state of British politics. I've been thinking recently, what with the deification of Boris Johnson. Oh, what's that? He's just running for mayor? Oh that's alright then. Anyway. It got me to thinking about the damage the Blair era of lies2 had done to politics, let alone the state of the nation. And how it needed a shake-up of sorts. A way of focusing on workable policies instead of false promises. Ah ha ha ha. How naive. Cameron's rehearsed speech did nothing for me. Quite like the inquisitive hamster, it had me in stitches instead. But the comparison of Cameron to Blair with the pronouncement of accompanying doom was sobering. There is no alternative to Brown. Whatever the News of the World's poll says, Labour is still pretty much in power and will be at least for another general election. Whenever Brown has the guts to call it. Sobering.
1 He's been back for a while, but I haven't. So it's taking me some time to get through his recent posts.
2 Oops. Sorry. It's this broken keyboard of mine. I meant spin of course.
I switch the computer off for a few days1 and this happens. WTH? Did I side-slip into an alternate dimension? Is my interwebs pulling a fast one on me? This type of shit you can expect from countries with dictatorships, not the UK. Oh, hang on...
1 OK, a few weeks.2
2 And it'll be a few weeks more if this type of shit keeps happening to our freedom of speech (bar libel, wot is a tricky area).
Ooer missus. Trawling through unpublished witterings of mine, what do I find but this?
=====
I'm not entirely surprised to read that:
...in North America, where a 2006 survey revealed that atheists rank lower than "Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups...
There seems to be a great deal of deity invocation here (apart from mere cursing). Churches1 too. One on every corner. But no corner shops2.
=====
Freaky or what?
1 There may be churches galore but all with locked doors. Whatever happened to "Sanctuary. Sanctuary."?
2 Something's up with that. More G.O.D. than M.I.L.K.
[crawling out from under the rock]
So, Tony Blair has been getting his knickers in a twist, has he? A choice quote:
Opinion and fact should be clearly divisible. The truth is a large part of the media today not merely elides the two but does so now as a matter of course. In other words, this is not exceptional. It is routine.
--Outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair, taken from the full speech published by the Indy.
A bit rich coming from the man who convinced Parliament to go to war in Iraq based on no evidence whatsoever of weapons of mass destruction1. I am particularly impressed by the way he has a good whinge about the Hutton inquiry then quickly moves on. And singling the Indy out for criticism? Hmph, I think they'd rather like that. As the leading viewspaper in the UK, it must be nice to know that their words have hit the mark. Own goal, Mr PM. You have indeed said what needed to be said, but perhaps you should now sit down and read it through, paying particular attention to how it also applies to you and your time in government.
1 An over-simplification, but you know the back story. Preach. Choir.
What should LFC do next?
We must spend big, says Benitez.
Behh! Wrong answer. You should be spending wisely on young talent, who you can later flog off to the highest bidder.
Amongst the acres of hagiography written about our departing Prime Minister a number of glaring inconsistencies leap out...
[snip]
Blair leaves at a time not of his choosing - an even more detested in Britain than his mentor Margaret Thatcher—officially the most hated prime minister in recent history.
--Gus of 1820.org.uk
d'accord.
It's all in the hands of a bitter, bitter man.
--Mika, Life in Cartoon
Pretty much sums up the state of affairs.
Nationalists triumph in the first of many contests for the current sitting at Holyrood.
More later when I've thought things through.
And beats Margo Macdonald by a landslide to secure the job of Presiding Officer.1
1 I know. I'm two days too late. My mind is temporally disengaged anyway. When are those Scottish elections starting?
2 And the names are not even spelled the same. Sorry. Barrel bottom scraped, scoured, scrubbed and white-washed.
Contrary to popular belief, the electric car is not dead. And "tree-huggers" are the new target market for a 40 km/h battery-powered vehicle. According to the makers of Zenn:
"The existing market in the states is predominantly gated communities or master-plan communities in the southern states. So that's typically a 65-year-old plus person who uses this as perhaps their third or fourth vehicle."
Um. Third or fourth vehicle? What are vehicles one, two and maybe three for then? And what's wrong with walking?
Admittedly, the Zenn-man goes on to describe his future market of younger people looking for an occasional car. But I was already outraged by that point. Third or fourth car... I'm already feeling guilty for using one.
Can anyone tell me what the hell an akatsuki enzyme is and why it keeps popping up in my keyword search1? Is this predicting the day that I discover a new enzyme and egotistically name it after myself? Or is it some crappy New Age bullshit treatment2? You will be sorely disappointed if you're here for that. If anything, I should be joining Ben Goldacre in rubbishing these pseudo-science pieces of crap that purport to make people's lives better when all they do is make them poorer.
1 Statwhore admission: once in a while, I look to see if anyone from an interesting country has stumbled onto my insignificant spot on the www. And I was slightly surprised to find a Kiribati ISP in the collection this week. Hello. I hope I wasn't overly offensive with that silly off-the-cuff remark about coconut oil. And how are the Atollettes?
2 For the record, I enjoy the occasional reflexology massage. I don't buy into any of the claims of direct linkage of my big toe to my brain, ok? It's just a damn foot massage. It feels nice when you've spent the whole day standing while doing experiments to go home and massage your foot. Or hire someone to do it for you. There are no other significant health benefits.
How is Apple so low on the Greenometer with all those hazardous chemicals that Steve Jobs claims they've eliminated or are in the process of phasing out? Based on no research whatsoever on my part, it sounds like Dell is planning to, but has not actually achieved the elimination of PVC and BRF:
Nokia and Dell share the top spot in the ranking. They believe that as producers they should bear individual responsibility for taking back and reusing or recycling their own-brand discarded products. Nokia leads the way on eliminating toxic chemicals, since the end of 2005 all new models of mobiles are free of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and all new components to be free of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from the start of 2007. Dell has also set ambitious targets for eliminating these harmful substances from their products.
The specific report on Apple claims that:
For a company that claims to lead on production design, Apple scores badly on almost all criteria. The company fails to embrace the precautionary principle, withholds its full list of regulated substances and provide no timelines for eliminating toxics polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and no commitment to phasing out all uses of brominated flame retardants (BFRs). Apple performs poorly on product take back and recycling, with the exeption of reporting on the amounts of its electronic waste recycled.
(via)
New (b)leader, new (b)liar?1 And to christen the beginning of the end, has Guardian Unlimited hired the same website designer as Times Online?2 And does this hint at some editorial change I've missed out on?
1 Contrived, I know. It's been a long day.
2Update: All these fancy pictures on the new website meant I missed the editor's explanation. Meh.
