Shit, yesterday was International Polar Bear Day and I dind’t even celebrate. Talking of which, what’s happened to The Bag of Bears? Has he closed down?
I’m still here. Dissertation finished. Now recovering. Lots to comment on. Another idiotic report on equal pay. Another reduction in liberty (what, you need links for these things?). Loads of great stuff on europhobia, curious hamster, etc. etc.
I’ll be back some time soon.
That Pete Doherty.
He’s not Oscar Wilde is he? Guardian desperate for some younger readers presumably.
Glad to see the Winter Olympics starts today. A couple of weeks watching British people hurtle downhill or slide around for no apparent reason other than the chance of glory and for David Vine (is he still around?) to mention their name as they finish up in twenty-second place or somewhere similar.
But why no Special Winter Olympics? We have to put up with a Summer Special Olympics after all, and a winter one would be a lot more fun. The chance to laugh at a lot of disabled people being frankly pretty crap at everything they do should always be encouraged.
Of course we’re all meant to nod along to the notion that the Special Olympics is about bravery and passion and real talent. But it’s patently not. It’s about freaks and a modern day freak show*. Watching not very well-coordinated people limp along in the ’sprints’ and blind people having to be guided through long-distance races by being tied to partners is just about on the level of a School Sports Day. Though Potato Sack Races for Five year olds have nothing on the pure bloody delight of blind football. Watching them attempt to find the ball through listening to the rattle and then kickout at thin air is frankly bloody hilarious, and no amount of sanctimonious nonsense from the commentators will make it seem anything more.
I have no problem with the differently abled having their own events, but why this universal kow-towing to the collective delusion that it’s sport? I’m pretty good at some sports and bloody awful at others, but I don’t get the chance to be celebrated in front of millions as I compete in the ‘not very good at this’ games, and it’s only the fact I’m only emotionally crippled that stops me. In fact, I’ve never seen dwarves or midgets at the Special Olympics. Why such discrimination between handicaps?
A winter Special Olympics featuring blind slalom. amputee speed skating, tourette’s ice dancing, and the afore-mentioned thalidomide bobsleigh would go down a storm. Certainly would increase the level of interest anyway.
* I of course except Wheelchair sports, which are very little different from cycling or rowing in my opinion, and if the latter get recognised, I don’t see why the former shouldn’t as well. Just be honest and let fully abled people compete too, and stop being all precious over whether someone is really disabled or not. Actually, also put turbo engines on the back.
Worstall carries a story from Michelle ”teeth whitener’s best friend’ Malkin.
It’s one of those typical IPCGMITY stories, school in suffolk bans hot cross buns because it might offend religious sensibilities of non-Christins. Seemed a bit odd to me as it’s still a way to go even till Lent. Unlike most of these stories (straight bananas, banning xmas, etc) however there’s a grain of truth. But only a grain. The story was picked up by that mighty organ of record the Ipswich Evening Star and then on to the Mirror and elsewhere and lots and lots of places in the US. It’s rushing round the blogosphere as we speak.
With the result that the head in question is getting hate mail. But what’s this? The papers and blogger haven’t got the whole story. Says the head,
I have not imposed an outright ban on hot cross buns and we look forward to having them before we break up for the Easter Holidays.”
So what happened? Well, she requested the suppliers to remove the cross because it wasn’t yet Easter and THIS might offend non-christians. Well, okay, the latter bit is a bit odd (though most of us would applaud anything that delayed xmas till the start of December). But the actual decision is perfectly sensible. It wasn’t the time to eat hot cross buns, so they weren’t going to. Perhaps, rather than the appaling attacks on this woman, she should be applauded for resisting arrogant consumerism threatening to turn important xian festivals and their associated rituals into all year-round excuses for consumerism.
The Evening Star plays both ends by asking its readers, ‘do you think Miss Jackson deserves hate mail?’
Rafael draws attention to the scourge that is the grey squirrel.
My mother has the right idea. She catches squirrels in squirrel traps and then dumps them in the pond. They drown in five seconds or less. As she puts it, ‘it’s them or the bulbs’.
and I’ll say it gain, democracy doesn’t work. There’s that nice Mr Bush and Mr Blair campaigning to spread the joy of democracy acorss the globe, and what do the Palestinians do? Take them at their word and elect who they want to be in charge.
Which wasn’t the point at all. Democracy’s only allowed if you elect who you’re meant to elect.
To stop this happening again, Mr. Blair has decided to hold off on any future elections until he can be guaranteed that he’s selecting the winner. Starting with the 2007 UK local elections.
Look, just forget about banners, NVDA, writing to the newspapers. Forget, even, about being a suicide bomber. Just snort coke and you fight imperialism. Simple.
Who’s got me septum?
The Synod are debating women bishops. Now, I have no problem theologically with women being bishops. It’s absolutely clear that the first generation of Church leaders included women, recognised by Paul (yes, that evil-woman hater) and the other Fathers.
I’m not really happy with the notion of either flying bishops or a third province for the recusants. This seems to me to strike at the heart of apostolic succession. Not to mention the need to maintain the single communion within the Church.
So, I should be all in favour of enforcing women bishops sooner rather than later. Only, I’m not. And it really comes down to the women vicars I’ve met. While I’ve met many male vicars I don’t like or don’t respect, I’ve met many that I do. But of the women, they’re all (sweeping generalisation) of a type. Happy clappy or high-heretic and nothing in between. Of the former, increasingly in the majority of new seminary students, there’s something of the Dawn French about them (which is no surprise given the influence of that damn programme on images of xianity). Large, happy, bouncy, willing to engage in discourse about anything, ‘talk through’ any problem. But no backbone.
Maybe its just that I hate Dawn French.
The IWF and BT release figures demonstrating that the number of access attempts to banned child porn sites has increased, and this is therefore a major concern. Everyone repeats the story. Because no one can question the child porn epidemic, uhhr, no one looks twice at the figures.
The story suggests that because attempts to access the banned sites (on the IWF list) have risen from 10,000 eighteen months ago to 35,000 per month now, it shows a worrying increase in the number of evil kiddy-fiddlers on the net. Extrapolation from the BT figures (across 1/3 of the UK net) to the whole of the UK business suggests a shocking 100,000 attempts made every day to access child porn sites. Well, uhhr, no. Shock horror.
As the IWF themselves point out, they’ve increased the number of banned sites from 3,500 to 6,000 in the last year, thus quickly accounting for a doubling in the number of visits (I know, dodgy statistics too, but we’ll keep it rough). But, wait a minute, these sites are banned. So people trying to access them will probably make multiple attempts before realising that 404 is REALLY there. Thus accounting for more failures.
At heart though is some major disingenousness. If the sites are banned, how do people find out about them? You can’t just put ‘pictures of nekkid little girlies’ into google and come up with a list of child porn sites (I’ve just tried ‘little girls cunts’ and got, yes, lots of images and sites around quite mature ladies, not an under-18 in sight). Child porn sites are hard to find. So how are these supposed attempters attempting? Could it be spam? Yup, that’s what’s most likely. Clicks on spam e-mail of the ’see teen girls’ type. They aren’t deliberately trying to access this material at all.
The extrapolation is even more nonsense. If only BT are actually banning these sites, we have to assume that some of the attempts through other ISPs are successful, which would suggest a lower number of attempts, and a lower overall figure. And likely a lot of people visiting sites where they’re rather disappointed by what they find…
So what’s it about? Well, it’s funny that this major social story is accompanied by BT and children’s representatives calling for everyone to adopt the BT Cleanfeed system (a system which can be reverse-engineered to provide the banned list). That’s a commercial system. So, congrats to the BT commercial PR team for getting their product enthusiastically endorsed by every major news organization under the sun. But still we’re no further forward in understanding paedophilia.
So, it now appears that while Islam must have vengeance upon bad cartoonists for the irrevocable harm they have done to the religion, drug dealing is absolutely fine. Heroin and cocaine dealing, apparently, is a-ok with the prophet (pbuh), brings no shame on the religion or on its many moral proponents. Or have I got that wrong too?
Meanwhile, whle the brave Met refused to arrest anyone for their calls for violence outside the Danish embassy (bet Nick Griffin enjoyed that), they did manage to arrest a couple of free-speech campaigners according to Today.
And Iran is responding in style by satirising the Holocaust. Not sure how one does this, but given the historiographical progress of the camps into the status of sacred cow (yeah, I know…) and never-to-be-questioned myth, this is probably not before time. Just hope they’re actually funny and avoid the stereotypes of the muslim cartoons, but rather doubt it. Given the latter were full of hook nosed individuals, Iran could even use the same images.
Some muslims are upset by accounts of a caricature of the prophet (pbuh) which links him to violence. This is an outrage (yes, I know there’s the issue of depicting the prophet (pbuh) at all, but as any google image search would show, that’s hardly a new thing).
So the outrageous thing is prophet (pbuh)=violence.
And they protest this how? Oh, by setting fire to things, stoning other things and calling for general murder and mayhem.
Thus proving the point of the original cartoon. Or have I missed something?
The Danish caricatures of Mohammed/Mahomet are here. That individuals are surrounding EU offices as a result and recalling ambassadors to Denmark as a result is, well, laughable.
Finally we find out what western civilization is really about–the right to mock. And, yes, as a Christian, you want to send me similar about Jesus, that’s fine. He was a damn good comedian afterall. As usual, Sunny and some of his mates at pickled politics have the best discussion
‘How do you boycott Denmark?’
‘Stop eating bacon…no, wait….’