Category Archives: current affairs

current affairs, environment, links, medical, science, sexuality, topographical

It's Been a Busy Week!

There seems to have been a lot going on this week which drew my attention but which I didn’t get to write about here. So here’s a summary (in no particular order) …

First an interesting item on how belief can kill. It’s a curious phenomenon but even so I can’t bring myself to read the book. See The Dark Side of the Placebo Effect: When Intense Belief Kills.

Much more interesting and useful is a long article on the National Geographic site about the workings of Teenage Brains and how this should be seen as a sensible evolutionary trait. It might also help all of us understand and relate with teenagers. It certainly seems to explain quite a lot.

Next an investigative journalism piece about the Fukishima Disaster and especially the long-term effects on the Japanese population. The suggestion is that the effects of stress etc. will be far more significant than the actual radiation doses (I guess excluding the immediately affected workers). For my money the article still doesn’t delve deep enough — but the journo writing it probably couldn’t get access to do so.

Law and Lawyers has written several pieces about the worrying machinations of the Metropolitan Police in attempting to get The Guardian to reveal some of its sources. First they were going to use the Official Secrets Act, then PACE 1984. For now though it seems the dogs of war remain caged.

Also this week Obiterj at Law and Lawyers has pointed out that the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011 comes into force. This means the next General Election will be on 7 May 2015 — unless both Houses of Parliament decide otherwise by a two-thirds majority.

Which for a scientist somewhat pales into insignificance beside the apparent result from a team at CERN that they have detected neutrinos doing the impossible and travelling faster than light. But hold on guys, they don’t quite relieve it either and they’re asking the scientific community for help to test their results. Good scientific commentary by Adrian Cho at Wired and Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy.

Finally back to earth. There’s been lots of twittering in the dovecotes about female orgasm, how it relates to evolutionary pressures and to male orgasm. Also some good demonstrations on how to demolish a (supposedly) scientific study. The best of the critiques I’ve seen is from Scicurious. Maybe you girls should just be allowed to enjoy it?

Have an orgasmic weekend!

current affairs, environment, topographical

Fact of the Week


The magnitude 9 earthquake that struck Japan on 11 March was one of the five most powerful shocks recorded; so powerful that it lowered the coastline by a metre and nudged Japan two metres closer to the United States.

[Jonathan Watts, “Fukushima disaster: it’s not over yet”, Guardian, 9 September 2011, online here]

current affairs, quotes

Quotes of the Week

Not a lot in the way of quotes this week, although those that follow are relatively chunky, as we’ve spent 4 days over the weekend running an international literary conference (more of which anon, I hope).

I believe Tony Blair is an out-and-out rascal, terminally untrustworthy and close to being unhinged. I said from the start that there was something wrong in his head, and each passing year convinces me more strongly that this man is a pathological confidence-trickster. To the extent that he ever believes what he says, he is delusional. To the extent that he does not, he is an actor whose first invention – himself – has been his only interesting role.
[Matthew Parris, The Times, March 2006; quoted in Oliver James, Affluenza]

Tea Pigs uses only whole leaf teas, whole herbs, whole berries and whole flowers. No dust in sight. Served in biodegradable tea temples.
[https://www.teapigs.co.uk/]

I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.
[William Blake, Politicians and Politics]

So there you are … politics diluted with tea. What could be more British?!

current affairs

Moral Decay


There’s a thought-provoking post from a couple of days ago by Peter Osborne on the Daily Telegraph blogs site under the title “The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom“.

He takes our revered leaders — politicians and businessmen alike — to task for being hypocritical over the recent looting when they have equally been found with their hands in the petty cash box. As the good book says “Let those who are without sin cast the first stone”.

Worth a read.

amusements, current affairs, quotes, sexuality, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

Some odd bedfellows this week …

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
[Robert Louis Stephenson]

Your car is Japanese. Your vodka is Russian. Your pizza is Italian. Your kebab is Turkish. Your democracy is Greek. Your coffee is Brazilian. Your movies are American. Your tea is Tamil. Your shirt is Indian. Your oil is Saudi Arabian. Your electronics are Chinese. Your numbers are Arabic, your letters Latin. And you complain that your neighbour is an immigrant? Pull yourself together!
[Seen on Facebook]

‘chav’ (vogue label of 2004, originally a traveller’s term of address or endearment, from a French nickname for a young fox), who represents an imagined social grouping, a troublesome, truculent, feckless, shameless underclass delighting in petty criminality and conspicuous consumption (of, inter alia, illicit substances, electronic stimuli, pimped technology and ‘bling’).
[Tony Thorne, Jolly Wicked, Actually]

An eye for an eye makes the world go blind. A tooth for a tooth gums up everything!
[Thoughts of Angel]

Sex was an expression of friendship: in Africa it was like holding hands … It was friendly and fun. There was no coercion. It was offered willingly.
[Paul Theroux quoted in Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jethá, Sex at Dawn]

I had a friend at university who used to propound this latter theory that sex was (and should be seen as) not necessarily more than an expression of sincere friendship and that why should one not have sex with ones friends just as one might have a beer with them. Not sure he ever managed to put it much into practice though.

amusements, current affairs, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

This week, a few words of wisdom from some Americans …

Any social organization does well enough if it isn’t rigid. The framework doesn’t matter as long as there is enough looseness to permit that one man in a multitude to display his genius. Most so-called social scientists seem to think that organization is everything. It is almost nothing — except when it is a straitjacket. It is the incidence of heroes that counts, not the pattern of zeros.
[Robert A Heinlein, Glory Road]

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
[Thomas Jefferson]

Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.
[Scott Adams]

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
[Thomas Edison]

I have always believed that I was slightly saner than most people. Then again, most insane people think this.
[Truman Capote]

amusements, current affairs, pleasures, words

Railspeak

About a week ago David Marsh wrote a brilliant article in the Guardian about the peculiar torture of Railspeak, that surpassingly odd distortion of English perpetrated by train companies:

Railspeak is a language with a unique syntax and vocabulary — characterised by, for example, the mandatory use of auxiliary verbs (“we do apologise”), the random deployment of redundant adjectives (“station stop”, “personal belongings”) and the selection of inappropriate prepositions (“journey time into London Paddington is approximately 25 minutes”).

Trains never leave, but “depart”, never reach their destination, but “terminate”, and are frequently delayed by mysterious “incidents”. Rail catering, meanwhile, has been transformed from a music hall joke (British Rail sandwiches) to a surreal world of its own, offering among other treats “teas, coffees, hot chocolates [sic] …” (Has anyone tested this by asking how many varieties of hot chocolate are, in fact, available? To enjoy, perhaps, while reading the safety information leaflet in braille?)
…
Meanwhile, someone should tell the announcer at Waterloo station that the ever-lengthening list of things we can’t do — smoke, run, cycle, skateboard, find a rubbish bin, find a seat — does not, so far, extend to playing boules or yodelling. Is this an oversight?

Customers requiring enhumoration into their Monday will find the article in the vestibule at the end of the post. Here.

amusements, beliefs, books, current affairs, freedom of speech, nudism, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

So here’s this week’s cornucopia of quotations. There’s a philosophy PhD in this lot somewhere!

A clean house is the sign of a broken computer.
[Unknown]

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
[Rose Macaulay]

A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.
[Robert Frost]

The human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve intact its splendour and its beauty … Nakedness as such is not to be equated with physical shamelessness … Immodesty is present only when nakedness plays a negative role with regard to the value of the person … The human body is not in itself shameful … Shamelessness (just like shame and modesty) is a function of the interior of a person.
[Pope John Paul II, The Theology of the Body]

The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
[Jean Cocteau]

The best things in life aren’t things.
[Unknown]

Those who are at ease with themselves […] want to undermine authority rather than exercise it.
[Prof. Paul Delany]

[Tony] Blair has […] told us, “Hand on my heart, I did what I thought was right”. If a dry-cleaner said this after ruining our jacket, we would not be pleased with the explanation. Politicians are different: don’t look at any unfortunate results, they say, just admire my generous motives.
[Prof. Paul Delany]

A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason, and the real reason.
[Financier JP Morgan]

One of the basic human rights is to make fun of other people, whoever they are.
[Anthony Powell quoted in John Russell, Reading Russell: Essays 1941 to 1988]

If you don’t like our sense of humour, please tell us so we can laugh at you.
[Unknown]

beliefs, current affairs, medical, science, sexuality

Sex and Religion in Public Life

Jeana over at MySexProfessor writes an incisive post about why it is more important that we know about the religious lives of public figures than their sex lives — albeit the article is built on the words of one of my hate figures, Richard Dawkins. It isn’t that I disagree with the sentiments behind much of what Dawkins says (I don’t), but the bigoted and intransigent way in which he says it — he is just as fundamentalist as any of the religious believers against whom he rails.

As so often others have said what I think so much better than I can, so here are a couple of seminal extracts.

[O]ur society has so many hang-ups about sex that we’re practically responsible for creating an environment in which any sexual expression could potentially be deviant […] even fairly innocuous acts (which one could argue, taking pictures of one’s genitals counts as) are made out to be of huge significance because so many people are hung up on the idea that ANY sexual expression outside the norm is automatically inappropriate or gross or bad.
…
Dawkins asserts that it does matter what a public figure’s religious beliefs are, since those beliefs, far more than their sexual acts, may determine how they pursue public policy. He gives these examples: “[…] George Bush has publicly boasted that God told him to invade Iraq […] To push to an extreme, who would deny Congress’s right to ask whether a candidate for Secretary of Health is a Christian Scientist or a Jehovah’s Witness? Or take a Christian sect that fervently desires the Second Coming of Christ, and believes the key Revelation prophecies cannot be fulfilled without a Middle East Armageddon. Would you wish the nuclear button to be made available to a follower of such a creed?” This is scary stuff.
…
[W]e must grant people the dignity of privately pursuing things that oppose the sexual mainstream.** Just because a politician likes unconventional sex doesn’t mean they’re going to try to force it on everyone through legislation. Unfortunately […] politicians have done much to make anything that deviates from heterosexual monogamous reproductive sex a crime.

** And not just the sexual mainstream. People must have the right to deviate from and oppose mainstream thought and opinion on anything. For that is how opinions are changed, new ideas formed and progress made. But this doesn’t give anyone the right to force or attempt to force (violently or otherwise) their opinions on others.