Can someone please send me some carrier pigeons?
January, friends. When resolutions are held (for a while at least), healthy food is eaten, chocolate lays about the place unbought and unwanted and when, naturally, our DSL connection degrades in a manner that can only be described as slovenly and untidy. High winds wreak havoc on our connection speeds. I don't know yet if [...]
Where’s Santa when you need him?
Christmas, as people have often remarked, changes a lot as you get older. For one thing you get less presents (mainly because you're more fussy, I think). For another you feel less excited about the whole thing (maybe because of the lack of presents that you're getting). All of which could lead you to thinking [...]
No eulogies yet, thanks
Yes, Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. No, this isn't exactly the best news ever in the history of literature. But can people please, please, please stop eulogising? As the man himself said: I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as [...]
To be filed under WTF
From BBC news (link): A British teacher has been found guilty in Sudan of insulting religion after she allowed her primary school class to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, has been sentenced to 15 days in prison and will then be deported. Which is bad enough. I mean it's a [...]
After the dinner
(Posting this in the morning from the conference; my hotel wifi went away last night and I'm damned if I'm going to pay another 10 Euros just to post this…) Dinner's over and, for a conference dinner, it was fantastic. I should have taken photos of the food itself; the omnivore main course – which [...]
Institutionalisation
Oh do fuck off, the Rt. Hon. Liam Byrne. ID cards 'to be UK institution' The identity card scheme will become a "great British institution" on a par with the railways in the 19th Century, Home Office minister Liam Byrne says.
But sir, ’tis a connection nonetheless
I pay for (upto) 8Mbps broadband. I usually get circa 4.5 – 5Mbps download, 512Kbps – 1Mbps upload. Since we’ve been reconnected (yay!) I’ve had upload speeds of 400-odd Kbps, which is okay, and download speeds of 120Kbps, which is most definitely not. If we assume that in this context 1Kb = 1 kibibyte (i.e. [...]
News? This?
BBC News: Young ‘forget Jesus at Christmas’ Fewer than half of children aged seven to 11 think Christmas is about the birth of Jesus, a survey suggests. Unsurprising, really, given that Christmas really isn’t about religion these days, or at least not in Britain. I’d say it’s a refreshing perspective to have. I’d be tempted [...]
*Sigh*
There’s just no good way to tackle this book. From The USA in Bible Prophecy: This book clearly shows that America (Zion) is the land set aside by God Almighty to be the place of regathered Israel. Sermons and documents by the Founding Fathers testify to their belief that they were the Israel people of [...]
Once again, religion rears its ugly head
Have… not… right… words… BBC NEWS: Archbishop attacks public atheism The Archbishop of York has condemned what he called the systematic erosion of Christianity from public life. Dr John Sentamu told lay readers illiberal atheists were undermining Britain’s religious heritage. Where to start with this, I wonder? To be fair, a lot of his points [...]
So much nonsense, so little time…
This post started life as two other posts, one about this story (BBC) and another about this one (also BBC), both of which served only to annoy me. When I originally wrote the posts, I found myself getting angrier the more I wrote; as is often the case with this sort of thing, the more [...]
Faith, as usual, is an excuse for everything
I wrote this post yesterday, finding myself getting ever more annoyed as the words appeared in Performancing, and I realised that I really do get wound up be religion, or at least religion used as a tool for someone’s convenience, probably a lot more than I should. To put this into some sort of context, [...]
A masterful job of muckup
The best laid plans get a spanner in the works. I had meant to do some editing this afternoon, along with a bunch of other bits and pieces. We got back from town at about three, and I figured that I had time to sort out the something that’s been nagging me for a while [...]
Journalists Suck
I dislike journalists on principle. I’m sure that a lot of them are nice people with, heaven forfend, morals, but nevertheless when someone tells me that they’re a journalist I tend to back away a couple of steps, look them up and down and, I’m sorry to say, stop trusting them more or less at [...]
Stupidity Breeds Stupidity
“Your species has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by it’s ingenuity when trying to destroy itself.” ~The Seventh Doctor, Remembrance of the Daleks The human race never fails to dismay me at times. Like when, following an amusing snippet in this week’s New Scientist’s Feedback section, I chanced to read the reviews [...]
