Why Dont You Blog?

Now that I am back online, I am suffering from the mountains of chain emails my “friends” send me, thinking I am actually interested in reading some nonsense about how sending this email to 10 people in 1/10th of a second will make my wish come true.

I have found one which is strangely interesting - but, I suspect, not for the reasons the originator wanted. The “Friend” who sent it to me is some one I have not seen face to face for about 10 years now and (based on the other emails they send me), they have either been born again or think I am. Pretty amazing really.

Anyway, the email, titled “Wow, what a wake up call,” reads: (it is long, so it is after the fold)

Read the rest of this post

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This is a short note to say I am back online now. Things are still a little hectic so “normal service” is not yet in place, however at least I can use things other than my phone to browse the web - it has shocked me how reliant “we” become on the internet for basic things.

Anyway, thanks to the miracle of Pipex, I have a working net connection (four days, only two of which were “working days,” after I ordered online) and things are certainly brighter now. Well Done Pipex.

Now I am “back” as it were, I will have a look at re-designing the site theme to try and improve on the issues it currently has and take on board the user comments you were kind enough to send. Thank you.

More soon.

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Another rant about gender values. Click away now if you like. This one’s about manly honour and its miraculously contradictory manifestations.

On the BBC site, there’s a piece about how a judge called a killer a “coward.” Branded him a coward even, how exhilaratingly medieval. Not a mudererer, note, or a killer, or even a manslaughterer , if there’s such a word. A coward. This seems to have been the worst penalty he had to offer.

(Don’t you just love our gradual conceptual return to medieval “community justice”?)

Playing field killer ‘a coward’

A killer responsible for the death of a 16-year-old on playing fields in Kent has been branded a coward by a judge.
Lee Cowie, 19, was sentenced to four years at a young offenders’ institute. He had admitted the manslaughter of Michael Chapman,…At Maidstone Crown Court, Judge Andrew Patience said he was not “man enough” to challenge Michael to a “fair fight”.

Apparently, he attacked the boy from behind. The dishonourable unmanliness seems to have caused more concern to the judge than the actual death. This half suggests that there wouldn’t have even been a crime if there had been a formal duel challenge and seconds.

It is an annoyance to me that the realm of life where women are consistently luckier than men is in the realm of murder. Women can often get away with murder by playing the “Don’t blame me, I’m just a girl” card.

Now it looks as if men might be also able to minimise the time they have to serve for crimes of violence, if they just have the sense to observe the rules of gentlemanly combat.

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Endemol has excelled even its own proud record of providing “entertainment” in the true tradition of the Roman arena.

It’s about to produce a reality show on Dutch tv where three people who need transplants will compete for the kidney of a dying person.

What can you say? What fun. Life for one winner. Death for 1 person for sure and possible death for the 2 losers. Read the rest of this post

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Poland is worried about the potentially gay content of the Teletubbies.

I kid you not. Well, I might be kidding you, because this has the ring of spuriousness. but I am nevertheless reporting it with a straight face. (In fact, even the BBC seems to withdraw from its attention-grabbing first few paragraphs. But, never let the facts get in the way of a good story. In any case, this is apparently part of a drive against “promotion of homosexuality” to children - that old wierd target - and probably comes with the full blessing of the Polish Catholic Church. Which may have amongst its ranks enough priests who’ve done their bit on that score, if the rest of the world is anything to go on…)

According to the BBC, the spokeswoman for children’s rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska, doubts Tinky Winky’s heterosexuality.

“I noticed he was carrying a woman’s handbag,” she told a magazine. “At first, I didn’t realise he was a boy.”

Who even realised the Tellytubbies were gendered?

I am particularly taken with the idea that carrying a given luggage item is an indicator of anyone’s sexual orientation, whether they are made of meat or cloth.

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Well, don’t fill your yard with chickens again yet. Our old friend, the bird flu painic is back, albeit in an apparently less virulent form (i.e. An article in Scientific American rather than monster tabloid spreads, but maybe I haven’t spotte dthem.)

According to Scientific American, Welsh school kids have been treated with antivirals after an outbreak of a mild form of bird flu.

Teachers and children at the school, which is close to a farm in Corwen, North Wales, where the H7N2 strain of bird flu was discovered last week, were being treated with antiviral medication as a precaution, the National Public Health Service (NPHS) said in a statement.

A total of 12 people have been identified as suffering from the flu, reporting “symptoms of a flu like illness or conjunctivitis” it said, but stressed no one was seriously ill.

The article says it may spread from person to person but isn’t a killer virus. However,

The presence of an H7 virus in poultry is treated seriously by animal health officials because scientists believe that, when allowed to circulate in poultry populations, a low pathogenic virus can mutate into the highly pathogenic form

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In a Guardian interview with Jessica Stevenson, the woman from Spaced who’s now in Dr Who,, she compared women today to the women of the suffragette era.

I wondered how women - so enthused, so galvanised, so passionate - could have organised one of the most successful political campaigns in British history. Compare that with now when they are obsessed with scented candles. Not to say that all women are like that but it’s still depressing that politicised, sophisticated women are few and far between. It’s a direct result of rabid consumerism.

One of my main rants against the world is how so many women seem bent on becoming mindless Stepford wives so there’s less than no argument from me there. Read the rest of this post

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Sorry. I wrote the Chuck Norris post without realising there was link to a really good rant on Nullifidian’s site.

This leads to the original article on the Institute for Humanist Studies It is really funny. And it has pictures that show the nature of the man better than any words could.

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Spotted in The Register was an article on Virgin’s secret/open fair use policy, which came up in the context of Virgin demanding other DSL providers are more “open” about their bandwidth limitations. This piece is well out of date but still worth noting (Note to self: Keep up with the Register)

Virgin is trialling bandwidth throttling in the north west, which it prefers to call traffic management. It would not say when the trial is set to finish, or whether the system would be rolled out nationwide, but said the aim is to rein in very heavy users during peak times. More stable access speeds would then be available to the majority.

The comments on this article is bursting with enraged Virgin customers, one of whom makes pointed use of the “pot calling kettle” metaphor.

One customer contrasts the satisfying service from Telewest (of sainted memory) with the current botchery. No argument from me, I just didn’t realise it was a deliberate policy.

Paying pretty large monthly sums - well more than someone on unemployment Benefit is expected to live for a week on - for a supposedly “Unlimited” service, to find out it is limited is somewhat confusing. Especially given the recent haemorhage (sp?) of cable customers, you’d imagine that there was more empty bandwidth than Virginmedia knew what to do with.

It’s not just Virgin, of course. It’s more or less every service provider that thinks they can get away with it. (So much for the mysterious laws of the market, then. Surely, the company offering the better service should get more customers? Oh, you naive fool.)

I was looking at Tiscali’s “fair use” policy, coincidentally. They tell heavy users that they will be capped, only in the evenings. Hmm, so they will only be choked in the times when people actually use the Internet? So they can use as much bandwidth as they want when they are asleep or in work. …..

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Obviously impressed by how far she has raised her previously minimal public profile by pandering to racism. the barking Margaret Hodge has sounded off again in the Observer.

Enough said.

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