Why Dont You Blog?

Sorry, we’re a bit slow here -the link is months old - but this could explain how god helped Manuel get to Guinness Book of Records size.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Popularity: 11% [?]

George Monbiot’s blog in today’s Guardian. Read this, please. Then maybe have a quick think about the Geneva Convention….

(The new low of barrel-scraping puns was just there to get your attention.)

I have to steal an appropriate quote from Apathy Sketchpad

If Obama doesn’t win the election by some kind of unprecedented landslide then I think the most humane option would be to release some kind of virus and wipe out the whole stupid population.

(No, - to any stupid people who’ve stumbled across this post looking for mis-spelled Latin music, or in case Brit humour doesn’t translate into other languages - it was NOT meant to be taken literally. It’s an expression of rage and despair.)

Popularity: 11% [?]

Popularity: 11% [?]

There’s a hallowed Whydontyou tradition that this blog has to get out a quick comment on any new Dr Who series. The first episode was OK, on balance.

I’m not the world’s biggest fan of Catherine Tate (a UK comedian) and it was a national embarrassment to see Tony Blair mouthing her catchphrases (worse even than his Simpson’s cameo.) Her Dr Who character just seemed like a more sympathetic portrayal of half of her standard comedy characters. All the same, she’s very gifted and wasn’t as irritating as she might have been.

It was telling to realise that I was actually hoping for the return of Billie Piper, although her apperance seems to have just been a two-second teaser. According to the Register, Lily Allen was the top assistant choice in November. I don’t know if that was just a wild Register rumour or if it’s still a possibility. IMHO, the best assistant in the new set of Dr Who series has been Freema Agyeman.

The space ship effects were good. I’m a sucker for well done 3-d graphics and good special effects.

(Except for the hanging bit, which was exactly as silly as almost every other “hanging from the side of a building” scene ever. I mean, just try hanging from anything, even if your life DOESN’T depend on it. If you can manage 15 seconds and you aren’t an experienced mountain climber - total respect. Or try and find a multi-storey building that doesn’t generate its own wind system. )

Cultural refs:

• A merge of the Supernanny and Anne Robinson stereotypes of bossy female Englishwomen. There aren’t many recognizable examples outside the TV world and some newspaper columns, but, hey, that’s the world now anyway.
• The supposedly increasingly fat UK population is a really popular topic, of course. Here the idea was that excess lard turned into a life form, which was an entertaining idea.
• People’s endless desire for any diet pills that will magically trim fat.
• Office work. Office blocks. Those cages that hold the window cleaners who don’t actually have to abseil down the side of your building.
• Alien visitor, crop circles and random conspiracy theories. Need I say more. Obviously, they usually turn out to be true in Dr Who.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Popularity: 20% [?]

Pity Nigeria, with its Christians in the South and its Muslims in the North, as the population gets squeezed more and more into an extremist religious mould.

There’s an excellent post by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about a new Nigerian bill

.. that would criminalise “indecent” dressing: necklines must be two inches or less from the shoulders, and the waist of a female over 14 must not be visible. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so dangerous.

She says that the

…. Judaeo-Christian-Islamic notion of controlling the female temptress so as to save the helpless male dehumanises women and insults the dignity of men ….

So true.So elegantly put as well.

Culture is the other justification for this nonsense. Chimamanda Adichie refers to the absurdity of the reference to traditional “culture” by people who have no real knowledge of pre-colonial culture and who use all the artefacts of the 21st century.

By the standards of CIF commenters - frequently several pages short of a G2 supplement - there are some really thoughtful comments. Several commenters take up the issue of the talebanisation of Nigeria, as well as the role of the conservative Anglican church leaders in opposing the more liberal US Anglicans over homosexuality.

old expat says:

One wonders where Bishop Akinola comes in on this. He has been supporting anti-gay laws in Nigeria, and aggressively exporting his conservative brand of Anglicanism to the American church. I have wondered if the competition between Islam and Christianity over souls in Nigeria is leading to a race towards extremism.

stuart h said:

As various cultural commentators have noted (Bikhu Parekh and Homi Bhabha commenting on ‘Satanic Verses’ springs to mind), the mistake may be to see fundamentalists as defending ‘archaic’ values or ‘tradition’, when, in truth, they are creating a contemporary culture which preys on fear of modernity and change.
Certainly there seems nothing ‘archaic’ about a number of UK and US evangelical outfits who seem keen to ally themselves with the Nigerian bishop in order to gain access to a new and lucrative ‘market’ in Nigeria. I have even seen the bizarre phenomena of white pentecostal preachers from my tiny British offshore island heading for Nigeria and surrounding African countries to supplement their incomes.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Popularity: 20% [?]