Category: Society

I’ve just noticed that I missed what looks to have been an interesting programme on BBC Radio 4 last Monday night: The Gay Divide. From the BBC’s web page:

Throughout the Moslem world homosexuality is a taboo, punishable in several countries by death. On the West Bank and Gaza women or men who have sex with people of the same sex face imprisonment and torture. They are also rejected by their families and the rest of society. Several hundred Palestinian gays and lesbians have fled to Israel.

Because they’re Palestinian, they’re illegal and cannot readily obtain asylum in Israel. But having tried in Israel, it is virtually impossible to obtain asylum in another country, as you can only apply for asylum once.

Fortunately, the BBC allows for the re-hearing of many of its programmes via the Internet now, and there’s a link on the web page to the audio file. I’m off to listen to it – I suggest that you do the same.

Update: Here’s a link to the story on the Radio Netherlands web. It also has a link to the audio story.

Also on the Mind Hacks Blog is reference to a report that whould seem to indicate that the Internet is increasingly figuring in psychotic delusions.

In the Middle Ages we had demons and devils, from the 1950s on we had UFOs and alien abductions, now it’s the Internet whose tentacles reach into our minds.

Give it another decade or two, and I predict that the emphasis will shift to biotech… 

But apparently not in this household. And the mother even has the audacity to blame the schools: "I don’t care what people say about me. I blame the schools – sex education for young girls should be better".

I despair. It’s the sort of thing that gives eugenics a good name. And one of the babies is called T-Jay? That’s a name? I feel a depressing attack of the Victor Meldrews coming on…

Via Boing Boing, comes this magnificently ironical parody of a presentation at a Pharmaceutical Conference. Brilliantly performed by its author, Peter Watts, it gives a chillingly low-key pitch as to why vampires can benefit society. "Sociopaths are already highly productive members of corporate society".

As counterpoint to the exposition are the wonderful company slogans of FizerPharm shown on the slides; example: FizerPharm – Trust, Profit, Deniability.

The penultimate sentence of the presentation is, of course, the kicker.

We got back from our friends’ wedding yesterday. It was a great success. The weather held out, and everyone had a wonderful day. I took over 1,000 photos. Hopefully a few will be worth keeping…

Two friends of ours are getting married tomorrow in this Dutch castle. Here’s hoping they have fine weather – because they will be arriving in a horse-drawn carriage… Yours truly is one of the two official photographers. First time I’ve done this "officially", so fingers crossed here as well.

OK, now can I have the bride and groom – click – right, now the families… – will the bride’s mother please watch her hat – we nearly had an industrial accident there…

I wonder what the Dutch equivalent of "Say cheese!" is?

Over at the Collision Detection blog, Clive Thompson introduces us to the rather unsettling presence of Greg Gillespie – inventor of the World’s Fastest Knife.

Freud would have a field day with the video.

If I’m ever in the presence of Mr. Gillespie, remind me not to sneeze. He might think I was looking at his wife and stab me in the eyes… Yup, there are some scary people out there. But somehow, I’m not convinced that having an arms race is the way to deal with it.

Today’s Guardian carries an excellent profile (by Alexander Linklater) of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch politician. Well worth reading to gain an understanding of what drives her, and why she requires round-the-clock protection of bodyguards.

… otherwise I’d have steam coming out of my ears over this. It’s this kind of thing that gives diversity a bad name.

Data point (a): Chile lesbian loses child appeal. "The Chilean court said her children’s development was at risk because she was living in a lesbian relationship".

Data point (b): Joe Valentine’s parents. Joe Valentine is a successful baseball player who happens to have been raised by two lesbians.

When will people realise it’s the quality of parenting that matters to a child’s development, and not the sexual orientation of the parents?

…They do things differently there.

Yes, I know that the original quote (L. P. Hartley, the Go-Between, 1953) had "Past" in place of "Young"), but it seemed absolutely aposite for the experience I’ve just had. I was idly perusing the statistics to see if anyone out there actually looked at my blog, and I came across a link that showed that a 14 year old girl in the East Midlands, England, had dropped in. I followed the link back, and found this:

Hiyaz today was funny at skul lata on but begginin was bad !
kirsty told every1 bout me n chris lol n now every1 nos
but in english me n kirst were playin catch wid ma pen n kirstys rubber lmao which den got tuk offf us by chelsea cuz i hit her wid it lmao
but den we managed to get anotha one lol

n den in science we had to do an experiment  n i was washin dese goggles unda da tap lmao n i flicked water at kirsty n miss caught me lol n den we was messin bout wid da acid n stuf n we all had to sit down n get a lesson on how to behave in a lab lmao
n trust me ! i dun sumut rly dangerous acordin to miss lmao

so now im very bored on msn talkin to chris bout stuf
i dno wot to say god help me lol ! ! !
amy tried to help but i cant do it man seriously !

anywayz im gonna go now laters
xxxx bye xxxx

Hello? Does one need any more evidence that evolution exists? This is clearly not a strain of English that I was brought up on. I remember in primary school sitting in a class, and another boy came in to ask the teacher something. He said something along the lines of "The headmaster wants to know if any of the kids saw [an incident in the playground] this morning". 

The teacher drew herself up to her full height and said: "Child, ‘kids’ are the offspring of goats – there are children in my classroom".

Deckchairs on the Titanic, anyone?

I hold onto just one thought – the person who makes these photographs may be heading down the road trod by Louis Wain.

Seeing that Boing Boing posted a sighting of a vending machine for iPods got me thinking.

Last week, in the Barcelona Metro, I saw a vending machine selling paperback books. Not understanding Spanish, I could not judge whether the books represented literature (haut cuisine) or Jeffrey Archer (fast food trash). I would like to believe the former.

And I remember a few years ago in the neighbourhood was a vending machine selling bunches of flowers (only in Holland?). Alas, long since gone the way of me-tooism – the beige-coloured global culture that I sometimes think I’m drowning in.

… or are the good folks in the US of A increasingly sprouting nutters in their midst?

First it was Kansas, now it’s spread to New York.

I blame the food.

Intolerance is on the rise again in The Netherlands. This incident is not the first, and I’m sure won’t be the last. The commentary on it by Bruce Bawer, reproduced by Andrew Sullivan in his blog, makes disturbing reading. That, coupled with the fact that I’ve just finished reading The End of Faith, by Sam Harris, has not put me in a sunny and relaxed mood.

One bit of good news is that Microsoft has reversed its decision to take a neutral stand on the anti-discrimination bill that failed by just one vote in Washington state and will now actively support it again. Microsoft’s  CEO Steve Ballmer explained:

After looking at the question from all sides, I’ve concluded that diversity in the workplace is such an important issue for our business that it should be included in our legislative agenda. Since our beginning nearly 30 years ago, Microsoft has had a strong business interest in recruiting and retaining the best and brightest and most diverse workforce possible. I’m proud of Microsoft’s commitment to non-discrimination in our internal policies and benefits, but our policies can’t cover the range of housing, education, financial and similar services that our people and their partners and families need. Therefore, it’s appropriate for the company to support legislation that will promote and protect diversity in the workplace.

Accordingly, Microsoft will continue to join other leading companies in supporting federal legislation that would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation — adding sexual orientation to the existing law that already covers race, sex, national origin, religion, age and disability. Given the importance of diversity to our business, it is appropriate for the company to endorse legislation that prohibits employment discrimination on all of these grounds. Obviously, the Washington State legislative session has concluded for this year, but if legislation similar to HB 1515 is introduced in future sessions, we will support it.

Glad to see that Microsoft has done the right thing.

The WEEE Man is made from the amount of waste electrical and electronic products that an average UK citizen will throw away in a lifetime, if he or she carries on disposing of products at the current rate.

At the risk of being flippant, the multiplication factor for Americans is probably 2.65.

…the concentration camp at Dachau was liberated by US troops. This post from Orac should be read, lest we forget.

That deathless tagline from Private Eye seems aposite for this crap.

Call me naive, but I had this idea that the London Review of Books was a deeply serious magazine, with a readership of fearsomely intellectual, and probably terminally boring, people. So, I am very grateful to Boing Boing for correcting this misconception by pointing me towards the LRB’s column of Personal Ads.