Last April, Rand Abdel-Qader was killed by her father. Now, her mother has been killed, quite possibly for daring to speak out against him and a society where "honour" killings are considered just.
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A World Without Bees
I’d heard of the phenomenon of the disappearing honeybee before, of course, but this article by Alison Benjamin in today’s Guardian pulls the story’s strands together in a compelling way. She paints a worrying picture. Apparently, the article is an extract from her book. Another one for the wishlist, then.Leave a comment
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Filth
Last night, the Beeb showed a TV drama about the clash in the 1960s between Mrs. Mary Whitehouse and Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, then director-general of the BBC. Entitled Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story, it was an entertaining look at the woman and her campaign. I refer you to the great Nancy Banks-Smith, and her review of the programme for more detail. I think I would agree with her that the Julie Walters‘ playing of Whitehouse was probably more lovable than the real person. My one experience of seeing Mrs. Whitehouse in the flesh, as it were, still leaves me – at a distance of thirty years – with feelings of anger and disgust.Update: Anticant has a review of the programme. He had personal experience of just what a nasty piece of work Whitehouse could be. Worth reading to understand the less lovable side of her.Leave a comment
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The Plague and the Party
Earlier this month, I pointed to a good interview with Elizabeth Pisani, who has just published a book on HIV and the AIDS prevention industry. Now I see that she has an excellent article on the subject in this month’s Prospect magazine. Worth reading, and she repeats her sobering message that:…living with HIV is not all abseiling down canyons at sunset. It’s about going to the clinic for viral load monitoring and taking toxic drugs, for the rest of your life, at an annual cost to the NHS (the National Health Service) of about £16,000 per person (which means an annual bill of about £1.2bn). And the virus is beginning to outwit some of the drugs we have developed, raising the prospect of strains of HIV that don’t respond to treatment. Plus, we don’t know what effects even the oldest drugs might have in the long term—many men who have been on antiretrovirals for over a decade have osteoporosis and failing livers; they’re suffering not from the infection but the remedy.Leave a comment
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Mehdi Kazemi Granted Asylum
At last, after the worries, some good news for a change.Leave a comment
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Island Imagery
I see that Google Earth has at last got higher resolution imagery for the Isle of Man. I can now clearly see at least some of the houses where I lived as a child. But the old Ivanhoe hotel, where I spent most of my childhood, was demolished some years back – a car park now marks the spot.The Google Earth and Maps team introduce the new imagery by running a quiz on their blog. The Isle of Man was supposedly the answer to this bizarre question:9) The currency of this island is known as Manx.Er, no it isn’t. That’s like saying that the currency of England is known as English. Sigh.Update: Gawd, it gets worse. In the blog entry providing the answers, the Google team say that the Isle of Man is part of England. No, it isn’t, you stupid people!Leave a comment
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Ennui
An example of David Shenton’s comic strip that raised a wry smile with me: Out and Proud.Leave a comment
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Different Ways of Thinking
J. Carter Wood, over at Obscene Desserts, introduces us to a couple of examples from the scary wing of the Haunted House built by religion. Depressing stuff. As he says: my brain kind of seizes up, since I can’t see how that works, how people can actually think that way. Me neither.Leave a comment
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Different Ways of Knowing
Greta Christina has a good piece on the uses of irrationality and how it bears on the God question. Worth reading.Leave a comment
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Global Peace Index
I see that this year it’s Iceland that has come top in the Global Peace Index. Somewhat worryingly, the Netherlands has dropped two places since 2007, it’s now at number 22 in the rankings. However, it scores better than the UK (at 49).Leave a comment
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Hare Wars
I don’t know whether you noticed that the hare, whose photo I posted a few days back, has been in the wars. Here’s a closer view of the same hare. Notice how the ears have large chunks bitten out of them?
As an alternative, here’s another hare who’s got all its ears intact…
There are plenty of hares around in these parts… And rabbits eating the flowers as well…Leave a comment
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Radio Silence
Well, I’m back (touch wood) after a few days without an Internet connection. My ISP (Internet Service Provider), XS4ALL, has been having problems this weekend. It also happened to be the weekend when my ADSL connection was scheduled to be moved from KPN across to XS4ALL. So, bright and early on Friday morning, KPN pulled their ADSL plug on my line. The idea was that XS4ALL would then plug in their ADSL service shortly afterwards. Alas, some network-wide problem hit them, with a few thousand subscribers being unable to get internet access, so they put a hold on adding new clients until they got it sorted. Me being one of them, of course.Not having ADSL has both pushed my frustration levels up, but also given me the opportunity to catch up with my book reading. Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black is highly recommended.I even managed to be pleasant, and share a joke or two, with Dennis on the XS4ALL Helpdesk today. Clearly I’ve calmed down from the idiotic fury I was spitting at some hapless minion in network control last Saturday. Whoever you are, I’m sorry. My emotions got the better of me.Leave a comment
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What Happened Next
So, I’m sitting in front of the computer, as is my wont, reading something. From my position, I can also look out through the windows into the front garden. A hare appears, rummaging through the garden. That’s rather sweet, think I and fetch the camera. Click, go I, and get this shot (amongst others).
I then return the camera to the other room and resume reading.Bugger me, but the tiny offspring of this hare suddenly makes an appearance and starts chasing its parent around the garden. Round and round they go, dashing back and forth like things possessed – what a photo opportunity!I dash for the camera. But when I return to the spot, nothing is there, Just the lawn and the borders and the trees.Damn. I shall never be a great photographer.Leave a comment
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Flying Penguins
I know I’m very late with this, but I didn’t get around to blogging about it at the time: One of the Beeb’s better April Fool’s jokes…And here’s how it was done.Leave a comment
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The Wisdom of Whores
That’s the title of a new book by Elizabeth Pisani. She’s an AIDS scientist and epidemiologist, and there’s a good interview of her in today’s Guardian. Basically, her thesis is that more focus on prevention, rather than treatment, of AIDS would have better results. As an old gay man, having lived through the dark days of the 1980s, I find the casual attitude to bareback sex (sex without using condoms) of many of today’s young generation of gay men absolutely terrifying. As Pisani says:ARVs reduce people’s viral load, she agrees, making them less likely to infect someone else – as long as they don’t miss a single dose. "But it also keeps them alive longer, and healthy enough to want to have sex. You only have to look at the experience of the UK or US gay communities where we’ve had more or less universal access to ARVs for at least eight or nine years, and the number of new infections are rising. More people are living longer with HIV, and there is what we call behavioural disinhibition: ‘Fuck the condoms, I don’t need them any more, because if he’s positive he’ll be on drugs, so he probably won’t infect me. And if I do get infected, it would be annoying, but not the end of the world.’"But having Aids is not a picnic. Yes, it’s great that all this stuff on treatment is happening. But it becomes all the more urgent to have effective prevention. And that’s not happening."Leave a comment
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Oil-Slick Politics
As Johann Hari says, oil-slick politics in the UK are not good. They will poison the body politic.Leave a comment
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A Time To Die
Jon Ronson has a talent for poking about in the haunted wing of society and coming up with Tales of the Unexpected. In today’s Guardian he writes about the Reverend George Exoo, who has assisted the suicide of over 100 people. While I reserve the right to want to choose euthanasia should the circumstances arise, I don’t know that I would want the Reverend Exoo on hand. He strikes me as too much of a loose can(n)on.Leave a comment
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Roadside Encounter
We’ve been having glorious weather for over a week now – 10 degrees Celsius warmer than is normal for this time of year. I decided yesterday to go out exploring cycle routes on my bike. I struck off in the general direction of Winterswijk, a town near the Dutch/German border. When I reached Winterswijk, I celebrated with an ice cream at Talamini’s Gelateria – the best Ice Cream Parlour in the region.On my way back, I was pedalling gently through the outer part of Winterswijk, when a car pulled up alongside, and the passenger asked me a question in German. Looking over, I saw that the car was filled with German youth – boys in the front and girls in the back. I apologised, in English, that I couldn’t speak German. After a moment’s nonplussing, the boy then asked, in English, "can we buy things here in this town?". Odd question, thought I, and replied that they needed to turn around and head back to the centre, where the cafes, pubs and restaurants were open in and around the town square. More puzzlement from the boy, who then said, "er, thank you", accompanied by much giggling from the girls. They drove off.It was a second or two later that I realised what they were after: drugs. And then I thought, what a bunch of idiots. They hadn’t thought to Google for Winterswijk’s one and only coffeeshop before setting off. Mad, impetuous, empty-headed youth. When I was that age, I think I had more sense than these youngsters seemed to have.Leave a comment
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