Newly-elected British National Party MEP Nick Griffin inflamed racial sensibilities once again this afternoon when he insisted that protesters not throw eggs at him unless they had first separated the yellows from the whites.
People in the audience vocally disapproved of this, and as a result Griffin was hit by a boo meringue.
edit: OK, this is nuts. If this joke ends up on t' telly – 8 out of 10 Cats, recording Thursday evening for broadcast Friday night – it's all down to one of my colleagues retweeting it on Twitter. It will be stolen rather than credited to me, but I can confirm that I originated the joke over email and that I am awesome, and that you should all buy my book (chapter 1 free to read on the web). ;)
I've finally given in and started tweeting. @suitov
edit2: Didn't make it into the show, apparently. Hee. Clearly I'll have to start broadcasting witticisms to the world more often.
View the original post at Black Dog Blog
118 118 man seen in Marmite
It may not be immediately obvious to everyone, but one family is convinced they can see the mascot of a directory enquiry service on the lid of a jar of Marmite.
Claire Allen, 36, said she was the first to notice the image on the underside of the lid as she was putting the yeast spread on her son's toast.
Her husband Gareth, 37, said he could not believe his eyes when he saw it.
Mr Allen, of Ystrad, Rhondda, said: "The kids are still eating it, but we kept the lid."
He explained: "Claire saw it first and called her dad to come and take a photo of it.
"When I first looked at it I wasn't sure, but when I moved it away from me it started coming out. I thought yeah, she's right - that's the moustache bloke from the adverts.
Mrs Allen told the South Wales Echo: "Straight away Jamie said "that looks like 118″, and my other boys (Robbie, four, and Tomas, 11) even said they could see a face.
"People might think I'm nuts, but I like to think it's 118 118 looking out for us.
"We've had a tough couple of months; my mum's been really ill and it's comforting to think that the jogging man from a commercial directory enquiries company advert is watching over us."
Read the original story here. Doesn't make much more sense than my parody, does it?
So I've been was agonising with colleagues about how this was ever considered to be 'news' within the BBC's remit to inform (no), educate (...no) and entertain (?).
Other text services are available, including AQA, which has sexy goffboi harlots working for it.
And now it's time for....
Psalm or Marmite advert?
Marmite advertisements use the attention-grabbing tactic of claiming you may hate their product.
But are the following quotations prophecies from the psalms associated with Jesus, or adverts for the goopy black stuff? You decide!!!!
- "More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause"
- "You either love it or hate it"
- "All who hate me whisper together against me"
Marmite's next campaign: "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. Some of whom will eat peanut butter. Shun them. Shun them."
View the original post at Black Dog Blog
Certain brain areas could be linked to sociability, or so a study suggests.
I don't see how a study on just 41 people could possibly be valuable.
Go ahead, speculate that autistics' brains are underdeveloped, that's fiiiiiiiine. Just don't impugn our taste for chocolate, please.
edit: Good dog.
View the original post at HellHound.net
US teacher broke law by describing creationism as 'superstitious nonsense'.
Creationism is superstitious nonsense. So are most religious beliefs. I live in the UK and am not a government employee, or indeed anyone with editorial responsibility, so either live with it or tell me my atheism is superstitious nonsense. Atheism1 is a treasured part of my identity too, but the law and I give you express permission to whinge about it all you want.
I don't know if this is the teacher's actual words being quoted, but if he truly said he had an "unequivocal belief that creationism is superstitious nonsense", how can that be attacked under the First Amendment?
If we're getting petty, this judge's ruling breaks the First A. Emphasis mine:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
So there. Anyway—I'm not particularly bothered by the finding represented by the headline.
The most interesting part for me is that most of the teacher's comments were protected. They include, in appropriate contexts, "when you put on your Jesus glasses, you can't see the truth", "conservatives don't want women to avoid pregnancies - that's interfering with God's work" and "[there's as much evidence that Jehovah created the world] as there is that there is a gigantic spaghetti monster living behind the moon who did it".
Those statements are now protected by law or precedent or something, which gives the good guys some kind of framework within which to work.
Should we care about animals? Discussion of animal ethics.
From Julian Baggini's answer:
The simplest and clearest motivation for taking animal welfare seriously is the recognition that pain is in and of itself a bad thing, and that to inflict significant amounts of it unnecessarily is wrong. Of course, until you cash out "significant" and "unnecessarily", the principle remains vague, but without these qualifications, the rule is a clearly nonsense.
From HE Baber's answer:
In fact there is no principled way to sort all and only humans into one moral category and everything else into another, so we face a moral dilemma. Either we hold that there is no objective criterion grounding moral consideration or we hold that when it comes to common practice we fall short.
They may post more responses; I'm not sure. Just those two at time of writing.
If I had a Retriever, I'd admit to kissing him or her good morning.
So here's a thought. When it comes to ethical choices regarding companion animals, if in any doubt, substitute "my infant child" for "my dog" and see how you feel about it then.
Following that principle, and if we allow (although I realise some (particularly in parts of the US?) don't) that debarking and declawing are not defensible, you won't find much that's morally taxing or lifestyle-inhibiting until we get to neutering. Because I wouldn't permit an infant child in my care to be sterilised, I'm forced to adopt the view that spaying and neutering companion animals is wrong. Putting that into practice, of course, as Baber points out, is difficult.
Our dogs weren't spayed, although Bracken had a hysterectomy in adulthood to cure a bad infection. Our male cat, however, is neutered. I do think if I ever own a cat I still would have it sterilised, albeit with qualms, but not a dog. Handling bitches in season is fine; we had doggy equivalents of panty pads for ours, and most people in suburbia these days don't let their entire males roam the streets. Males are easy to control, although that seems to have escaped my father, whose entire male Labrador regularly drags his bedding outdoors after meals and copulates with it.
I have seen neuters and spays performed on cats, and noted the enormous difference between the operation on a tom (literally 30 seconds. Slash, snip, snip, done) and the operation on a female (much longer and more invasive). For that reason alone, given that I would have a cat neutered, I would be much more likely to own a male cat than a female.
1 Actually, technically, that treasured part of my identity is better described as "intelligence" and "freethinking cynicism with a generous helping of Occam", because I don't define myself by negatives. Except perhaps that I'm not blond. And, of course, that I'm not the werewolf/saboteur/traitor/cylon.
If you think it's funny for a self-described neuter (-gendered individual) to be arguing about neutering, I agree.
View the original post at HellHound.net
Even now, in the stillness of death, the huge jaws seemed to be dripping with a bluish flame and the small, deep-set, cruel eyes were ringed with fire. I placed my hand upon the glowing muzzle, and as I held them up my own fingers smouldered and gleamed in the darkness.
"Phosphorus," I said.
"A cunning preparation of it," said Holmes, sniffing at the dead animal.
Glow in the dark pups aid science
("Critics argue it's playing god, but scientists point out that what we're looking at is in fact playing dogs.")
View the original post at HellHound.net
Oh Buddha, not... effeminately-shaped eyebrows!!1onetynine11!!!
Children's Laureates choose best books of all time. Just William ++, Treasure Island of course, Harry Potter nowhere on the list.
Also, I want a Psammead. They're rewarding companions. Just don't get them wet or feed them after midnight.
Israel renames unkosher swine flu
View the original post at HellHound.net
'Ill' worker fired over Facebook
The death of 100% (mostly-stupid article about something that truly annoys me)
Appeal for chocolate volunteers gets - surprise! - 1,500 replies
If I have this right, the choice was between compulsory school ethics lessons (the current policy) and the option not to attend ethics lessons and to take religious lessons (already exist as voluntary, occur out of school hours, poorly attended) instead. I find the idea of opting out of normal life and taking a closed scripture study group instead slightly disturbing.
So, Berlin, even though it was actually rejected by default because none of you turned up to vote, have a sanity cookie on me.
Rare albino buffalo seen in Kenya
h4x! A /b/ user explains (and claims credit for) their flooding of the Time Magazine 100 poll.
Oh for a personal army of these guys. In before not.
Twitter your prayer says Cardinal
Post your tweet ideas in the comments. 140 characters or less, must begin @our-father (or @anubis, @suitov, @narasimha or other deity of your choice. Can't speak for the others, but I don't monitor my Twitter account).
Currently enjoying this Easter-themed radio interview [MP3] from Landover Baptist Church. PTL!
edit: Saw this advert on TV and liked it (what, an arrangement of This Little Light of Mine that I didn't hate?!), and the Vimeo page adds something special to it.
View the original post at HellHound.net
Artist sculpts massive sand tiger
Sewing machine hoax hits Saudi Arabia (I suspect Snog of involvement.)
I never knew real wombats were so cute...
New limits to Antarctic tourism
Parties to the Antarctic Treaty agreed to limit the size of cruise ships and the number of tourists taken ashore at a meeting in the US city of Baltimore.
That's... great, but I'm not sure what it has to do with Antarctica.
Obama to regulate 'pollutant' CO2
Oh Obama, we all wish you'd got in 8 years ago when there was still some kind of hope. At least thank to you our ecosphere may yet leave a good-looking corpse.
Cult author JG Ballard dies at 78
View the original post at HellHound.net
Wincanton, the Roundworld twin town of Ankh-Morpork, steps further into geekdom (join us, come with us, we will teach you things).
So Monday night was Werewolf night, this time at the Space bar (I still can't work out if that's an intentional pun) off Oxford Road. A new chap turned up there; he goes to a gaming group that meets on Tuesdays at a place a short walk from Slen's house. This is games in the board-game and cards sense; they play lots of obscure things straight out of Essen that I've never heard of. Which is ace.
So I went along, stayed over at Slen's house and dragged him to the group. We played Tribune, which that dark equus of a brother of mine won, and then a few minutes of Master of Rules before the end. The others were playing some kind of Battlestar Galactica board game.
Lots of fun, lots of serious geeks there. Apparently they sometimes play MTG and often Werewolf. I'll give the MTG a miss, because I'm opposed to things you have to keep paying for, but Slen owns a starter deck which he's never opened, so that'd be fun for him.
edit: Miss Nobili told the BBC that the transformation from lap dancer to nun happened gradually.
View the original post at HellHound.net
An autistic lad is rescued by Spider-Man.
And now more idiots trying to make the world fit into their little boxes, to the detriment of all...
Despite the stupid stories you may have heard about windmills slicing birds up, the RSPB is in no doubt: we need more wind farms, and we need them soon.
Actually we need them twenty years ago, but hi, media outlets, welcome to the 08 Is Too Late bandwagon anyway.
Now that was miserable. So here's some happy power metal: Iron Fire - Bridges Will Burn
Bolt was good. It is about a puppy! In fact, it's pretty much a puppy Truman Show, which is pretty much a winner.
I was a bit uneasy about how the animals emoted, though. They didn't use their ears at all; it was rather confusing. For example, when the cat had her back to the dog, telling him to get lost, her ears should have been tightly back and her tail doing some conflicted lashing, and his ears at least somewhat flattened and tail down. No doubt it was the same all the way through the film, but that was the scene that actually broke the WSD for me. Kind of disturbing, like someone smiling and grinning while telling you they're horribly depressed, you know? I need cartoon expressions to be right, because they're a stepping stone to real ones.
I'll not get onto the lazy bit of characterisation that always makes cat = female and dog = male. ;) We dogs may be simpler and dumber, but girls have the right to be simple and dumb too, if they want.
View the original post at HellHound.net
Race for 'God particle' heats up. Please nobody shout Foe Yay or post LHC/Fermilab Rule 34 in the comments. This is a classy blog.
As fans of The Daily Mail know, everything in existence either causes cancer or cures cancer (example: Facebook). An extremely scientific study has begun to document these for the good of humankind. I give you The Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project.
Also, grandmother playing Guitar Hero. I recognise the Easy difficulty of Pat Benatar's Hit Me With Your Best Shot, so you can tell I'm about on her level.
edit: some artwork and photography from dA's daily selection. Dog + snow = ♥
For Anke: Hello guys, kitties and something indescribable. And this, even though the corn is wrong and makes me very sick to look at *whimpers*.
Red pandas with an inescapable Now We Are Six vibe, cuddling, cartoony pandas (interesting take on the mask), a portly and catlike take that truly earns their nickname of 'catbear', a slightly more raccoonish-mousy-feline look, unhappy plushie toys, superdeformed legless versions (good face on the left one, though), some clearly drawn by an animator, a gorgeous painting if you excuse the love heart, NINJA PANDA and hilarity ensuing (I may have posted this one before).
Amazingly enough, there's also a new pangolin since last I looked. And have a cloud pard to round off the furfest.
View the original post at HellHound.net
(Probably won't work outside UK, sorry.) Learning to Live, a 1964 sex edumacation film. I think it's quite good, actually, although of course it's dated. Simplistic animations work for me; in fact, they're the only moving pictures I understand!
(Film: "Well, we all know, don't we. The girl wants a boyfriend. The boy wants a–"
Mutt: "car."
Film: "girlfriend.")
One for architecture nuts. Audio slideshow: Le Corbusier's legacy [Flash]
There's plenty I, a non-buildingish person, never knew about this dude, not least that Le Corbusier wasn't his surname. His (epic Swiss-French double-barreled!) name was Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris.
You can find photos of some of Le Corbusier's buildings here.
I personally don't like his buildings at all - well, except for this playful church. It's to be expected, though, because I'm a 21st-century pup and he was pre-1960s, when big concrete things were daringly modern.
It's very interesting what he tried to do to Paris! Here's a picture of the scale model, also shown in the
slideshow in the first link.
Is it selfish to have more than two children?
Interesting, if unbalanced, article. The women in it rather horrified me ("I never wanted this many children. I wanted babies. They got to a certain age and I wanted another. I love newborn babies." "I didn't think about money and what it was going to cost either. I just had this romantic idea.").
I'd have liked to hear from some sensible, educated women who had planned their families, however large those might be.
Is it selfish for an unemployed teenager who can't keep her legs shut to pop out three no-hope sprogs named Krystell out of some mistaken idea that it's an easy way out of school and onto benefits? Is it selfish for a late-twenties woman in a stable relationship and career to pop out three well-supported suburban sprogs named Cynthia at three-and-a-half-year intervals? And most importantly, in what way is [they have six kids but] they do their bit for the planet by never flying long-haul
supposed to be relevant?
Also of interest:
The total fertility rate - the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime - reached 1.90 in the UK in 2007, meaning 190 children were born for every 100 women, according to the Office for National Statistics.
That still means the population is shrinking - until of course, you count immigration and emigration. According to the graph in the article, in the 1960s the fertility rate was about 2.7.
In other news, I am astoundingly enough still glad I've steered clear of Facebook.
It is, I'm afraid, simply not a good idea for EU residents to let their data outside the EU. And yes, that means Yahoo and Hotmail, let alone companies who are making themselves suspicious, like Facebook and Google are.
Terry Pratchett's knighthood. I wonder what she said!
Five-minute video interviews with Pratchett and Stephen Fry.
I'm gonna be a knight some day. No sword, though. They're crap.
Give me a call. I can make 'em do the funnest tricks.
More seriously, making a groom into An Issue is not the correct way to go. Grooming is being licked by a big cat, which is done when one has eaten and is sleepy, and if your cat tolerates it at all it is most sensible to make it a normal part of the post-prandial sofa snuggledown. If it really hates it, then it may be best to do it before feeding. If so, be consistent.
Claw-clipping, by contrast, has no natural analogue and benefits the cat not a jot, and therefore kneads to be filed under Things You Will Put Up With Because That's How The World Works. For a food-motivated animal, claw-clipping should be done immediately before a mealtime, or at least with treats afterwards, and done with a degree of skill or a helper to keep the process short. You may prefer to do front paws on one occasion and back paws the next in the interest of making it a more frequent, less stressful process. The cat will enjoy the back feet even less than the front. Do not attempt to clip claws while the cat is high on catnip.
Teaching your cat a word like "Finished!" will remove a lot of stress. As soon as the command is given and the cat is released, that must be the end of the indignities and your attitude towards it must immediately return to normal. No guilt, no excessive fuss, I mean normal. Bare-faced cheek is a cat thing; they understand it. At first the creature will probably run off in high dudgeon each time, but once it gets used to the process the sulks will be shorter and shorter.
Piper, for example, gives no more than one token growl and doesn't even leave the room any more. He's just that lazy. As soon as he hears "Finished!" he snaps back into begging mode, goes to his bowl and waits for his biscuits. He knows that "Finished" means "safe"... and, sad to say, "reward". (This is helped by the fact that it's also the command I give him after feeding him that means he can start eating.)
This is what I have learned about cats and how they differ from real people.
Bear balletists. Ursine Peles. This is awesome once you realise that the reason for the whole rigmarole is that grizzlies hate getting their ears wet.
View the original post at HellHound.net
I've just noticed this from Platitude of the Day:
Christians launch anti-atheist bus campaign
Oh, snap, atheists, that's you good and told! I mean, that's really cutting right there, quoting the holy book they totally respect and believe in at them like that. (Matthew 5:22)
Don't you just love how Christians are always the models of dignity and good humour? Just as Jesus would never lower himself to spiteful tit-for-tat, neither would the people who aspire to be like him.
edit: I forgot to include this in the interest of balance. Read the description!
View the original post at HellHound.net
Yay, I got to do the news this morning! (Such as we still do it... i.e. very briefly.)
MS stem-cell treatment 'success'. This is awesome.
Indonesia's transgender Qur'an school
*sends them feedback* As usual, "transgender" is used when you mean "male-to-female transgender". Please could you stop pretending the other side doesn't exist? Just specifying once that you're talking about male-to-female early on in the report would be acceptable.
Ministers fight church 'rain tax'
Considering how rich the Church is vs. your typical charity, the Church should be paying for itself and the charities. (Don't gimme "ooh, the Church is quite poor really". Do you KNOW how much land and stonework it owns?)
Porn images vicar faces expulsion
I'm disgusted that his expulsion from the clergy is surprising or notable enough to be 'news'. It should be a matter of course.
The president of the tribunal Gerard Elias QC said the recommended decision was considered after the "immense seriousness and depravity" of the offences coupled with the absence of "regret or apology".
Oh, so it's only because he didn't say sorry, not because he is a danger to children.
The Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, the Rt Rev John Davies, said the tribunal's order reflected the seriousness of Hart's offence.
He added: "It sends out the very clear message that there is no room for any form of child abuse in the Church in Wales."
It sends out the very clear message that if you're caught abusing children and you don't look sorry enough, there is no room for you as a practising minister in the Church in Wales. Everyone else is welcome back after you've served your slap on the wrist.
The Obama approach to interrogation
Did I miss something? Since when has positive discrimination become an unchallenged Good Thing?
Black-and-white cat helps postman (only UK readers are likely to get why this is funny)
View the original post at HellHound.net
David Attenborough, presenter of much-loved British wildlife documentaries, reveals that he has received hate mail for not crediting God for the wonders he shows us.
You always get some nutters. Still, can't help feeling disgusted. Some people want to have their cake and eat it. Watch programmes about the real world and wonder why they aren't consistent with la la land, while, as Attenborough points out, crediting god for hummingbirds and not for parasitic worms.
Parasitology, one of those things about which I keep meaning to take Neal Asher's advice and read up a little. Parasites are beautiful and clever and a rich mine of horror-laced SF and fantasy. Anything that modifies behaviour, or otherwise affects someone's mind, taps right into that deliciously enduring fear of loss of individuality.
Christians try to invade the "spiritual but not religious" wishy-washies and epically fail.
Probably not realising that, chances are, said wishy-washies either come from Christian backgrounds or at least have been exposed to it already. Or maybe it's an "if you're not good an evangelised, they obviously didn't do it right!" thing.
A 1909 armed robbery that appalled the nation, encouraging red-masthead-style paranoia about 'alien' immigrants.
Wikipedia may introduce editors who have to approve all major changes before allowing them through.
Face it, this was bound to happen. (I suspect the tipping point was when the BBC started linking to them, but then, I would say that.)
View the original post at HellHound.net
They've been less and less frequent, so I may as well make the final nail official.
At my workplace, over the last four years, we used to spend much of our morning looking through online news and collating it. At that time I used to do near-daily news updates in my blog over lunch breaks, highlighting stuff I found important or funny or really damn infuriating, for my sanity as much as anything else. A few of you enjoyed these so much that you friended me because of them, which was awesome and much appreciated, and I hope you've found it worthwhile to stick around even though the news snark has necessarily been dwindling in frequency.
This is because the way we do things in our little Religion webteam has been gradually changing—generally for the good and sane, if unfortunately tending more towards the bureaucratic—and part of that is that we're focusing our efforts on things other than the news. And, to be honest, it was ridiculous how much of our time we used to spend on the task compared to the number of people who actually visited our news pages. The stats apparently showed that quite plainly! So we've wound down the newsgathering to a token few headlines daily, usually done by someone other than me (pout—my own fault for keeping programmer hours). Which means I don't get to see much of the religious and ethical news any more, which means there's quite simply less to rant about.
I will, of course, continue to blog any stories and other links that catch my eye, like any normal blogger, and I expect the occasional rant and snark will continue too.
This does, of course, mean that this blog needs a new gimmick. Suggestions for that would be much appreciated.
View the original post at HellHound.net
Pope: "Stop claiming you've seen the Virgin Mary. You're making us look nuts."
Migraine-inducing artwork... no, truly. Really nice article about migraines and their causes.
Evil cats in the news (note name of second felin)
View the original post at HellHound.net
Autism test 'could hit maths skills'
The prospect of a prenatal test for autism, allowing couples to choose whether to have a baby with the condition, is coming closer. And with it also comes the possibility of a prenatal drug treatment being developed.But in this week's Scrubbing Up, leading autism expert Professor Simon Baron-Cohen warns caution is needed to ensure associated talents, like numerical abilities, are not lost if the test or a "cure" become available.
The old disability-and-abortion debate. Would I prefer never to have been born? No, obviously not. Would I prefer a hypothetical me who didn't exist yet to have been terminated and a different hypothetical me without an ASD to have been conceived? I'm completely neutral to the idea.
However, this whole thing fails to take into account that fools, you need us. You need us to talk to your computers for you. You need us more than ever. The Midwich Cuckoos are already inheriting, bitches, and there's nothing you can do, so start chugging back the thiomersal now.
View the original post at HellHound.net
How are the bitey fallen! Since when are vampires reduced to angsty objects of lust for teenage girls, asks BBC Magazine?
Some amber with an unusual payload.
"Hurrah, we've just accidentally dug into a magma chamber!" Oh, geologists. <3
Fascinating thing here about a follow-up to Milgram.
I thought spending my life with my foot in my mouth was bad...
Advice on chip pan fires has been changed.
Conifer pruned into plum pudding
Disappointing news. Cedric the Tassie devil, considered the best hope for his species because he seemed to be immune to the face cancer that's killing them, has developed tumours.
Winter medical myths 'debunked'
Mermaids! <3 Beautiful things.
Sexy Muslim underwear. NO CONNECTION TO PREVIOUS ARTICLE COMMENTARY.
I want a robot. Do you too? So why aren't they selling them yet? Because, as this thing shows, they can't get anything about them right... except their names. And the cool ones of those are going fast!
The psychology of crying. Tear ducts are awesome. Psychology isn't, at least at this superficial level.
Now this really is awesome! Single virus used to convert adult cells to stem cells. There's a lot more to it, so read the full article if you think protein-making is just the coolest.
View the original post at HellHound.net
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