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| On the TV news this morning was one of the two Scotsmen who have allegedly become infected with swine flu. He said it felt like having a head-cold. In other words, he had the sniffles.
Every year, flu viruses reduce the population slightly. As has been suggested elsewhere, the sales of potions to protect against such bugs generates much lucre; and the medicine itself also fills a few extra coffins.
Every so often there really is a pandemic--or so history reports. Certainly right now the press is having a merry time predicting devastation from this pig-related flu, perhaps as it conveniently distracts people from thinking about the pig’s ear which seems to have been created in the world of finance.
Medical folk keep telling us that stress reduces the ability of our immune systems to ward off viruses (and ill-health in general.) Worrying about pig flu could therefore possibly increase a person's susceptibility to it.
Anyway, whilst busily peeling the veg for tonight’s dinner, I began wondering why the name “swine” had been chosen. No-one talks about eating swine chops, or enjoying roast swine. The word can be used as an insult; as an expletive even. Yet the press adore it as it sounds so much more dramatic than “pork” or “pig”.
So, using a little dark humour to keep us all safe and well, our immunity unstressed by tales of impending bogey-viruses, how about a spot of re-naming to help keep things in perspective.
My proposal: From now on, only the term “piggy sniffles” should be used. | |
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| "The taxpayer is required to pay £40m a year to cover the costs of having chaplains on call in hospitals. An obvious alternative...would be for patients to be visited by their own local vicar, rabbi or imam.
"In a population of over 6o million, a little over 1.1 million regularly attend Church of England services. In hospital, even allowing for a few thousand panicky, injury-time conversions to faith, the non-believers are in a majority.
"It is bizarre, and occasionally downright sadistic, that the grievously sick, the dying and the bereaved are forced into the arms of a priest, whether or not they happen to be believers."Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/terence-blacker/terence-blacker-why-is-support-for-the-sick-a-religious-issue-1666750.htmlI hadn't even realised that we tax payers were paying for hospital chaplains. Surely £40m would be better spent on training and employing more nurses, buying new equipment, or on providing better hospital food (which has also been under fire in the news lately due to its poor nutritional standards.) | |
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| It’s a gorgeous spring day here. I’ve got the French doors open, and Emily has dragged her blanket onto the patio step to stretch out on it while she’s sunbathing. The forsythia is a blaze of yellow, and cherry blossom is drifting like snowflakes on the warm breeze. Daffodils and crocus are in bloom everywhere, and there’s a pair of blackbirds rummaging for nesting material underneath the shrubby St John’s wort.
Yesterday I was in Liverpool as Kevin Holt, a photographer from The Daily Mail, had arranged to visit Richard’s studio so he could take a few shots of us both. These will be used as part of an article about cryonics which will published in that newspaper, probably next week sometime.
Afterwards I had a meander round the city centre, and bought a new pair of trousers--plain black, but the material is lovely and soft. I want a black top to go with it, something very dressy to off-set the plain black, but found nothing I wanted.
I had a peek at several shoe shops, too, which was amusing. What’s with all these stack shoes with 10” heels? Being 5’ 2” tall, 10” heels would make me look as if I was teetering on stilts. | |
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| http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7711554.stm"The nine year old child...is the youngest of three Yemeni girls who recently went to court complaining they were married against their will and asking for divorce..
"So why did (the father) sell his daughter to a stranger? 'He gave me 30,000 rial ($150, £90) and promised another 400,000 ($2,000). I was really in need of money and thought it was a solution for the family,' he explains.
"For seven months, Arwa's husband shared the small room where the family eat, play and sleep. When Arwa fought off his advances, she was beaten. The torment only came to an end when her husband and father quarrelled...
"Sheikh Hamoud Hashim al-Tharihi is general secretary of the increasingly influential Vice and Virtue Committee and a member of the Islah Party. He cites the example of the Prophet Muhammad who married six-year-old Aisha but waited for consummation till she was a little older. 'Because this happened to the Prophet, we cannot tell people that it is prohibited to marry at an early age,' he argues. Moreover, he claims it would harm society by spreading vice."So paedophilia prevents the spread of vice, does it? What a pathetic excuse. - Index:news
- Emotion:angry
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| Knife crime is in the news again this week, after the weekend saw five separate violent attacks in Bolton, Lancashire.
There are several things that we need to ask ourselves. Firstly, what happened to parental responsibility? Why is that that so many parents don’t seem to care what their teenagers are doing, or who they are associating with?
Second, why is it so easy for anyone to buy weapons? The internet, for example, offers countless sites which have many weapons for sale - and totally within the law.
Thirdly, why do teenagers feel the need to carry knives or other weapons? The moronic identification with gang culture is likely to be at the root of this. And while Hollywood and rap music may not be entirely to blame, their role in glamorising violence has surely to be acknowledged.
Reality check: there is nothing glamorous about dying. There is nothing romantic about spending your youth behind bars.
So what of possible solutions for this situation?
The proposals being considered include zero tolerance for the carrying of weapons, and a minimum of one-year jail sentences for anyone found carrying a knife. Another idea suggests young people should have a choice between being in employment, a useful apprenticeship, higher education or National Service. Enforcing parental responsibility through heavy fines has also been suggested.
What do you think? | |
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| Take a few minutes, if you will, to visit ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) wga_supporters. Writers tend to get the rough end of the financial stick. While actors and directors pick up fat payments, writers are lucky to earn a tolerable living from their work. Rest assured, without writers there would be no TV shows, no film scripts etc. Show your support to the striking writers, who are only trying to win a fair deal for themselves. | |
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|  Remember that Warholian line about everyone having fifteen minutes of fame? Well, in this age of supposed equality, this seems to have been extended to spiders - the one living in our bird house, to be exact. Yup, dear ol' Incey Wincey made page two of the Wirral Globe this week. On the TV news, there was a brief piece which announced that British fruit growers have lost up to two-thirds of their crops due to the wet weather. Apparently this has been the wettest June since records began. (This in itself doesn’t mean much, as the records only go back around 150 years which, in the life of this planet, is like a blink to you and me.) The bulk of my raspberry crop has been ruined. The fruits are rotting on the canes, which renders them absolutely useless. But that’s nothing compared to the problems other people are having right now. Read this:- http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23402936-details/'We've+all+been+fo rgotten'+say+30,000+UK+flood+victims/art icle.do So many people have lost their homes! It might take up to a year before they can return to them, or so it has been reported. And no wonder, considering the scale of the problem. Some places are still flooded, and more rain has been forecast. Soooooo, apart from mailing out oodles of invitations (pleas?!!) for people to buy A Wirral Otherkin Trilogy, and giggling at the dogs happily playing tug-o-war with their new toy zebra, I’ve been working on character charts in preparation for starting the first draft of Rowan. Yes, we have a title! And it’s about a bloke called Rowan. Rather like how Tamsin was about a girl called Tamsin. Ok, enough of being silly. Back to work. | |
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| Eternal lovers, perhaps? An archeological dig in Italy has uncovered two entwined Neolithic skeletons. Take a peek at this intriguing link:- http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070206/sc_nm/italy_embrace_dc Thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) anselmthelost for this link. My low opinion of television has been echoed in a recent study, which has called for a total ban on TV for all children under the age of three, for a maximum of one hour per day for the three-to-fives age group, and for severe restrictions on time spent in front of the screen for older children. Psychologist Dr Aric Sigman has published a report analysing thirty-five scientific studies about television's effects on viewers, which has identified fifteen negative effects. These include obesity, damage to the immune system due to reduced melatonin levels, eyesight problems, an increased likelihood of Alzheimer's, Autism, diabetes and attention disorders. Read the full article here:- http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=265852007To these disorders, I would propose that of decreased imagination, as all any television viewer is required to do is to stare mindlessly at the contraption while a constant stream of mediocrity and trash (and who-knows-what subliminal messages) pour into the passive, receptive brain. | |
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|  Saffron
Originally uploaded by __Adele__.I have just posted this month’s Yahoo! newsgroup’s newsletter. There isn’t much in this issue. “This month I coughed a lot” hardly makes for gripping reading.
Anyway, did anyone see last night’s TV program on bird flu? While it was rather long-winded, the presented fictionalised scenario of a pandemic was interesting.
Some people suspect that bird flu is largely a hoax created by manufacturers of flu vaccines. I can understand this, as I’m a natural-born sceptic myself. We’ve heard so much about conspiracies and hoaxes over recent years, such as the infamous Millennium Bug which failed to manifest, despite widespread panic and the absorption of much tax-payers’ money. (Hmm, I wonder who got to spend that?!!) Then there’re theories that the Moon Landings were faked in a Hollywood sound studio, or that America blew-up it’s own “two towers” to start a war over oil, or that Western society and the World Bank are really run by nine antiquarian book dealers.
The list of conspiracy theories is seemingly infinite. The internet is full of similar material and certainly it can be entertaining. However, apparently some people find this freedom of expression threatening.
Reporters without Borders is organizing a 24-hour online demonstration against Internet censorship. Log-on to the group's website at http://www.rsf.org
In America, civil rights and media organizations went to court last week to challenge the government over an internet censorship law they say is vague and violates the First Amendment. Source: http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/3830
“The Internet, which began as a U.S. military construct for global communications, quickly became the international communications utility. Today, it is the globe-eating spiderweb of consumerism, expression (free and otherwise), love, hate, politics, and religion. Perhaps it will be a protector of free expression and defense against closed, authoritarian governments and oligarchies. Or it will be another force for censorship and control.” Source: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/11/04/110146.php | |
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| The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has apparently announced that all churches which refuse to sign a decree stating that they agree with traditional, conservative Anglican values will be reduced to the status of associates, rather than that of actual members, of the Church of England. This means that any move towards a more liberal inclusion of gay – or rather, openly gay – priests would be halted.
Read more here:- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2246806,00.html
To me this attitude seems incredibly retrogressive. Whatever happened to “Judge not…” or “Love one another…”? If a Christian genuinely believes that their deity created them, the world and all that’s in it, then why do they then contradict themselves by excluding a section of society solely on the grounds of their sexual preferences? Do they think Mr God got it wrong when he invented homosexuality or bisexuality?
Instead of fussing about forms of sexual preference which are as ancient as the human race itself, I'd much prefer a debate about the continuation of the Church's exemption from paying taxes.
The truly sad part of this, to my mind, is that sexuality is even a topic of debate.
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| In readiness for the Pope’s visit to Poland, the sale of ice cream has been banned, according to this article here:- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5015518.stm I hadn’t realised that a Cornetto could inspire such tremulous caution. A Magnum, however, is clearly another matter. Have you seen how some people eat those? Disgraceful…! *Chuckles* - Index:news
- Emotion:giggly
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| The Da Vinci Code certainly seems to have got the Church in a tizzy. ”In the USA, Christian clergy and scholars have produced more than four dozen books and countless websites to pick apart the premises of the book and film,“ according to:- http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2006-05-18-da-vinci-protests_x.htmExcuse me, but wasn’t Dan Brown’s book marketed as fiction? Did you hear about the awful life of a young girl? She was forced to scrub floors all day long and wasn’t even paid the legal minimum wage. And then there was the disgusting example of three pigs which were housed inadequately and were therefore at the mercy of thugs and vandals. Anyway, in the end, the young girl married a guy who had a thing about impractical shoes – glass slippers, even – and the big bad wolf came to a sticky end too. And was there any mention of any of this in the headlines? No!!! It’s discrimination, I tell you! - Index:news
- Emotion:mischievous
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| More amusing news for you:- ”Dan Brown's total immersion of his readers into pure pagan ideology is wicked.” At least, according to this article:- http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49643 The author goes on to list all the things in the book which he apparently finds scary, including pyramids, rattles, the Gnostic gospels, papyrus scrolls, astrology, star gazing priests, not to mention “comets, stars and planets”. Is this man terrified of the sky? - Index:news
- Emotion:mischievous
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|  I thought this might amuse... Hey, I made pages twelve and seventeen of our two local papers! Which places me somewhere between notifications of jumble sales and adverts for double-glazing. *chuckles* | |
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