A cat's version of reveille

While reading over at Blame It On The Voices, I came across this video clip. I couldn't resist 'borrowing' it.

As Jeff Cooper so memorably pointed out, "Dogs have owners. Cats have staff."





Peter

World's most expensive bottle of tequila?

There's a new entry in the conspicuous consumption sweepstakes. The Daily Mail reports:

A Mexican distiller has produced what it hopes will become the world's most expensive tequila in a platinum and diamond-studded bottle.

Hacienda La Capilla's 'The Diamond Sterling' comes in a 1.3-litre ceramic bottle coated in more than 5lbs of platinum.

But that's not all: the bottle is encrusted in more than 4,000 diamonds, totalling 328 carats.




The bottle is crafted by renowned designer Fernando Altamirano and is valued at around $3.5million.

The liquor inside is not half bad either: a rich seven-year aged tequila straight from the Mexican state of Jalisco.

. . .

... the company said they hoped their newest creation would fetch $3.5 million (£2.2 million).

There's more at the link.

I'm assuming there's a worm inside, in the finest tequila tradition . . . at least, I hope there is. That way, if anyone's fool enough to pay that much for it, someone else can ask incredulously, "You paid how much? For a worm?"



Peter

Around the blogs

There's a rich harvest of giggles on some of my buddies' blogs this week.

First, Tanker over at Mostly Cajun describes some of his youthful military misdeeds.

There was one corner of the training area that was like twenty acres of fault land covered by a foot of soft red clay, and I don’t remember which of my compatriots discovered that you could, by careful manipulation of steering bar, throttle and transmission, throw a tank from twenty-odd miles per hour forward speed into a sliding sideways, tracks throwing mud twenty feet into the air, all the way through 360 plus degrees of spin-out.

You already know where he's going, don't you?


Next, JayG asks what the hell a Massachusetts teacher was thinking?

Words. Fail. Me. Pencils are "materials to build weapons" in this lunatic's world. What frightens me is that this sort of empty-headed, kumbaya singing, hemp wearing flower child is in charge of instructing children as opposed to safely being locked in a padded room where she clearly belongs. Being afraid of a frekkin' pencil because it could be used as a weapon? Yeah, that signals that key neurons aren't firing in that pointy little head of hers.

That's our Jay . . . diplomatic and tactful as ever!


'Lancedeboyle' over at Jaded Haven describes the joys of parenting . . . among which is what he calls 'Holistic, Naturalistic Toilet Training'.

So, for breakfast the boy had oatmeal laced with nuts (for the sound) and a glass of prune juice (for primer).

“Hey, that’s real tasty, Dad.”

Mid morning. Raisins, nuts, more nectar of prune.

Lunch. Oatmeal bars. Additional installments of prune.

“Man, I can’t get enough o’ this stuff.”

Mid afternoon snack…. He gave it a pass. And now…..Pain.

By two PM the boy was moaning in a way that I found strangely pleasant. You could hear gurgling two rooms down. He’d slap his butt and say, “Shut up! Stop it! Stop it!” And squeeze his cheeks tight.

“I guess you gotta go, Boy. Maybe you could sit on the…

“No! Noooo!!” [Fine with me, Ace. See if your will power trumps the Power of Prune.]

Slapping and swearing at his butt went on for two hours.

Finally, so crippled that he couldn’t put on a diaper, he quick-stepped into the bathroom, jerked down Sears Best, sat and exploded.

The rest of the gory details are at the link.


Finally, a bunch of us bloggers chat online (via IRC) over at the Gunblogger Conspiracy. The evil overlords of the Conspiracy occasionally post snippets of the online chat for the edification (?) of others. A recent example concerned pizza choices.

WARNING: Some naughty words are used. The language on GBC can get robust at times. Don't go there if you're easily offended.

Here's a sample from the conversation. (A quick note for those who don't know the participants: Vertel is in Australia, whereas pdb and Whitebread are here in the USA.)

[pdb] what the hell kind of commie pizza is that?

[vertel] pdb: THE KIND THAT CAN TAKE DOWN CITIES AND COUNTRY AND EVEN PUPPY DOGS AND PLAYGROUNDS

[whitebread] Thank you, Kim Jong Vertel.
[whitebread] What toppings?

[vertel] I’m trying to decide that now. :P
[vertel] One of the three’s an old standby. Hawaiian with extra pineapple and olives.

[whitebread] no!
[whitebread] no no no
[whitebread] That is not a pizza. That’s a fruit salad with crust

[vertel] SHUT UP PINEAPPLE ON PIZZA IS THE FOOD OF THE GODS

[pdb] lol

[whitebread] False heathen gods, perhaps

[vertel] That’s the best kind of god!
[vertel] You soulless minion of orthodoxy.

[whitebread] hah

There's more at the link, and many other conversations at the Gunblogger Conspiracy blog page. Enjoy!


That's the laughs for this week from my fellow bloggers.





Peter

I want one!

I'm intrigued by a British company that's offering waterborne offices for use in marinas, on riverfronts, etc.




They're not powered watercraft, but appear to be basically barges with a modern lightweight superstructure. They seem to be as well equipped as any small business office.




The company's presently designing a studio apartment using the same basic hull.




If it's equipped to the same level as their offices, it should make a great place for a weekend getaway to a marina or river. A single person might even live there full-time, albeit without too much space to expand or throw a party - except on the roof! They don't seem too pricy: the office unit sells for £74,950 (about US $117,000) plus tax, while a bare-bones unit without furnishings sells for £64,950 (about US $101,400) plus tax. Not cheap, but certainly not unreasonable at today's prices.

I'd love one of those as a writing getaway. I could moor it somewhere on the Cumberland River or Old Hickory Lake (or one of the other lakes in the area), and have a waterborne hidey-hole. Write for a few hours, step outside and jump off the deck for a refreshing swim, barbecue some lunch on a portable grill set up on the roof, then take a nap before getting back to work. Sweet for summertime use! Perhaps it's time to set up a blog tip jar?



Peter

Nature in the raw

There have been many spectacular photographs of the eruption earlier this year of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland. The Telegraph newspaper in England has published several collections of them. I've put up one picture out of each collection to show you how good they are, and linked each picture to the collection it came from. Click any picture to see the rest of the images in that collection.












Another superb collection (some of which are duplicated in the Telegraph's collections above) is by Icelandic photographer Ragnar Sigurdsson, who (with co-author Ari Gudmundsson) has published a best-selling book of his images (it's just gone into a third, expanded edition, which gives you some idea of how fast it's selling!).




He's put many of his best images online, in relatively small sizes (he's obviously keeping the big ones for sale in his book), but still big enough to enjoy. Highly recommended viewing.

There's nothing like a volcano doing its thing to make one realize that one's rank in nature's pecking order is very insignificant indeed . . .

Peter

Thanksgiving with Lolcats

To wrap up the Thanksgiving foodfest in a suitable manner, here are a couple of today's Lolcats, courtesy of I Can Has Cheezburger? Click each picture to be taken to its Web page and read viewers' comments.









Peter

Doofus Of The Day #418

Today's award goes to the collective lawyers of the Church of England.

Two million husbands and wives are not lawfully married because of a Church of England blunder, it was revealed yesterday.

Their church weddings are legally invalid because the vicars who married them used the wrong form of words, CofE lawyers admitted.

The error affects more than a million weddings celebrated over the past 30 years in churches across England.

It opens the prospect that marriage partners heading for divorce may try to deny their spouse maintenance, support or even a home on the grounds that they were never really married - the trick tried by Mick Jagger when he claimed his Balinese Hindu wedding to Jerry Hall was never a real marriage.

. . .

The Church’s blunder involves the wording of the banns, which must be read out in church three times in the weeks before a wedding. The banns ask if anyone knows of any good reason why the marriage should not be allowed.

Under the Marriage Act of 1949, the wording of the banns must be that set out in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. This asks the congregation ‘if any of you know cause, or just impediment, why these two persons should not be joined together in Holy Matrimony.’

However, in 1980 the Church brought in a new prayer book, the Alternative Service Book, with a new marriage service and a new form of wording for the banns. The modern wording has continued to be used in the CofE’s latest prayer book, Commons Worship, adopted in 2006.

But when the new prayer books were approved, as is legally necessary, by Parliament, Church lawyers forgot to change the 1949 Marriage Act so that it included the new wording of the banns. This asks if anyone knows a ‘reason in law’ to stop the marriage.

As a result, no wedding conducted under the form prescribed in the newer prayer books is lawful.

. . .

A leading secular divorce lawyer, Jeremy Abraham of the Matthew, Arnold and Baldwin firm, said: ‘Technically, I fear this means many marriages are invalid.

‘But the marriage legislation effectively says that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it is a duck. If both parties believe they are married, then they are protected. In Mick Jagger’s case, he did have to pay out to Jerry. I don’t think this will make a difference in the end in divorce cases.’

There's more at the link.

One million marriages potentially invalid??? It's a good think the C. of E. offers voluntary confession of sins to its members . . . think of all the inadvertent adultery and fornication that's been going on, and will need official forgiveness!





Peter

Astrology debunked

A few days ago I wrote about the Forer effect and 'subjective validation'. In the cited article, reference was made to 'a mishmash of lines from horoscopes' collected for the experiment. This led one reader to chide me via e-mail for being 'negative' about astrology, and ask me to 'correct' that misperception.

I'm afraid I can't correct it. I'm very negative about astrology! I regard astrologers as charlatans, and those who believe in their predictions as - at best - over-credulous and deluded. I know there are those who will disagree with me (and still others who'll claim that any religious or spiritual or supernatural belief is just as fictional), but I'm afraid that's where I stand.

For those who aren't sure, I highly recommend Phil Plait's debunking of astrology. It's one of the most factual and logical I've yet discovered. Here's his summary of astrology.

Summing Up

I had a lot to say here! So just to make it easier on you, here are the main points of this page:

• There is no force, known or unknown, that could possibly affect us here on Earth the way astrologers claim. Known forces weaken too fast, letting one source utterly dominate (the Moon for gravity, the Sun for electromagnetism). An unknown force would allow asteroids and extrasolar planets to totally overwhelm the nearby planets.
• Astrologers tend to rely on our ability to remember hits and forget misses. Even an accurate prediction may be simple chance.
• Study after study has shown that claims and predictions made by astrologers have no merit. They are indistinguishable from chance, which means astrologers cannot claim to have some ability to predict your life's path.
• There is harm, real harm, in astrology. It weakens further people's ability to rationally look at the world, an ability we need now more than ever.
  

Conclusion

Astrology is wrong.

See? Told you I'd repeat it. That was one astrological prediction you could actually count on.

There's more at the link. Interesting and entertaining reading, as are the other Web sites to which he links for more information.

Peter

Happiness is . . . a partner?

A study printed in the American Psychological Association's journal suggests that individual happiness isn't necessarily so 'individual' after all. MSNBC reports:

According to a study in the latest issue of the American Psychological Association’s journal Developmental Psychology, a person’s individual happiness is closely tied with that of their spouse — at least when it comes to long-term married couples.

“What we saw over a long period of time is that if one spouse changed in terms of increasing happiness, the other spouse’s happiness would go up,” says Christiane Hoppmann, professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and lead author of the study. “And if there was a dip in happiness, this dip would also affect the respective spouse.

. . .

Hoppmann says this new research could help future studies better understand the underpinnings of what actually makes a person happy.

“Oftentimes, large surveys will ask individuals of different ages ‘How happy are you?’ and ask other kinds of things that might contribute to happiness,” she says. “What we’ve shown is that when you ask people about their happiness, you need to involve significant others, meaningful others who share important experiences, who live at the same place, who might be stressed by similar stressors.”

But the research also brings up additional questions.

“Right now, we know that happiness is tied in marital relationships,” says Hoppmann. “But we don’t know yet whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. We can’t tell if one spouse lifts up the other when there’s trouble or whether one spouse drags the other down. It could be both.”

There's more at the link. Interesting and thought-provoking reading.

Peter

A fascinating historical puzzle

I'm intrigued by the suggestion that a Chinese village may have been founded by former Roman legionaries, more than two millennia ago.

For years the residents of the remote north western Chinese village of Liqian have believed they were special.

Many of the villagers have Western characteristics including green eyes and blonde hair leading some experts to suggest that they may be the descendants of a lost Roman legion that settled in the area.

Now DNA testing of the villagers has shown that almost two thirds of them are of Caucasian origin.

The results lend weigh to the theory that the founding of Liqian may be linked to the legend of the missing army of Roman general Marcus Crassus.

In 53BC, after Crassus was defeated by the Parthians and beheaded near what is now Iran, stories persisted that 145 Romans were captured and wandered the region for years.




The town's link with Rome was first suggested by a professor of Chinese history at Oxford in the 1950s.

Oxford professor Homer Dubs believes the group travelled east, were captured by the Chinese and founded Liqian in 36BC.

Prof Dubs theorised that they made their way as a mercenary troop eastwards, which was how a troop 'with a fish-scale formation' came to be captured by the Chinese 17 years later.

It has been suggested that some made their way east to today's Uzbekistan and later enlisted with the Hun chieftain Jzh Jzh against the Chinese Han Dynasty.

He said the 'fish-scale formation' was a reference to the Roman 'tortoise', a phalanx protected by shields on all sides and from above.

Homer Dubs pulled together stories from the official histories, which said that Liqian was founded by soldiers captured in a war between the Chinese and the Huns in 36BC, and the legend of the missing army of Marcus Crassus, a Roman general.

There's more at the link.

Professor Dubs' theories certainly mesh with earlier historians. As Wikipedia points out:

According to Pliny, in 53 BC, after losing at the battle of Carrhae, 10,000 Roman prisoners were sent by the Parthians to Margiana to help guard the eastern frontier of the Parthian Empire. The Han Chinese later captured this area and the Roman prisoners were likely among the first Europeans to meet the Chinese directly.

The Han Chinese triumphed at the Battle of Zhizhi, where the losing side is recorded to have adopted a 'fish-scale formation' during the fight - perhaps used by mercenaries (possibly including captured Roman legionaries) sent from Parthia? If so, that's another link.

If only we could identify the area of Italy - or other part of the Roman Empire - where those particular legionaries originated, it might be possible to do some sort of widespread DNA sampling to see whether their descendants in that region show similarities to those of the villagers in China. Absent that, I guess this will remain nothing but speculation . . . but what a fascinating thought!

As Shakespeare would put it:

HORATIO
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!

HAMLET
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Peter

Who's in charge here?

My money's on the bird . . .

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #417

Today's Doofus is from England.

An amateur pilot in a Cessna caused chaos to an RAF fly-past marking the Queen's Birthday when he strayed into its flight path.

The pilots of the 29 military aircraft - which included Tornado fighter-bombers - were ordered to 'dive, dive, dive' after bungling David Remnant headed towards them.

One of the Tornado pilots had seen the Cessna just 200ft away, heading straight at him, Aylesbury Magistrates Court was told.

Air traffic controllers ordered the RAF crews to dive 300ft, while Remnant was ordered to fly 300ft upwards to avert a disaster.

The 43-year-old amateur pilot had taken off from Denham in Buckinghamshire on June 12 after misreading the times on an air restriction notice.

The company director, from Watford in Hertfordshire, was said to be 'mortified' and admitted entering controlled air space.

He was fined £1,400 [about US $2,200] and told to pay £673 costs [about US $1,050].

There's more at the link. If you're interested, you can view a video clip of the Royal Birthday Flypast, from June 12th this year. The incident described above isn't shown - presumably it happened away from Brize Norton airfield, where the flypast took place.

I'm not sure what the term 'amateur pilot' means . . . I presume the journalist mean 'private pilot'. However, no matter what label you attach to him, I daresay Mr. Remnant managed to cure - definitively! - any cases of constipation that may have been troubling the Royal Air Force flight crews involved!





Peter

The 500th planet!

Space.com reports that a milestone has been reached in the discovery of planets orbiting other stars.

The 500th alien world appears to have been discovered, according to extrasolar planet trackers.

Less than 20 years after confirming the first planet beyond our own solar system, astronomers have bagged exoplanet No. 500. The milestone was reached Friday (Nov. 19), according to the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, a database compiled by astrobiologist Jean Schneider of the Paris-Meudon Observatory.

As of today (Nov. 22), the count stands at 502 alien worlds, the database reports.

The 500th extrasolar planet was reported in the midst of the discovery of several others. And there's always the risk a previous discovery turns out to be a false alarm, dropping the count.

For such reasons, it makes little sense to permanently anoint one particular world as "exoplanet 500," Schneider told SPACE.com.

That being said, the 500th alien planet currently appears to be one of four newfound extrasolar worlds, based on Schneider's list. They appear on the list just after another extrasolar planet, HIP 13044 b, which astronomers announced last week to be from an alien galaxy.

All of the newfound planets are less massive than Jupiter (they range between 15 and 50 percent of Jupiter's mass), and the planets' distances from Earth range from 58 light-years to 196 light-years.

The find comes less than two months after another watershed moment — the discovery of the first potentially habitable extrasolar planet. And astronomers are sure to hit other big milestones soon, as data rolls in from instruments like NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space observatory.

"In some sense, 500 is an artificial milestone," said Jon Jenkins of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute. Jenkins is the analysis lead for the Kepler mission.

"It's much more fun to watch the nature of the discoveries change over time," Jenkins told SPACE.com. "The variety of planets we've discovered has also increased."

Astronomers aren't just discovering scorching-hot gas giants anymore, he added. They are finding smaller, rocky worlds, too — planets that could be a lot like Earth.

There's more at the link.

Dang, these astronomers are making progress! I can remember when they announced they'd found the very first extra-solar-system planet, back in 1988. That was disputed for a long time until it was confirmed, but another discovery in 1992 put the existence of extrasolar planets beyond doubt. Now they've counted over 500 of them! I guess I won't live to see any of them, but who knows? Two or three generations from now, children may be growing up with the option of taking a one-way ride out of our solar system into the great unknown, to colonize a planet from which they'll never return.

How I'd love to have that opportunity! What an adventure!

Peter

Clearly my school days were all too innocent!

I can only stand in awe - or should that be amazement? - of any school that allows its students to carry on like this.

An internet video featuring naked Swedish high school students frolicking with farm animals and riding tractors on school property is nothing out of the ordinary for Sweden, according to the school’s principal.

“This kind of thing happens all the time,” the school’s principal, Peter Gustavsson told The Local.

“There’s nothing wrong with being naked. That’s still allowed.”

The eight-minute-long video, entitled “Farmers' Daughters”, opens with a shot of a young man in bed with two young women. As the scene unfolds, it becomes apparent that all three students are naked.

“Damn, do you know what I just realised?,” says one of the girls.

“It’s our student cabaret night tonight. We forgot again!”

The two girls then run out of the room and proceed to let two other naked girls, both of whom are bound and gagged, out of the back of a truck.

Gustavsson explained that students at the school, the Natural Resource Use Programme high school (Naturbruksgymnasiet) in Strömma in western Sweden, periodically organise cabaret nights in which they perform satirical skits.

“These nights are a way for the students to poke fun at themselves and be creative,” he said.

Other scenes in the film feature half-naked young men sitting in a pig pen, a bare-bottomed young woman laying bareback on a horse, as well as a trio of young ladies who appear to be showing their breasts to a cow.

Nevertheless, the tone of the film is light and humourous, rather than erotic, and the students take great pains to keep their sex organs and nipples covered.

“I think the film is rather nice, actually. No one is drunk; there is no alcohol, no drugs. It’s just a bunch of naked kids having fun,” said Gustavsson.

In one sequence, two naked girls summon a third girl who is sawing down a tree with a chainsaw wearing only a protective helmet and lumberjack’s harness, while another scene shows a surprised young lady covering her nipples with a pair of rodents as she is called to follow to other nude co-eds.

There's more at the link.

"Covering her nipples with a pair of rodents"??? Ye Gods and little fishes . . . I can just imagine the expression on the face of the (lady) schoolteacher in charge of our amateur dramatics society if we'd tried to 'perform' like that back in my high school days!





Peter

Computers and the imagination

I'm fascinated by the things people can think of to do with (and to) their iPads. Crescent Electronics blog has listed eight ideas that are both intriguing and a bit out there. Here's one example.

It was only a matter of time before someone with the skills required fitted an iPad into the dashboard of a car. On the face of it, the possibilities are very attractive: large screen satellite navigation, touchscreen access to your music, video...the only problem is, most of these activities would likely cause an accident if carried out while driving. Still, it looks good, right?

Here's a video of the installation process.

There's more at the link. Fun reading.

Not to be outdone, the good people at Dark Roasted Blend have put together a collection of 'post iPad concepts'. This is one of them.

This experimental product [is] called the P-ISM, described by NEC designers as a "Pen-style Personal Networking Gadget Package." A prototype of the system, which cost a reported $30,000 to build, was unveiled at ITU Telecom World in 2003 (that's long, long time ago).




"P-ISM is a 'pen-computer' package including five functions: a pen-style cellular phone with a handwriting data input, virtual keyboard, a very small projector, camera scanner, and personal ID key with cashless pass function. P-ISMs are connected with one another through short-range wireless technology. This personal gadget in a minimalist pen style enables the ultimate ubiquitous computing."

There are many more concepts at the link. Entertaining and thought-provoking reading.

Peter

How to cook a turkey in a hurry!

All it takes is a little imagination . . . and a little thermite!

I'd recommend not setting it on the table to cook, though . . .



Peter

Of bugs, health, and interesting medical practices

Two news reports caught my eye today. Both deal with the importance of bacteria to our health: one in a normal sort of way, the other . . . well, let's just say that normal doesn't enter into it!

The Australian Daily Telegraph reports that research has confirmed the value of getting your children outside to play, so that they can come into contact with useful bacteria.

PARENTS, step away from the baby wipes and put that hand sanitiser away - eating dirt could actually make your child smarter.

Research published in the current issue of Kidsafe NSW's playgrounds newsletter shows the positive side of a soil-borne bacteria that is likely to be inhaled when children are playing outside.

Academics discovered that mice that were fed the dirt bacteria Mycobacterium vaccae navigated complex mazes twice as fast as those which were not.

The research, presented in the US earlier this year, was welcomed by Kidsafe NSW Playground Advisory Unit program manager Kate Fraser as another reason kids should be encouraged to get outside and get dirty.

"Over the past few years terms like 'cotton wool kids' and 'helicopter parents' are becoming really common," Ms Fraser said.

"So we thought it was time to air the laundry on what's happening with our play spaces and make sure we are offering kids challenges.

"We need to make playgrounds safe, but also offer a certain amount of risk and controlled risk. It's a real balancing act."

It is believed the bacteria increases levels of serotonin, reduces anxiety and may also stimulate growth in certain neurons in the brain.

There's more at the link.

From Sweden comes a report of a rather . . . er . . . different way of getting useful bacteria into your system!

The Swedish medical community is increasingly turning to what many patients consider a rather unappealing antidote for battling resistant 'superbug' bacteria.

Swedish researchers hope that bacteria extracted from healthy faeces can be used to develop new medicines to battle superbugs following the successful curing of a 60-year-old American woman who suffered from resistant bacteria in her stomach, the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper reported on Monday.

The woman beat the illness after doctors, following advice from Swedish researchers, administered an enema injecting the faeces of her healthy husband.

Physician Per Dahl of the infection clinic in Växjö in southern Sweden, who administers the technique to a handful of people each year, told the newspaper that the suggestion is not always met with resounding approval by the patient.

"Their first reaction is that it sounds disgusting and unpleasant to get another person's poop put into them," he told DN.

Doctors in Minnesota turned to the technique after they had exhausted all available antibiotics without any effect being registered on the woman's deteriorating health.

After having been administered the enema of her husband's bacteria-free faecal matter, the woman made an rapid recovery and immediately began to regain some of the 27 kilogrammes in weight she had lost over the previous eight months.

"It was very exciting to see if the new bacteria would grow. I examined the waste and there was an enormous difference," said microbiologist Johan Dicksved at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) to the newspaper.

Dicksved explained that his analysis showed that after a month the offending Clostridium difficile bacteria which had caused the woman's debilitating condition had gone, to be replaced by the new bacteria.

The method is becoming a more common feature of Swedish healthcare as cases of resistant bacteria increase, DN reported.

Again, more at the link.

I don't want to see any comments about being a party pooper!





Peter

More on the fatheads at the TSA

I wrote last week about the Transportation Security Administration and its latest inanities (or should that be 'insanities'?). I'm very pleased to note that a great many Americans are taking umbrage at the TSA's gratuitously offensive and patently ineffective measures, and are not only objecting to them, but mocking them into the bargain. I sincerely hope that the protests that are apparently being planned for tomorrow happen in full force, and thoroughly disrupt their security charade. It deserves nothing less.

One of the finest and most profane (definitely not safe for work!) debunkings of their idiocy comes from my blogging buddy Stingray of the Atomic Nerds. Here's a sample.

“TSOs are trained security professionals,” Pinnock said. “Despite this call for chaos and disruption, it’s our belief that our members and people we represent will respond as the security professionals that they are.”

Y'know, I'm actually in 100% agreement that they will respond as the professionals that they are - petty thugs with delusions of adequacy, parodies of authority that even Cartman thinks are over the top, quislings lacking the common sense granted a simple turnip, and they will not take being challenged smoothly in stride. When an organization collectively lacks the simple common sense to step back and say “It’s just a pair of fingernail clippers. These are not a threat” and ignore a policy seventeen steps beyond idiotic, I do fully expect them to respond as the security professionals that they are.

Go and read the rest for a wonderful example of vitriol, viciousness and humor, condensed into a single glorious rant. Nobody does it like Stingray!

Plenty of anti-TSA material is circulating by e-mail. I don't know the origin of this collection of bumper stickers, but they arrived in my inbox this morning.




Priceless!

I wonder if anyone in the TSA is actually getting it? Can they understand that their security theater bluff has been called, and that we won't tolerate it any longer? Or are they still hiding their bureaucratic heads in the sand and refusing to face reality? Certainly, if they continue along their chosen path, the acronym TSA will have to be reinterpreted as the Terminally Stupid Administration!

Bureaucrats! Grrrr!





Peter

More interesting photography

As regular readers know, I frequently post links to photographic exhibitions and displays. There are two of them tonight.

The 2010 National Geographic Photo Contest is in full swing. There are some astonishingly good pictures on display. You can see many of them at the link, in relatively small sizes. However, the Big Picture has published over 40 of them in larger format. Here are a few examples to whet your appetite, reduced in size to fit this blog.








There are many more at the link, some of them breathtakingly beautiful. Very highly recommended viewing.

Another series of photographs that caught my eye appears on the Web site of the Chicago Tribune. It documents the erection and dismantling of a sculpture called 'Eye', by artist and sculptor Tony Tasset, set up in Pritzker Park in that city for the duration of the summer. What interests me is not only the details of how the sculpture was assembled and taken apart again, but the way the photographs capture its interaction with the surrounding cityscape and the people of Chicago. Here are a few images from the Tribune's series to illustrate what I mean.








Again, there are many more at the link. Interesting viewing.

Peter

The inevitable result of the Welfare State?

A report from England perfectly illustrates the problem of a 'nanny State' that provides everything for its citizens.

Education Department figures show more than one million school-leavers, one in five, are classed as Neet – not in education, employment or training.

And more than 800,000 of them are capable of holding down a job – unhampered by disability, illness or child care.

Academics blame the trend on a ‘disenfranchised’ generation who would rather collect benefits than work in a menial job.

Tom Burkard, of the Centre for Policy Studies, said: ‘Our obsession with equality and extending university education has taken a heavy toll on our youth and destroyed a generation.

‘Anything but a middle-class job is denigrated. It’s getting harder to convince these youngsters there’s any reason to work.’

. . .

Research shows Neets, on average, drink more, take more drugs and are significantly more likely to be involved in crime.

There's more at the link.

We have precisely the same problem here in the USA, even though our welfare system is organized differently to the UK. I've been in inner-city areas in at least a dozen US states, areas where the majority of the residents are on one or more forms of government assistance. D'you think they're in any way deprived or under-funded? Think again. It's astonishing how many families on welfare were driving new cars (and not just cheap cars - think Cadillac Escalades in large numbers!). They all had well-furnished homes, with flat-screen TV's (large ones), game consoles, new clothes, plenty of visible jewelry . . . yet social workers in the area told me without the trace of a smile on their faces that their 'clients' were 'living in poverty' and 'dependent on the government for survival'. It used to make me vaguely sick to my stomach, having seen what real poverty means in the Third World. In fact, many African families I've known would cheerfully commit mass murder in order to be able to live in the 'poverty' of which these US families complained!

The same applies to their 'job search' efforts. I've had more than a few of these people tell me, straight-faced, that 'they couldn't find a job commensurate with their qualifications'. Many of them had degrees (the educational value of which I found dubious in the extreme). When asked for more details, they'd turn out to have majored in 'women's studies', or 'African-American studies', or sociology, or anthropology, and so on . . . never in anything that was actually in demand in the commercial world. When I asked them (as I usually did) why they hadn't chosen to study something more 'marketable', they typically became indignant. It was their right to study what they chose, and employers were unreasonable (to put it mildly) for not appreciating their qualities as human beings. Why couldn't a company wanting technicians or sales personnel recognize that a BA in woman's studies was just as good as any business qualification? It wasn't that they'd made poor career choices - rather, companies were discriminating against them! It was racism and sexism, that's what it was!

I could never get through to these people that they should accept any job that came along in order to support themselves. They literally couldn't see that point at all. If they needed something, and didn't have a job that would let them earn enough to buy it, then someone else owed it to them, and they were going to kick and scream and protest until it was provided. They couldn't even begin to identify with people in the Third World who would accept menial and undesirable jobs in order to earn bread for their families. Instead, when confronted with such examples, they dismissed those workers as 'suckers' who let others take advantage of them. Why didn't they mount protests in the streets to force their governments to feed, clothe and house them? These were basic human rights, after all!

*Sigh*

I just couldn't get through to these people at all. If I tried to argue that food, clothing and shelter were not rights, but things that had to be earned, they regarded me with either horror (for being such a fascist) or disdain (for being so ignorant). They were quite content to live from day to day, drawing their government support, never bothering to look for any kind of a job that didn't gratify their self-image or meet their demands. They were utterly dependent on their State-provided safety net . . . and those who provided it were just as dependent on them, in a sense. Their votes kept in power the politicians who handed out government largesse. Neither group could exist, or sustain their present lifestyles, without the other; and both groups leeched on and drained resources from other, more productive elements in society, regarding it as their absolute right to do so.

Sounds like a recipe for long-term social disaster to me . . . whether here, or in the UK, or anywhere else.

Peter