Posted on May 9th, 2012 by haiku
Worth a thought: Over the last few years, we’ve noticed that nearly every victory the FBI celebrates against terrorism is actually about stopping its own terrorist plots that it feeds to hapless individuals, often nudging them and pushing them down the road to “become” terrorists, despite commonly displaying little to no aptitude for actual terrorism. [...]
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Filed under: haiku, Politics & economics
Posted on May 8th, 2012 by James Higham
As far as humanly possible, I plan to avoid Aviva, not that I’ve much to do with them – only at the train station. The Beeb: Insurance firm Aviva has announced that chief executive Andrew Moss will be leaving with immediate effect. The move comes after the firm suffered the embarrassment of losing a shareholder [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Posted on May 7th, 2012 by James Higham
Two headlines said more than they said, if it can be put that way: Au revoir, Sarkozy! Au revoir, austerity! New Euro crisis as French and Greeks reject cuts and vote for return to ruinous spending … and: Hollande victory gives Europe new direction John Lichfield: Humbled Sarkozy is the first President to miss out [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Posted on May 7th, 2012 by James Higham
Yesterday I wrote a post directed to a woman in Australia who’s been appointed by the AFL, at football patrons’ expense, to stop discrimination among footballers. In her article, she goes on about “the alpha male” using terms like having to “engineer” change and regurgitating virtually the whole feminist lexicon. It’s a post about hypocrisy, [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Posted on May 6th, 2012 by James Higham
At a little after 19:00, our time, the result [above] was given. The British press had it an hour earlier but French papers weren’t permitted to tell it until 20:00 their time. Predictable, of course. It’s almost as if people only want a two way race and to swing first one way, then the other. [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Posted on May 6th, 2012 by James Higham
JD put up a post yesterday on eyes being the window of the soul and an interesting piece in the Mail also said yesterday that the size of a predator’s eyes match its speed, e.g. the big cats.
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Posted on May 6th, 2012 by James Higham
Decisions, decisions – whether to address this ridiculous article in some detail or whether to just let it go. OK, so let’s get down to it. People need to be educated about what respect for women means. It’s not about opening the door first or some other display of chivalry. It’s about women truly having [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics, Society & human issues
Posted on May 5th, 2012 by James Higham
Lighten up a bit, someone said two days ago. Lighten up? Y-e-e-e-s-s-s … Politics This from a Telegraph commenter [by the way, they are currently logging me in then when I try to comment, they ask me to log-in, even though it says above I'm logged in] sums it up: Boris won because he is [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Posted on May 4th, 2012 by James Higham
21:11: If you look at these: Boris Johnson CON … 861,367 … 44.88 Ken Livingstone LAB … 753,436 … 39.25 Jenny Jones GRN …86,568 … 4.51 Brian Paddick LD …80,005 … 4.17 Siobhan Benita IND …73,362 … 3.82 Lawrence Webb UKIP …38,790 … 2.02 Carlos Cortiglia BNP …25,839 … 1.35 … maybe I’ve misunderstood but [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Posted on May 4th, 2012 by James Higham
You didn’t read that wrongly. Just caught a report in le figaro on the tasteless Argentinian ad everyone’s now probably seen. As the French have traditionally been opposed to British territorial interests, I groaned and had a look at the comments and sure enough, there was some young ignorant French boy agreeing with Argentina. But [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Posted on May 3rd, 2012 by James Higham
What is it with these people and their fixation? Why do they also associate with riff-raff like Barry Soetoro? As many as 100 high school students walked out of a national journalism conference after an anti-bullying speaker began cursing, attacked the Bible and reportedly called those who refused to listen to his rant “pansy assed.” [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Posted on May 3rd, 2012 by James Higham
You just knew it had to be Menschioned, didn’t you? You knew it couldn’t just be let go. Take three or four reasons why this can’t be allowed to rest – choose from, say, misogyny, hatred of all women, that there is rampant State/feminist prejudice at this time or at the sheer injustice and wilful [...]
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Filed under: History & Culture, Politics & economics, Society & human issues
Posted on May 2nd, 2012 by Moggsy
Who here plays the Sims? Probably not many and only the girls. If you don’t know it is a simulation of society, you get to follow and influence your own Sim person. A bit like paying with dollies, but you get to be the dolly. There are lots of modules: The Sims, Hot Date, The [...]
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Filed under: Moggsy, Politics & economics, Society & human issues
Posted on May 1st, 2012 by Chuckles
Posted on May 1st, 2012 by James Higham
Last year, the current captain of the football club I support was rubbed out for four weeks for striking another player. Our club was up in arms because a] it had not been directly observed, except by those in the crowd nearest the incident b] the video footage was obscured. The “judges” in the case [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics, Society & human issues
Posted on April 30th, 2012 by James Higham
You probably saw it at Torrent Freak, about the band All Shall Perish [guess which genre?] who signed to the German label Nuclear Blast. So you’d expect there’d be management issues, people being ripped off, that sort of thing. Worse. Some Panamanian outfit, World Digital Rights, is suing the band’s fans: World Digital Rights demands [...]
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Filed under: Music, Politics & economics, Society & human issues
Posted on April 30th, 2012 by James Higham
Mark Wadsworth has a guestposter, Lola, who has up a vid: It goes into exploitation of workers and what the NMW means for the lower rungs, i.e. the sack. Not in dispute in a full time sense but it also means that those already on the minimum wage would have to add cleaning to their [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Posted on April 29th, 2012 by James Higham
“How Science Works,” written by David Goodstein, Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at CalTech, is one of those pieces almost none of us know about and yet the ramifications of his little tome spread far and wide. A Slashdot comment mentions: “A few months back, the National Research Council and the Federal Judicial Center [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics, Religion & Philosophy, Society & human issues
Posted on April 29th, 2012 by James Higham
This is how I imagine Mary Magdalene – I would both follow her and lead her. In Matthew Henry: an 18th century perspective on women, Churchmouse mentions the contribution of women to the church from the earliest days, sometimes in a leading role. There are a number of issues all mixed in here. What do [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Posted on April 28th, 2012 by James Higham
While the death of Meredith Kercher is pretty much off most people’s radar by now [the public only remember for some time], the case itself is not off the radar. In fact, it’s very much on it. There is an appeal to the Supreme Court right now and before discussing John Kercher’s book, let me [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics, Society & human issues
Posted on April 28th, 2012 by James Higham
What does one do when laid low by the dreaded lurgy? Take a quiz on French political life in April, of course: I’d like to have left the post like that but sadly, I can’t claim the 10/10. It was actually 4/10 and I had help with the last one. Still, it was fun. You [...]
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Filed under: History & Culture, Politics & economics
Posted on April 27th, 2012 by James Higham
Russell’s treatises on formal logic were taken, in my university days, as the models underpinning debate. The good thing about such debating was that it usually had an adjudicator but when it didn’t, then the formal logic kicked in as arbiter. Virtually all debate in the blogosphere fails to follow these guidelines but at least [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Posted on April 26th, 2012 by James Higham
In a comment on this Palestine thing, I mentioned that Dearieme was wrong but also right. Hell, I’m no relativist as a rule but in this case, it depends entirely on whose history you’re reading. On this topic, there are no neutral histories, not even from the British and Americans. The task is in putting [...]
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Filed under: History & Culture, Politics & economics
Posted on April 26th, 2012 by Chuckles
Posted on April 25th, 2012 by Wiggia
Cynthia Bower, Chief Executive of the Care Quality Commission , forced to resign for gross incompetence of CQC I haven’t written on a serious subject on here simply because there are others far more qualified and accomplished than me at putting down in words their thoughts and solutions than I am, I was nudged into [...]
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Filed under: History & Culture, Politics & economics, Wiggia
Posted on April 25th, 2012 by Moggsy
OK, Another “hard hat” guest post. Blame some of this one on: http://nourishingobscurity.com/2012/04/23/a-day-for-england/ What really is the point of Parliament? I am asking this sort of seriously. I know people are always saying it is pointless ^_^ I am not being anti-democratic. No. What I am thinking is how many laws does anyone need – [...]
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Filed under: Moggsy, Politics & economics
Posted on April 24th, 2012 by Wiggia
If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to have the opposite effect, it’s the appointment of a Minister for Snow, a Drought Czar hosepipe ban or anything else they want to control. The opposite is guaranteed to occur, e.g. the announcement this morning that we are about to get a month’s rain in five days, on [...]
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Filed under: Music, Politics & economics, Wiggia
Posted on April 24th, 2012 by James Higham
Posted on April 24th, 2012 by James Higham
In the light of the Aviva “error”, when HR sacked an entire staff whilst trying to sack one, many things were said in comments. I’ve tried to accurately reflect the broad range of views on HR – if there were 70 bad comments and 30 nice, then I tried to put in 7 bad and [...]
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Filed under: Politics & economics
Posted on April 23rd, 2012 by James Higham
This is not isolated. As mentioned in the post at OoL, written as a result of a request from a lady whose mother is in one of these, the problem is endemic. The links alone in that post illustrate the problem. While the low pay, low staff to patient ratios and general conditions are appalling, [...]
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Filed under: Earth and cosmos, Politics & economics, Society & human issues
