I've got my plot at Heathrow. Have you?

---

Not Rape. I found reading that incredibly triggering. I also found that it made me angry. Yes, there is a lot that people can do to protect themselves and make themselves safer. But I am really really squicked by the way that means that victims get blamed when they are raped. Nevertheless, it's a thought-provoking article.

Still no dogsitter that's viable. Mat is ill. His germs have REALLY good timing: they have made him lethargic and useless and unresponsive at EXACTLY the right time; at the moment it's looking like NEITHER of us will be going to conference. Which is going to be a joy for poor old Emma, who is expecting both of us to work...

Still, rather than wailing and gnashing my teeth, I thought it would be better to distract myself by writing a post. It may be somewhat random though. The first item is a clue as to why:

(via addyit - vid link here)

---

And then there is what has become known among Lib Dem Bloggers as Mat's Musical Meme, because even though it's been going round LJ for months, Mat's is the only LJ they read ;)

Answer the questions with the titles of songs by one band/artist. Invite your readership to guess the band.

1) Are you male or female? Poison Girl
2) Describe yourself. Beyond Redemption
3) What do people feel when they're around you? Heartache Every Moment
4) How would you describe your previous relationship? Killing Loneliness
5) Describe your current relationship? Our Diabolikal Rapture
6) Where would you want to be now? Gone With the Sin
7) How do you feel about love? Drunk on Shadows
8) What's your life like? Sleepwalking Past Hope
9) What would you ask for if you only had one wish? Please Don't Let It Go
10) Say something wise. It's All Tears

---

Speaking of Lib Dems, am grateful to James Graham for reminding me of the one thing Jo Crispy-Strips DIDN'T say about the new Lib Dem website which is cool and laudable: YAY Creative Commons! We've got one up on the government, just by understanding the concept.

---

I wonder when the rest of us will learn that Americans don't like being told how to vote? Not anytime soon, it seems.

---

Via purplecthulhu, The Kingsnorth protesters are acquitted under a "lesser of two evils" defence. This could be an interesting precedent...

---

Via puddingcat: comment and I'll give you a letter, list ten things you LOVE which begin with that letter, then post this in your journal and give out some letters of your own. puddingcat gave me a C.

1, Cake.
2, Canines.
3, Captain Slow.
4, Cthulhu.
5, Classic Who.
6, Crappy Old Horror Films.
7, Crappy old Sci-fi films.
8, Crackpot schemes.
9, Cynicism.
10, Cock.

I think those are all pretty self-explanatory... Oh well. Life goes on. Best be off to work.

Apparently lots of people's attention is turning to celebrations of Britishness at this moment, what with us having the Olympic handover, and a shitload of medals and such. The thing is, we Brits aren't that good at unreserved nationalistic pride - witness Steve's suggestion of adopting Mna-Mna for the National Anthem, here. The Last Night of The Proms aside, we like to be faintly self-deprecating and ironic about our displays of patriotic fervour. We don't do all that flashy stuff like other nations. Yes, we know the world would be a better place if we were still running it, but we don't like to rub it in other nation's faces too much. We just cock our national eyebrows at their antics, think about how we had a proper parliament when they were still all hurling rocks at each other, and smile smugly to ourselves.

Obviously, there has to be an exception to every rule, and so it is with this one. There exists an enormous, bright red, supersonic, two-fingered salute to the idea that we Brits don't do flashy, and I saw it cavorting above Torquay today.

The Red Arrows' sole purpose of existence is to show the rest of the world that Our fighter pilots are Better Than Yours, and maybe you can fly excitingly up a canyon at breakneck speeds, but we can do it in formation, nine strong, and trailing red white and blue smoke as we go; and when we get to the end of the canyon we'll wave at the children on our way past. Yes, they are environmentally unsound, and yes, they cost a fortune... But bloody hell they're impressive.

Bollocks to a national anthem (new or otherwise), let's just get the Reds to do a flypast every time we win a medal in 2012!

---

A pretty picture to illustrate something we all knew anyway: roughly 2/3 of the population earn less than "average" wage.



(hat-tip: andrewducker, here)

---

And finally, because I know you love them, a poll, inspired by Mat's dad suggesting we take the scenic route home and then being all stunned when I thought that meant going through the countryside instead of along the coast.

Poll #1249284 Scenic Routes?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which is more scenic?

This news has been creating a stir (they are talking about it on the Today Programme right now). I find it very amusing. In a time when people can work from, bank from, shop from and pretty much do everything from home, Policy Exchange thinks that everyone should move into the overcrowded, overpolluted south-east? Ahahahahahahahaha! Me, personally, I hope lots of idiot scallies fall for this streets paved with gold bollocks. Policy Exchange and their right-wing chums, gazing upon our Northern paradise with envious eyes and wanting us to suffer their level of overcrowding too, are welcome to them.

---

redatt makes a very good point about the assumptions we all make about anonymous posters. I am as guilty of this as anyone, as can be seen by how hard I go at Jo Christie-Smith, here. It's certainly something worth bearing in mind, and a discouragement against making pointless ad hominem arguments against a person whom you know nothing about.

---

Political Betting has a reality check for those of us who are clinging to the hope that we're not heading for a Tory Landslide next election.

---

captainlucy has an impassioned argument as to why they shouldn't remake The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I agree with him. Having new theatre productions of The Rocky Horror Show with new casts is fair enough. A remake with a new cast would be forgiveable, if pointless. But "re-imagining" it, with new songs? Just NO. I can think of a few remakes that weren't horrendous, and fewer still that were better than the original, but the odds are not in the remake's favour, are they?

---

OTOH, and just to be contrary, a remake I am excited about: the Star Trek origins movie. I am so sad I actually bounce up and down in my seat with excitement when you hear Leonard Nimoy's voice about 25 seconds in. And click on Downloads! They've released another four-way-split poster, and I have finally replaced my desktop background. Instead of this, I now have this.

---

Police state story of the day (hat-tip: mooism). I tell you this, Internets, if the rozzers kick my door in and re-arrange my cool wall, there will be trouble. I am NOT having Hammond in anything other than totally uncool!

---

Via Chicken Yoghurt, All is not well at the construction site of Olkiluoto 3, the world’s largest nuclear reactor… All together now? WE'RE ALL DOOMED!

---

And finally, to distract you from the impending nuclear holocaust which will wipe us all out, some morning fun: How many episodes from each classic Doctor can you name in five minutes? I got all of Colin's in 2 minutes 15, which isn't bad to say I am hungover and tired.

Too tired to give you actual thoughts of my own; here are some that belong to other people.

Brilliant internet campaign strategy in Kansas. Yes, THAT Kansas.

Nick Cohen provides a hymnsheet for secularists to sing to.

In soviet Russia, harrassment sexes you. Note to self, don't EVER move to Russia. Meanwhile, in not-soviet USA, bloggers tax government!

Bwahahahahaha! (in case they put content up, The Green Top has capped it).

If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear from a national DNA database, right?

Three from Sp!ked: The Privatisation of Politics, Don't Blame Parents for Cotton Wool Kids (I can't help adding a "because they're sheeple who must follow the crowd!" to that headline), and a nice article about online censorship.

And finally, the Orwell Diaries go live starting tomorrow. Don't forget to add orwelldiaries to your f-list.

They've found the deleted scenes from Metropolis! Sci-fi geeks rejoice! And pray Cthulhu we get a showing of it at the FFW next year...

matgb has a highly amusing post about the hypocrisy of the guy who sued the BBC for showing Jerry Springer: The Opera and upsetting his delicate religious sensibilities (related Facebook group).

Don't watch anything on YouTube which isn't allowed to be there, else you'll get got.

Creationism hits science classrooms in the UK. and we are funding it via the state school mechanism. *I* am paying for some poor kids to be taught complete bollocks as though it is fact. Amused Cynicism makes comment more eloquently than I ever could.

The Torygraph have picked their top ten ever Doctor Who episodes. No surprises that it's Ten-heavy, but perhaps surprising that it contains no Trout. And, obvs, Caves of Androzani should be #1.

James May is amazed that the BBC are upset with him for drinking a G&T, when really, they should be upset with him for putting slices of lemon in it. LIME, James, LIME!

Jeremy Thorpe says Robert Mugabe must die. I guess there's a limit to everyone's Liberalism, eh?

David Davies shows just how pro-liberty he really is. Hey ho. Is anyone actually surprised by this?

Chicky Yog imagines Gordon as a barman and finds him wanting.

The turkeys HAVE voted for Christmas: Mike at PB is right. Any PPC opposing any of the lot who voted for this is going to have a field day.

neohippie posted this video:



... and I had to share it because... well, don't you think the mad dancing dude looks like lanky Lib Dem councillor Jon Ball? Well, except the lanky dancing dude is a better dancer, obviously... ;)

---

neohippie also mentioned that the above video gives her the same sort of warm fuzzy feeling like that "I love the whole world" Discovery Channel commercial, and that vid gives me the warm fuzzies too, so I'm going to repost it (link is here)



Apparently the sainted XKCD get the warm fuzzies from it too, since they have done their own version...

---

And speaking of things that give me the warm fuzzies, Amused Cynicism has reported something that makes me just want to go out and buy a Joss Stone album:

After the show a reporter asked her what she thinks of piracy, and people who download her songs off the Internet. Her response baffled the reporter, as she simply told him: “I think it’s great…” There was an awkward silence for a few seconds, the reporter probably expected to hear something else from her. “Great?,” he said.

“Yeah, I love it. I think it’s brilliant and I’ll tell you why,” Stone continued. “Music should be shared. [...] The only part about music that I dislike is the business that is attached to it. Now, if music is free, then there is no business, there is just music. So, I like it, I think that we should share.”

“It’s ok, if one person buys it, it’s totally cool, burn it up, share it with your friends, I don’t care. I don’t care how you hear it as long as you hear it. As long as you come to my show, and have a great time listening to the live show it’s totally cool. I don’t mind. I’m happy that they hear it.”

Stone went on to say that most artists have probably been “brainwashed” by the record labels, when they discourage their fans from downloading music. Of course, Stone is not the only artist who actually wants people to share their work. Last year rapper 50 Cent made some positive remarks about filesharing, and Nine Inch Nails take it even further, as they upload their music onto BitTorrent sites themselves.

We all know that artists who support filesharing benefit from it, and one day the music industry will wake up to that. But until that day, lets say a big hurrah for Joss and point and laugh at Kiss... And now I have the urge to listen to Steal This Song by Mitch Benn...

---

You know when people tell you that climate change is all made up so that we can be made to pay more taxes? And that the world has fluctuating temperatures anyway, and it's silly to think that man could affect it?

Show them this. Nice hard maths, how do I love thee.

---

One more very cool thing before we slip down the slope of depressingness: The facebook Nexus app. Someone on nwhyte's f-list says they might have the smarts to make this for LJ: I hope they do. Of course, the coolest thing about mine is that it looks like the mothership in LifeForce. YAY for Patrick Stewart made from blood!

---

The results are out for Henley. The Tories won, which is not a big surprise, with a lower turnout and a decreased number majority, but an increased percentage majority. Lib Dems increased their vote share slightly, but not appreciably. But the real story is in the lower orders. Labour came fifth. They lost their deposit. They were beaten by not only the greens, but the bastard nazi party.

As they say on PB, happy first anniversary, Gordon.

* bleak smile *

---

I don't know what I think about this article, except that lots of people should read it.

Despite the vast number of religions, nearly everyone in the world believes in the same things: the existence of a soul, an afterlife, miracles, and the divine creation of the universe. Recently psychologists doing research on the minds of infants have discovered two related facts that may account for this phenomenon. One: human beings come into the world with a predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomena. And two: this predisposition is an incidental by-product of cognitive functioning gone awry. Which leads to the question ...

Is God an Accident?

---

The full text of the Lords judgement on anonymous witnesses is here. I know what *I* think about this - I'm not against witnesses' identities being kept out of the press, but complete anonymity with no cross examining makes evidence very unreliable in my view... There must be some sort of happy medium? I mean, if the only evidence you can get is an anonymous witness, then that's surely not enough to convict?

Or am I old-fashioned in clinging to the idea that one should be innocent until proven guilty? More and more often these days it seems like I am...

---

Ready to get more depressing? There's a Romanian girl. When she was ten, she was raped by her uncle. She didn't find out she was pregnant until it was too late for her to have an abortion under Romanian law, so she wants to come here to have one. Surely nobody sane could object to this? She's ELEVEN, and she was RAPED!

Well, apparently there are people who object to it (check comment two on Unity's post on LC), and I am fully in agreement with innerbrat on their complete lack of sense and morals.

Forcing an eleven year old girl who was raped to carry an incestuous child to term is not protecting unborn children. It is child abuse. There's no other term which fits. It makes me feel sick to the stomach that people can even contemplate it.

---

It occurs to me that maybe I should have started this entry with the depressing stuff, and ended on the cool vids to cheer you up... Oh well. If you're depressed now, just scroll back up... ;)

Paul Anderson's post for Bloggers Unite (mine is here) is an excellent and interesting examination of intellectual property rights as they apply to blogs, and why it's important for them to be enforced - not only for us small fry, but for the MSM as well.

---

Work/Life balance in the sciences and engineering puts women off. No shit Sherlock. It does that in LOTS of professions - I don't think it's science and engineering that need reform, particularly, but our society. Any profession which wants you to work stupidly long hours and have no life is going to put most people off. The only people that are NOT going to be put off are very macho competitive people, who are often, but not always people who identify themselves as members of the male gender. This applies in science and engineering, yes, but also in politics, the law, city finance, etc. etc. etc.

What needs to change is the idea that working part time, or flexible hours, is seen as bad and wussy, while working all the hours Cthulhu sends is seen as laudable and impressive. That's what causes ALL the problems IMHO: people who live to work, rather than work to live.

The thing is, in science, living to work, seeing it as a vocation, is often what gets the results...

---

Much argument has been had about my preferred colour schemes for websites. I find that dark backgrounds hurt my eyes lots less than bright ones; other people have the opposite reaction. Well, at least now I have greenery on my side!

Just as a matter of interest:

Poll #1189357 colour preference
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

I prefer

Guy in a blue shirt, making the same point S Fry made on fryblog recently:



He's right. You all know he's right. Do something about it.

I keep getting time outs when I try to comment the last couple of days. This are meaning I are not as interactive as usual, for which I apologise. To add to my intarwebby woes, Hasbro and Mattel are ganging up on me to take away my main reason for Facebooking. Bastards. I shall be joining the Save Scrabulous group forthwith.

I should be commenting on the US Primaries a lot more than I am, I suppose. After all, everyone else seems endlessly fascinated. The thing is, although I am concerned as to what the eventual result of the election will be, because it will have a huge effect on things here in the People's Republic of Yorksher UK, I can't actually summon up much energy to be enthusiastic about the race. It's a general principle of mine not to worry about things you can do nothing about¹, and there is knack all I can do about the US elections.

Oh well, I have some parcels to post later, and then hopefully I will be putting up a public BPAL swaps post. This will be the perfect opportunity for those of you who have not yet seen the light to see what all the fuss is about (this means you, people I am tagging on Facebook :P). For those of you who are completely unenlightened... I gave up smoking about 18 months ago. Yeah, I know, I still have the odd lapse, but mostly I haven't been a regular smoker for a while. When I was smoking I never bothered with perfume, because (lets face it) when you smoke, all you smell of is fags, no matter what you squirt on. When I started getting my sense of smell back, somebody² mentioned BPAL and roughly outlined the ethos³, and I was intrigued enough to buy a few imps (samples). The very first one I tried⁴ hooked me, and remains a big favourite to this day. Thus, giving up smoking hasn't actually saved me much money...

---

¹ Worrying about something you can do nothing about is a completely pointless waste of time and energy, and I am very lazy and thus have little time and energy to go around. I have therefore tried quite hard to train myself not to do waste time thinking about things which I can't possibly affect. Sadly this means that, as in the case of the US elections, there are some things which one would expect me to be quite enthusiastic about, where I just can't summon up much interest at all.

²I think it was strangefrontier, but it may have been puddingcat

³ Hand-blended, natural perfumes, made from essential oils (and not diluted with alcohol etc. like the big name ones are); esoteric and interesting names; continual production of new and limited edition smells; happy and vibrant community of consumers who swap and sell each other unwanted stuff so there's no waste...

⁴ Monster Bait: Underbed. Yes, trust me to fall in love with a Limited Edition for my first ever BPAL...

I'm being very blonde today and keep getting distracted by shiny things, so depth is not about to happen. Have a random series of unconnected paragraphs instead:

Do you know any Swiss people? Direct them to this petition. Sadly I, as a Brit, can't sign it. But I'm passing the link on in case you know anyone who can.

---

In the light of this article, in which the US government blithely states that it would be quite happy to commit what I would call an act of war against us, when we are supposedly it's closest allies, Davide Simonetti has a convincing argument that American Imperialism isn't on the horizon, but is actually with us and has been for some time (thanks to Amused Cynicism for the link).

---

qi_quote is... well... Quite Interesting today.

Sir Richard Burton, the Victorian explorer and translator of The Arabian Nights spoke 40 languages and dialects. At 19, he could already speak seven of them. Born an Anglican, he converted to Roman Catholicism, then Hinduism, then Sikhism, then Sufism, then Islam, before finally reverting back to Sufism. He also wrote A History of Farting and spent the latter years of his life measuring the cocks of African tribesmen.

I wonder if he'd be able to tell matgb and I why we have both been doing incredibly stinky farts (that smell the same, too) since Sunday night...? It's not like we've had the same diet... [/tmi]

---

I have a friend, raven_oreilly. This friend is American, and was brought up in a household where she was taught to believe certain things. She has been going through the process of questioning those beliefs for a while now; reading lots of books, researching, finding things out and evaluating what she's found. She might decide that the beliefs she was brought up with are entirely correct, she might not. But watching her emerge, butterfly-like, from the restrictive cocoon of received wisdom and into the freedom and daylight of thinking for yourself is a beautiful thing, and it will remain beautiful whatever colour her wings turn out to be.

---

Speaking of beautiful: Sam West. He's beautiful, obviously, but so are his words.

---

Vince Cable Watch Special!

Millennium Elephant (well, his daddies) organised yet another Lib-Dem-Bloggers-meet-top-Lib-Dems thingie, and apparently last night was the turn of the lovely Mr Cable (the previous ones being Ming, Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg). alixmortimer is the first to get her report in (with a fabulous punning title), but others are bound to follow in due course

---

And finally, Vote for Mister Splashy Pants!

I'm pimping today: Amused Cynicism (syndicated at cabalamat2) is a great blog for people who want quick sharp bites at politics. Witness these recent entries. I read a lot of blogs these days, but Amused Cynicism is one of the few that's on my default filter. The reason I'm pimping today? I really love his^# commentary on Chris Dillow's recent piece at Liberal Conspiracy. In a couple of short paragraphs he:

- acknowledges that there are intelligent Tories (I know at least one *winks at puddingcat*)
- postulates that Cameron isn't one, and gives reasons
- concludes with a pithy little jab at Cameron

There is rarely a huge amount of depth in the posts themselves at Amused Cynicism, but the tone fits with me, and there are always links to further and better particulars.

In other news, once I have parcelled up my old phones and sent them off, I will be getting over sixty quid from envirofone. Well-recommended website, especially since bloody YouGov still haven't got me to the magic fifty quid figure for sending a cheque (still, if you all fancy signing up to YouGov and participating in polls that get mentioned on the big blogs, national newspapers and tellynews - and earning me some money in the process - CLICK THIS LINK HERE).

---

^# I make the assumption that he is a he because he somehow reads like a he. If, as is entirely possible given the complete lack of gender identifiers in the user info, he turns out to be a she, I have a large humble pie downstairs and am quite happy to cut myself a slice.

I WANT!!!

How cool is that? A wind-up MP3 player! Shrubby has a wind-up Bayliss radio and she loves it; she loves winding it up, even, because she gets a tangible benefit from the winding action, apart from the pleasingness of the action itself (generally radio 3, bless her).

I want one of those so much. Next on the list, a wind-up mobile phone? That would be fantastic!

Today, for no apparent reason, I made a resolution to give something up.

Yes, I know, it's not Lent; but nor am I Christian. And yes, I know, New Year is 63 and a bit days away (or more, if you're Chinese, or a completely different number if you're of various other cultures/religions), but I felt the need anyway. Perhaps it's down to my vague interest in NeoPagan things; although I'm militantly agnostic, I still find some comfort in ritual and tradition, and Samhain feels like new year to me. So, yes, I'm making a New Year's Resolution.

Today, I Are Be Mostly Givin' Up Chain Stores.

I had a bit of Stuff to Do in town today, and I thought I'd pick up some shopping while I was there. And it struck me: I don't actually NEED to go to the supermarket at all. I can buy bread from the bakery, and cheese from the cheese shop, and meat from the butcher, and there's a little organic and wholefood shop where I can get milk and extra veg... And to do this wouldn't be any more inconvenient or time-consuming than it is to get to and walk around Sainsbury's.

And then I thought about all the ethical benefits of supporting local business, and reducing my carbon footprint, and all that stuff. And I wondered why it has taken me so long to reach this decision? I think of myself as a fairly ethical shopper, I get my organic veg bag, I don't eat much meat (I think I've eaten more meat in the past week at matgb's Mum's house than I did in the previous five or six months LOL)... So why has it taken me this long to decide to do the obvious thing? What is the mental stranglehold that Sainers has over me, that makes me think of it as easier than going round town? It's not. It's further away, harder to get to, and it's not like it's any quicker to get around.

And then a further thought struck me. It's not just food. It's not just supermarkets. It's everything. B&Q. Woolies. Boots. Argos. The list goes on. All of them have little local equivalent stores that are as good, if not better, for most things. B&Q is a case in point. Yes, B&Q is huge, but that just means you have to carry things further to get them out of the shop. At the charmingly-named Oddjobs, they have a little man in a brown coat who does that for you. And they cut things to size free of charge. And anything they don't stock, they can get. The only reason I go to Boots is to get points on my card. But when was the last time I even LOOKED at the points total, never mind went to spend it?

If I buy the Ecover washing up liquid from Sainsbury's, I spend 3p less than if I buy it at the little organic wholefood shop. BUT, once I've bought it once at the wholefood shop, instead of throwing the bottle away, I can take it back there and they will refill it, charge me less, AND I'm being environmentally friendly by refilling the same bottle instead of a new one. This makes sense.

SO.

I have decided to give up chain stores. This means that, in the name of supporting local business and being green, I will not shop in any store that has more than five branches (this will allow me to keep buying things in the local bakery, which has four branches - two of which are in my home town LOL - but will prevent me going into Ninja Games, which will save me money).

Also, in other New Year-ish news, I have the urge (prompted but not caused by idiot neighbour, but the least said about that the better) to re-arrange the house. It's an odd sort of spring cleany feeling... Go figure.