'Nother Solent

MY COMPUTER IS BROKEN!

I'm sending this from an internet cafe. And at £1.50 a minute I'm not saying much more than, sorry, everyone for any irritation caused. I hope to be back online in two or three days. Now I know how a Betan feels on Barryar. Bye!

Blogs At Dawn.

Brian Linse, of Ain't No Bad Dude has sportingly just sent me an e-mail to let me know he is about to join battle re my vaguely-sympathetic to Scientologists post below. If it wasn't past my bedtime I would leap into the fray, but it as it is past my bedtime I shall surrender abjectly instead. Not that painful really, as I don't disagree that the Scientologists are bad news, and he doesn't disagree that even they might get lucky and have a point about civil... uurgh, I'm going to bed before somebody starts talking about Waco.

Oops. I said the word. Nobody write in, I can't cope with that stuff.

Another reason for not writing in is that I won't be posting tomorrow, at least not in the morning, 'cos I have committed myself go first thing to a ghastly plastic "designer village" in Braintree, a place that has no other claim to fame except that of having voted for Teresa Gorman as its MP, or was that Billericay, it was but that makes it worse, how awful to be Braintree: a place that couldn't even attract Teresa Gorman, and fail at Christmas shopping.

It's very strange. My friend who's going with me knows quite as well as I do that the Freeport Designer Village ought to have its temples overturned and its fields sown with salt, yet still we go forward, sleepwalking, in search of the cut-price Musto shop, rather as the Conservative party goes forth in search of being in Europe but not run by it.

And So To Bed.

A public service message

from Ken Layne: "Want a free videotape to record eight hours of Lakers games? So do I! Just send an e-mail to these people and ask for your free tape. You're supposed to send them five bucks later, but what is this, a police state?
This tape, sadly, will be used. It will have eight hours of speeches by Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, Mumia Abu Jamal's "new lawyer," etc. But still, an eight-hour videotape for free? That's a good deal. Order now. You can even record 76ers games on this tape ... it's that good!"

Saudi lawyers seek to redefine tobacco companies as "terrorists"

, according to this blandly written BBC News 24 article, Saudi hospital fights tobacco 'terrorists.' So, Mr Ahmad al-Tuwajiri. You're a Saudi lawyer. You want to fight terrorism. And this is how you spend your day?

You, a Saudi, from a nation so lousy with terrorists that you spawned most of the WTC attackers, are going to hire an American lawyer (hey, I can recommend some good firms in New York) to hijack the laws and sentiment against terrorism, for the purpose of ending the last freedom left your eunuchized people, that of cocking a snook at the powerlessness of their lives by poisoning themselves.

I've got to say it. "And even the ranks of Tuscany / Could scarce forbear to cheer." It is impossible not to feel a certain admiration for such chutzpah - to employ a term that you may not like. Mr Ahmad al-Tuwajiri, you will go far.

You know, perhaps you could go work in America yourself. A lot of those New York firms I mentioned have vacancies. Still, don't think you would be entirely without competition in the land of the free. All those lawyers representing health officials who have sought to get gunshot wounds redefined as an "epidemic" so that they can win by stealth policies rejected by voters, they'll be right on your tail.

Scientologists are people too.

I have not the slightest belief in L Ron Hubbard's foolish and occasionally sinister made-up religion of Scientology. The Foundation for Religious Tolerance, the guys who sent out this newsflash, are a Scientologist front organisation. Nonetheless, as Bernard Levin pointed out, the people who need their free speech defending are those who are actually having it attacked and it is true that the French and German governments regularly persecute Scientologists. Here's what the Foundation have to say about a new law in France:

In response to the new French "anti-religious" law, the Church of Scientology in France has taken the lead in filing a legal action in the European Court of Human Rights to have it declared in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The law provides for the dissolution of religious organizations found guilty of two or more relatively minor offenses, either directly or by perceived leaders. For example, an entire church could face dissolution if a leader was found guilty of causing a traffic accident leading to bodily injury. Draconian penalties including heavy fines and prison sentences would be enforced on any parishioner who then attempted to reestablish the Church, even as a different corporation. The law's sponsors have made it clear that they intend to use the law to deny thousands of parishioners their right to practice their religion."

It's funny how the minute you say the word "cult" everybody thinks the cultists turn blue, grow an extra head and trade in their citizenship and humanity for a new status called "cultist." Christianity, my religion, was once a cult.

Looks like the public education system

in my spiritual hometown of San Francisco is a black hole. Money goes in; nothing comes out. This according to the SF Chronicle.. Odd how one of the people cited as causing the mess, Cortines, went on to a new job in the New York public education system, and another, Rojas, came from the same system.

Better a happy Bart than an unhappy Socrates?

Reader Hilder Hartling writes that her son informs her: "... that episode ... does indeed have a positive ending. Bart is indeed destined to be dumb because of the Simpson Gene, but he doesn't seem to mind too much by the end--as long as he can engage in a game with his male relatives wherein they put pots on their heads and run head-first intoeach other. :)

"I doubt that there was any anti-male agenda. Basically, Simpson men are genetically predisposed to being dumb (they throw themselves in front of cars for insurance money, they pretend to be rich people at parties, they cause 17 meltdowns over the course of ten years, etc.). Grandpa Simpson even goes so far as to say that Homer started out smart as a monkey (winning spelling bees and such), but "then his mind started
getting lazy" and he became as dumb as a chimp."

Er...this you call happy?

Education - how various countries score.

This Guardian report claims that UK pupils move close to the top of world class, survey shows By gum, aren't the Koreans and the Finns clever! In contrast, pity poor Mexico and Brazil, solidly in the last two places in all three subjects: literacy, maths and science. On the other hand, perhaps those countries feel better to be in the bottom slot of the premier league than top slot of the minor divisions.

Estelle Morris claims the British move up the rankings is a vindication of "our" reforms. Since any government reforms that would seriously affect the educational achievements of teenagers must have been started years ago under different skies, I deduce she's a closet Tory. Go on, Estelle, come out, we've all known for years. I have mixed feelings about this. Yes, wave the little flag, it is nice to see our boys and girls do better than they used to. No, I still don't like the National Curriculum. It's just plain oppressive even if it does work. For the last ten years or so the great crude club of government power over education has been in fairly skilful hands. Very different people held it once, and might do again.

Still not worried by the EU arrest warrant?

Here is a man who is - Not some blog-obsessed nobody but Norman Lamont, Chancellor 1990 - 1993. Read this Telegraph article, EU police could arrest you at home and jail you abroad. Norman was rather a cutie when Chancellor. One of his private office people once came into his office and found him under the desk looking for a dropped pen. "Hello," said he, "has anyone seen the economic recovery? I seem to have dropped it somewhere."

Nulab wants an end to inconveniences of jury trial.

Read this New Statesman article by Nick Cohen, then pass it on. Sometimes I stop joking and start to be afraid. Instapundit makes some good comments about how this relates to disarming the people. Glenn Reynolds in turn got it from "The Edge of England's Sword" - link on the left.

I have just been reduced to tears by an episode of The Simpsons.

It was the one where Lisa thinks she will turn stupid as she grows up because of the dreaded Simpson gene.* I could try claiming that it was the thought of real people with degenerative diseases that turned on the old waterworks, but that would be a lie. It was the imagined sufferings of bright yellow cartoon characters with big froggy eyes that successfully made me run away to make a completely unwanted cup of coffee. Maybe the mass slaughter of puppets in Captain Scarlet which is on next will cheer me up. Did you notice that they cancelled the first episode after the WTC attack? A little over-sensitive, I thought. Mind you, I'm not surprised they took it seriously: the quality of acting in that show is magnificent.

*BTW, did I detect an anti-male agenda in the way that only the men have the Simpson gene? The actual moment that propelled me into the kitchen was when they looked through Bart Simpson's school book and the little smiley faces turn to frowns as his marks went down. Having missed the last few minutes blowing my nose into a kitchen towel, I do not know whether the episode ends on a note of hope. Is Bart destined to be a nuclear physicist after all? Am I destined to die howling at the existential melancholy of The Clangers? Time will tell.

The best visuals I have ever seen on a blog, bar none

, appear on Damianation. Obviously that old faker Mondrian was nothing but a leech on the bloated subsidy-driven modern art market. But to use his ideas as a backdrop for a Revolt of the Angry Canadians blog, now that is art. Read the stuff about Bobby Fischer by all means, but I do not recommend following the suggestion in the title line, as a lot of these broken-down old chess prodigies have picked up notifiable diseases from toilet seats in Bangkok.

Just a thought

. If "Chairman Arafat" wants to play the game of statehood, someone better remind him of the rules. He's been having a lot of fun recently, what with the TV station and the chats with Tony and getting to call his thugs "policemen" - but all this comes at a price. If he can't or won't exercise the responsibilities of the leader of a state, he isn't one. The bottom line is will he or won't he turn his guns on Palestinian killers.

Whaaat? You mean the Erotic Computation Group isn't real?

Oh, New York Times, say it ain't so.

The Time's they are a-changing.

From the contents page of the website. I don't know if the same error appears in the print version.

TRAVEL
A dusty Paris with palm trees

BY STEPHEN MCCLARENCE

Tunis has smartened up without losing any of it's character.

...while The Times has dumbed down and lost all of it's subeditors.

In your supermarket today: the unorganized militia.

There's a suggestion inRandom Jottings that next time a spree killer comes your way, instead of hiding you should throw things. Impractical? Suicidal? No. About fifteen years ago now shoppers and staff in my then-local Waitrose drove off a couple of thieves armed with shotguns by chucking cans at them. One peeved customer started it, and suddenly it was raining tinned pineapple on the poor old robbers. This wasn't in the script, and exeunt omnes PDQ. I grant you that cans won't always be available and that a suicidal spree killer is a tougher skull to crack - but then your motivation to throw good and hard is stronger, too.

Stoning works. Ask the Afghans.