[virginity] a market commodity

Concerning this girl who is auctioning her virginity:

The woman, who has earned a bachelor degree in women's studies and now wants to start a master's degree in marriage and family therapy, is hoping the bidding will hit $1 million.

Marriage and family therapy? Hmmm. Also, who would pay that sort of cash in the first place in a supply soaked market? And lastly - though I took a basic course in Female Anatomy 101, I wonder how she plans to establish ... well ... if she ... well ... best leave this now.

Think I'll offer up my virginity for £99.99.

Any takers?

[invest] in the merry-go-round

Think I converted mine just in time.

And yet there is this.

What should one invest in if one had more than a hundred or two?

[lhc] to serve man ... a cookbook

Been on the first jog around the blogs today and certain things became apparent in the public and blogger perception of the non-event.

May I put it this way?

If I had a multi-billion project under way and public perception was a very large factor in its continuation, if I had quite a few round table partners and they had certain expectations of a return on their investment, if I had subscribed, long ago, to a game plan for Europe and beyond, along with many others, then I'd manage the release of the information to the press through carefully selected channels.

Where I couldn't control this, I'd make sure the project began inauspiciously, innocuously, just a zap around the complex and no doomsday whatsoever. The more ambitious parts of the project would perhaps not form part of the press releases to my more sympathetic journalists and media icons and would not be scheduled for some weeks.

This would be a very cynical approach, I confess, relying, as it does, on the first premise that "if it hasn't happened today, it ain't gonna happen" and on the second premise that "the public needs its news here and now, after which it loses interest".

Of course there is no cynicism in this project whatsoever, just good old science and altruism. It's all to serve man.

[thermopylae] near naked men with swords

Just finished watching "300" and decided to do a Gracchi here. Now I realize this battle has been much on your minds lately so it's time to rush you the post-mortem.

You know, of course, that the Chili Con Carne Festival had almost cost the Battle of Marathon, when the Spartans couldn't leave home and arrived late and now, when Xanadu decided to try his luck one more time by building some ridiculous bridge called Hell's Pont, which he then ordered beaten with sticks, the Spartans were forbidden to travel and so the free world had a little problem on its hands.

Not to worry.

King Leonardo [da Vinci] gathered a bodyguard of 300 interestingly dressed men and had a cunning plan. He'd defend the pass of Thermalundies, which was only 20 men wide and so could rest his rear end and generally get into the blood, gore and slaughter thing up front, piling the Persian bodies sky high in a wall.
Nice people.

They fought really well, the Geeks, forming their shields into a Phallus and preventing the assault from hurting them but then the deformed Eponymous Tracheotomy betrayed them to Xanadu by showing him a back passage behind the Geeks and that was the end of the ball game.

The Geeks did go down after that, initially at least but Xanadu who, as a God-warrior king-type, proved himself no sailor, lost his fleet and the conquest of Europe was over.

There were some great lines in this saga and an awful lot of rhetoric. When Leonardo was asked by his wife the Gorgon what she should do while he was away, he said, "Marry a good man," and when asked to lay down his arms, he answered, "Come and get them." When told that the Persian arrows would "block out the sun", he answered, "we shall fight in the shade."

You have to admire his sense of humour really.

Pot of chili sauce for the Con Carne Festival

[prosecuted] for saving a life

You're probably sick to death of reading of the latest bureaucratic turn of the screw but we were talking about getting authorization and clearance for this and that.

Currently renewing my driving licence and doing other little ID things, we were discussing a hypothetical question of what you'd do if you were not certified in a critical situation, e.g. a Health and Safety issue.

There was a real case, some time back, of an ambulance driver in this situation and this one about the coastguard is getting closer and this one is even even closer but this is the scenario we were thinking of:

Imagine you were at your local swimming baths and a regular swimmer sees a child in difficulty at the bottom of the pool. There are a handful of locals around but the pool attendant is up the stairs at this second and as the swimmer knows, pools are noisy and the attendant is out of range. The swimmer is not technically qualified [lifesaving certificate long out of date] but he realizes that the action needs to be fast.

He gets the nearest person to go [walking, not running] and get the attendant, he calls out if anyone's a qualified lifesaver but no one's listening, of course. He jumps in and remembering his lifesaving drill when he was a kid, he manages to get her up to the surface, just as the pool attendant takes over.

He's prosecuted for assuming duties he's no longer qualified for and has to face up to the local magistrate.

Would you have dived in like that or would you have done it differently?

[middle-east update] a peace of sorts

Just to bring us up to speed on the Middle-East, the most recent news I could get was August 26th:

Occasional rocket attacks from the Palestinian enclave, controlled by radical group Hamas, have continued despite a ceasefire agreed on in June. Israel usually responds by shutting border crossings with Gaza, and preventing humanitarian supplies to the region, home to 1.5 million people.

Other news collected in passing:

Israel is developing, by means of visas and passes, a separation of the two states on the West Bank and Gaza, involving three month time periods for travel, the necessity to be married and to be working for humanitarian causes.

... and:

The PRC said the rockets it displayed recently are but a drop in an ocean of surprises in store for Israel should it attempt to reoccupy Gaza, from which it withdrew in 2005. "We have been under siege for the last two years," said Ibrahim Dahman, the only militant who allowed his face to be videotaped, since he already is wanted by Israel. "The only thing left is for them to invade and kill us."

However, all is not well in Iran:

Teheran's former nuclear negotiator Hasan Rowhani said that Ahmadinejad's policies have done more harm than good in his three years in office, adding that the hard-line leader missed out on "golden" opportunities to develop the Persian state.

Speaking to a meeting of the Moderation and Development Party on Monday, Rowani singled out Iran's high inflation - a fact despite huge oil revenues.

He said Ahmadinejad failed to privatize the economy as required under the constitution and didn't use opportunities at the international level to improve Iran's global standing.

Apart from that, the nuclear issue in Iraq and Olmert's corruption charges seem to be the main news.

All in all, in Middle-Eastern terms, it's non-news just now. For how long? And the big question - why won't the Arab states just let Israel be as a nation? Naive question in one sense but fundamental in another.

[business wear] on the tube in this gear

Oh yeah!

This is a must for going for job interviews. Throw away your ASDA George outfits with the variegated stitching and get into this, man.

There's a nice little pink number too if you'd prefer. Sensible wear for sensible people. I can see our fellow bloggers in it now.

[around bloghounds today] the people are hurting

Richard Havers:

It's about fairness and unfairness. It's about providing support to those who played by the rules but are struggling with rising prices. It's about making sure that a fair chance is provided to all.

Andrew Allison:

Like many of you I am sick and tired of being described as a racist the moment I bring up the subject of immigration. Articulate some views about gay adoptions that do not go along with the liberal consensus, and you are described as a homophobe and are squeezed out of the debate. If you don't go along with the jolly view that everything is wonderful in EU land, and you are a bigoted, little Englander. Politics has gone from the grassroots and is ruled centrally.

Sackerson:

All I'm looking for is a FISCAL conservative... And by the way, whatever happened to "moral suasion"? Why does everything have to be banned or compulsory? ... And maybe US demographics, like here in Britain, would be very different if the slaughter of the innocents hadn't happened - but we are all bending under the weight of a thousand daily coercions.

Cassandra:

With Palin we say, "pray (...) that there is a plan, and that plan is God's plan." That would be far much more attractive than the "world historical events" cabal who pretend their machinations are Acts of God, while they are actually thought up and steered by their own One World Totalitarian Collective agenda.

Daily Referendum:

Before I go any further I want to point out that neither Harry (to my knowledge) or I are raving anti Muslim loons. I am however worried that we could be running two very different systems of law. We have a system of law in this country and it should apply to every citizen regardless of race, colour, sex or religion. This story is running in the Sunday Mercury.

Debacle:

Having given up trying to have any decent, normal, honest, straightforward dialogue with public bodies, the obvious thing to do - apart from exiting the planet - was to write. The vital importance of keeping good records became obvious: these public bodies are exceptionally skilled at obfuscating and distorting and sending you off on wild goose chases and round and round the roundabout that, without a clear record, they can also send you round the bend. I reckoned that I may as well share it all publicly.

[implosion] might not be such a bad idea

When the experiment begins soon after 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) on September 10, disaster scenarists will have little to work on. In the first tests, a particle beam will be shot all the way around the LHC channel in just one direction. If all goes well, collisions might be tried within the coming weeks, but at low intensity. Any bangs at this stage, said one CERN researcher, "will be little ones."

Right. I don't actually believe Europe is going to implode from this thing and yet did anyone see Terminator 3, with Skynet?

Different thing of course. isn't it? That one was about machines becoming sentient. OK, what about Deep Blue Sea? Saffron Burrows represents all that we love to hate - a know-all scientist who puts the experiment and funding before human lives, so much so that they had to redo the end of the film:

In the film's original cut, McAlester [Burrows] lived, but test audiences made it clear how much they disliked the character (going so far as to shout "Die, bitch!" at the screen) as her actions had caused all that had gone wrong. Thus, the decision was made to re-shoot the ending so that her character died.

The Mummy series springs to mind in this context as well. By the way, does anyone know Saffron Burrows' real life persona - interesting. Read her mini-biography.

Real life is a bit as if we're all living in some giant progressive tragedy where we know who the baddies are and the supposed goodies [humanity] and it all inevitably occurs, despite warnings. Doom and gloom soothsayers are labelled, mocked and vilified, then it all happens and the scientist supposedly says, as Woodrow Wilson did, "What have I done? What have I done?"

Does anyone know of one of these experiments where it actually ... er .. worked and brought peace, love and really good things to humanity?

[birmingham] and stephane dion

The beauty of Birmingham

How well do you speak English?

Canada's main opposition leader Stephane Dion says his biggest handicap as he campaigns for votes in the country's snap elections is his difficulty communicating in English, which he blamed on a "hearing problem." "I have a hearing problem and it may be linked to that," the Liberal leader said in an interview with the Globe and Mail newspaper. "I have difficulty to isolate sounds," he said. "It may explain the fact that the music of the language is difficult for me to catch."

Question - should that be "to isolate", "in isolating" or should another construction have been utilized? No matter.

Speaking of Brummies, we were discussing them today and the question arose of their accent. "Oh, they're much improved now," my friend corrected me.

"Well that's nice to hear," I replied. "I always considered that my strangulated accent was not the worst accent in the British Isles but now I see that it is."

'Yes, it's much improved now, Birmingham," he continued. "They've done the city centre up quite nicely, in fact."

You'd have to agree with that. Look at how spic and span those canal boats in the picture [above] look. I've just had the most brilliant idea how to overcome my current job flow crisis - set up a Birmingham Narrowboat Holiday Company, funded by Northern Rock.