Giant Role Model

Ever-perceptive, the Grit explains why Homer Simpson is a better fertility symbol than the Cerne Abbas Giant, despite the fact that Pagans are upset Homer has moved in next door.

My Masculinity Isn’t Threatened

Visiting my cousin’s blog I was tricked into taking the Star Trek personality test. However, I’m man enough to admit that it showed:

You are Uhura

“You are a good communicator with a pleasant soft-spoken voice.
Also a talented singer.”

I was 10 percentage points off of my childhood hero Captain Kirk, but sadly I was just as likely to be one of those red shirt extras in a landing party that invariably get killed.

Click here to take the “Which Star Trek Character Are You?” quiz…

Why They’re Not Called Grammar Schools Anymore

Today I was teaching about prejudice and discrimination. I tried to get the class to understand the meaning of the word “prejudice”. I asked them what “pre-” meant. No idea. I asked them what a prefix is. No idea.

Did I mention that this is Year 10 and it isn’t a bottom set?

Leaving the topic for a moment, I probed further. I asked if anyone knew what a suffix is. After a long pause, a girl piped up, “Isn’t that a place, like a county or something?” One boy in the class at least knew more geography that he did grammar: “That’s Sussex, you idiot!”

Iranian Entertainment

One of the funniest things I’ve read in the latest Islamic idiocy, an Iranian newspaper has attacked the person of HM the Queen for the Salman Rushdie knighthood.

Jomhuri-ye Eslami called HM “the English hag”  and “the offensive English royal”, and suggested that she personally paid Sir Salman £500,000 to write The Satanic Verses.

As quoted in The Times, “The insult of the English Queen for honouring a knighthood on Salman Rushdie has sent the clear message that from the point of view of England and its Queen, Rushdie’s act is a great and praiseworthy service to the slowly vanishing English Empire which needs to be acknowledged.”

“This act can be seen as a cover-up to distract the public’s attention from the sexual scandals of royal princes and princesses who are infamous and detested even among the English population, a population who cannot wait for the end of this hated monarch regime which stinks of the Middle Ages.”

Hardly does stupidity ever defy intelligent comment in response. Sometimes you just have to let fools speak for themselves.

Wheelchair Access to Crime

I have long been an advocate for equal opportunities for disabled people. For the most part, handicapped people have not had the same access to criminal behaviour. Sure, it’s easy to commit white-collar crime, but the mobility-impaired have not really stepped up when it comes to more traditional felonies.

Anthony Glenn Terry of Lafayette, Indiana has tried to make his mark amongst the criminal element. He rolled into a convenience store and demanded money from the register. News stories do not indicated whether he had weapon, but he must have had some means of convincing the clerk to hand over the cash.

He got about a block away from the scene of the crime before police stopped him.

Terry has previous convictions for drug possession, drunk driving, and remarkably, burglary.

Border Patrol

Living in South Texas, my mother is concerned about issues of border security. As she noted this morning,

 ”We’ve got more illegal aliens inside the United States than outside of it.”

Doing the Math

Over at Mere Comments, Dr Anthony Esolen has posited a multi-level puzzle concerning the nature of infinity.

Many of the responding comments are as enlightening as the puzzle itself as they discuss the theological/philosophical nature of mathematics.

The rest of you may already be familiar with it, but I laughed out loud at one joke I found in the comments:

One day Rene Descartes entered a cafe and sat at a table. The waitress approached and said, “Would you like some coffee, Monsieur Descartes?”
“yes, I would” he replied.
“And some cream with that, Monsieur Descartes?”
“Yes, I would.”
“And some sugar, Monsieur Descartes?”
“I think not” he said, and disappeared.

Perhaps I’m just easily amused.

Doing My Bit for the Cause

Friday was Comic Relief day, with casual clothes at school and everyone encouraged to wear red. One of my form students put this wig on me and nearly everyone in my form got their camera phones out to snap a photo.

This looks a bit like I did at 16, except for the beard, which I didn’t grow until I was 18.

The Great Hope of the GOP

If Fred Thompson runs for President, I might move back to the States just to campaign for him.

Oh, and step aside Chuck Norris. The facts are in about Fred Thompson.

H/T: Provoking the Muse

Rev. Al the Eco-Messiah

Mark Steyn is always funny and always on the money. I do believe he’s outdone himself with today’s brilliant column on just how deep Al Gore’s hypocrisy runs. I almost fell out of my chair.

H/T: a commenter at The Hairy Beast

Down in the Muck

I thought when it came to depravity, the UK was right up there with the best (or worst). No, no, no. I think the Norse have to take that title.

I’m not suggesting in any way that all of Norway should be tainted with the actions of one man, but I’m not even going to describe them, other than to say it was, in just about every sense of the term a “crime against nature“. The story is three years old – but even if it isn’t hot off the press, the shock value is unabated.

H/T to Bad Cop News

All is Quiet on the Inner City Front

Ok, so it’s the small Midlands city front, but why waste a chance to drop in a Bruce Cockburn line?

WordPress may not be the best platform for someone who is borderline OCD. With Blogger, I was blissful unaware that no one was reading my drivel. Now I have stats. I’m constantly checking the stats. Does my public love me?

For some reason, after riding uncharacteristically high, I’ve hit a dip today. This is despite the fact that in between marking Year 9 exams, I’ve put a lot of stuff out there trying to get you tag surfers (and you know who you are, even if I don’t) to click on over.

I could try hiding some stuff under the “More” tag to entice you. Hmm…. Sex? Right-wing politics? Left-wing politics? Devotional content? (I’m still reading Job and Fr Pat’s commentary.) History? (It is the 424th anniversary of the Papal bull Inter gravissimas – the object of derision by Orthodox Christian ever since and the 203rd anniversary of Marbury v. Madison, the bane of Presidents and Congresses ever since.) Humour? (Or maybe I can get more American readers if I write it “Humor”.) Britney Spears? I could be the 4 millionth blog to put up a picture of Bald Britney, or even one with her head shaved. What is it you people want?

“Hi Margaret? Hi, it’s Gordon.”

If you want to find out what’s really happening in the Cabinet, and what one member thinks of others, just be a skilled impressionist. That’s what TV comic Rory Bremner did by ringing up Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett and pretending to be Chancellor (and PM-in-waiting) Gordon Brown.

The tape of the conversation is locked away for legal reasons, but The Sunday Telegraph has published a transcript. The conversation took place on the day before the 2005 General Election.

It demonstrates that Beckett knew what the rest of us had already figured out (as paraphrase by the Telegraph),

- John Prescott’s empire was ineffective and should be broken up

- Patricia Hewitt was “out of her depth”

- Alan Milburn couldn’t “hack” it as party chairman

- Stephen Byers was a “bit of a risk”

And those are some of the people who take collective responsibility for running this country.

Bremner doesn’t just pick on Labour. Back in the mid-1990s, he rang three Tory MPs pretending to be John Major. Like the fake Brown conversation, those tapes never made it to air either.

No Laughing Matter

The Church if England is launching a comedy club in Birmingam. It is not coincidental that they are launching it on Ash Wednesday. They are purposely beginning during Lent, with the intention of making this time less solemn. According to the BBC, “The club is part of a wider effort by the Church of England to make Lent, which began on Wednesday, a bit more fun.”

To me that kind of misses the point of Lent, but then I’m not running the Church of England. Not that anyone is sure who is running the Church of England. But these are all points for another time.

No, I have a much more tangental point to make. It’s not even about fact that it’s not really a Christian comedy club, but rather just a place to have good clean fun without having to listen to swearing. Rather it’s about a commenter on the BBC article who said, “Clean, Christian Comedy. I’m losing the will to live just reading the article.”

What is it to him (or her, it was just signed “MB, London”)? It’s not like he’s being forced to go. It’s not even like Songs of Praise, where he might have to endure three or four seconds of it before he changes the channel. It’s not like the vast majority of comedians don’t pander to his preference for a lowest common denominator constant stream of obscenity.

A Snow of Devotion

Some shrines last the test of time. Others are more transient.

In the latter category is Our Lady of Lampeter. It’s no Walsingham or Lourdes, but it’s definitely worth a click.

No Longer Going Mad

I was browsing the blog of my cousin-in-law and I came across this, relating an awareness experience of cultural change.

Jesus Taken Into Care

And speaking of single-parent families, it’s a good thing Jesus wasn’t born in Britain. Here’s what would have happened.

H/T to Mrs H