Pope is crazy

This old man must be nuts.

According to this article in the Guardian, the Pope thinks that homosexuality and “gender theories” are a threat to our existence —as severe as environmental catastrophe!

Speaking in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration, Benedict said yesterday the church viewed the distinction between men and women as central to human nature, and “asks that this order, set down by creation, be respected”.

Overpopulation and resource stability are examples of very serious issues. Whether boys kiss boys or wear dresses seems relatively inconsequential. It is very depressing to think that our species is being led by such small minded, petty, and deluded old men at this very crucial time in our history.

Economic Ouchies: Retailers are next!

Articles like this from today’s Guardian should grab our attention.

The prediction is that some big retailers wil go bust in 2009. Given the rise to dominance of the service and retail sectors in the US and UK over the last decade, I wonder what will be left if the big retailers start going down?

From the article:

Nick Hood, a partner at insolvency specialists Begbies Traynor, warned: “There will be hundreds of smaller retailers going bust and up to 15 national and regional chains, including one or two that will really make your eyes water.

“Woolworths was no great surprise, but there are going to be some real ‘Oh my God’ moments, which will leave big holes in the high street.”

Not good.

I saw a UFO

Yesterday (Saturday 9 February, Reading UK) I saw an object in the sky that I was unable to identify. Before saying anymore, allow me to assert a few clarifications and disclaimers. I DID NOT say that I saw an alien spacecraft. I said I saw an UNIDENTIFIED flying object. If I were able to attribute the obejct to spacemen, then I would have identified the object, thus rendering it NOT unidentified. I am not one to assume the most complicated, unlikely explanation where my knowledge is incomplete. Spiritually, I am agnostic. Professionally, I’m a scientist. I’m as sceptical as they come. I spend a lot of time staring at the sky. I’ve seen lots of fantastic phenomena in the sky. Nature provides a beautiful show. What I observed in the sky on Saturday does not conform to any known script that I have read.

I was jogging at 3pm on a residential street. The sky was cloudless, the sun was bright. Looking to northwest, at about 30 degrees above the horizon, I observed a long, dark, stick-like object in the sky, tilted about 45 degrees pointing northeast. The object’s length was about 3-5 degrees. I stopped my jog to observe the object for several minutes. My initial thought was that I was seeing a parachute from an oblique angle, but the object was neither descending nor changing shape. Instead the object climbed 5-10 degrees and drifted 5-10 degrees eastward towards due north. The orientation of the object slowly changed from 45 degrees northeast to 90 degrees to about 45 degrees northwest. The length of the object gradually decreased, as if it were moving away from me. After about 5 minutes of observing this strange ” dark stick in the sky”, I started jogging again. After another minute of jogging, I stopped again to look for the object again, but I could not find it. I really do wish that I hadn’t been so casual about this observation to begin my jog before watching the thing disappear!

I am dumbfounded. Anybody ever see something similar?

cluster headache

In dead of night the shadowman stoops over my bed and draws back my heavy eyelids. In a rank breath warmed by halitosis, he whispers in my ear. “I’ve something to show you, sleepy one. Wake up and see what I have done”. My reluctance to follow, my unwillingness to overcome the inertia of dreaming, makes the shadowman grow impatient. And so he repeats himself, with hotter breath still, leaning his sweating forearm more weightily on my eyelid. “I’ve something to show you NOW, sleepy one. Wake and see what I have done. I know you’ll like it. You always do.” I awake, but he is hiding. I briefly scan left to right, up and down, but none of the shadows in my room are moving.

Before I can lay back down to sleep, the horror begins inside my head. Deep in my brain a knob of bundled nerves are turned slowly, twisting evermore tightly, turning up a volume of throbbing white noise to bleeding levels. The bundle tightens and tightens towards a point of imminent snapping. I think I might die tonight. The throbbing behind my eye amplifies, exciting a terrible resonance across a sheet glass that sits inside my head between my brain and my left eye. With each pounding beat the glass splinters and tears apart the flesh inside my eye. “Now I see what you have done. Now I see what you have done. Now I see what you have done.” I fall to the floor, rocking back and forth. I am a lever whose fulcrum is a nail protruding from the floorboards into my eye. I repeat, over and over, through clenched jaw, tearing eyes, running nose. I repeat: “Now I see what you have done. Now won’t you leave me shadowy one? My head is torn, my death’s begun.”

“Ha ha”, he snickers from an unseen corner. “I knew you’d like what I’ve done. Shall I show you where to find a gun.”

I contemplate this bold conclusion. A gun to my eye, an innocnet squeeze, and the pain could be gone. I hear him laughing. He reads my thoughts. He likes me to want to die. That is the singular purpose of his visit . With a childish laugh he opens a drawer, stands back one step, straightens his back, and points and long slender shadow finger towards the silver barrel of a revolver shining in the moonlight. “Is this what you want?”, he asks. I nod yes.

He has received the answer that he has come to extract, and so just as I pull myself from the floor and step towards the drawer, a laughing rush of wind blows through the room, filling my opened eyes and nose with a cold oxygen that I can feel upon brain’s stem, and flooding the room with a light brighter and whiter than sun on the beach. And with this wind my pain is flushed from my head and out of the window. I watch the red flash whirling for a moment in the window frame, being held and danced with by the shadowman. He smiles widely before his exit. I’ve seen that smile before. He will be back, but only at the very moment I forget about him.

excluding Kucinich

The exclusion of candidate Dennis Kucinich by networks MSNBC and ABC from recent televised debates prior to the New Hampshire and Las Vegas primaries was either poorly thought out or diabolical.

These networks purport to have excluded Mr. Kucinich on the grounds of “viability”. While “viability” is indeed a necessary pragmatic criterion to consider when planning debates, it must be defined and applied very carefully. If applied ambiguously, then the “viability” argument could be mistaken by the public for interference with an election — a very serious offense.

Legislative bodies and political parties have provided a very reasonable and legally testable set of criteria that may be used to assess “viability”. Namely, if you can get (your delegates) on the ballot by collecting the adequate number of signatures, or if you can qualify for federal matching funds, then you would seem to be “viable” in the sense of our democratic process. Why don’t the networks trust these criteria?

The networks are surely aware of the magnitude of influence that media coverage plays in our national elections. It is by virtue of this influence that television media outlets have an incredible responsibility to be seen as passive and not interfering. In fulfilling this obligation, the networks provide to our democracy an invaluable public service. The networks should have erred on the side of transparency and included Mr Kucinich in the debate. With respect to transparency, the perception of failure is failure. ABC and MSNBC should not cast votes before the rest of us.

I, nonsense

I’m feeling a particular lack of enthusiasm for anything these days. That is not to say I am incapable of enjoying myself or that I don’t become rather engrossed in this or that. Rather, I just can’t seem to make myself believe that anything is so very important in my life that I need to get up on a mount and shout about it.

This is not a sufficient reason to be mute. I can blabber along anyway. Why not? That’s what most of us do. We talk total nonsense all day. We do total nonsense all day. We watch others do total nonsense all day. Like mailing letters, watching quiz shows, reading advertizements on the side of taxis, etc. That’s life. Boring, but it’s what we do, day after day. You’re probably a real nutter if you think you’re different. Take celebrities. What do we really want to know about them? Whether so-and-so has an irritable bowel syndrome, what cigarette brand they smoke, whether they prefer dogs or cats, whether they like watching Jeopardy, what time do they wake up, do they listen to the same pop music as I do, etc. etc.

lost farts

New blogs come and go, I know. The danger of digital diary keeping is that with a single, drunk, faithless, or hopeless push of the button… poOF. Total evaporation. Into the stratosphere to swim with lost farts. Such a sad fate for a rich meal prepared with care over hours savoured slowly. That’s what has happened to two of my blogs. One of them was really cracking along. What a shame. Well, let’s see if my very limited knowledge of chemistry can be used to reverse the phase change and turn those farts back into a solid and nutritious form.