Glob-a-log

A long, long time ago human folly had a noble face. There was a tall man on an old horse; a servant on a donkey. Indeed, Cervantes’ Don Quixote (and Sancho Panza.)

There have been operas and ballets, poems, songs and plays. Asterix meets him in Spain. Picasso and Doré have done the Don proud as well.

Today though, most folly is just crass, and ugly – sometimes, extremely so:

A Fort Walton Beach woman was arrested last week for beating up a pregnant woman over a beach towel.

Mary Riley, 45, was charged with aggravated battery for attacking Lauri Kortum Thursday behind El Matador Condominiums on Okaloosa Island.

Kortum and witnesses said Riley wanted the beach towel Kortum was sitting on, according to the arrest report from the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office.

We also have mass folly – people following religious and/or political crooks and dumbbells, and always coming back for more…

Some of it can be entertaining – like those complaints by Australian TV viewers of the Concert for Diana, about two TV commercials, directly following the performance of US rap artist P Diddy:

Diddy’s set ended with an ad break that opened with a promotion for White Lady Funerals, with the slogan “A woman’s understanding from very special women”.

That was followed by a road safety ad, which warned that “speed limits are there to save lives”.

The unfortunate sequence seemed particularly out of place during a concert to commemorate the life of Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris 10 years ago.

Quite. And talking of road safety – and folly, obviously:

A bus driver in England has been fired for playing the computer game Grand Theft Auto — while at the wheel.

Steve Allcock was reported by terrified passengers who heard the screams of characters being butchered as he drove between stops.

Bosses fired him after on-board CCTV footage showed he had the handheld device on his knees.

Still, individuals always loose out against institutional or bureaucratic folly:

After nearly two years, thousands of truck miles and $12.5 million in storage costs, a cold relic of the flawed Hurricane Katrina relief effort is going down the drain.

The federal government is getting rid of thousands of pounds of ice it had sent south to help Katrina victims, then north when it determined much of the ice wasn’t needed. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had been hanging on to the ice in case it was needed for another disaster, but decided to get rid of it because it couldn’t determine whether it was still safe for human consumption.

“We just didn’t take any chances,” FEMA spokeswoman Alexandra Kirin told the Gloucester Daily Times.

Indeed, Heaven forfend you would – or would have used your bloody brains before you started out on this demented Odyssey.

Ah, for those good old days of Don Quixote – but they are gone and we are left with modern horrors, like children’s TV programmes, featuring murderous mice and killer bees.

So, no more noble knights, or brave and foolish quests. It’s like the poet says,

No more giants

Rossinante,
take me to a hospital,
muffle-hoofed
and not too eager to oblige.
It will be my final stay,
my final stage.

The crazed man fighting white-coats:
it’s not the noblest of quests
but one of means,
one that will do;
a grinding to a halt,
not worthy of a song.

Rossinante,
having borne my lonely madness
for so many years,
my friend,
deliver me from dreams and longing:
this puppet’s work is done.

Take me home,
Rossinante,
just take me home.

Russia plunged relations with the West into a new low as President Putin tore up a landmark arms control treaty.

The Kremlin chief’s announcement that he was suspending Russia’s participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty came as Britain’s relations with Moscow are expected to return to the Cold War days of the 1970s this week.

Sounds grim – but indulge me, for a bit.

Scientists at the University of Bern discovered that,

If rats benefit from the kindness of strangers they are more likely to assist an unfamiliar rat in future. In doing so, they provide the first evidence of an unusual form of altruism that appears to violate evolutionary theory.

Back to those more bothersome bipeds though. There’s a philosopher, John Gray – not to be confused with the walking & talking bit of puke that goes and, more’s the pity, writes his nauseating little self-help books under the same name. The philosopher Gray also publishes books but he’s more into stirring up trouble than self-help:

History has not ended, as Francis Fukuyama fatuously predicted, in a Utopia of contented globalised commerce. According to Gray, what lies ahead is a series of terminal convulsions. On an overheated earth, expiring humanity will squabble over diminished resources, goaded to frenzy by politicians who, like George W Bush, take orders from a God created by their own demented delusions. Failed states will go on trafficking in nuclear or biological weapons, and the person beside you on the Tube might be one of Armageddon’s special agents, an apocalyptic freelancer. We can expect the breakdown of civil society to begin at any moment.

Not much hugging or alligning planets here. Right, back to Putin, who, indeed,

signalled that Russia was on a new and explosive collision course with Nato when he dumped a key arms control treaty limiting the deployment of conventional forces in Europe.

Putin said Moscow was unilaterally withdrawing from the Soviet-era Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty because of ‘extraordinary circumstances that affect the security of the Russian Federation’, the Kremlin said. These required ‘immediate measures’.

However, that does not necessarily mean, as the Daily Mail suggested, that it’s those evil Russians again, breaking treaties all over the place and setting back that old nuclear doomsday clock again – or bringing it forward: pick your own garbled metaphore.

Consider this (old) newsflash:

US President George W Bush has officially announced that the US will withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia.

“I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government’s ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue-state missile attacks,” Mr Bush announced following a meeting with his National Security Council.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the move was not unexpected but that he considered it a “mistake”.

Well, the world, by now, is quite used to Mr. Bush’s little mistakes. Taunting a weakened but still stubborn and paranoid Russian bear wasn’t the first or the worst of his foreign ‘policy’ gaffes.

You can say one thing about old Double Duh though; he is persistent:

Declaring the need for a timely decision on Kosovo’s desire for independence from Serbia, the United States threatened Friday to seek a solution outside the United Nations if Russia persisted in blocking Security Council action.

“We are determined to move forward, either within the Council or otherwise,” Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, said in a conference call with news agency reporters.

Yes, that worked ever so well in Iraq.

Still, if you’re a born-again alcoholic with your finger on the red button, why should you even try to go for rational?

Mr Bush revealed the extent of his religious fervour when he met a Palestinian delegation during the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egpytian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, four months after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: “President Bush said to all of us: ‘I am driven with a mission from God’. God would tell me, ‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’. And I did.”

Mr Bush went on: “And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, ‘Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East’. And, by God, I’m gonna do it.”

(One wonders though what Gordon Brown, the new prime minister of Great Britain, thinks of all of this. His predecessor, Tony, was also big on God – and may now have a go at becoming Pope. It’s less sure that the thoroughly Scottish Brown enjoys all this God talk. Still, he will have to live and deal with it, one way or the other.)

Anyway, back to Bush and his merry pack of Christian Cuckoo Clowns.

Or, no.

There are more religious nuts in the world’s wild woods. Take that lovable loon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran. Yet another guy who has God whispering sweet nothings in his ear,

Among the true believers is Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who predicted with “no doubt” his June election victory, months in advance, at a time when polls gave him barely 1 percent support. The president also spoke of an aura that wreathed him throughout his controversial UN speech in September.

“O mighty Lord,” Mr. Ahmadinejad intoned to his surprised audience, “I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.”

Isn’t it nice to know that Mr. Bush and Mr. Ahmadinejad are now engaged in this meaningful discussion about all sorts of important issues? All of which can be boiled down to that one, central question: whose God has the biggest dick?

Still, if it all ends in tears and yet another dirty, little war, the rest of the world can take some comfort from the fact that it won’t change much in the grand scheme of things.

According to the Economist magazine,

The United States and Iran finished in a virtual dead heat, and way down the list, in an assessment of the peacefulness of 121 countries.

The United States placed 96th and Iran came in 97th on the global index released Wednesday by the magazine.

So, the worst thing that could happen was that they end up as number 120 and 121 – but happily, when the clouds clear and all the bodies are buried and the survivors go, What the fuck happened here? Bush and Ahmadinejad will still have their own personalised God to talk to – and their countries will still know the same relative, twinned peacefulness as before.

Overall though, it must be said that rats do seem to be somewhat better at living together in some kind of harmony than we are – but then again, they probably don’t have Gods whispering in their ears all the bloody time, and that must make their lives considerably easier.

Invading other countries is not something you should do lightly – or for fuzzy reasons, like the existence of

a) possible WMDs
b) an evil bogeyman leader
c) spurious links to certain terror organisations
d) a universal wish for democratic rule.

Be that as it may, the US, with a little help from their friends, did invade Iraq, and they will have to find a way to sort out the mess they helped to create.

It would be hilariously funny, if it were not so serious but president Bush is still in denial (or fuzzy thinking) mode – even though the end game is nigh,

George Bush has tried to bolster crumbling Republican support for his war strategy in Iraq, telling a public meeting in Ohio that the surge of extra troops had to be given time to work.

Mr Bush said withdrawal from Iraq would give the al-Qaeda terrorist network a haven from which to plot against America.

Problem is: al-Qaeda? Who are these terrorists we are talking about actually?

Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.

About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said.

It’s like that old Fawlty Towers episode: ‘The Germans’. With Bush playing the Cleese character, desperately trying not to mention the war to his German guests – read: not mention Saudi Arabia within hearing distance of the American public.

It’s not the first time the Bush government has had to protect the ‘good name’ of its Arab oil buddy. After 9/11 ugly (but informed) rumours went around that Saudi Arabia had financially sponsored al-Qaeda, as part of a gentleman’s agreement that the terror group would not operate inside Saudi Arabia.

So, despite the fact that Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and 15 of the 19 terrorists who committed the attacks of 9/11 came from there as well,

a hasty United States enquiry into the attacks said it had found no evidence the Saudi government funded al-Qaeda. It also cleared the wife of the Saudi envoy to the US, who had been alleged to have given the 9/11 hijackers money.

“The commission dispels two outrageous myths about Saudi Arabia,” said Saudi official Adel al-Jubeir.

Well, hurrah…

Or maybe not.

Last year, a report by Freedom House concluded that the Saudi Ministry of Education textbooks promoted an ideology of hatred towards non-Wahhabi Muslims.

“What is being taught today in Saudi public school textbooks about how Muslims should relate to other religious communities will poison the minds of a new generation of Saudis,” said Nina Shea, then director of Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom.

The textbook commanded students to “hate” Christians, Jews, “polytheists” and other “unbelievers,” including non-Wahhabi Muslims; taught students that “Jews and the Christians are enemies of the [Muslim] believers;” and the spread of Islam through jihad is a “religious duty” among other promotion of religious hatred.

In addition to religious intolerance, sponsors of the new amendment are also angry over Saudi Arabia’s support for the anti-Israel Palestinian group Hamas – which the United States considers a terrorist group and which has taken control of the Gaza Strip. Lawmakers say Hamas received more than half of its financing from Saudi Arabia.

Still, Saudi Arabia isn’t sponsoring al-Qaeda. Just Hamas. Such a relief… Well, if that’s all, can we just…?

Ah, not quite all, no:

The United States has largely eliminated the infrastructure and operational leadership of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network over the past five years. However, its ideological offspring continue to proliferate across the globe.

American efforts to combat this contagion are hamstrung by the fact that its ideological and financial epicenter is Saudi Arabia, where an ostensibly pro-Western royal family governs through a centuries-old alliance with the fanatical Wahhabi Islamic sect. In addition to indoctrinating its own citizens with this extremist creed, the Saudi government has lavishly financed the propagation of Wahhabism throughout the world, sweeping away moderate interpretations of Islam even within the borders of the United States itself.

The Bush administration has done little to halt this ideological onslaught beyond quietly (and unsuccessfully) urging the Saudi royal family to desist. This lack of resolve is rooted in American dependence on Saudi oil production, fears of instability in the kingdom, wishful thinking about democracy promotion as an antidote to religious extremism, and preoccupation with confronting Iran.

What’s more,

The Saudi Wahhabi clergy gets a hefty slice of the national budget and raises billions through the zakat, a 2.5 percent levy of income required by the Koran of all true believers. This extreme sect of Islam named two members of the axis of evil — America and Israel — long before President Bush came up with his three candidates: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Iranian theocracy and Kim Jong-il’s North Korea.

Since 1979, the Wahhabi establishment has spent an estimated $70 billion on Islamist missionary work, ranging from the funding of some 10,000 madrassas in Pakistan to the construction of thousands of mosques and seminaries and community centers all over the Muslim and Western worlds. Jihad, or holy war, against Western heathens was the fundamentalist creed.

Okay, so Saudi Arabia is sponsoring Hamas – and those Wahhabi guys. But they don’t pay al-Qaeda, right? So, it’s not that bad…

Ah, but it is…:

Al Qaeda’s reliance on charities to raise, mask, transfer and distribute the funds it needs, has been put under close scrutiny by counter-intelligence and enforcement agencies around the world. They have put together a composite sketch of the activities of more than 50 international and local charities. Many of these charities are, or were associated with some of the major Islamic umbrella organizations headquartered in Saudi Arabia, including, but certainly not limited to, the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), the Benevolence International Foundation, the al Haramian Islamic Foundation, Blessed Relief (Muwafaq) Foundation, and the Rabita Trust. These organizations have branches worldwide and are, or were, engaged in activities related to religious, educational, social and humanitarian programs. But we now know that they were also used, knowingly or unwittingly, to assist in financing Al-Qaeda.

The International Islamic Relief Organization is another Wahhabi sponsored charity. Established in 1978, it has branch offices throughout the world, including 36 in Africa, 24 in Asia, 10 in Europe and 10 in Latin America, the Caribbean and North America. The bulk of its financial contributions come from private donations in Saudi Arabia.

Ah.

So, there you go. Saudi Arabia doesn’t sponsor al-Qaeda. They just give the money to Wahhabi charity organisations who then give the money to the Bin Laden boys. Nothing to do with the House of Saud, you see?

So, to recap:

First there’s 9/11.
Perpetrators: mostly Saudis.
Mastermind: a Saudi prince in exile.
His al-Qaeda group: indirectly funded by Saudi Arabia.

US reaction:
First: invade Afghanistan. Which makes some sense: Bin Laden is hiding there.
Second: invade Iraq. Eeeerrr…?

I’ll end as I started: invading countries is never something one should do as a passing whim. Still, one word to the wise:

Mr. Bush, before you go and bomb Iran or something: if you really need another war to do something for both your ratings and the history books, why not invade Saudi Arabia instead?

America has some serious unfinished business with the House of Saud – for all the crackpot terror groups they’ve been sponsoring and the true evil they have helped to spread around the world.

Hey, and they’ve got oil too. Lots of it. Which is always nice.

Research into fashion habits has shown that the use of underwear increased dramatically after 1200, both on the continent and in England, as more people moved into towns.

As underwear became more popular, so the supply of rags increased significantly. That in turn increased the amount of paper and brought knowledge within reach of a much wider audience.

Parchment really was a luxury item. For a few sheets, you had to kill a sheep and cure its skin in the same way as leather, and for a complete book, you’d be talking about quite a few sheep. Now the paper makers found themselves with all the old pants, and they produced a product which has lasted remarkably well.

Lovely.

However, that does not mean that we should sing our Songs of Praise for every bit of underwear – be it still in use or discarded.

Let me digress a little,

University of Zurich researchers have created a spray that can relieve people of shyness, and help them socialize with others.

The spray is very easy to use, and an individual can boost self-confidence just by squirting it up the nose.

The researchers say that the spray harnesses the powers of a feel-good hormone called oxytocin, a neurotransmitter in the brain that is involved in social recognition and bonding.

Let’s just say that Boris Johnson, British bad boy of politics, who looks like a vaguely humanoid version of Lewis Carroll’s white rabbit, is not exactly in need of a shy spray.

For those who haven’t been following Boris Johnson’s career all that closely, the fact that a close-up picture of his face is now printed on thongs that are sold (amongst other BJ products) on an internet site, called CafePress.com, should make that at least abundantly clear.

Nobody who has been trying to follow his amiable if blundering path through public life quite knows what the Boris persona or package is for.

Most of the times, he has that slightly pained look on his face of a child whose mother is into very strange children’s literature – and he behaves with splendid if embarrassing regularity like he’s a well-paid star in one of those very weird Japanese TV ads.

Anyway, right now everybody in England is waiting for Boris to finally make up his bloody mind. Will he or won’t he run as a Tory candidate for the position of London’s mayor in the upcoming election?

It would be fun if he did, of course.

What’s more, he might even have a chance of winning it. The guy who’s running London at the moment, Ken Livingstone, is just as barking as Boris merely seems to be but a Hell of a lot less lovable with it.

Plus, it’s London we’re speaking of – not Liverpool. Margret Thatcher, with Osama as her bearded lady in waiting, would have more chance to win the mayorship in Liverpool than Boris Johnson has.

Dear oh dear – Boris and Liverpool. Let’s just say it would be better if the two never ran into each other again, at some cocktail party or other celeb do. Otherwise, things could get ugly real fast.

It would almost be like George Bush returning to Connecticut to enter that state’s Mister Wonderful Contest.

INCOMING: Mr. Johnson is going to run…:

Boris Johnson promised to be “frank and candid” today as his campaign to be London mayor got off to a chaotic start outside City Hall.

People can be incredibly stupid – be they dead ayatollahs or still breathing human rights lawyers,

Last week David Enright, a human rights lawyer whose wife is black, came across the book Tintin in the Congo in Borders and was outraged by what the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) described as “imagery and words of hideous racial prejudice, where the ‘savage natives’ look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles . . . It beggars belief that in this day and age Borders would think it acceptable to sell and display it”.

Borders will now put the book in its adult comics section; Waterstone’s said it would consider a similar move; WH Smith sells it on its website, with a sticker recommending readers be 16 or over. Not good enough, says the CRE: the only acceptable place for the book is in a museum, “with a big sign saying old-fashioned, racist claptrap”.

Still, as India Knight continues her case in this Times online article,

But why stop there? You could chuck in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, lots of Kipling, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell on class grounds; practically every novel written in the past 200 years on feminist ones; The Tiger Who Came to Tea because the mother is a domestic drudge, a victim of paternalism, a pathetic role model and bourgeois to boot. In fact you could make a huge bonfire and burn every book that exists on the basis that you can guarantee someone will find it offensive.

She concludes,

Just because something is unpalatable doesn’t mean it has to be erased. Erasing it only serves to make it outré and desirable.

Indeed,

Sales of a Tintin comic book have rocketed by 3,800 per cent after Britain’s equality watchdog claimed that it depicted “hideous racial prejudice”.

That, of course, was utterly predictable – and it’s that which always seem to make institutions like the CRE (and misguided fools like our human rights lawyer and the late ayatollah) mad, sad and sometimes dangerous.

It was the same with movies like The Life of Brian and novels like Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover - and, indeed, Salmon Rushdie’s Satanic Verses; a book that sold quite well thanks to the efforts of its main sales promoter, the late and mostly locally lamented ayatollah Khomeini.

For those who like figures – here goes:

At the moments of writing this (Amazon’s sales figures are updated on an hourly basis) The Satanic Verses is still placed within the top 100 of the Amazon co.uk sales ranks, at number 97. Rushdie’s much praised Midnight’s Children, seen by some as the most important Indian novel of all times, languishes at a barely respectable number 579.

(Tintin in the Congo now holds a remarkable - if hardly surprising - number 6 position on that list – and another one that had the world’s professionally querulous foaming round the mouth, Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, is still on number 5.)

People don’t learn – they don’t seem to want to. Never mind if their actions give succour to their most reviled enemies - because it’s always ever so much nicer to feel like a victim, and to be in the right: angry and raging, like Lear in the storm,

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike [smite] flat the thick rotundity o’ the world,
Crack nature’s moulds, all germains spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!

Scientists warn that household cats can trigger allergic reactions in more than a quarter of the population. A study of nearly 2,000 volunteers across Europe found that cats could cause breathing difficulties in people with some of the most common allergies.

Well, that’s hardly surprising, when you see what’s happening on the catwalks these days…

Not exactly poster child material for a What women want campaign, you might say.

Mind you, did you see that story about the woman who was banned from going to the beach? Ah, here it is:

A woman has received an Asbo banning her from going into the sea around the British coastline after trying to drown herself more than 50 times.

Her suicide attempts over the past five years have cost emergency services up to £1million.

The 44-year-old former golf professional has tried to kill herself by jumping off piers and jetties and wading into the ocean.

If only she had thought of wearing one of those stupid cat coats. Then no-one would have tried to stop her, pull her back or even collect the hideous remains.

Yes, yes; bad taste. Very bad taste. Not quite as bad as George Bush and Dick Cheney visiting the troops in Iraq and singing I feel good but still pretty bad. I know.

Then again, think how a cat would feel if it saw one of those bloody coats. It’s not exactly respectful to our old feline friends, now, is it?

Which is not wise, by the way. Cats are not known for their sense of humour – or tolerance.

In fact, just the idea of such a gruesome kitty cat coat is enough to turn any self-respecting feline into a raving Buddhist,

(The hand drum was just as described; made out of human skulls — children’s skulls, to be precise. Over the highly polished craniums was stretched a thin membrane of human skin)

and to bang those drums till the crows come home.

It’s almost too sad for words but fundamentalist Christians simply don’t get it.

Their billboards claim that Jesus loves each and every one of us but on TV and radio talk shows, in newspapers and Christian blogs, it’s all a wailing and a gnashing of teeth, spiced with dire, apocalyptic warnings – the overriding message being that most of us and the world as we know it are doomed, doomed, doomed.

What’s more, for people who are supposed to be the representatives of the One Who Forgives, they are surprisingly lacking in grace,

Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It’s no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history.

That doesn’t exactly sound like a man who’d be willing to walk that extra mile to lead any lost sheep back into the light, now does it?

No wonder God gets a bit irritated with these Bible belchers, from time to time, and has to resort to some selected, blood pressure reducing smiting.

Anyway, old Pat and his fellow fear mongers most resemble those Romanian policemen who made the news recently,

Europe’s oldest elephant died after Romanian police set their dogs on it when it refused to enter its winter quarters, a new report has revealed.

Bucharest zoo staff originally claimed that Gaya, 48, had died of old age. But a report commissioned by the city council, which owns the zoo, found that keepers had asked local police to set their dogs on the elephant to force it to move from its pen.

In other words, shepherding the Pat Robertson way.

I see the bad moon arising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightning.
I see bad times today.

Ah yes – and you better believe it…

The sad thing is, when it’s just human on human stupidity, you can shrug and say, Hey, we had it coming. Most of the time though, we like to spread the misery around,

Birds with brightly-coloured plumages face a greater threat from radiation released during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster than many other species, a team of ecologists claims today.

We’re so used to our collective stupidity that most of us have to suppress a mere half-hearted yawn when we hear about yet another dumb git who’s started some crazy, anti-evolution website,

It is not the purpose of this article to present a scientific argument in the Creation vs. evolution debate. If you are looking for scientific arguments for Creation and/or against evolution, we highly recommend Answers in Genesis.

or read about another tired publicity stunt by one of the many Misogynist Inc. Groups, as always loudly applauded by the cultural relativity brigade.

It is sad, of course, that we’ve built a world which is so polluted that our children get asthma attacks the moment they set a foot outside the door.

(Though some cures are so vile, they form an even bigger environmental hazard, which can only been battled with extreme prejudice.)

Still, these children will grow up to do the same stupid shit as their parents did before, so let’s not waste too many of our tears on them.

There seems to be no cure though for our various mental and moral diseases.

Our elected leaders are both corrupt and stupid,

The police found most of the items bought with the gift vouchers – including women’s underwear, a Darth Vader voice distorter, and a punching bag – at the mayor’s home or his council office.

Our heroes have unexpectedly dirty feet of clay, while most of the rest of us are lost in Narcissistic dreaming – or worse:

The worst case I am aware of is a man who did a DIY nose job. He pushed a chisel up his nose and then replaced the cartilage he had taken off with a chicken bone.

It’s grown so bad, that nowadays millions and millions of people living in those, so often loudly praised democracies can’t even be bothered to leave their TV sets and TV dinners long enough to go out and vote, every once a few years or so.

Even the young, once so eager to protest and change the world, don’t watch the News anymore.

Let’s face it: we’re done. It’s time to call the Sandman and ask him to remove us gently from this planet, without disturbing the rest of its inhabitants, if possible.

So, once more, take us away, Leonard,

And I lift my glass to the Awful Truth
which you can’t reveal to the Ears of Youth
except to say it isn’t worth a dime
And the whole damn place goes crazy twice
and it’s once for the devil and once for Christ
but the Boss don’t like these dizzy heights
we’re busted in the blinding lights
of closing time.

Every hour, every day, thousands of people are born – and an amazingly high percentage of them grow up to be

moral vacuum sellers,

A college student from Vermont arrested earlier this year along with several other people for holding up a banner in protest of the death penalty outside the U.S. Supreme Court has been found guilty of violating a law prohibiting demonstrations on the steps of the court.

moral cowards,

Said festival director Chattan Kunjara na Ayudhya,

We had a request from the Iranian Embassy that the film festival remove the film, and we did. Now we move on.

However, Chattan said the decision to cancel the film was his alone,

There was no outside pressure.

or moral imbeciles,

Montgomery County educators are replacing a lesson that called for students to read about and discuss a racial epithet against African Americans as a precursor to reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” in ninth-grade English classes.

You can trade in old cars, you can upgrade your software, you can even exchange a decrepit mobile phone for something sleeker and smarter.

So, where can we turn to for our Boxing Day extravaganza? When will we be able to return all these stupid, unwanted ‘gifts from God’ and cast them back, into some eternally dark and well-locked womb – till Hell freezes over or they develop at least a modestly average moral IQ?

Whichever comes first.

In 2002 a survey, called ‘Is Britain Dumbing Down?’ found,

that one in ten Britons could not name a single world leader – but could list up to five characters in television soap opera EastEnders.

Tony Blair (UK): named by 83%
George W Bush (US): 82%
Vladimir Putin (Russia): 16%

The survey also found that nearly 10% of the population never watched, read or listened to the news.

Five years have passed, since these disturbing facts came to light, so surely the British government has come up with a strategy to raise its citizens’ levels of awareness?

Weeellllll, maybe not quite as such…

Today the government announced, what they described as a

radical overhaul of the school curriculum for 11- to 14-year-olds,

Hurrah!

designed to bring secondary education up to date and allow teachers more flexibility in the subjects they teach.

Eeerrrr…; meaning what, precisely?

Britain’s World War II prime minister Winston Churchill has been cut from a list of key historical figures recommended for teaching in English secondary schools.

Ah, yes. Of course. How very helpful.

INCOMING:

in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical and Physical and Engineering Sciences, a detailed mathematical analysis of walking and running is given by Dr Manoj Srinivasan of Princeton University and Professor Andy Ruina of Cornell University, New York.

Their most important conclusion,

the Ministry of Energy should cut off funding to the Ministry of Silly Walks.

We can only hope the same conclusion will be reached re the Ministry of Education.