Glob-a-log

Now, I’m not saying this is ‘Stop the presses’ huge hovering headline news but it is the strangest bit of trivia I’ve come upon in quite a while:

Codex Sinaiticus, meaning the Sinai Book, is one of the two earliest Bibles written. Written mostly in Greek on parchment, it is treasured by scholars as an unparalleled resource for textual criticism of the New Testament. The pages are not all in one place; the British Library has the biggest chunk, bought from Stalin in 1933 for £100,000.

Don’t you think that would make a marvellous movie?

You have an old and sacred manuscript, come to light in an age of turmoil and revolution. You have elderly scholars bowed over holy books, mumbling away in ancient, mostly forgotten languages.

Okay, you don’t have an Indiana Jones type hero battling his way into some booby-trapped temple, conquering all kinds of villains and overcoming his fear of snakes.

Instead, you have someone who’s armed with loads of cash.

That is a bit of a downer but then you do have the whole ‘evil empire’ of communism as a backdrop, chockfull with all types of hugely cinematic villains – and let’s be honest, when you have old Joe Stalin featuring as the arch fiend, who’s gonna miss some albino monk?

I’ve always wondered why Bush and his cronies were so obsessed with this nonsensical, undefinable and, obviously, unwinnable War on Terror. Which looked a bit like Ghostbusters, with a much bigger budget but minus the jokes.

Well, maybe Bush et al weren’t that stupid after all. Perhaps they knew that their troops wouldn’t be ready, or even competent enough, to fight a real war.

I mean, if the rest of the US armed forces are as bad as the US Air Force is, God help all of us if we really would need them one day.

Having said that, I now realise I should take back that ‘minus the jokes’ remark of the first paragraph. While it’s highly dubious that the US Air Force is fit for any serious purpose, it is a fun organisation. The way a good slapstick movie can be fun.

So, first, they sold fusing devices for nuclear missiles to Taiwan – by mistake…

Then, you may remember, last summer, a B-52 bomber was loaded with six air-launched nuclear missiles (without its pilots or crew knowing about this) and flown across America.

Now, this:

A crew of three air force members decided to rest a little and within 15 minutes they were fast asleep. They awoke several hours later. The only problem was that the room in which they were snoozing was the missile alert facility at Minot air force base in North Dakota. Directly beneath them was the underground control centre containing the keys that can launch ballistic missiles, and in their care were metal boxes containing the secret codes that allow the nuclear button to be pressed.

Nice, don’t you think?

The old night watch motto was, ‘We guard, so you may sleep’. The US Air Force seems to sleep best while on guard. Bless.

(’Lost nukes’ route)

Now, here’s a strange little story for you. Wholly inconsequential, and guaranteed to be utterly forgettable but rather fun at the same time:

Wine writer Malcolm Gluck set the ball rolling recently by claiming a record of sorts for having signed 1,001 copies of his book, set at a wine warehouse in London in 1998. Gluck achieved this with the help of a team of three men, one fetching the copies, one opening them at the blank page, and another whisking the signed copies away. Rushdie lost no time countering. He said he had signed 1,000 copies, on his most recent tour promoting the Enchantress of Florence, in a books warehouse in Nashville in the USA in 57 minutes. The wine specialist then launched the controversy, questioning whether Rushdie could possibly have signed as many books as he had claimed, or whether he had just scribbled his initials.

Then, Rushdie got all offended, like some Ayatollah coming upon the Satanic Verses for the very first time – and not at all amused when he finds out that some rude little author chappie has given the names of the Prophet’s wives to a group of whores who work in one, rather seedy brothel.

So, his answer to the wine writer was a rather lengthy and pompous version of the old, ‘I did so too, so there!’

He did stop short of calling a fatwa on the offending author though.

Anyway, mister Gluck was suitably impressed – and repentant, sort of…:

“Well, if that’s true, I’m humbled,” Gluck said yesterday. “I’m delighted to learn of Salman’s achievement. I think it’s very funny actually, it’s like men boasting about the size of their sexual equipment, it’s got nothing to do with any other aspect of their personality. I doubt there will be any women going for this record, this is just such a male thing.”

Yup, little boys arguing about the size of their willies and ending up having a pissing contest against some poor, inoffensive wall.

Mind you, that’s still a Hell of a lot more grown-up than the reaction of your average, offended Ayatollah, of course.

Okay, this is just fucking insane:

A teenager shown on a video coaxing his 2- and 4-year-old nephews into smoking marijuana was sentenced Thursday to eight years in prison. Demetris McCoy, 18, pleaded guilty to two charges of injury to a child/causing bodily injury and agreed to testify against his co-defendant, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported online Thursday.

When the video was made, the children’s mother was sleeping in another room, police have said. She was not arrested. The children, their mother, grandmother and McCoy lived together at the time. The children have since been placed in foster care.

I truly don’t know where to begin with this one…

First, it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain and half a heart that you don’t send (even older) teenagers to jail, unless the crimes they commit are truly horrendous. Smoking marijuana and ‘coaxing‘ 2- and 4-year-old kids to take a toke doesn’t even come close to being a serious crime.

Yes, it was a stupid stunt but let’s be honest, that’s what teenagers do really well: stupid stunts. Holding a joint to a baby’s lips is just dumb but not nearly as moronic and dangerous as most other things teenagers get up to almost routinely and to describe this act as ‘causing bodily injury’ is just insane.

More than insane, it’s malevolent. Proving that some authorities will just invent the strongest of charges whenever drugs (and a certain class of young people) are involved.

Now, we come to the truly magnificent part of the story, though. While the police grudgingly admits that they did not see ground to arrest the mother of these children, because she was sleeping in another room at the time, the authorities came with another solution to punish her.

So, they placed the children into foster care. Never mind that the authorities already put one of the kids’ uncles in jail for introducing them to the dangerous world of drugs, now they are taken away from their mother as well, because… Well, just because, really.

I’m not sure how you would even begin to measure the different sort of damage you inflict on a child, by giving it a toke or by separating it from its mother but then, the War on Drugs is not about any kind of sane measuring. It is a war waged by moral imbeciles and bad faith politicians who truly don’t give a damn about the horrendous damage they inflict both on society as a whole and a chosen selection of its individual members, while they preen and poster on their futile stages.

So, another few teens sent to jail, their lives most probably irreversibly damaged in the process; two babies taken away from their mother, with who knows what future horrors and heart-break as a result of this – just all in a day’s work in this ongoing and criminally stupid War on Drugs.

Let’s start with this poem, called ‘Life and love’:

The Towers fall;
the dead lie buried.
Dust is settling down.
The city reels,
recovers.
Life and love go on.

I think of you -
I think of swallows
that outran the storm.
The clouds are rising.
All around us lightning strikes
and life and love go on.

Obama called it the ‘audacity of hope.’ This is not about him though – but it is about audacity, and it is about hope:

“I am in the middle of nowhere, I am holding on to nothing, I am the play of the winds,” says the 58-year-old Frenchman, Philippe Petit, recalling the morning in August 1974 when he boldly and illegally crossed the sizeable gap between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre by shuffling across a steel cable less than 1in thick, and at a height of 1,350ft.

So, now James Marsh has made this documentary about Petit and his walk between The Towers, called ‘Man on the Wire’.

In an interview Petit answers one, hugely predictable question the only way it could have been answered:

Concerning the absence of any reference to the 9/11 attacks in the documentary, he says: “This was about glorifying the life of the tower, whereas the whole Universe knows about the death of it.”

Indeed – and, no doubt, that will be the image that will stay with me, and countless others: The man walking the thin thread that was hung between these majestic towers.

Yes, we know those images are old – and that the Towers did come down – but that doesn’t matter. For we have always known that it is easy to destroy.

Of course, destruction is real; as is grief, as is rage.

Still, here we have this image of a man on a tightrope, walking between those towers that we know so well. In one world, they are no longer there but in an another world, and in our minds, they are still with us. In this sense, in our dreams, and in the fact that one man walked upon air in between them, the Twin Towers will live forever.

The audacity of hope, yes - or, as Philippe Petit said, “I am in the middle of nowhere, I am holding on to nothing.”

As we are still holding on to hope - and holding on to life, and love. So, maybe it is not that easy to destroy some things, after all.

(Toilet toff & tosspot Robert Benson)

I’ve finally realised why Conservative politicians like to privatise things. It’s because they always get into such embarrassing trouble in public places.

Anyway, what is it with Conservative politicians and public toilets?

I mean, in the USA, people have just recovered from laughing about senator Larry ‘wide stance’ Craig and here we have yet another family value politician, on this side of the pond, who’s been caught with his trousers down:

A TORY councillor was arrested for gross indecency after he was allegedly caught in a sex act with a man in a loo. Robert Benson, 41, was taken to a police station and charged with engaging in sexual activity in a public toilet. Benson — who has recently married — was nicked in South Harrow, North London.

Don’t you just love that ‘recently married’ detail? Makes you wonder if it would have made a difference if he’d pinned a sign ‘Just married’ on the outside of the toilet door instead of putting it on the back of the wedding car. Call it a alternative life style decision.

Mind you, I’d have more consideration and commiseration for the councillor’s wife if:
a) I hadn’t seen the guy’s picture and
b) he wasn’t a Conservative politician

I hate people who say ‘I told you so’ but truly, she could have seen this one coming from miles away.

Anyway, in England it’s always said that whenever there is a Labour scandal, it’s about money and corruption, because, traditionally, people in the Labour party didn’t have and/or come from money.

With the Tories it’s supposed to be about weird, kinky sex scandals – basically because England’s Conservatives used to come from the thoroughly inbred classes who sent their sons to the kinds of schools were they would be caned and rogered by various teachers and older boys.

Yes, those are clichés – but we all know how clichés are born: By truths hitting us over the head so many times that even the least contemplative muppet starts to see a certain pattern emerging.

Anyway, it’s nice to see that some of those old traditions are still being kept – but then, that’s why Robert Benson and his mates are called Conservatives, of course.

(Senator Larry “wide stance” Craig)

You know, we’ve become so used to the Internet that we’ve forgotten that earlier generations actually had to leave their houses to go and buy or simply look at smutty pictures:

In 1947 a nude portrait was bought by a public gallery and more than 20,000 people queued to see it. However, council chiefs in Newport, South Wales, decided that the painting was scandalising their town and ordered that it be taken down. It went back on show yesterday more than 60 years after it was banned for being “too brazen” – only to receive complaints about it because she is smoking.

Anyway, much may change – like watching naked women in the comfort of your living-room – but your average council officers are as they always were: annoying little busy-bodies who think their religious, aesthetic and/or PC prejudices are the luscious rays of the sun, come shining out of their truly despicable arses.

So, when even George Bush admits that it’s time to check into an oil rehab, we should be looking at other ways to keep ourselves energised.

Nuclear energy has always been the magic bullet/wand of choice of the established political classes but the green camp, with its emphasis on renewable and natural resources, has its followers too. The problem with most of those green solutions has always been that they seem to be too inefficient and small scale – and certainly not high-tech & attention-grabbing enough for your average politician.

The following project might change both the image and the effectiveness of green solutions to our energy problems - on the other hand, never mind if it will work: this approach is certainly sexy and will offer enough photo opportunities to satisfy even the biggest political attention whore:

A tiny rectangle superimposed on the vast expanse of the Sahara captures the seductive appeal of the audacious plan to cut Europe’s carbon emissions by harnessing the fierce power of the desert sun. Dwarfed by any of the north African nations, it represents an area slightly smaller than Wales but scientists claimed yesterday it could one day generate enough solar energy to supply all of Europe with clean electricity.

Of course, some will grumble that this solution, even if it would work, does not offer any strategic advantages. One of the problems that Western politicians have with our dependence on oil, is that it is provided by countries in parts of the world that can’t be relied upon to become or even remain our allies. Solar energy from the Sahara would not really solve that geopolitical conundrum.

The problem for Europe is that it doesn’t catch enough sun to build these solar energy parks on its own territory – and it’s unlikely that a majority of Europeans would ever agree to build enough windmills to provide a comparable amount of electricity.

So, in Europe we will, most probably, see more nuclear reactors being built in the near future, and a few more windmill parks, here and there. Any kind of solar, Sahara option would, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, be one of those unknown unknowns, so a bit too risky to our politicians’ tastes.

Now, if only we could harness the rain as we can do with the sun. Then the Dutch could be safe and wealthy behind their dikes, the Scandinavians and Brits would no longer have to rely on fickle and expensive North Sea oil and Ireland would become the new Saudi Arabia.

I’ve always been extremely fond of Jim Henson’s Kermit the frog. The Beatles told us in their song ‘Let it be’ that ‘When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes for me’ but I always found Kermit’s ‘It’s not easy being green’ more comforting.

Still, even I have to admit that my favourite frog has nothing on your average bunny, when it comes to being discomfited. Yes, there’s the Easter Bunny, who could be seen as a kind of role model and PR coup for bunnyhood in general but then you have the loathsome Hugh Hefner and the things he’s done to the image of our fluffy, long-eared friends. It’s not easy trying to be cute and child-friendly when your face is being used as a logo for a soft-porn wankazine.

It gets worse though for that poor bunny. From being used to sell American style consumerist porn, its image is now adopted by an Islamic TV station that’s trying to sell its pornography of violence to its youthful audiences.

Enter Assud, the rabbit:

An Islamic television station is using a Bugs Bunny lookalike in a programme for children, who vote whether to chop off his hands when breaches Sharia law. Assud the rabbit vows to “kill and eat Jews” and glorifies the maiming of “infidels” on the Palestinian children’s show ‘Tomorrow’s Pioneers.’ In one episode, Assud admits stealing money and is seen begging for mercy after young viewers and parents phone in demanding to cut off his hands as punishment. At that point, Saraa, the 11-year-old presenter, intervenes and rules that the bunny should only have his ears severed because he has repented.

The rabbit, played by a costumed actor, is one of the main characters on the show broadcast in Gaza by the al-Aqsa channel, which is otherwise known as Hamas TV. Tomorrow’s Pioneers was first aired in April 2007, and features young host Saraa Barhoum and her co-host, a large costumed animal.

The show originally featured a character called Farfur who resembled Mickey Mouse and urged children to fight against the Jewish community and form a world Islamic state. Farfur was later replaced by a bumble bee called Nahoul, who told viewers to “follow the path of Islam, of martyrdom and of the Mujahideen”. He was ‘martyred’ earlier this year and replaced by Assud, who tells children in his first episode: “I, Assud, will get rid of the Jews, Allah willing, and I will eat them up.”

It’s a nice gimmick though, don’t you think, martyring those characters who’ve reached their sell-by-date? In Western soaps writers have to find all kinds of ever more convoluted means to write their characters out of the series. So, a granny who’s lost her senility appeal can’t just have a heart-attack but must be eaten by sharks while on a holiday paid for with money she stole from her church’s bingo funds or some such.

Islamic TV writers don’t have to go to all that trouble thinking up ever more improbable story lines. They can just use the same variant of the old ‘Some big boys did it and ran away,’ excuse – to wit: ‘Some evil Jew came and martyred our mouse, bumble bee or rabbit.’

That’s after the show’s cute little Holocaust-loving presenter has cut off the bunny’s ears for stealing, of course.

Conventional wisdom has it that about 99% of the British population are alcoholics who, when not actually in the pub getting drunk as fast as possible, are out in the street, vomiting, fighting and/or fucking. This while their government is wringing its collective hands, whining and watching impotently – but ever desperate to show how much it ‘cares’ and coming up with ever more white paper schemes whose only proper function is to show the government’s deeply embarrassing incompetence.

The following story won’t help to disabuse the average England watcher of such notions:

More than 800,000 people are admitted to hospital each year with alcohol-related illnesses and injuries — four times the official figure — ministers will admit today. Figures will show that six per cent of all NHS admissions are in some way caused by drink and the rate of visits to hospital over alcohol-related problems is rising by 10 per cent every year. Alcohol is thought to cause about 17,000 cases of cancer a year and £2billion of NHS money is spent every year treating patients with alcohol-related diseases. Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, believes “lifestyle” illnesses will put an increasing strain on the NHS unless people behave more responsibly.

£2billion a year is the kind of number you can only contemplate after a stiff drink or two, as is a rise of 10% of drunk hospital visits each year. Those are serious figures – and there is probably not a lot anyone can do about it. The Health Secretary may waffle about people ‘behaving more responsibly’ but behaving responsibly is not what people do, or ever have done.

The human animal doesn’t do responsible. Our Darwinesque and oft grotesque evolution came about by a selection of the kind of genes that go, ‘I wonder what would happen if I did this…?’ Despite the dearly held misconception, it’s not necessity that is the mother of invention but reckless curiosity. So, we are very good at ‘reckless’, meaning that ‘responsible’ doesn’t get to see much of the game.

Anyway, how did the gormless Johnson and his departmental dopes manage to mishandle or massage the real numbers so clumsily? I know this government is good at losing laptops and discs, but mislaying about 600,000 drunken hospital visitors must be a new New Labour incompetence record.

Back to the rising numbers of idiot drunks, though.

I do wonder when the government will seriously start to think about Prohibition. Smoking is all but totally outlawed and most of the rest of our lives is now cosseted and strapped inside health & Safety straightjackets, so I’m sure some clowns will already be whispering the dreaded P-word in those famed Corridors of Powerless postering. Me, I give it less than a few months till the first official rumours about a new Prohibition will make it to the frontpages of the tabloids.

I started with that old fable beast ‘Conventional Wisdom’ and I’ll end with it. So, C.W. has it that Prohibition won’t work because it didn’t when the Americans tried it.

I’m not so sure of that.

In those days, people were not the pathetic little wimps that they are now. Then, people were happy to completely ignore the government’s stupid meddling when they thought it had no right to do so. Do you really think that people at the start of the 20th century would have bought into the whole passive smoking hysteria and would have stood for a ban on smoking in public? I don’t think so.

Nowadays, people grumble and whine a bit about the Nanny State and then they do whatever Nanny tells them to do. Spineless wimps, is what we’ve become in the West. We actually let ourselves be bullied by every fucking idiot with a new and shiny Health & Safety or Political Correctness scheme.

So, I don’t see why Prohibition would not work, this time round. Sure, it will cause some muttering, some whining – some bleating, if you will; but sheeps make lousy revolutionaries, so, if the government wants, I’m pretty sure they could make Prohibition stick.

After all, we’ve gone further than Jesus ever asked us to go. We don’t just turn the other cheek: we spread them whenever someone in ‘power’ tells us to do s.o