One piece of good news in the struggle between terrorism and politics: IRA ‘no longer a terrorist threat’ (Guardian).
Author: Anthony
The two faces of Birmingham
To Birmingham for a conference yesterday and a meeting this morning. Stayed in the Holiday Inn on Hill Street, which really needs a refurb internally (and is getting it), but is comfortable enough. Free wi-fi broadband as well, which is more than can be said for some hotels.
Had dinner at Zinc, on the canal near Five Ways, which was a pleasant experience – unlike the 80s retro bar across the road. A stylishly-designed Pitcher and Piano nearby was more relaxing, if a bit corporate.
This morning, out to a meeting in Star City, a casino-bowling-cinema development at Nechells in Aston. Took the bus out there like the good boy I am, but it was a fairly depressing ride. Row after row of sad looking 60s/70s houses – still maintained by their owners, but looking very faded overall. The slaughter of central Birmingham by the ring road is really tragic.
There were a few architectural high spots – a nice row of possibly mid-Victorian terraced houses on Nechells Park Road, and a wonderful public baths, which might be a bit later: full of Victorian civic pride with a vast coat of arms on the front. A bit of research shows that it closed in 1995, and is now the home of the local regeneration project. They couldn’t pick a better building: the city’s motto is proudly emblazoned over the door: FORWARD.
So Mr. Tiddles is out, then?
Did you know there’s official Internet guidance (an RFC) on what name you should give your computer?
The Spanish don’t think this way
Overheard on the bus, a (true) comment that shows the difference between the English and Spanish shopping cultures. “Well, I don’t like going to the market for my vegetables. They’re never as fresh, are they?”
Laugh or cry?
The Onion’s piece (Senate Wins Fight To Lower Allowable Amperage Levels On Detainees’ Testicles) is altogether too close to the reality of a world where the Senate has allowed noted humanitarian G. W. Bush to define the term torture, and to suspend habeas corpus for anyone he fancies. (BBC, though I’m paraphrasing a little).
Oh, and one of the members supporting the Bill was Sen. John McCain, one of the main speakers at the Tory party conference this year. And it seemed like such a good idea when they invited him.
Update: Robert Philpot makes a similar point on the Guardian’s Comment is Free site.
Will definitely contain nuts
More and more, it seems, the nutters are taking over the asylum Internet. Take this dispiriting discussion on the Graun’s website. In the first few posts, the Germans are Nazis, the Russians are Soviets, and the Brown Peril (was Yellow) is poised to sweep across Europe, which has been rendered weak by its democratic system and minimum wage laws.
As you can probably tell, comments of this nature often come from gloating Americans, insecure in their imperial overstretch and determined to prove that only the US of A can save the world. Typical are comments such as this:
All I am saying is that I believe democratic institutions are not capapble [sic] of reacting quickly enough within Europe in response to the growing internal peril that is evident. I may be wrong but I think, as an American, that supporting the [BNP and other far-right parties] (providing these parties are not anti-semitic) may be the way to go.
By the growing internal peril, they mean people like Sajid Mahmood.
Perhaps the surest sign of right-wing US nuttery is that it’s OK for us to vote for racists and xenophobes, as long as they’re not anti-Semitic. In case you were wondering where that leap of logic came from, it’s because we Europeans are incorrigibly anti-Semitic, and therefore can’t be trusted not to start herding people into camps at the first opportunity. America – where levels of anti-Semitism in actual scientific surveys come out about the same – is beyond rebuke on such issues, and can therefore lecture us all it likes.
Twenty common science myths
Chicken soup not good for colds; yawning not contagious; water drains backwards in the southern hemisphere LiveScience.com demolishes your illusions.
Charlie Brooker on t’Internet
Not a debate, here.
Spinach poisoning
The firm behind the e.coli outbreak in the US is called Natural Selection Foods.
Kangaroo courts: OK or not OK?
You’d think there’d be only one answer to the question, “should we destroy the Geneva Conventions?”, but you’d be wrong. The US Congress is debating the issue at the moment, with prominent Republicans like John McCain standing in opposition to the Bush and leadership line. The intellectual calibre of the pro-torture lobby can be summed up by this comment from Peter King (R-NY), reported in the New York Times:
“I just think John McCain is wrong on this. If we capture bin Laden tomorrow and we have to hold his head under water to find out when the next attack is going to happen, we ought to be able to do it.”
There we go. It should be made legal to torture *anyone*, because in an extremely unlikely hypothetical scenario, we might want to torture one person (even though it wouldn’t produce reliable evidence). As a great English judge once said of torture, it is repugnant to reason, justice and humanity. This could apply equally well to this Administration’s human rights policy.