Archbishop: Blair Bad, Brown Good
Posted on September 15, 2007
Filed Under Welcome To Great Britain, Politics, News | Leave a Comment
Who do you think would appeal to an archbishop more: a grinning snake-oil salesman who thinks he is the new messiah or a grumpy grandmother snatcher who keeps fiddling with his “moral compass”?
The Telegraph, interviewing the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, says:
Clearly, he was uncomfortable with Tony Blair’s missionary zeal but he admires Gordon Brown’s moral compass. When we ask whether he thinks a Presbyterian Prime Minister will be different to a high Anglican, he says: “The kind of political culture that Gordon Brown has come through is a bit more austere and values-oriented. He has a real level of emotional commitment about global poverty. I’m pleased that one of the first things he did was to reverse the legislation about gambling, and the hint that they might be looking again at 24-hour drinking.”
The problem is you have to know how the hierarchy works. Tony Blair thought he was God’s left hand man, presumably, because George Bush was on the right side, but where does that leave the Archbishop? You would think that he outranks both of them, but if Tony Blair converts to Catholicism, as they say he will, might he not become Pope? Then he might outrank both Bush and the Archbishop. Also, if he is the true messiah, does he not outrank everyone anyway?
Anyway, it is all pretty theoretical, according to the Archbishop, as we are all on a hiding to hell anyway.
“Is our society broken? I think it is,” he says. “We are in a phase of our culture where the fragmentation of society is far more obvious. It’s not just families, it is different ethnic communities and economic groups. We talk about access and equality the whole time, but in practice we all seem to live very segregated lives.”
He goes on: “Outside my front door in Lambeth I see a society so dramatically different from across the river or in Canterbury. There is a level of desolation and loneliness and dysfunctionality which many people have very little concept of. If you sense that the world you live in is absolutely closed, that for all sorts of reasons you are unable to move outside, if nothing gives you aspirations, there is an imprisonment in that, there is a kind of resentment that comes with that and a frustration that can boil over in violence and street crime.”
Inequality is, in his view, just a symptom of a wider moral vacuum. “I don’t think that the huge wealth of some is the cause (of the problems), it is more that society just wants to reward business success and celebrity. If you’re a teenager in Peckham neither of those are easily accessible.”
Gordon Brown had better fix his “moral compass” pretty quickly, as it sounds like we are all heading for ‘the rapture’ and if Tony gets to heaven first, he is just as likely to bang the gates shut and start raining hellfire and brimstone down on all those who do not believe in him.
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The World And Its (Imaginary) Friend
Posted on September 11, 2007
Filed Under Business, Web Publishing | Leave a Comment
If you thought it was only on Big Brother that people would (even when sober) claim that someone they had only met ten minutes before was their best friend and they loved them, you need to get out more.
No, not out in the real world! Don’t panic! You need to join a social networking site like FaceParty or MiceSpace. There, everyone will be your friend and you will be everyone else’s friend. You do not need to meet them or speak to them or know who they are, just say, like a child on their first day at school “Can I be your friend?” and they all will. Hurrah!
Oh, but look at this. Apparently, having 27 043 friends is not quite realistic; and thinking that a few lines of text and a blurry photo of a half-dressed creature being sick makes that imaginary person your friend actually signals that you have mental health problems, rather than a flourishing social life.
Dr Will Reader of Sheffield Hallam University has actually made a study of the phenomenon.
Timesonline has this:
Most people have about five close friends and know about 150 people in total, most of them acquaintances with whom they are on nodding terms.Cyber-users have the same number of close friends but many more casual acquaintances. Dr Reader was speaking yesterday about the initial findings into a study of how MySpace and Facebook are changing relationships.
He said that the biggest impact was being experienced in the number of “casual relationships on virtual nodding terms”. Sitting at a computer was no longer a solitary act: the computer could be a social hub bringing people together from all over the world.
“The web was solitary. This is bringing back the social side of human interaction.” But, he said, this had been carried to an extreme by many users who went by quantity rather than quality and had become the trainspotters of the virtual world.
“To have in excess of 1,000 friends is not uncommon,” he said. “It can be a bit like trainspotting. They just want to get as many people on to their list as possible.
“It does upset some people. They start by feeling good that they appear to have made a new friend only to find out that they are simply being added to a list. They’re not wanted for themselves; they’re wanted to extend a list.”
The Enquirer puts it this way:
He confirmed to AFP that all those people who say they are your friends on Facebook and Myspace are actually lying. Playing around with them will not help fill that pitiful, painful, empty void which is your sad lonely soul as you journey onwards towards a death alone, Reader said, or least words to that effect.
Such friends are about the same number of people you would probably meet in real world contact. In the real world you would not count any of them as friends, unless you were really, really drunk.
Humans see face-to-face contact as “absolutely imperative” in building close relationships and that it was “very easy to be deceptive” over the Internet, Reader said.
As a footnote and a warning, Dr Reader used to live alone with a hamster before making his study. He now has 17 327 very close friends and is being treated for nervous exhaustion.
So, do you want to be my friend?
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Nuke ‘Em With Friendly Fire
Posted on September 5, 2007
Filed Under News | Leave a Comment
They used to say when driving a car, “Remember your cockpit drill”. This, actually, only consisted of check gear, check handbrake, check mirror, check nuclear weapons. No! You were never allowed to carry nuclear weapons when driving. Just conventional ones and WMDs which you could guarantee to be able to deploy in 45 minutes.
So, you can see how easy it might be to fire up your jet, tell the chaps on the ground you were going for a spin, but would be back by dinner time and simply forget that you were loaded to the hilt with nuclear warheads. It could happen to anyone.
Reuters has this:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. bomber mistakenly flew with at least five nuclear warheads over the United States last week, but the Air Force on Wednesday said the flight never threatened public safety.
Still, President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were alerted on Friday morning to the mistake, according to Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.
Gates also has received daily updates from Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley on a probe to determine how the mistake occurred.
“It’s clearly important enough that the secretary was informed of it and that he has requested daily briefings from Gen. Moseley as to what they are doing to fix the problem and to get to the bottom of the problem,” Morrell said.
“I can also tell you that it’s important enough that President Bush was notified of it.”
Overall, then, the general thrust of this seems to be that it was quite important. You would have thought they would just say to the pilot: “Look, this could have happened to anyone. I have done it loads of times. Don’t say anything to anyone and we’ll forget all about it. You didn’t actually drop any bombs while you were out, did you? No. Well, that’s OK then”. Apparently not.
“These reports are deeply disturbing,” said Democrat Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee.
“There is no more serious issue than the security and proper handling of nuclear weapons. The American people, our friends, and our potential adversaries must be confident that the highest standards are in place when it comes to our nuclear arsenal,” he said.
[…]
An Air Force spokesman, Lt. Col. Edward Thomas, said the Air Force started an investigation into the incident and a review of all operational procedures.
“All evidence we have seen so far points to an isolated mistake,” Thomas said.
“It is important to note that munitions were safe, secure and under military control at all times. The error was discovered by airmen during internal Air Force checks. The weapons were safe and remained in Air Force control and custody at all times,” he said.
Well, as long as they were in “Air Force control and custody” everyone should feel safe, even when they were nucler warheads when the plane should only have been equipped with two small stink-bombs.
When Team America: World Police patrol the skies, we can all sleep safe in our beds at night.
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