Journal Entries
Joined up thinking required
Posted Jun 28, 2007
Britain has a drugs problem; too many young people are getting hooked on heroin and turn to crime or prostituion to feed their habit.
Afghanistan has a problem with the Taleban forcing farmers to grow opium. It produced 92% of the world's output last year:
http://www.economist.co.uk/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9409154
Perhaps it's all a bit simplistic of me, but why not buy the opium off the Afghan farmers and give it to our drug addicts on prescription? That way, people don't have to turn to crime and we can keep an eye on their rehabilitation, we kill off the market for for the drug pushers, and we also choke off the money supply to the Taleban. Even if the going rate for illegal opium is four times that of the legally-grown, pharmaceutically-destined crop, it would still be a cheap way of killing three birds with one stone.
I'd like to know if there are any logical flaws with this argument.
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Latest reply: Jun 28, 2007
A Question Of Boundaries
Posted Jun 21, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6769671.stm
Let's get something straight first of all: I am no particular fan of Salman Rushdie. I have only ever read one book of his, and that's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, but I tend to regard him as a man with an over-inflated sense of his own importance. Wasn't it he who stood up at a Booker Prize meeting and started declaiming that he deserved the prize more than the winner?
Anyway, what the Pakistani goverment needs to get into the thick skulls of its fundamentalist rump is that apostasy is not a crime in Britain. Our actions are sanctioned by the laws of the land, not by shariah. Moreover, Rushdie was awarded his knighthood (wrongly in my opinion, as he has done very little for anyone outside his sphere and rather rarefied audience) for services to literature. This includes a large body of work that has nothing to do with the Satanic Verses at all.
I imagine that a minor fraction of his output has anything to do with Islam yet this is how these people demand he should be judged. Well, I suggest that iof this is what concerns them most that they judge the Satanic Verses by their criteria, and we'll judge the rest of his work by ours.
Discuss this Journal entry [13]
Latest reply: Jun 21, 2007
I found this amusing
Posted Jun 14, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6745749.stm
'MacFormat editor Graham Barlow believes the need for iPhone applications was the driving force for the shift to Windows but thinks any market share Apple can grab from Microsoft along the way will be a bonus, not just for the firm, but for its hardcore base of fans.
"I don't see it as a betrayal of all things Mac. Windows users are desperate for Apple to provide some decent software," he said. '
Er...no, sorry. I sit down at my new Vista PC and the last thing I think is 'I wish I was using a Mac'. Virtually *all* the software on a Pc is 'decent'. Most of it is actually rather good. If it weren't, people would stop using PC's and start using Macs. And they don't, on the whole, because Macs are overpriced 'glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults', as Charlie Brooker says.
The underlying truth is that most people couldn't give a sick dog's dump about who provides their operating system. They use what they're comfortable with. As an analogy, virtually all computer keyboards use the antiquated QWERTY layout, instead of the much better Dvorak or Maltron ones, but people use the former because they are able to use any keyboard anywhere. Same with operating systems.
Discuss this Journal entry [16]
Latest reply: Jun 14, 2007
Hell hath no fury
Posted Jun 14, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/4253849.stm
Ouch.
(I think that says it all).
Discuss this Journal entry [3]
Latest reply: Jun 14, 2007
Something I really ought to write an entry about.
Posted Jun 12, 2007
We're not badly off, culturally, where I live. Just down the road is the Nottingham Broadway, one of England's most prominent independent cinemas. I've always enjoyed cinema and would support the view that it's the seventh art form, but due to various issues I haven't been as avid a cinema goer as I used to be.
However, a good friend of mine, just slightly younger than me, recently suffered a terrible out-of-the-blue illness that has left his liver in a parlous state. We used to go out drinking together occasionally but that is now out of bounds. So, each week, we go to the Broadway to see a film. For nine quid, you get a meal at the cafe (which is pretty good) and you get to see the sort of film that you would have to wait a month of Sundays to see in one of our overcrowded, badly-seated, sticky-floored and expensive multiplexes. I have yet to see a bum film there. The last one we saw was Jindabyne, a powerful, well-acted and gripping Australian adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story.
They used to hold a yearly crime and thriller festival, Shots in the Dark, but this no longer runs. This is a pity as it managed to attract some big names, such as Tarantino: they had the British premier of Reservoir Dogs there. Also, Tarantino visited again when they showed Pulp Fiction.
Like many of the independent 'arts' cinemas the Broadway has now gone digital (although I have yet to see an all digital screening). It has four screens, a cafe, a mezzanine bar, a restaurant and a conference centre. It's a brilliant resource, and atypically-well-run for an 'arts' project. It also doesn't indulge the 'poseur' element of the arts crowd to the detriment of the non-aesthetically-endowed, ordinary people like me who just want to see good, well-made and interesting movies that don't fit the Hollywood formula.
You can read about it here:
http://www.broadway.org.uk/
Discuss this Journal entry [2]
Latest reply: Jun 12, 2007
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