Journal Entries
"Do Panic"
Posted May 28, 2007
"It is a scandal that the present system is enabling a car salesman to divert significant government funds to propagate dogma such as "intelligent design" in our schools. State funds are also being used to support some schools that abuse impressionable young people by brainwashing them into believing that non-believers will burn for all eternity in the fires of hell. This policy is a perfect recipe for the creation of the next generation of homegrown and state-educated suicide bombers."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2086202,00.html
We need more faith schools like we need more workhouses. Some obnoxious ghoul suggested in his blog a while ago that Darwin was to blame for the Virginia tech shootings (not the ready availability of guns to unhinged individuals with schizoid personalities, you will notice): http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2007/04/16/how-could-loving-god
I happen to think we need avowedly secular schools. Darwin taught us that we are *all* related, not just to humans, but to animals as well, but it hasn't made a blind bit of difference to the way we treat other people, let alone other species. Instead, not so long ago, we have had bigots killing non-believers in Serbia, Northern Ireland and now Darfur and Iraq. It's about time we gave Charles a chance to improve the moral outlook of young hearts and minds.
Discuss this Journal entry [3]
Latest reply: May 28, 2007
Goodbye and good bloody riddance
Posted May 21, 2007
Now even the Tories agree that grammar schools are a bad idea:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6676447.stm
There is no doubt whatsoever that I would have gone to a grammar were I brought up in Kent instead of Swansea: i went to a comp and came top of my year in the A-Level grades. However, I can see no justification for socially segregating eleven year olds on the basis of an IQ test. Moreover, those people most in favour of selective education, the Right, also tend to be support arguments that genes and not environment govern success in academic and other areas of life. And what about the 80% who don't get into a grammar? Should we be labelling kids as failures right from the age of eleven?
I hope this regressive idea eventually dies the death it deserves.
Discuss this Journal entry [37]
Latest reply: May 21, 2007
There's more at stake in this issue than my triumphalism...
Posted May 19, 2007
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11462
OK, so climate change seems to be my hobbyhorse at the moment, but I intend to deliver a knockout punch to any attempt to use this august enterprise as a soapbox for contrarian views. I'm tending to regard climate change denial as almost as much of an enormity (in its original sense) as Holocaust denial. The only difference is that one has happened, the other hasn't, yet.
Discuss this Journal entry [20]
Latest reply: May 19, 2007
One few place left for the denialists to hide
Posted May 18, 2007
Thise of you who thing that global warming is a storm in a teacup and the scientific community is unnecessarily alarmist, ought to read this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6665147.stm
Hiding behind spurious and out-of-context invocations of scientific principles (such as, B, Le Chatelier's Principle) won't work anymore. And those of you who think that giving house room to such tendentious drivel enriches the Guide (such as you, Pinniped) really ought to think about what you are doing here and what you are bringing to this enterprise.
I can't be nice or polite about this anymore. I won't have people telling me that a ticking time bomb is nothing to worry about and that I ought to shut up and stop being so 'utterly ultimately boring'.
Discuss this Journal entry [9]
Latest reply: May 18, 2007
is it just me?
Posted May 7, 2007
You must have heard of the book 'Is It Just me, or is Everything Shit?'
Well, what I'd like to know is is it just me, or do others out there think that the Star Wars films are a load of overrated derivative garbage?
This lot obviously don't : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6629907.stm
Discuss this Journal entry [9]
Latest reply: May 7, 2007
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