Signage and Tattoo Removal in the Vanguard of the New Economy

Just what we need - more signs. A coroner has called for signs on beaches warning the public of the risk of sand tunnels caving in and suffocating diggers TO DEATH. I live in a wood in Dorset and when I came here ten years ago the few vertical objects that existed had branches on them and pine needles. Now, since the Health and Safety Executive got it's act together we have signs, lots of signs - signs to tell us to stop, signs to tell us to go, signs to tell us how the stop/go thingy works to wit: when the red light shows wait here - WTF? I have lived almost sixty years and never, in all that time, has anyone, ever had to explain to me how a traffic light works but now apparently they do. I even managed, without attending courses, to work out what the red lights flashing over the street junctions in my childhood Dublin(the affectionately known Winking Willies), were about at the age of six. What next - a sign telling me how to read the signs perhaps or regularly spaced signs all round our coastline reading 'Warning! Risk of Drowning'. Still on the positive side this may be just what's needed to prevent coastal erosion.

What about tattoo removal?

What?

You said something about tattoo removal.

Oh yeah that. Well, with all the individuals around proving their individuality by having myriad bits of their bodies drawn on by people with vibrating pencils, there's going to be a HUGE market in tattoo removal techniques when they all wake up and realise how repulsive they all look as their skin begins to sag and their bulges begin to expand with advancing age.

So the Brown/Darling axis need not worry. The economy will be kickstarted by the twin prongs of the booming signage industry and the flowering of the de-flowering business.

Ooo er missus!

STFU!!

Oh Boy, Sparks Are Gonna Fly

If this report is correct and the new prez is trying to control the price of drugs in the USA we should be prepared for a huge fight. Already, as this report suggests, Big Pharma is marshalling its forces to lobby for a free market in health care i.e. the power to charge what they like for their snake oil. This presidencay is shaping up to be one of the most interesting for many a year but if I was the Presidents body guards I'd be increasing my life insurance many-fold. 

God Does Not Exist - What To Believe

Christians, Muslims, Hindus all have a readily identifiable belief system to which, rightly or wrongly, they adhere. Richard Dawkins has made an industry of debunking those beliefs and leveraged himself into the public consciousness by writing extensively, rightly or wrongly, about the delusional nature of religious belief. It would appear very much as if the collaspe of a far more secular delusional belief system, the financial system, is resulting in some very real hardships in the population as a whole and more specifically in the lower strata of the population. It seems we meddle with belief systems at our peril. Prof Dawkins take note.

Natural Foods Not So Natural

Tyson Foods, the worlds largest meat processor and the United States second largest producer of chickens, has been ordered to stop using the labelling stating that their chicken is raised without antibiotics. Why? Well get this. In order to be able to use this labelling, and presumably benefit from additional sales to shoppers who are increasingly concerned about what is being done to ur food and when and where, Tyson foods have been injecting antibiotics into their chickens in ovio, in the egg, before they are hatched. So 'Raised Without Antibiotics' becomes applicable because they haven't hatched yet! WTF? It obviously affects their sales significant;y because they're fighting hard to get the order thrown out and the labelling regs rescinded.
But hey, you know you can trust these people right?

Oh Hello - Not So Perfect After All

It seems that a significant amount of the plastic equipment used in biological research can leach bioactive  substances into the liquids contained therein, or transferred thereby, that can alter the action of those liquids and bastardise the experimental results. Interesting, when the thought police have been loudly proclaiming that Science is the only way forward, that bad science is responsible for the end of the world as we know it. Perhaps they'll accept that the mainstream can be just as fucked up as the whack-jobs quoted in the hatchet job articles published to counteract some of the undoubted rubbish published in the press and elsewhere but I doubt they will. Some day we'll stop car crash journalism and examine interesting anomalies together in a spirit of cooperation but I doubt I'll live to see it. My lucky energy pendant has passed its sell by date.

Ann Nixon Cooper or Joe The Plumber

Nothing could illustrate the differences between the two campaigns in the United States of America better than the citizens chosen by the respective candidates to illustrate Joe Public. While McCain picked Joe The Plumber who was quickly tracked down and turned out not only to have no plumbing qualifications but also to owe the taxman several thousand dollars, Obama picked a 106-year old black woman whose dignity and longevity were evident in equal measure. The contrast could not have been more stark. 

There seems little doubt that, if dignified statesmanship is what's required in a President, then America has made the right choice.

Canvassing the Veggie Vote... Or Not?

This just in via Pharyngula. Roy Brown is appaled at being called a... vegetarian! What a foul calumny to describe this fine upstanding candidate as that most derided of Montana residents, the dreaded Vegetarian.

I was surprised by this story until I recalled the tale of the British TV producer person who, whilst studying the menu, asked a roadside diner waitress in Montana, 'What do you recommend for a vegetarian?' To which said serving wench replied through her gum, 'I recommend you get out of Montana'.

Seems there are worse things than being black.

Settled Dust?

Now the Brand/Ross brouhaha is calming down and Mr Brand has departed the Beeb and Mr Ross is in detention it's time to re-visit to try to work out just what the hell happened. As far as I can gather the show itself only garnered two quite mild complaints. It was the Mail what done it! After an article appeared in the Mail on Sunday a positive a positive tsunami of complaints welled up and consumed the message boards, blogs, emails, listeners forums etc. My own small contribution was just one such. So how to explain this swell of righteous indignation. My assumption is that, like me, many people have been turning away from the Brand/Ross axis of 'humour' largely put off by the presenters' own tendency to go way over the top. As far a Russell Brand is concerned I never listened to him much anyway not because I dislike his stuff but because he was just on at the wrong time and time-shifting by podcast is not yet in my lexicon of available options. Anytime I did listen to him I found him zanily entertaining and only mildly offensive never enough to raise a protest or to switch off. Jonathan Ross on the other hand overstepped the mark so often and with such puerile innuendo that I made a positive decision not to watch or listen to him again but like, I suspect, many others I didn't protest just voted with my off switch. It now appears that there were quite a few of us because the woodwork yielded the tidal wave of approbation that was visited on the BBC post-Sachs. So the Andrew Sachs affair was just the catalyst that released the pent up torrent of dissatisfaction with JRs childishly smutty technique. Sadly Russell Brand and Lesley Duncan have born the brunt of the listening public's disapproval and Mr Ross seems to have suffered a mild wrist slap. Personally I would have reversed the penalties but that's not the world we live in. Jonathan Ross is the senior presenter, is probably paid more, I suspect is more intelligent, knows better, and is much much older. He should know better. He is undoubtedly clever and, I believe, doesn't need to descend to the levels which he has plumbed so regularly.

Enough about the main protagonists and on to the BBC whose inability to have nipped this furore in the bud is simply staggering. Not to have a senior figure in place to be able to head this kind of outcry off at an early stage with the relevant apology and promises of rolling heads etc. etc. is extraordinary. Hopefully they'll learn some lessons from this and we wont see a repeat of this level of ineptitude from our public broadcaster again.