I'm leaving for new adventures today :)

I don't feel like navel gazing though, I'm looking ahead now. My best friend phoned me last night and I felt hugely better for talking to him (and then TD afterwards - supportive lovah!).

Anyway - I saw this this morning and lol'd a lot. It's a hundred kinds of awesome:
Kasparov The Conceited looking alarmed? Check
Security guards looking moody? Check
Dildo made into a helicopter? Check
Awesome.

http://www.break.com/index/sex-toy-helicopter-interrupts-speech.html

Next post will be from Canadialand

Leaving isn't easy, but I'm glad I'm doing it

The strange thing about emmigrating is the "this is the last time I'll ever" thoughts. Today is the last Saturday I'll be spending here (other than the odd trip back). It's a bit self-indulgent and dramatic, but I'm expressing it as I feel it.

Today I take my daughter back to her mother's after spending just over a week together (she's 8 and on half-term). We've had a nice time, and it hasn't been an angst ridden mope-fest - it's just been normal. I had a bit of a pang this morning, I have to keep reminding myself that I'm only going to be a 5 hour flight away - I'm not dying, and neither is she. Perspective is hard to maintain in the face of emotion. My hope is that when she comes to visit she'll fall in love with the place too, and will choose to come and live with us. If she doesn't, then she's still going to have awesome holidays. It's great to have a partner like TD that is completely supportive and understanding of what I need to aim for as a father - I'm not used to it so sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm not responsible for everything anymore.

Flicking through facebook a minute ago, I saw some pictures of my Brighton friends. I miss them and I miss Brighton - it's where I was born, and also where I was reborn. I need to spread my wings though, the chance of a whole new life was not to be passed up. My mother is Canadian and she left home when I was 4, I didnt see her again till I was 16. Consequently I held onto Canada as this place that I needed to know, needed to see - it was the only link I had to her. In some ways it has as much of a draw on my soul as Brighton. My childhood was spent laying claim to being half-canadian. So in a way I'm returning to my other roots :)

I'm going into this with my eyes wide open (perhaps in terror!) - as the 7th approaches, I allow myself a little more excitement. My work permit came through on Thursday, and that was the last thing that I was waiting for - I've got the girl and I've got the job that lets me get to her. I have a week on my own now, which I've thankfully managed to fill with work appointments, so the time should go quickly. So much unknown territory awaits me, I feel like I'm on the edge of a cliff and psyching myself to jump into the water below.

A 7 day countdown until I actually do it though :)

7.....

Insomnia

A cycle of refutable logic
Beating me to a guilty pulp
Tired and emotional
Refutable becomes irrefutable.

A maelstrom of feelings
Disconnected thoughts dont linger
Long enough for analysis.
Like trying to catch rain drops.

The pillow over my ears
Doesnt smother the pattering
From inside my head
It just makes me sweat.

Sleep eventually comes
Never deep enough for rest
But enough to make my head ache.
With the morning comes coffee.
And insight.

They did the right thing

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/may/21/health.stemcells

What I didn't mention before was that they were supposed to be voting on amendments to the Bill relating to embryo research and IVF access for lesbian parents - the pro-life/anti-choice lobby hijacked the debate and submitted amendments to the 24-week limit on abortion.

Thankfully the majority of our politicians realised that there was no need to change the law, as nothing has changed since it was made in 1990. This despite of the emotive tactics of the pro-life MP's, holding up pictures of foetuses and offering anecdotal evidence of "murder".

As the above link relates:
"Christine McCafferty, the Labour MP for Calder Valley, who tabled a separate Commons motion stating that the current abortion time limit is "scientifically and ethically justified", said: "The pregnant women herself is the only person who can make a responsible decision.

"Abortion should be a private decision between the patient and her doctor, just like any other medical treatment. Why is it so difficult for societies, even one like ours, to give the power to decide to those who carry the consequences?""

I can't put it better than that - it's easy to take a moral position when you don't have to carry any of the consequences. Much like people opposing "saviour babies" (when screening can be used to ensure that a new baby is a good match genetically to save the life of an older sibling) as messing with God - let's see what your position is when it's your child that has a deadly illness.

The religious have acted in such a "we know best, God's will blah blah" manner over this, that it has reawakened by militant atheism - I had settled to a "live and let live" approach to religion, but then I see how they want to affect and dictate our lives. Atheists need to be aggressive about their position, it isn't enough to just let them be. Anyway.

It was good to see the party leaders continue the tradition of allowing their members to vote according to their personal ethics and consciences - for the last ten years we have seen very few 'free' votes from the Labour party, so I'm glad they allowed it for such an important topic.

Why I'm leaving, part 3

http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/results/rankings/2008/

Canada - 11th most peaceful country in the world
UK - 49th most peaceful

awesome.

Something to laugh at

I can't get over how funny this is.

Here's a prime example of 'Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus' offered by an English professor from the University of Colorado for an actual class assignment.

The professor told his class one day: 'Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right.

'As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also sending another copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to ke ep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.'

The following was actually turned in by two of his English students, Rebecca and Gary.

THE STORY: (first paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Jennifer couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

(second paragraph by Gary)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Jennifer with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. 'A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,' he said into his transgalactic communicator. 'Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far...' But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. 'Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel', Jennifer read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. 'Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?' she pondered wistfully.

(Gary)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anudrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dimwitted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through the Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anudrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid Jennifer.

(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

(Gary)
Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. 'Oh, shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of FUCKING TEA??? Oh no, what am I to do? I'm such an air-headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels!'

(Rebecca)
Asshole.

(Gary)
Bitch!

(Rebecca)
FUCK YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!!

(Gary)
In your dreams, Ho. Go drink some tea.

(TEACHER)
A+ - I really liked this one.

100 Kinds of Awesome :)

I love drums :) This is brilliant - I actually got all emotional at the end.

http://www.biertijd.com/oudbruin/content.php?article.668

Why I'm leaving, part 2

This is a piece by George Monbiot, one of my favourite journalists. He sums up pretty much everything I feel has gone wrong in the UK, and the sense of betrayal that the Labour party has done this.

"

You can hear the wringing of hands and tearing of cloth all the way down Farringdon Road. Dismayed by the local election results, convinced that Labour will be crushed in Thursday's byelection, afraid that this will presage disaster in the next general election, my fellow columnists are predicting the end of the civilised world. But I can't understand why we should care.

Yes, I worry about what the Tories might do if they get in. I also worry about what Labour might do if it wins another term. Why should anyone on the left seek the re-election of the most rightwing government Britain has had since the second world war?

New Labour's apologists keep reminding us of the redistributive policies it has introduced: Sure Start children's centres, reductions in child poverty, raising the school leaving age, the national minimum wage, flexible hours for parents and carers, better conditions for part-time workers, the decent homes programme, free museums, more foreign aid. All these are real achievements and deserve to be celebrated. But the catalogue of failures, backsliding and outright destruction is much longer and more consequential.

One fact alone should disqualify this government from office: we have a cabinet of war criminals. The Nuremberg tribunal characterised a war of aggression as "the supreme international crime". It is not just that Britain's Labour government launched and sustained an unprovoked war, it also sabotaged all means of achieving a peaceful resolution. In April 2002 it helped the Bush administration to sack José Bustani, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, in order to prevent him settling the dispute over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. In two separate offers before the invasion, Saddam Hussein agreed to meet the terms the US and Britain were demanding. But they slapped him down and concealed his offers from their electorates. (All references are on my website.)

Cluster bombs can be legally used because the British government helped to block an international ban in 2006: it is still holding out against an outright ban at the current talks in Dublin. The government has undermined another international peace agreement - the nuclear non-proliferation treaty - by deciding to renew the Trident missile programme. It was the first administration to announce a policy of pre-emptive nuclear attack: even the great nuclear enthusiast Harold Macmillan never went this far. In 2007 the defence secretary, without parliamentary debate, revealed that the US would be allowed to use the listening station at Menwith Hill for its missile defence system.

Labour appears to be prepared to meet any demand the Bush administration makes, however outrageous. In 2003 the government signed a one-sided extradition treaty, permitting the US to extract our citizens without producing prima facie evidence of an offence. In the same year the defence secretary announced that he would restructure the British armed forces to make them "inter-operable" with those of the United States, ensuring for the first time in British history that they became functionally subordinate to those of another sovereign power.

Labour's foreign policy is as unethical as Margaret Thatcher's. It provides military aid to the government of Colombia, whose troops are involved in a campaign of terror against the civilian population. It granted an open licence for weapons exports to the government of Uzbekistan, and sacked the British ambassador when he tried to draw attention to the regime's human rights abuses. It has collaborated with the US programme of extra-judicial kidnapping and imprisonment, left our citizens to languish in Guantánamo Bay, and made use of Pakistani torture chambers in seeking to extract testimony from British suspects. Until 2005 it tied its foreign aid programme to the privatisation of public utilities in some of the world's poorest countries. Last year it held out against reform of the International Monetary Fund's unfair allocation of votes.

The proportion of the British population in prison has risen by a fifth since the Tories left office. Today Britain locks up 151 out of every 100,000 people. The Chinese judiciary, by contrast, which is notorious for its willingness to bang up anyone and everyone, jails 119 people per 100,000; Burma imprisons 120; Saudi Arabia 132. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, passed in 2005, contains clauses that permit the police to ban any demonstration, however peaceful. It is one of a long series of bills the Labour government has passed that restrict the right to protest.

The citizen has been re-regulated; business has been deregulated. Last year deaths caused by serious injuries at work rose by 11%: a predictable result of the sacking of 1,000 staff at the Health & Safety Executive and a 24% reduction in workplace inspections. In 2006 the government instructed the Serious Fraud Office to drop its corruption case against the arms manufacturer BAE Systems. It has obstructed efforts by other states to investigate the company.

Labour has shifted taxation from the rich to the poor, cutting corporation tax from 33% to 28% and capital gains tax from 40% to 18%, and introducing a new entrepreneurs' relief scheme, taxing the first million of capital gains at just 10%. It tried to raise the income tax paid by the poorest earners from 10% to 20%. Labour has lifted the inheritance tax threshold from £300,000 to £700,000, and maintained the cap on the highest rates of council tax. While vigorously prosecuting benefits cheats, it has allowed tax avoidance, mostly by the very rich, to reach an estimated £41bn. Inequality today is slightly worse than it was when Labour took power in 1997 (the Gini coefficient which measures it has risen from 0.33 to 0.35).

Both as chancellor and prime minister, Gordon Brown has forced the private finance initiative into almost all public services. His privatisation schemes have crept into places where the Conservative government never dared to tread. Labour has waged war against our planning system and overseen a disastrous decline in social housing: under Thatcher an average of 46,600 social homes were built every year; under Tony Blair the average was 17,300. Labour is closing post offices, small schools and GPs' surgeries, while overseeing a doubling of airport capacity and the construction of 4,000km of trunk roads. These developments ensure that even the modest targets in the climate change bill are likely to be missed. Carbon dioxide pollution fell faster under the Conservatives than under Labour.

Above all, the Labour government has destroyed hope. It has put into practice Thatcher's dictum that "there is no alternative" to a market fundamentalism that subordinates human welfare to the demands of business. Labour has created a political monoculture that kills voters' enthusiasm, and has delayed electoral reforms that would have given smaller parties an opportunity to be heard. All we are left with is fear: the fear that this awful government might be replaced by something slightly worse. Fear has destroyed the Labour party, but people keep supporting it in trepidation of letting the other side win.

Save this government? I would sooner give money to the Malarial Mosquito Conservation Project. Of all the causes leftist thinkers might support, New Labour must be the least deserving."

Hoping our politicians do the right thing

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,,2280895,00.html

Tomorrow the UK parliament votes on amendments to the abortion laws in this country. At the moment we have a 24-week threshold for abortion, and there are a bunch of motions to reduce that to 20 weeks and lower. I am pro-choice, vehemently so. I'm concerned by the arguments being made to reduce the limit, because they are pro-lifers that are dressing up their argument to try and sound scientific - scratch at the surface and then you see that a reduction to 20 weeks is just the start. The European average is 12 weeks we are told, and those Europeans obviously know what they're doing. Bullshit - how many pregnancies go undetected for 12 weeks? How many birth defects become evident afer 12 weeks? When a right wing MP refers to an abortion as "murder", and a foetus as "a life", then their personal agenda is clear - the mendacity in not being up front about that is a disgrace and borne entirely of a desire to keep women voting for her.

The UK has massive problems with teenage pregnancy - and consequently those kids often don't know they are pregnant until fairly late on. If the right wing really wanted to reduce the abortion rate, then they should invest their energy in comprehensive sex education that ignores the parents' wishes. Those teenagers and their children become a burden on the system, which costs us all money, so the incentive should be there for politicians to address the problem. They won't, because none of them are prepared to tell middle England "we need to teach your children to use contraception when they have sex", because middle England likes to believe that children are innocent and that telling them about contraception will take that innocence and make them want to have sex. Newsflash: most UK kids have lost their virginity by 16, many by 14.

Anyway, I digress. These votes are always emotive, but I find it a disgrace that politician's are willfully manipulating scientific data to suit their arguments for a reduction. Nothing has changed in our situation from 1990 when these laws were last amended, so there is no need for the current set of politicians to fuck about with those laws.

Bitter, much?

Bit of a LOLlercoaster this one :)

http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=Pq11YkGJ

Kinda NSFW due to swearing in the text. Awesome :)

Europeans are weird

Location: Copenhagen Airport, departure lounge
Atmosphere: reeks of sausage
Mood: sociopathic

I don't like Europeans, they have weird habits and they smell. I like old people even less than that, for pretty much the same reasons. So being sat on a foreign train with no idea where Im going (Kopenhaven apparently - I assumed it was Copenhagen with typical British bloody-mindedness since it "looks most like the place I want to get to"), things took a rapid turn for the worse.

First off some fuckwit teenager sat down opposite me and decided he was the hardest thing since hard was invented by God on the Third Day (aka Iron and Carbon Day), so he stared at me for the first few minutes (I believe he would have tried to outstare a corpse with two glass eyes, possibly winning). I got bored of this so put my book down and said "what?". He stopped staring at me then and spent the rest of the journey sulking and looking out of the window. Twat.

Then a full nazi rally complement of german pensioners got on the train. All female and fat in that Bavarian "I ate a minced pig for breakfast and washed it down with fermented sheep knuckle beer" way. The fattest one decides to sit next to me and managed to drop her walking stick on my foot, then glared at me like it was my fault. Her walking stick handle had been carved into the shape of a Doberman's head, but obviously the ears would have been inconvenient so they left them off. Either that or it was a carving of the family dog shortly after it had been injured in a freak accident with a toilet roll holder.

This woman smelt so bad - the cloying smell of old person really gets to me. It's a mix of stale body odour and lavender, I think the lavender is supposed to suppress the BO but it actually just enhances the overall effect. Much like fat people wearing baggy t-shirts to disguise the huge rolls of blubber falling over their trousers, all you notice is the bits where flesh is _still_ stretching the material tight, despite the fact that they are wearing ten third-world child labourer hours worth of slave cotton. Anyway, she smelt horrendous and I spent the twenty minute journey refraining from beating her to death with 15,000 well placed blows of her freakshow walking stick.

Plus she insisted on talking in german for the entire journey to her friend as loudly as possible about her mobile phone "NOKIA...... SWEDEN..... TELEFONE....NOKIA". Gah. She needed a dry slap. With a brick. Launched from a cannon.

Anyway, time to board my flight now. I hope for my sake there are no octagenarian germans sitting near me. I've got a brick in my rucksack.

Frickin awesome!

Nature is truly awe-inspiring. This is a lightning storm caused by the eruption of that volcano in Chile. I don't have the words, so just enjoy. Full story

Certifiably insane?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsXMszBtzuk&feature=related

I can't work out if the guy is a genius of deadpan, or is certifiably insane. Perhaps both.

Anyway - it gave me a good laugh this morning :)

Shut your brat up!

Why do people think it's acceptable to sit in a public place and let their kids run wild. I'm trying to work in a cafe due to building work at home, yet all I can hear (through my headphones!) is the same screaming fucking baby. Why do these people think it's ok to inflict their progeny on the rest of us? There's 40 people in here chatting quietly or working, and one screaming kid is adversely affecting everyone else's pleasure. Fuck Off.

Same goes for pubs since the smoking ban - now all these fuckhead parents think it's ok to take their kids to the pub in the evenings so they can have a drink. You know what? Fuck Off. Take your snot-nosed spunk bubble to the pub during the day by all means, but in the evening respect the fact that other people go out to get away from their kids and just want to relax with friends. And don't breast-feed when you're sat ten foot away from the eating area!

I'm a parent, and I love my daughter dearly - but that doesn't preclude me from being considerate of other people's lives. The world is bigger than you're immediate genetic needs. Go to a creche.

Mutter.

Rant about stuff - pet peeves

Americans who think that the only way to speak or write English is their way. I don't give a fuck if you spell "honour" and "colour" without the U - where I'm from, we do. Since my country gave rise to the language, I hardly think we're wrong. The world is bigger than your borders.

For example - "orientate" is a perfectly valid word, and is the more common practice in the UK.

And while I'm at it - "schedule" doesn't have a 'k' in it, so try pronouncing it properly. Oh wait - that's just a _regional_ difference you ignorant fucks.

"Herb" has a fucking H in it!!! Please pronounce it whenever you are in the UK, as otherwise people will think you are a white jamaican or that you are taking the piss - this is not a good thing to do in some parts of the country.

In the UK I hear the following all the time:

"aks" instead of "ask"
"cerstificate" instead of "certificate"
"skelington" instead of "skeleton"

I have recently become a fan of "innit" - it's the equivalent of the Canadian "eh?" on the end of sentences. Alongside that I've now started using "is it?" after someone tells me something, to express disbelief/interest/something to say to feel the silence:
"I'm going down the shops, innit"
"Is it?"

Ooh ooh another one - Americans, I appreciate that for a long time the world has been convinced that you don't know what irony is. However, telling me that _you_ know what irony is, and then proceeding to laugh at Alanis M and her little song "and like, it's ironic that she doesn't know what irony is", are not interesting ways for me to spend a conversation. I really don't give a fuck.

That's enough grammar fascism....

Trains
- if you're on the train, by all means take a call. Maybe even make one to tell your loved one when you'll be home. Please don't phone your mate and spend 30 minutes telling them about last night and how "so yeah, Danny tried to get 'old of me innit, but I told him to fack off cos he ain't my type, and then Jodi got 'old of 'im instead and I was like what's your problem?". I hate you.
- I'm happy you want to read your paper, just keep it out of the area between my face and the book Im holding. (I once saw a man grab the paper off of someone who did this and start doing the crossword "I thought you were giving it to me")
- just because I'm not wearing a suit, that does not mean I'm somehow not supposed to be on the commuter train. Look down your nose at me again and I'll slap you and your cheap suit all the way back to Burtons.
- Dear man eating Burger King, I've been at work all day and I'm starving. I refrained from buying junk food because I know I'd feel bad about it. Why the fuck do you have to sit next to me eating? And why are you incapable of closing your mouth when you chew? I really think there's no liquid left in your drink, so stop. fucking. slurping.
- Dear passenger - sitting on the aisle seat and putting your bag on the window seat is not going to stop me from wanting to sit down. This train is full and I'm not going to stand up for an hour. When I indicate that I want to sit down, don't fuck about - just move over. Standing up and pretending you just wanted the aisle seat is a load of shit - we both know you were trying it on. Just for that I'm going to take up the whole arm rest.

And breeeaathe

I've got an itouch

awesome. It's a little slow to enter text, but it is frikkin sweet all the same. Even more amusing is watching my flatmate trying to play brain training on DS. His brain age is currently 80. Ha ha ha

I hope he gets in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU

Obama's recent speech in response to the race issue. I really do hope he wins - as a Brit and a European, and soon embracing my Canadian half-blood, I think he truly represents hope.

Are you here to live, or here to live a long time?

Great post by someone on a taiji forum - he's a neurosurgeon.

"Naturally, a lot more time,money & energy has gone into examining ways to enhance performance in the short term & very little investigation has gone into the long term effect of training. Why? - its perfectly easy to understand IMO. If you want to play it safe & be sure you make it to a ripe old age, you do everything in moderation & avoid stuff that is likely to overstress whatever (knees, hips, spine...)-- that is not gonna make you a superstar. To get really good, you gonna have to take some risks & in sports that means risks with your health. Not being stupid, you try to calculate which risks give you the most bang for your buck & supplement your training with practices designed to mitigate your risk. That is playing it smart. If you justify your training by saying you know of this & that guy that did this & is ok, you are trying to psychologically get comfortable with your choice of risks. Look i do the same damn thing, I continue to spar & take head shots despite the fact that I can actually quote you literature that shows how bad that can be (this one has been studied). I wear a mouthguard & I have a 17.5 inch neck (I'm only 5'9"). I poo poo my wife's warning with the occassional post-concussive symptoms but - come on man - who am I kidding. I have done surgery on a bunch of old fighters with parkinsons & with neck problems.

So what is the point of this long winded post? Patients often come in & ask should I avoid this, that, whatever.... My response is similar to the last paragraph. Are you on this planet to enjoy your time or just live a long time. If you want to live forever, be careful, be safe, be boring & good luck. If you wanna have some fun, well that is a lot more interesting (I think a better way to live) but it may catch up with you (it may not). So if you love horseback riding but you have had back surgery & wanna know if there is a chance continuing to horseback ride could lead to more back problems - well, duh of course there is. On the otherhand, you love horseback riding, why would you stop?"

I liked the cut of his cloth :)

Equality?

The Orange Female-Only Book prize.

Just watched a debate on tv (debate might be aggrandizing it - it's a chat show) about the Orange prize. It started back in the nineties when there was a lack of equality in the Booker prize and others. The Orange prize was necessary to challenge the hegemony of the 'boys club', but now the Booker lists a lot of female authors. Has the Orange prize lost it's justification?

It's not like the MOBO (Music Of Black Origin) which is purportedly representing and rewarding minority music (another debate for another time). Women are not a minority group, so why are they being treated as such?

If people want to have a female-only prize, so what? I think the key question is "so would you be ok if there was a 'men only' book prize?" I dont have a problem with this either, except that there will inevitably be comparisions of prize money and god help the men if their prize is larger.

There was only one woman on the panel of four, and she was an old school feminist. She had some credibility to begin with, as she pointed out that the only reason that men were able to create art and music in the past (whereas women were far less likely to) was that they didn't have to do anything else. A man could be an itinerant artist, a woman was expected to be a wife and mother. That's all good and I agree that there is nothing genetic that makes men better than women at art or music - it was the misogynistic society that caused the disparity.

Then she went a bit wimmins lib and said "and although things are a bit better now, women still do the majority of the work in the home". A younger guy on the panel took offence to her comments and pointed out that modern relationships were in fact partnerships and that most women he knew would never accept anything less than a fair split of the work. She was dismissive and went into really aggressive patronising(matronising? *grin*) feminism.

I loathe this type of "you subjugated us once, now you need to give us everything and if you disagree then I shall label you as a bigot" identity politics that seeks to set people up as oppressors. I got it when I lived in Uganda - like I was somehow responsible for colonising their country. I got it at Pride a few years ago for being straight. I got it at university in a debate for saying "I refuse to apologise for being white, straight, middle-class and male" (I got thrown out of the debate for that one - go me). I did not enslave your forefathers, I did not subjugate your great-great-grandmother, I did not lynch your ancestor, I did not make laws making your sexuality a crime. In addition - since when did _you_ suffer any of these things? You are not the victim and I am not the oppressor.

I believe in equality. I believe in a meritorious society rather than a privileged society. I accept that it is an ideal rather than a likely reality. I don't like positive discrimination, but I recognise that it is the only way to force acceptance amongst the ignorant - the problem comes that once you have established an acceptable role for a black manager or female doctor or gay soldier, do you continue with the positive discrimination? It is a double-edged sword, because fulfilling a quota immediately removes you from being considered as 'the best person for the job', even if you are. Once the glass ceiling has been shattered, stop flying people onto the roof - let them take the stairs like everyone else (I apologise for that woeful analogy).

Which in a long roundabout way brings me back to the Orange prize for women. Is it positive discrimination? I think originally it was. I don't think it is now - I see it purely as a closed group award (as opposed to an 'open' one). Apparently there is a black female author award as well. Great.

Would it be deemed unacceptable to have a white male author award. If the niche awards are not positive discrimination, then why is there a problem with another niche award for white males? I think there would be uproar if that award was setup, and I think I would agree with the uproar. Which is confusing, because it shouldn't be a problem.

This why taiji is full of people who can't fight

" I say to get over it - it's a preparatory move, it doesn't necessarily have to "mean" anything other than what it is, which is a way to initiate via the respiratory diaphragm's function the ground reaction force through the tensegrity-based connective tissue matrix, in order to establish and differentiate root (gan) in the legs and lightness (hing) in the torso, and then amplify this out through the distal extremities; if you want to talk from a Taoist perspective, it's basically a way to "activate" the micro/macrocosmic orbits and meridian system (starting with the Lung) prior to doing the form, and which arguably got tacked on to the beginning of the form by YLC (notice, the Chen form doesn't start the same way at all...)"

What a load of bollocks.

Check your ego at the door

Had a taiji seminar last night with one of my teacher's teachers (Willie Lim - CMC guy from Arizona) - I took a few of my students along with me, and we joined up with a bunch of my teacher's karate and taiji students. It was an interesting seminar, but I definitely felt like he was casting pearls before swine.

I hate doing partner work with people I don't know in seminars, I always end up with some nutbag that my teacher makes me partner with so no beginners get stuck with him. I get Bigfoot this time: 6'5'', 300 pounds, Cro-magnon brow, one large bogey hanging out of his nose. Fuck.

Me: Hi, I'm Vegas. Nice to meet you *shake hands and then move to start pushing hands/application/whatever the drill is*
Bigfoot: Hi, I'm big foot. How long have you been training?
Me: erm, I've been with Steve for a few years now
Bigfoot: oh really? I never see you - do you not come that often?
Me: No, I train privately with Steve. I live in Brighton.
Bigfoot: Oh ok.

I try and start the exercise going, except now he has to try and prove that he's better than me. He makes a complete abortion of the drill, to the point where I want to help him out. Big mistake.

Me: I think we're supposed to be doing X, not Y
Bigfoot: No it's Y.
Me: Ok. But it's not working when you do Y, so try X
Bigfoot: You're moving wrong, that's why I can't get Y to work
Me: So you want me to move so it'll work?

Bigfoot now tries to do the movement and force it through. I make sure it doesn't work this time. I'm now getting annoyed.

Me: Look - I'm doing X. That's why it works. So do X.
Bigfoot: Ok.

Bigfoot proceeds to do Y again.

Me: I'm getting a drink.

I come back and Bigfoot is now telling Willie that I'm being too resistant in the exercise and that he's having trouble. Willie looks at me (we know each other well) so I shrug and say we'll show him.

Willie: You're doing Y, but you need to do it like this (he shows X)
Bigfoot: Ohhhhh I see. *turns to me* We've been doing Y, but it should be X.

I stab him in the eye with some chi and smile. Bigfoot now is doing X, but still forcing the movement. Stupidly I decide to try and coach him (I am supposed to be assisting in the seminar after all).

Me: I find this works really well if I just relax
Bigfoot: Yeah, I am really relaxed. You should relax more.
Me:....
Bigfoot: Why don't you try again, and this time relax.
Me: ok.

My ego now gets the better of me and I put the move on 'properly'. He yelps and looks at me like a retarded kid that just burnt his hand on the kettle. Inside I smile.

Me: Oh sorry, I was just seeing how well it worked if I tried to use your strength against you.
Bigfoot: That's ok, that was a lot better.
Me: Thanks! It was wasn't it?

We finish the drill and my teacher comes over and quietly explains that the guy actually IS retarded. So I just beat up a retard. It still felt good.

I think I'm going to Hell.

Mans talk

"A man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive, and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with, and I will tell you his valuation of himself. ...He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer - because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut. He does not seek to gain his value, he seeks to express it."


-Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

True Love

TD has taken the dogs out for their evening ablutions, and there is a good chance she'll die in the horror show that is the Montreal weather. Someone remind me why I'm moving there again?

Oh yeah - True Love

I don't write about it online much, as I'm a fiercely private person. However - the outpouring of love and affection that TD has for me online deserves a response. So here it is:

Imagine never seeing colour in your life - that you have had no experience of it at all, everything is and has always been just shades of grey. Then imagine that as you grow up you read about colour, see films about colour, even have people telling you about colour. But you never see it. After a while you might decide that either colour doesn't exist, or just that you are incapable of seeing it. You have never experienced it, so you don't even miss it - you just think your life is what it is, and you derive pleasure from other things that you do know. It is possible to be happy and content without something you've never known.

Then one day somebody comes and shines a special light upon your world, and everything it's light touches floods with colour and warmth. There is radiance wherever you turn - so overwhelming that you can barely stand to look at the world around you. Initially there is shock and awe that such beauty exists, and then a brief lament that it has taken so long to be able to see this irridescence, and then at last absolute gratitude and wonder that you should have been granted this burst of glorious beautiful colour.

You go to sleep that night and wonder if the colour will be there again tomorrow. It is. Eventually you wonder if it would be possible to continue without the light and the warmth, and you hope never to have to find out.

That covers about 1% of what TD is to me. She walks upon my dreams, and beneath every step my dreams sprout forth into lush reality.

Stepping Into Your True Self

This is for Martini, but anyone is welcome to try this. It is a common pattern in NLP and in some magickal systems, in Hawaiian methods and some hypnosis - I find it the single most useful exercise a person can do to redirect themselves.

First you need to understand your mind - a way of describing how things work in there is to split the mind into conscious and unconscious. The unconscious pretty much does it's own thing, and it likes to do things the same way ad infinitum, as it's easier than making changes all the time - if you think about it, it makes sense for us to form habits because it makes it easier to get new stuff done, rather than wasting mental resources doing stuff 'afresh' every day.

That's great, until you get stuck in a habit or pattern of behaviour that isn't helpful - then it can get very tiring and frustrating - consistently repeating the same self-destructive behaviours, which makes you feel crappy, so then you do more stuff to propogate the self-loathing etc etc What this pattern does is direct the unconscious towards a desired outcome - you'll be amazed at how effective it is.

So first you need to get somewhere quiet and peaceful - this will take 10-15 minutes and works best when you're alone. You might want to tape yourself saying these steps and then play them back so you can just concentrate on what you're doing.
- Lay down on your bed or on the floor on your back
- close your eyes
- now spend a minute or so breathing deeply to your belly, and just concentrating on relaxing your body. Feel where you have tension and let it go. Take as long as you need to feel calm and settled - work on feeling how heavy you can make your arms and legs feel. Really spend time on this - it's great :)
- create an image of yourself in your head - like you're looking into a mirror floating above you. Really work on giving it detail - notice how your hair is looking, what clothes you are wearing, what expression you have on your face, what posture you have. Every detail you can imagine.
- now you're going to start making changes to this version of yourself. I recommend changing one or two things at a time. So if you want to build confidence or self-esteem, imagine how you will look when you're more confident. Really build it up so that you can clearly see the behaviour, so that a stranger could see this trait all over you
- once you have the image in your head, you're going to make it bigger. Make it a hundred foot tall - a giant version of you. Hear yourself talking as this new confident 100 foot tall you, see how animated your face is, be amazed at how exceptional this giant version of you is
- now rotate the giant you so that you're facing the back of yourself, still 100 feet tall
- take a deep deep breath to you stomach
- and DROP the new you into yourself, feel it fall and be subsumed into yourself, imagine what it would be like to absorb this giant powerful you into yourself
- breathe deeply and feel the energy you have taken in
- now open your eyes, smile at yourself for taking the time to work on yourself, and go about your business

Make the time to do this every day for 3 weeks, and you will notice the changes - they will start happening very early on in the process, but it's important to stick the process out. You're giving your unconscious some guidance on the behaviour you wish to exhibit, and your unconscious needs things to be reiterated a few times ;)

Anyway - this pattern was life-changing for me. I hope you find it useful, or at the very least interesting.

Thanks

:)

Train with your partner

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbhBX6E4lEA

Love it :)

Bank 'helpdesks'

Fucking idiots. My online PIN wasn't working, so I stop before I get locked out of the account. The idiot on the phone then tells me to try again, and consequently I get locked out. Then presented with "sorry sir, you'll have to wait for another PIN to arrive in 3 to 5 business days". When I point out that I'm travelling to the US this weekend and am not going to be here to receive my new PIN, I get told "sorry sir, that's the way the system works".

Fucking dickheads. Have made a complaint, but am still going to be on another continent for over two weeks - so quite how Im supposed to pay bills etc is beyond me.

This week has been a disaster so far - also managed to lose the last two years of emails when I 'backed up' prior to reinstalling everything.

Technology may well be your friend, but the last two days it has been my worst enemy. That and call centre fucktards who can't even follow their own procedures properly.

Gah.

Day 2 Woes

Obviously what I forgot when I posted yesterday about doing BJJ is that muscle soreness takes two days to come out of the system. 50 push-ups and 150 sit-ups in the warm up pretty much shredded me, then rolling on the floor for 90 minutes grappling demolished what was left. It actually hurts when I try to sit uo :) Love it.

I just started doing BJJ again, and am aching like a mofo for it. I love it. Martial artists often declare that they know hundreds of techniques, but are rarely pushed to show it. I like this anecdote:

Master x said to Master y, how many arm bars do you know?

Master Y then started to talk through this one and that one.

Then Master x said 'no, show me'.

Master y then started to demonstrate step by step on a student.

Master x then said 'no, show me while grappling.'

Master y then grappled with his student, and out of the 30 odd arm bars he knew, he only successfully applied 5.

Master x then concluded, 'you only know 5 arm bars.'

Live for today

Someone called Brad wrote this - I like it. Especially since I have a sink full of dishes in the kitchen :)

"You’re here. This is your life. And you’re missing out on it. Your fantasies are never real, and they never can be, because nothing you can possibly imagine will ever be anything like the way you imagine it.

The same applies to anything you might get depressed about — the state of the world, the state of contemporary music, the state of your haircut.

The thing that always helps me is doing whatever little things I can do right now to improve my life. Like cleaning the toilet, or emptying out the litter box. Make someone laugh. There’s always something that needs done. Always. And it’s your job to do it. Contribute something to the world you live in. It doesn’t matter if it’s something big or small. In fact, small is better. We don’t live our lives for ourselves. That’s a huge mistake nearly everyone makes. You are a part of the continuum of life and it is your duty to make your own unique contribution. That’s what God put you on Earth for. When you go against that you feel unhappy.

Is your life balanced? Or do you envision it as a few peak experiences, big highs or big lows, interrupted by long stretches of nothing much going on? Drugs will mess you up too. Much as I hate sounding like Nancy Reagan, it’s damned true. They pull you up one way for a little while, but then there’s always the rebound. If you live your life as peak experiences interrupted by nothing happening, you might think that’s fine. But it’s not fine. The very reason today seems so bleak and grey is only because you’re comparing it to your memories of yesterday’s sunshine, or yesterday’s high, or yesterday’s orgasm. Or that great “if only” that would make everything fine if it wasn’t just out of reach. But that’s just your memories and ideas. Reality is the dishes in the sink. And the dishes in the sink today are always better that the rollercoaster ride last night — because today is real and yesterday and tomorrow are lies you tell yourself.

Depression is a thought. It’s a tough one to get rid of. But in the end, all thoughts, no matter what they are, are nothing but energy bouncing around in that lump of hamburger inside your skull."

On religion...

An atheist is someone who has an absence of belief in god/s - now many atheists will have a belief that there is no god, but that isn't atheism. A-theism - without belief (as someone else posted). When people talk about their atheism, it then tends to become a belief system - anything beyond 'without belief', is inherently their own construct. e.g. 'I believe that there is no point to our existence' is not atheism. This is why there will never be a successful 'Atheist Party' - atheism is not a unifying belief, so we're not likely to band together.

An agnostic is someone who believes that the existence of a god or gods is unknowable. A-gnostic - without knowledge/knowing. Often agnosticism is misinterpreted as 'I think there might be but I need proof'. In the strict philosophical sense, it means absolute certainty that the question of God is unknowable as we can only perceive material things, and God is supposedly beyond the material. So you can have atheist and theist agnostics. I am an agnostic atheist - I believe we can't know if there is anything beyond the material plane, and I also have no belief in God.

Something that doesn't seem to be too well covered here is that it is difficult to be an atheist (the same way I imagine it should be hard to be a theist)- it requires a fair amount of thought and self analysis, and constant review and assessment. People have made light of the nihilistic despair that can come with atheism that one needs to work through. I turned to philosophy to help me understand why I was so uncomfortable with theism (there is a book "Atheism:the case against God", which I recommend to everyone for a good philosophical assessment of the arguments. I much prefer it to Dawkins, as it isn't aggressive, and it covers the philosophical/theological side of things properly). What I am left with is my belief that there is nothing after I die - I have this life and that's it. So I strive to make the best of this life - I have learned what makes my life pleasant and enjoyable, and so I do those things (work, keeping in shape, being in love, raising a child, socialising with friends, helping people). As someone stated earlier in the thread, it's Hedonism according to the philosophical position (although we can deconstruct that too ). Unfortunately the word has been hijacked and now is commonly taken as meaning "reckless self-destruction through gorging oneself.

I don't believe we are special, we're just a species of ape with a bigger brain. We have evolved inquisitive and analytical brains that allow us to take alternate positions and extrapolate from imagined paths. I think the logical result of that thought/imagination is that we will create magnificent ideas, and that we can share them with each other and understand them. In some cases many people will agree that one imagined idea sounds particularly good, and then they might believe it is true, even though they cannot give evidence for it beyond their communal belief. The beauty of having a communal belief without evidence, is that you can never deconstruct it on the basis of logic and reason. It is impossible.

-------------------------

Science can explain many things, but it sometimes doesn't capture the essence of them. I can logically and scientifically describe the emotion of love, why it happens, what it is for - but I can't explain how it feels to someone who hasn't experienced it. I've never had a belief in God, so I don't know what it feels like. I know that if someone told me that the emotion I felt for my partner or daughter was pointless and irrelevant and stupid, I would be greatly offended. Consequently I don't go attacking people's beliefs freely. There are important distinctions to be made - for example there is belief in God vs belief in the scriptures. There is belief in God vs actions in God's name. Much like the atheist who says "I have no belief in God, and therefore I'm going to kill all these people" - it is not the absence of belief that made him do it, it is his own nature. Obviously it gets complicated with theism when people follow human interpretations of ancient scriptures and kill because God told them to.

I used to be an angry atheist, but I think that was part of growing into someone who was comfortable with that position. I don't get angry about it anymore, and it only becomes an issue for me if I feel me or mine are being encroached upon by a theist (my daughter being told atheists will go to hell for instance - not acceptable). I think that our societies are at a stage where it is ok to be an atheist, and I am grateful to the angry atheists of the past that have got us here - I firmly believe that state and church should be seperate, and I firmly believe that we should all be allowed to follow whatever God we choose unless that belief negatively impacts upon others. If every member (or the majority) of a religion was out to kill the rest of us, then that religion should not be tolerated - if it's small sects of a religion, then those sects should not be tolerated - if it's individual members that happen to have a religion, then those individuals should not be tolerated.