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How not to be eaten by aliens
Big Women
Bigger Than Jesus
Circumcision
First Against The Wall When the Revolution Comes
Astrology debunked
Gandhi: Great Soul or Arsehole?
Family Values in The Bible
The Right to Choose
Aborting Babies
Slavery: Not a Black and White Issue
Stand clear of the doors!
Meatheads, Slobs and Pencil Necked Geeks
Child of Law
Americans will never be happy to be socialists or social democrats until they have something as glorious as the BBC.
From before I was old enough to think critically I have loved the BBC and she’s been there for me. State provision isn’t anything sinister to me, it is not Big Brother, it is auntie. The BBC. Valerie Singleton. Radio Four. Doctor Who. David Attenborough.
Of course the BBC isn’t strictly part of government, which is even better. But having this relationship with the BBC all my life has helped me have a healthy attitude towards the whole idea of collective action. An American sees no friendly face for government and public provision and Americans fall over each other to despise and disparage governments and collective action of all kinds. To people in Britain this is absurd, the notion that everything the government touches must be sinister and inefficient is laughable. Auntie isn’t like that. Auntie is living proof that people of goodwill can deliver excellence in public service. The BBC is world class and is helping ensure that Britain stays a great power in entertaining, educating and informing the world.
allot // v.tr. (allotted, allotting)
1 give or apportion to (a person) as a share or task; distribute officially to (they allotted us each a pair of boots; the men were allotted duties).
2 (foll. by to) give or distribute officially to (a sum was allotted to each charity).
[Old French aloter (as a-3 + lot)]lot // n. & v.
n.
1 (prec. by a or in pl.) colloq. a a large number or amount (a lot of people; lots of chocolate). b (as adv.) much (a lot warmer; smiles a lot; is lots better).
2 a each of a set of objects used in making a chance selection. b this method of deciding (chosen by lot).
3 a share, or the responsibility resulting from it.
4 a person's destiny, fortune, or condition.
5 esp. N.Amer. a plot; an allotment of land (parking lot).
6 an article or set of articles for sale at an auction etc.
7 a number or quantity of associated persons or things.
v.tr. (lotted, lotting) divide into lots.
cast (or draw) lots decide by means of lots.
throw in one's lot with decide to share the fortunes of.
the (or the whole) lot esp. Brit. the whole number or quantity.
a whole lot colloq. very much (is a whole lot better).
[Old English hlot ‘portion, choice’, from Germanic]
ALOT is not a word, never has been a word and will not be allowed to be a word, ever. Not while there is breath in my body.
A lot is a great shibboleth, it neatly separates those who know about English from those who talk ‘merican, Estuary, whigga and drivel. Innit?
If you don’t like the smell of cigarette smoke in your car what do you think the non-smokers behind and alongside you think?If you are smoking in your car I can cope with you having the window open but if you drive along in a traffic jam with your hand permanently holding your cigarette out past your door mirror you are just taking the piss.If you hate the smell as much as I do, which seems to be obvious by your efforts to get away from it, please just give it up. |
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I get pissed off when a smoker who happens to be a non-driver attacks drivers saying that cars produce more fumes than cigarettes. On the level of concentration of poisonous gases they have a point, a hundred smokers in a room is not going to kill anybody unless it is a very small and airless room. But the smell is a different matter. It is the smell that I find objectionable rather than the idea that smoke is literally killing me. I don’t need the deadliness of passive smoking to be proven to know I have enough of an objection to breathing in second hand smoke. I don’t like the smell, I don’t like the way it stings the eyes and the stench stays in my clothes and hair for many hours afterwards. That is a sufficient reason to define tobacco smoke as an insult and an injury.
The air in modern western cities is clean, quite astonishingly clean compared to what it was like a mere twenty five years ago. For the past two weeks I have been working in the middle of Salford, commuting in by car on busy roads. When I blow my nose there is no trace of the grey filth that I used to notice when I had been into Manchester or London back in the early eighties. The early eighties of course were significantly cleaner than the fifties when the air was absolutely filthy, thousands of people used to die when high pressure systems stopped polluted air escaping from major cities, especially in London. When I was a choirboy the church I went to changed colour from black to pale grey after a century’s worth of industrial grime was sandblasted away, and this from a small village well outside any conurbation.
Is the category of smoker and driver mutually exclusive? Do no smokers drive and no drivers smoke? Of course not. It is ridiculous to say YOU DRIVERS pollute more than US SMOKERS because no smoker is a smoker because they chose not to be a driver out of a love of clean air. Of course several smokers are not drivers because they can’t afford a car and cigarettes too and they have lousy priorities. If anybody respected the atmosphere and the rights of their fellow breathers enough to forgo the advantages of personal mobility they are hardly likely to be smokers.
Ranting 1 | 2 | 3
Science is for listening to
If you are under twenty years old the chances are that you have never done any real science or anything remotely connected to it. Chemistry and physics experiments in high schools are all about “proving” stuff , most of which was proved more than 150 years ago.
We teach twelve year olds things which the greatest scientists who have ever lived never got to find out. Our understanding is very much greater that it ever was in the past but that has come at a price. Now there is so much that is known that everything we ask our children to do in school is following in the footsteps of people who have gone before. It is difficult to find any great sense of achievement in discovering a new world if you knew it was there all along, there is no sense of achievement to be gained by conquering an intellectual peak to find a restaurant at the top selling souvenir T shirts.
It is very easy to imagine scientific pioneers as supermen because circumstances demand that they do amazing things for the first time. In following them we can all too easily get the impression that we are intellectual pygmies standing on the shoulders of giants.