Wee Daphne

Here's a rather heart warming and well-reasoned piece by an American mother whose five year old boy wanted to go as Daphne from Scooby Doo for Hallowe'en this year.

Fair play to this woman. She is obviously clear-thinking and sensible, and she argues her case with poignancy and understanding. She not only describes, but she also tackles people's prejudices head on. I'm very impressed!

Gaga in a 2:2

The Guardian reports today about the University of South Carolina which is offering a module in Lady Gaga Studies.

One can only imagine what it would consist of, but the Guardian has written a rather humourous yet withering piece about it.

There's hope

"And my favourite show, which thank God only ran one season because it was truly distasteful - was The Littlest Groom where thirty desperate women competed to marry a dwarf!"

Smart, funny and fair.

It was Panti who had originally posted this on her blog, so I stopped to watch it. I was so impressed that I hunted down Savino's website and wrote her a quick email of thanks.

Stephen Slater

About two weeks ago, there was much ado in the media about a flight attendant for JetBlue airlines in the US called Stephen Slater. One day Stephen just had enough; one unreasonable passenger too many; he saw red. And then he saw yellow - the yellow of the inflatable slide as he bounced his way out of his airline career and into his fifteen minutes of international fame.

Whilst working on a Stephen Slater t-shirt design earlier, I came across this article. It is written by a fellow flight attendant on condition of anonymity. It's well written and thought provoking, and best of all it's balanced. It shows but the pros and the cons for what Stephen did. I recommend that you read it. You might learn from it. I did.

This man killed 230,000 people

Meet Theodore Van Kirk, the sole surviving crew member of the Enola Gay. This smiling 89 year old veteren, was directly responsible for the deaths of 230,000 Japanese people on 6th August 1945, when the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb over the port city of Hiroshima.

He is interviewed by Ed Pilkington in G2 today. It's really rather fascinating. Just goes to show the brutality of war and the conditioning that he received within the US Air Force in order to render him capable to take part in the highly specialist bombing raid.

Factoid alert: The Enola Gay flew for 8.5 hours, covering a distance of 1,800 miles to get to the drop zone. The bomb was then dropped and the plane had to turn in mid-air and retreat a distance of a least 11 miles before the bomb exploded. There was a 43 second window in which to do this.

Speaking the Queen's English.

David Mitchell give's the yanks a few pieces of linguistic advice on behalf of Her Majesty.



Now, I'm off to hold down the fort...

Wall to wall bastards.

The Onion reports today that China is on course to replace the United States as the world's number one asshole.

Now if you're offended by gratuitous coarse language, you probably shouldn't click the link, but here's a taster, just to make your eyes burn.

"Although the U.S. will remain among the worlds two or three biggest cocks through much of this century, we can now confidently project that China, with its soaring economic growth, ever expanding cultural influence, and total disregard for basic human rights, will overtake America as King Prick Numero Uno within the next 10 years."

We'll all be cursing in Chinese by 2020.

Not so big brother will track you down.

This is the story of an American guy who remotely tracked his iPhone after it was stolen in LAX, It's fascinating, because it shows how easy it is for every single digital movement to be tracked. It's also very scary, because big brother is watching.

Have a read down through the article and see what he found. He was able to quote the thief's address, family details, car registration, who he called, where the phone was, where he slept... Scary!

If a man lieth with a mouse, than it is an abomination and both man and mouse shall be put to death.

Yeah, that's right. Mice. I'll leave the rest up to your imagination.

The guy involved appears to be a bit of a character, so to speak - in so much as he was caught smuggling $34 million worth of cocaine.

But it wasn't only mice, it also featured dogs and horses. And one man who was filmed riding a horse (geddit) actually died from the injuries that he received.

Bizarre.

Like shooting fish in a barrel

During the heavy snow our pond froze over and all of the water lilies died. Then the fish were starved of oxygen and five of them died. Niamh and I then built a funeral pyre for them and gave them a good pagan send off.

The same thing has happened in Minnesota on a considerably larger scale, as seen in the image above. I wonder how are they gonna get rid of several tonnes of dead fish? If I see Minnesota pollock on special offer in Superquinn next week, I'm gonna be very suspicious.

I never thought I'd be taking dressing tips from Sue Sylvester.

Gerry Claffey this is especially for you.

(Thanks Niamh.)