Tuesday 30 September 2008

Single

Being single, it emerges, actually blows. Big time.

Dates are a waste of time. Actually, unless you live in Hollywood, dates are a complete misnomer once you're over 25 and clearly able to make decisions about the sort of persons you want to have sex with in a relatively short space of time.

As far as I can see, the only purpose of a "date" in 2008 is to establish a mutual agreement that, while you will have sex at some point, the fact that you can wait for a movie to finish and a meal to be eaten before making lurid proposals means that you are not a pair of total scumbags. This is called "respect".

Alternatively, as a single 27 year old, you can expect to be hit on by friends or colleagues who are already in relationships, because - well, you're just out for some fun, right?

The length of the sentences in this piece are inversely proportional to the amount of fun I am having being single.

The A of Creation















Really, I've no excuse not to be blogging when I've been sitting on this little beaut.

Several notable persons in our office have recently been sent a copy of The Atlas of Creation by Global Publishing of Istanbul (interestingly, they appear to have picked on directors mostly - perhaps they think they're more easily swayed in the way of rubbish islamic creationist zealotry). The book purports to undermine evolution theory, comparing fossils to - supposedly identical - living species, obviously ignoring some of the very basic precepts of the argument for evolution and in the process making a number of factual errors:

"The fossil record is perhaps the most important evidence that demolishes the theory of evolution's claims. Fossils reveal that life forms on Earth have never undergone even the slightest change and have never developed into one another. Examining the fossil record, we see that living things are exactly the same today as they were hundreds of millions of years agoin other words, that they never underwent evolution. Even during the most ancient periods, life forms emerged suddenly with all their complex structures–with the perfect and superior features, just as do their counterparts today."

It is a stonker of a tome - weighing in at 12lb (I weighed it on a friend's bathroom scales after it actually broke the handles of the bag usually holding my gym kit) - all glossy paper and hologramatic cover. The cost of postage alone boggles the mind, especially when you bare in mind that this book has been sent to tens of thousands of universities, schools and research facilities all over Europe (although, why they sent it to us is anyone's guess - the UK's largest regional business publisher doesn't have much of a religious agenda, even though we do like holograms).

Obviously the fact of its existence isn't that shocking, you only need to read the news to discover that creationism is on not only on the upsurge but also being backed by some serious financial weight. The question we are left with is how to deal with this?

The "author" of the Atlas of Creation is a convicted sex-offender with a history of anti-Semitic writing and he clearly has a lot of money behind him. He managed to get the Turkish government to block Richard Dawkin's website and has issued countless libel suits against news websites in the middle east. Is it appropriate to ignore it? Is it really enough to laugh at the silliness of his anti-evolutionary claims?

I'm not pre-supposing an answer here. I, for one, certainly don't know one - blogging to a small group of like-minded liberals is hardly a protest and (I'm ashamed to admit) I'm slightly scared even writing this.

Anyway, the Atlas of Creation has solved one problem for me - I'm sure my geneticist friends will appreciate a bit of humour in their Christmas stockings.

Friday 12 September 2008

Name Check Check

Manchizzle, the acme of blogging in the rainy city, has seen fit to give me a bit of a name check, for which I am blushingly proud and also rather shamefaced about, considering that at the time I was big-upped I hadn't actually blogged anything for about two weeks.

I should also point out that my ongoing stupid template problems mean that I have lost all of my links to other sites, so please take this is a spiritual link to Manchizzle, until such time as order is resotered.

Mapping Creativity

Despite the ubiquitous media-wank copy, Mapping Creativity by bTWEEN is a very interesting project seeking applications for a £25,000 grant to commission an "interactive project that drives Manchester's collective creativity".

In short, this has given rise to some interesting (and some more hackneyed) proposals for interactive projects that engage different social groups in Manchester. There are some clever ideas and some things I have seen done before but I really hope the judges fulfil their own remit and commission something that facilitates and forges "links between disconnected communities" using technology. It's a very worthy but slightly dubitable ask.

Tuesday 9 September 2008

Where Have You Been?

Well mostly, I've been shouting at length at a blog template, thus not much blogging in these here parts for the last few weeks.

Never mind that though, I've given up and gone back to a very boring Blogger template (and for some reason Blogger, in the process, has decided I'm Spanish) to facilitate the much blogginess that should happen soon. Oh the stories I have to tell...