O Mistress Mine!

The other stolen generation

David Cameron visits Brasenose

Wild Kingdom
GIRAFFE SUFFERS FROM CRICK IN THE NECK A giraffe in a US zoo has been pictured suffering from what looks like an agonising crick in the neck Five-year-old Amali from Tulsa Zoo, Arizona, suffered the unfortunate bend in transit from The Wilds park in Ohio. It is feared that the hook might never be cured. Since undergoing treatment from Tulsa Zoo’s resident vet Dr Kay Backues, Amali has been kept in medical quarantine since her arrival on October 18

Eighties Earworm du jour
I especially like the super-static, electrified cat. Paul Simon Boy in the BubbleUploaded by Celtiemama. – Explore more music videos.

I am not an underclass
Disability sucks. I just thought you should know that. It’s sometimes painful, always inconvenient and inclined to bite gaping holes out of your self esteem. Most people are pretty reliable: they get up in the morning, go to work or school during the week and kick back on the weekends doing activities they enjoy once the daily maintenance tasks (literal and financial housekeeping etc) are complete. However once you are disabled, you are no longer ‘most people’. Supposedly the most damaging aspect of Disability is isolation. Sometimes this is physical – when a disability limits your ability to get out of the house; other times it is social – whe

A world without monotheism
I originally posted this comment to the Richard Dawkins forum (which gets rather bitter and nasty over time). I’m writing a novel based around the issue now, but the question originally came from one of my students. ——————————— This topic came up when I googled the question ‘what would civilisation look like without monotheism? I realise this is a strange topic to be googling on a Sunday evening but it’s been floating around in my head since a student asked it of me when I was tutoring C

Denialism and moral equivalence
Clive Hamilton wrote a piece for Crikey earlier this week in which he likened those who deny climate change to those who deny the Holocaust. He said: We think of Holocaust deniers as being immoral because we suspect them of being motivated by anti-Semitism or a desire for political advancement through stirring up racial hatred. We think of climate deniers as being immoral because we suspect them of being motivated, not by truth-seeking, but by political goals, a desire for funds from fossil-fuel companies or personal aggrandisement.