Archive for August, 2008

The figures don’t lie.

Abstinence only education really does work for the Bible belt of America. Almost one million teenagers get pregnant in the United States each year. Teenage pregnancy rates in the states were abstinence only sex education are far higher than those in states that offer proper education.

What does this result in? Lots and lots of young Christians having babies which are then raised to be a whole new generation of Christians. As I said, works fantasticly. Maybe we should be giving out condoms with holes in for freshers’ week?

Having said all that, I didn’t watch a lot of the Olympics mainly because it just annoyed me. We seem to have been a bit too happy, smiley, everything is fine with China. Let’s review a few of the news stories that came out during the games.

The fireworks were pre-recorded.

Nobody turned up so they rounded up groups of students to make the stadiums look full.

To construct the new venues they bulldozed people’s houses with compensation.

People’s families suffered due to the people being involved in the games being taken away to camps so they couldn’t look after their families.

The fancy trains that said “made in China” on them were actually made by a company in Canada – who were ordered to de-badge them and put “made in China” on them in an attempt to stop people associating said term with crap quality. When in fact, of course, it is, hence why they went to Canada for their trains.

They spent a third of their GDP on the games, rather than feed their people.

They decided the young girl who was singing was too ugly so they hid her behind a curtain and put a better-looking girl out there miming.

They managed to perform the closing ceremony without using any amplification on the drums.

They had people carrying “nothing to see here” boards on standby as seen when the Hungarian weightlifter bent his arm back.

Their no doubt equal and fair selection process for the hundreds of people dancing in the stadium somehow presented any overweight or even slightly imperfect people from appearing.

Finally, the coordinator for the ending ceremony of the Olympic games said the western world couldn’t do amazing ceremonies like China did because…

• We respect human rights
• We have no dicipline and stop every 15 minutes for coffee breaks
• We only work 4 and a half days a week
• We aren’t willing to suffer enough
• However he does complement North Korea on their ability to stage such performances.

Did I miss anything?

There are a few things I want to talk about here. We need rather well I thought. Russia beat us to 3rd place in end but but 4th for Britain is really good, after all if there is one thing we are good at it is losing at sports.

Anyway, syncronised diving. It’s not a real sport is it? I mean seriously, you’r just jumping into a pool at the same time. It’s not big and it’s not clever. It’s very good to do at some kind of swimming club with 7 year old kids but an olympic sport? Of course not.

Also, London 2012, how are we supposed to follow this? Well anyway it’s irrelevant as we’re not even going to try. There is already talk of how we are going to hold a more “intimate” games, which basically just means less impressive.

And what was our closing ceremony about? It did have some rather nice features but it was spoilt for me by the fact that the big red bus we had, turned up on time. I don’t really feel that sums up British culture. Oh and the commentator accidentally called Leona Lewis a “superstar.” Finally, in case we hadn’t lost all self respect we ended it with “here’s David Beckham, he’s not going to say anything we’re just showing off.”

Finally, I just want to be clear that the man we sent to represent us in front of the rest of the world – was Boris Johnson. Kept him away from Britain for a while I guess. It’s good to see I’m not the only person who actually uses my jacket pockets.

Good stuff.

Yeah :D.

Life is just expensive. I’m sure it never used to be.

I mean, I came from from Tesco this evening being £100 less well off. Between the £50 I spent on good (I’m not sure how, I only spent £10 on alcohol) and £50 I spent on petrol, it’s just depressing to do a Tesco shop these days. Though it is mighty tasty :D.

The chances are that most if not all of my friends (well technically they aren’t friends, they are colleagues as they are outside the circle) from work are never going to read this blog post. Never the less, I would like to say thanks for this weekend. It’s been amazing.

Having got out at a very reasonable time on Saturday night we settled down on the benches outside for a beer and sat around chatting for a while before heading off to Cass for a sandwhich. It was so like old times. It’s something that has really been missing from the night shift but very gradually, we’re bringing it back.

Sunday night we headed down to the pub quiz to spend our winnings from last week. We didn’t fair quite so well in the quiz this week though we did manage a rather impressive turn-out. We soon found our way to drive-thru and then by a series of interesting events, the car park at Tesco Garforth where we had spent countless nights over the years. Maybe my youth hasn’t quite slipped away just yet.

Has anyone else been getting a lot of these recently?

We’re sorry, this video is no longer available.

I’ve been getting loads. At first I thought it was that YouTube had withdrawn the video but it hadn’t come out of the search results and people’s profiles yet. But apparently they haven’t as many of the videos, including some of mine are still available.

Indeed, if you just hit refresh a few times on a video that is displaying that message it will eventually show you the video.

Having had a google around people seemed to initially blame it on embed code for videos which have since been withdrawn but based on what I have described above and the fact I have experienced it on YouTube.com itself, it would seem otherwise.

I did hear one blog blame it on high traffic and the servers not being able to cope. Seems a very plausable explanation. Maybe Google is letting itself go a bit?

A quick google around tells me that you can pick up a homeopathic remedy for anxiety for as little as £13.17 plus shipping.

But here is the thing. It’s just water.

Suddenly seems rather expensive for 15ml when Tesco are doing 2,000ml for a rather more reasonable £0.17.

It really makes you wonder however why the NHS are spending millions of pounds of our money on homeopathic remedies. And as such I’m starting a new campaign to promote greater understanding of homeopathic medicine because, much like religion, the thing that will do the most damage is if people actually learn what it’s about.

You can learn more about the bullshit the NHS is spending money on at the campaign’s website, It’s Only Water.

I went out on Friday for John’s birthday at which there was also in attenance quite a few people I knew from high school. Sometimes you really don’t appreciate your life and what you have achieved until you meet up with your former peers and compare. There is just something nice about being able to take a deep breath and think to yourself, “I am such a better human being than you.” Good times :D.

Apparently.

I got a letter through last week from my insurance company telling me “it has been suggested you were involved in an incidient.”

I mean, what the is that supposed to mean? Several phone calls later and I am told that it was reported to them by another insurance company but all the details about the incident were blank. I told them to close the claim because I had no knowledge of it or indeed any kind of accident and they said they would sort it out and phone me back.

They didn’t phone me back.

So I phoned them once more today and they told me they didn’t really know what was going on with it so I explained it to them again and apparently they are going to sort it. Hmmm.