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Current Affairs

More people have access to mobile phones than to toilets, it says.

Yup.

As I pointed out here:

It’s possible to be a little cynical about this phones versus thrones number though. Actual flush toilets aren’t in fact the problem. What is is the provision of water to flush them and a sewage system to flush them into. Both of which are largely government provided. While mobile phone systems are largely private company provided. Whether you want to call it the lust for profit or the greater efficiency of the private sector, it won’t surprise the more right leaning of us that phones do have a greater market reach than toilets.

There is more to it than just this of course. One obvious point being that it’s actually more difficult to provide running water and sewerage treatment plants than it is to provide mobile phone towers.

From the Annals of Fashion Stupidity

holocaustjammies

  The long sleeved pyjama top for toddlers has been described by the Israeli press having a “fresh-from-the-concentration-camp look” with a strong resemblance to the uniforms worn by the inmates of Nazi death camps.

Following a storm on social media such as Twitter, Zara has withdrawn the clothing, manufactured in Turkey, while insisting that the yellow star was supposed to resemble the golden badge of an American sheriff.

“We honestly apologise, it was inspired by the sheriff’s stars from the Classic Western films and is no longer in our stores,” the store said this morning.

“Nevertheless, we can understand the sensitive context and connotation that was created. We sincerely apologise if, as a result, we have offended the feelings of our customers.”

Bit of a brain fart there, eh?

Hmm, not sure about this

The bigger the wedding, the happier the marriage, a new study has found.

According to a report by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, participants who had a formal wedding – with more guests – reported higher marital quality than those who didn’t.

Of 418 individuals who were studied over the course of five years, 41per cent of those who had a formal wedding reported marital quality in the top 40per cent, compared to 28per cent of couples who did not have a formal wedding.

Making a larger and more public commitment might have something to do with it perhaps?

One does worry slightly for the future of civilisation

Fans of former England footballer Paul Gascoigne, popularly known as ‘Gazza’, were left confused and fearing for his future as a Free Gaza campaign took off online.

Tweets with the hashtag #freegaza have been trending on Twitter in response to the violence in the Middle East, with users using their posts to urge Israeli forces to stop their assault on the Gaza Strip. The conflict, which started on July 8, has led to the deaths of more than 1,200 people.

But followers of the troubled player, who has become known for his battles with alcohol and drugs, mistakenly thought that he had been arrested and that the campaign was in support of his freedom.


These people
have the vote you know.

Marilyn Monroe and triple zero sized women

Hannah Betts is all worried over triple zero sizes appearing in the shops:

Chillingly, a US size 000 measures up to a UK size 0, five sizes smaller than a UK size 10, itself on the smallish side in a culture in which the average British woman is a size 16, and the public’s ideal physique a size 12 (according to YouGov). A US size zero measures 25 inches around the waist; a triple zero, a meagre 23 inches.

It can be difficult to visualise the bodies behind such unvital statistics. My eight-year-old nephew, so lean that he can fit into his baby pyjamas, has a waist of 23.5 inches; his lithe nine-year-old sister, measures 24 inches. The girths of these adult women are smaller, despite their being significantly taller, in a way that seems hardly possible. The average triple zero poster girl stands at 5ft 7in. To be so narrow-framed at this scale is to be emaciated.

A petite therapist friend puts matters into perspective. “I am the smallest person in the world and my childlike waist is about 28 inches,” she says. “I have bought UK size 6 clothes from Topshop’s petite range, which is horrifyingly too small, making me wonder if they require ribs to be removed, or whether it is actual children who wear them. I am truly shocked.”

Hmm. Perhaps a little perspective?

In fact, the average waist measurement of the four Monroe dresses was a mere 22 inches, according to Lisa Urban, the Hollywood consultant who dressed the mannequins and took measurements for me. Even Monroe’s bust was a modest 34 inches.

That’s not an anecdote. That’s data.

The other actresses’ costumes provided further context. “It’s like half a person,” marveled a visitor at the sight of Claudette Colbert’s gold-lame “Cleopatra” gown (waist 18 inches). “That waist is the size of my thigh,” said a tall, slim man, looking at Carole Lombard’s dress from “No Man of Her Own” (a slight exaggeration — it was 21 inches). Approaching Katharine Hepburn’s “Mary of Scotland” costumes, a plump woman declared with a mixture of envy and disgust, “Another skinny one.”

The pattern she noticed was real. At my request, Urban took waist measurements on garments worn by 16 different stars, from Mary Pickford in 1929 (20 inches) to Barbra Streisand in 1969 (24 inches). The thickest waist she found was Mae West’s 26 inches in “Myra Breckinridge,” when the actress was 77 years old.

Isn’t this fascinating?

Annabel Karmel, the celebrity children’s chef, only hired “good-looking men” and fired an employee 20 years her junior after he rejected her sexual advances, an employment tribunal heard.

Mrs Karmel, 57, the bestselling author dubbed the “Delia Smith” of children’s food, allegedly wore provocative clothing and made inappropriate sexual comments to her former sales director Mark Salter.

Mr Salter, 39, said that because he resisted the married mother-of-three’s suggestive behaviour he was sacked in July last year, just four months after taking charge of sales for the company that handles Mrs Karmel’s business

What’s interesting about it is that while Karmel’s name was being protected the case went on. As soon as the judge said that she could be named, it was settled.

Read into that whatever one might wish but it is interesting….

Snigger

US Airways has profusely apologized after an extremely graphic picture of a woman engaged in a sex act with a model Boeing 777 was tweeted to a customer who complained about her Spring Break flight.

Seems almost appropriate for spring break actually.

Well, you’d rather hope so, wouldn’t you?

He may have inherited his mother’s eye colour, but otherwise Prince George is very much his father’s son, as the world had a chance to see yesterday when he arrived in New Zealand.

The eight month-old future king bore a striking resemblance to Prince William at a similar age when he, too, visited Australasia with his parents.

There’s a saying that a baby will look like its father. On the grounds that those that do so will get more male parental attention and thus be more likely to survive. The background being that looking like one’s father lessens the suspicion that there’s a cuckoo in the nest.

Which is great providing that the presumed father is indeed so. And it’s rather built into this idea of primogeniture that we do rather hope that this is so in this case.

Snigger

An al-Qaeda instructor killed himself and 20 of his pupils when he accidentally set off a car bomb during a bungled training session in Iraq.

Reminds me of the Irish lad who set off his bomb on his lap while in a bus…..

This does not compute

An attorney for an Ohio death row inmate who underwent a slow, gasping execution with a new drug combination has been accused of coaching the condemned man to fake symptoms of suffocation.

Dennis McGuire, 53, took 26 minutes to die – the longest execution of the 53 carried out in Ohio since capital punishment resumed 15 years ago – which renewed questions about the death penalty.

The Office of the Public Defender said Robert Lowe, one of McGuire’s attorneys, was temporarily suspended last week but back at work Monday after a review failed to substantiate the allegation.

State prison records released Monday say McGuire told guards that Lowe counseled him to make a show of his death that would, perhaps, lead to abolition of the death penalty.

There are two possibilities here.

1) McGuire was unconscious and therefore incapable of faking anything.

2) He was not unconscious, potentially capable of faking something, and therefore was being killed very slowly and in great pain.

It is not possible for him to have been faking it and also not being killed slowly. The allegation itself is therefore absurd.

So here’s a religious question

For 2,000 years, pilgrims and archaeologists have hunted for physical evidence of Jesus and his family, without success.

But now an ancient burial box claiming to contain the earliest reference to the Christian saviour is about to go on public display in Israel after its owner was cleared of forgery. It has not been seen in public since a single, brief exhibition in Toronto in 2002.

The modest limestone burial box, known as an ossuary, is typical of first-century Jerusalem, and is owned by Oded Golan, an Israeli antiquities collector. Chiselled on the side are the words “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.”

James the Just was the first leader of the Christians in Jerusalem after the Crucifixion. He was executed for apostasy by the local rabbinical court.

There’s various bits and pieces about whether Jesus had brothers and so on. Whether Mary had more than the one child etc. And no, I’m not worried about all of that.

Instead, a different question. The name Joseph was very common in that time and place. James too. John, etc.

Jesus…..is that a unique name? Is it even a name at all or is it more like a title?

Put not your trust in Julian Assange

He seems to have fucked over Edward Snowden right royally:

The plan to spirit the surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden to sanctuary in Latin America appeared to be unravelling on Friday, amid tension between Ecuador\’s government and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

President Rafael Correa halted an effort to help Snowden leave Russia amid concern Assange was usurping the role of the Ecuadoran government, according to leaked diplomatic correspondence published on Friday.

Amid signs Quito was cooling with Snowden and irritated with Assange, Correa declared invalid a temporary travel document which could have helped extract Snowden from his reported location in Moscow.

Correa declared that the safe conduct pass issued by Ecuador\’s London consul – in collaboration with Assange – was unauthorised, after other Ecuadorean diplomats privately said the WikiLeaks founder could be perceived as \”running the show\”.

This is after Wikileaks \”escorted\” Snowden out of Hojng Kong. Leaving him in the transit area of an airport in Moscow. Now entirely without documents valid for travel anywere. His US passport withdrawn.

Thanks Julian, you\’re a real mate.

The consolations of age

Jeffrey Archer has revealed his sadness over the declining health of Margaret Thatcher, admitting that his long-term friend no longer recognises him.

The author and former Tory MP, who served under Lady Thatcher when she was prime minister, said that the 87-year-old had been one of three ‘remarkable women’ in his life alongside his mother Lola and wife Mary.

But he says that her failing memory means she doesn’t know who he is when they now meet.

Presented without comment

I have recently been made aware of a case of plagiarism in one of our journals. The Journal of Academic and Business Ethics Volume 5 contained an article with a significant amount of plagiarism that went undetected in the review and publication process.

Craig says:

You can’t make up stuff like that.

The latest attempted bombing campaign

In a first for the UK, bombmaker Naseer, a pharmacy graduate, planned to extract ammonium nitrate – used as a main explosive – from sports injury cold packs.


The mind boggles
, it really does.

Sounds about as sensible a plan as extracting the americium from fire alarms to create a dirty bomb. With the added excitement that they would almost certainly blow themselves up trying to do the processing.

The stories we hear about these would be jihadis do show that they\’re wholly unimaginative. There\’s so many dangerous things already extant in an industrial society that could be used instead of 1960s style IRA derv and ammonium nitrate.