Most people are dangerous behind the wheel
This is a bit of a rant because the Easter long weekend has reminded me of all the things that freak me out about road trips and driving habits in general. My ideas about things you just shouldn’t do:
1. Try to text whilst doing 110 down the F3
2. Pull out in front of someone in the right overtaking lane with only metres to spare whilst you are both doing at least 110 down the F3 and they’re probably texting
3. Expect that flashing your lights and beeping behind someone travelling only, say, 108 in a 110 zone on the F3 whilst you’re both in the right lane but they have nowhere to merge into the left lane, will produce a satisfactory result and not, more likely, end in carnage
4. Repeat 3 except swap “108” with “stationary”, swap “110 zone on the F3” with “60 zone on Harris Street”, swap “you’re both in the right lane” with “you’re both in the middle lane except they’re almost sideways and indicating to get into the right lane”
5. Think that travelling a nanosecond behind someone whilst you’re both doing over 110 in the right (overtaking) lane and they tap the brakes means you should proceed as normal and not reduce your speed
Fuck, I had to drink wine after all that – I might sound like a drama queen but geez I feel lucky to be alive.
And that’s just my driving, don’t get me started on everyone else ; )
Let there be light
Ricky Gervais is a comic genius and this is a very funny topic. Just watch : )
Stick this in your pope and smoke it
OK, so I’m a little slow on writing about this one, but the distribution of condoms, the pope says, aggravates the HIV/AIDS problem. Huh?
From The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/17/pope-africa-condoms-aids
More than two-thirds – 67% – of the global total of 32.9 million people with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa.
Three-quarters of all Aids deaths in 2007 happened there.
Well, I’m with Richard Dawkins on this one: the pope must be a bit dim (as reported in reasonWeekly) http://reasonweekly.com/richard-dawkins/richard-dawkins-says-pope-is-stupid-for-claiming-that-the-use-of-condoms-could-increase-aids-problem
Professor Dawkins, the prominent biologist and atheist, said that Benedict XVI would have blood on his hands if his beliefs were followed by Catholics around the continent.
Speaking at a university in Spain, he said: “I wonder on what basis anyone can say condoms make Aids worse. The Pope is either stupid, ignorant or dim.
“If people take his words seriously he will be responsible for the deaths of thousands, perhaps millions of people.”
So, I thought I’d create a list of famous condom moments in film, television, books
Days of Thunder – Tom Cruise racing a condom up Nicole Kidman’s inner thigh
Pretty Woman – Julia Roberts’ range of choices for Richard Gere
Vivienne: “Pick one. I got red, I got green, I got yellow. I’m outta purple but I do have one gold circle coin left, the condom of champions, the one and only nothing is getting through this sucker. What d’you say?”
Edward: “A buffet of safety.”
Vivienne: “I’m a safety girl!”
Naked Gun
CSI:NY 4×01. The spray-on condom scene
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I have less to say than I thought
All those childhood diarys and adolescent journals I wrote are full of musings and anger. Yet now, as I try to maintain a blog, I find myself having much less to say than my younger self. Perhaps I’m more content, having released myself from the shackles of love (co-dependence) and overcome the worst of Borderline Personality Disorder with a combination of psychotherapy and SSRIs, I no longer need writing as catharsis. Being content is really boring…
Reading material on poverty and aid
I’m currently reading a few books on ending poverty, aid etc. which are very much just ‘primers’ but should be interesting because Dambisa Moyo, author of ‘Dead Aid’, disagrees with Jeffrey Sachs, author of ‘The End of Poverty’ and I don’t know what Peter Singer ‘The life you can save’ has to say about it all yet, but he’s an ethicist so we’ll have to see if he has any practical solutions. Having said that, all the so-called ‘experts’ have their own ideas of what the ‘practical’ solutions are and I will have to make up my own mind (oh no!) as to what I actually believe.
‘The End of Poverty’, Jeffrey Sachs
‘Dead Aid’, Dambisa Moyo
‘The life you can save’, Peter Singer
Further to this earlier post, I finished ‘Dead Aid’ and am now reading Muhammad Yunus’ ‘Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism’ which is quite inspiring actually.
So, of everything I’ve read so far, I’m most interested in further researching conditional transfers, microfinance and social business in general. I had independently come up with something like Yunus suggests a while ago (no such thing as an original thought – except for his) which I called a ‘Fair Bank’. The idea was for it to fund itself through deposits and provide affordable banking products such as Grameen is doing, however I did think it was possible to also be moderately profit-generating. Now, I think this is what Yunus would refer to as a ‘hybrid model’ social/profit-maximising business and therefore not really viable due to the conflict of interest. Here’s why: it differs from Grameen Bank in that it is not only owned by the poor but shareholders can be anyone, anywhere. The reason this appealed to me is because I wanted to provide an incentive to investors beyond just investing in a worthy cause and getting your original investment amount back, by providing a real financial benefit to the investor by way of dividends and interest. I felt this may attract greater investment.
If a business has a specific model and all shareholders agree to only a set level of profit-taking, I am not sure I agree with Yunus that there would necessarily be a real conflict of interest. I understand the legal obligation of business management is to maximise profit and the goal of the social business management is to provide a social benefit, but I don’t fully believe they can’t work together. Can’t it be stipulated in the prospectus/shareholder agreement that if the business doesn’t break even or profits are not sufficient to pay dividends then the social responsibilities come first or can you stipulate that it’s a dividend re-investment only business until the shareholder wants out and maybe the company just does a buy-back? I don’t know, maybe it’s a legal thing – this area is not my strong point. Any ideas?
For the Israeli soldier who has everything…
…T-shirts with vicious slogans being worn by some young Israeli soldiers. According to reports in the Israeli media, and BBC news, one of the T-shirts has the slogan ‘Bet you got Raped!’ over a picture of a bruised woman in a head-scarf. Another shows the picture of a clearly pregnant head-scarved woman with the words, ‘One shot two kills.’
Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques – IDF fashion 2009
By Uri Blau
Tags: Israel News, IDF, Gaza
The office at the Adiv fabric-printing shop in south Tel Aviv handles a constant stream of customers, many of them soldiers in uniform, who come to order custom clothing featuring their unit’s insignia, usually accompanied by a slogan and drawing of their choosing.
Elsewhere on the premises, the sketches are turned into plates used for imprinting the ordered items, mainly T-shirts and baseball caps, but also hoodies, fleece jackets and pants.
A young Arab man from Jaffa supervises the workers who imprint the words and pictures, and afterward hands over the finished product.
Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children’s graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques – these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty.
The slogans accompanying the
drawings are not exactly anaemic either:
A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription “Better use Durex,” next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him.
A sharpshooter’s T-shirt from the Givati Brigade’s Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull’s-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, “1 shot, 2 kills.”
A “graduation” shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, “No matter how it begins, we’ll put an end to it.”
There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages.
For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, “Bet you got raped!”
A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies – such as “confirming the kill” (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim’s head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants.
In many cases, the content is submitted for approval to one of the unit’s commanders.
The latter, however, do not always have control over what gets printed, because the artwork is a private initiative of soldiers that they never hear about.
Drawings or slogans previously banned in certain units have been approved for distribution elsewhere.
For example, shirts declaring, “We won’t chill ’til we confirm the kill” were banned in the past
(the IDF claims that the practice doesn’t exist),
yet the Haruv battalion printed some last year.
The slogan “Let every Arab mother know that her son’s fate is in my hands!”
had previously been banned for use on another infantry unit’s shirt.
A Givati soldier said this week, however, that at the end of last year, his platoon printed up dozens of shirts, fleece jackets and pants bearing this slogan.
“It has a drawing depicting a soldier as the Angel of Death, next to a gun and an Arab town,” he explains.
“The text was very powerful.
The funniest part was that when our soldier came to get the shirts, the man who printed them was an Arab, and the soldier felt so bad that he told the girl at the counter to bring them to him.”
Does the design go to the commanders for approval?
The Givati soldier:
“Usually the shirts undergo a selection process by some officer, but in this case, they were approved at the level of platoon sergeant.
We ordered shirts for 30 soldiers and they were really into it, and everyone wanted several items and paid NIS 200 on average.”
What do you think of the slogan that was printed?
“I didn’t like it so much, but most of the soldiers wanted it.”
Many controversial shirts have been
ordered by graduates of snipers courses,
which bring together soldiers from various units.
Shira fell down a well
I visited the David Sheldrick elephant orphanage when I was in Nairobi and ended up sponsoring an elephant called ‘Kenia’ on behalf of my nieces and nephew (I’ll write more about that lovely experience at some point). I now receive regular updates on elephant calf rescues and the photos that accompany them are delightful. Check out http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/
SCUBA, sardines, sharks, a safari and spices
I cannot remember the moment I decided that plunging myself into a melee of sardines and their hungry predators was a good idea. I daresay I was probably drunk, or at least drunk on life, at the time. I tend to get drunk on life from time to time.
Last night I had that delightful combination of fear and exhilaration, much like the feeling I had just seconds before I threw myself out of a plane at 14,000 feet, only this time I got what I like to call The Nervous Shits. Charming, I know. The Nervous Shits appear regularly, right before a big night on the town or a work presentation. Do not confuse these with a regular dose of The Shits which come on suddenly after a Big Breakfast and two shots of espresso, or the kind you get when your unemployed flatmate thinks 3am on a Wednesday morning is a great time to start mixing some Wicked Tracks.
Peta Bellamy has stuff to say, but you don't have to listen 