Blogging In Spandex Hotpants

Okay, I could have gone with Blogging In Brief or Blogging In Short but they wouldn't have been half as much fun. Sticking with the underwear-theme, Blogging In Sparkly Y-Fronts crossed my mind, but I managed to dislodge it after a quick nip of vodka and a few careful headbutts to the nearest wall. So Spandex Hotpants it is. And if you're actually imagining me sitting here writing this whilst wearing spandex hotpants, then I pity you—I very much doubt that it's a pretty sight! Here, have a nip of this vodka…

Anyway, the idea is that I've been a tad busy the last few days, and haven't had time to do more than skim various blogs and news-stories, let alone actually spend time writing anything about them, plus I've a handful of vague ideas I've been mulling over that probably don't even deserve a full-on post of their own, so here they are in brief. Or hotpants, as the case may be.

Standard disclaimer: It's a mixture of the serious and the not so serious, in no particular order, and no denigration of the importance of the former is meant by its proximity to the latter.

First up comes yet another story of ignorant bastards placing their religious beliefs ahead of the health and lives of their children.

A couple in Texas, when their child—a home-birth—was born with blue hands and feet, a complication that arises due to lack of blood flow, decided not to call the hospital, but to call their church instead.

"We weren't being foolish we wanted God to be glorified," said Sean Morris, YMBBA Ministries."

Damn right they weren't being 'foolish.' This goes way beyond mere foolishness. They wilfully ignored their responsibilities as parents. Or, indeed, as normal, caring, human beings.

One has to wonder, do people who practice faith-healing and suchlike nonsense not believe that their god created doctors for a purpose?

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Let this be a warning to 'old people.' If you're planning on buying a book for a grandchild, or indeed any other child, from Barnes & Noble, you'd be best advised to take a chaperone with you or risk being thrown out for being, the obvious implication is, a possible child-molester.

Looking at a more general picture than just this one incident, there seems to have grown, recently, a tendency—where what might in general be called 'security' matters are concerned—of petty officiousness running rampant—like the three-inch plastic toy rifle that was flagged as a risk by airport security—and of all cars being labelled Fords, because Ford make cars—or all old men being labelled child-molesters because child-molesters might enjoy hanging around in the kids' books section. Quite simply, any bloody idiot who isn't an officious twit should be able to recognise that many cars are not Fords, and there are many other reasons for hunting around the children's book-section than a wish to be near children. The Inactive Activist has a nice article on this slant, starting from the same story.

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Closed-minded. (I could have sworn I'd mentioned this before, but for the life of me I can't find where, so sod it—I'll risk repeating myself.)

It's closed-minded, not close-minded.

If you expand this 'portmanteau-adjective' into a full phrase, you should come up with something along the lines of "having a mind which is closed." Unless you mean it's nearby, rather than closed to reason or new ideas, "having a mind which is close" makes no sense. And no, I don't care that 'close-minded' can be found in many online dictionaries. They reflect (bad) usage, not necessarily correct definition.

Think of it this way: the root-phrase is 'closed mind'; an adjective followed by the noun it describes. All that's happened is that the phrase has been hyphenated to create the semi-appearance of being a one-word noun; "He had a closed-mind," and then this hyphenated noun has been made into an adjective by the addition of an '-ed' suffix.

Where the confusion arises is that people look to the opposite, 'open-minded,' and note that there's no '-ed' on 'open,' whilst forgetting that 'open' can be an adjective in its own right, whilst 'close' cannot.

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Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions

I recently reread this novel, following a conversation in which I realised I remembered almost nothing about it other than a vague impression that religion was a major part of the plotline, and a feeling of being somewhat let down by the ending.

I have to say that I found the novel rather enjoyable, and I'd particularly recommend it to anyone interested in fundamentalist religion, especially of the Christian variety. That said, I'm awful at writing book reviews, as I have a tendency toward trying to avoid spoilers, to the point where it becomes difficult to say anything much about the book other than that I either liked it or didn't, but I wanted to share a couple of quotes, so I'll have to swallow it somehow and give some minimum background.

The story takes place (mostly) in Scotland, some years after what are variously known as the Oil Wars or the Faith Wars, one result of which is that religious involvement in the state has been rigorously expunged—true separation of church and state. Which—hopefully without giving too much of a spoiler—should be enough background for this to make sense:

"So," Mazvabo continued, "we accept the situation. But it's not a good situation, and it's not one we like. … Because, as you say, right in our own church's heritage, literally carved in stone, there's the memory of men and women who were willing to die rather than accept the state's authority over the Church. And that was an established Church … What would the old Covenanters have felt about a Church that is content to live under the boot of a state … And what would they think of the state that keeps the boot resting on the Church's neck?

And a little later, we get the reply:

… And that, Professor Mazvabo, is why I'm so annoyed to hear you complaining about the conditions of the Churches. The Republic of Scotland does not oppress the Church of Scotland, or any other. It ignores it …

And that, in just a few lines, encapsulates the entire secularist argument, and the essence of what the religious tend to see as their natural right. What Mazvabo refers to as oppression is merely denial of privilege. It's a theme that echoes through all too many real-world Christian diatribes concerning how oh-so-persecuted they are. Or would like to portray themselves as being, at any rate.

After all that, I still find myself somewhat let down by the ending. The events at the end of the novel are huge, globally significant and possibly disastrous, yet the implications are hardly discussed and the events themselves are almost glibly described in a few lines. It's not that I want a nice cheery, happy, ending—it isn't Disney, after all—but rather that there's no real ending of any sort. It seems to just drift to a halt as the major story, to which the events in the novel are a prologue, is just beginning.

Over all, though, I still quite liked it.

And that'll do for now, I think. These hotpants are starting to chaffe.
—Daz

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