I prefer consensual M&Ms

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Judge in Craigslist 'sex-slave master' John Hopkins' case says consensual S&M can be criminal
S&M can be criminal even if it’s consensual, a Brooklyn judge said today during the arraignment of a self-described Craigslist sex-slave master.
Erm, no, that's not what the judge said. He said that just because someone agreed to indulge in sado-masochistic activities doesn't mean that nothing that follows can be considered criminal. It's no different from the law regarding "normal" sexual activity. It can start off consensual but become criminal.

Not waving, but drowning

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Japan tsunami and earthquake: Nuclear power plants are dangerous
Yes, nuclear power plants are dangerous. But for Britain, the alternative is to start hoarding candles
It would be easy to just accept that this is just more twaddle from that great Daily Mail tit, Max Hastings but let's just stop and ask ourselves how the fuck that headline got written. As someone pointed out in the comments section of this appallingy piss-poor piece in the Guardian today:
     More people died at Chappaquiddick than at 3 Mile Island.

Dangerous? In the UK alone there have been around 165,000 recorded deaths in the coal mining industry and this is a) an admitted underestimate and b) excludes deaths of miners from lung disease and, more importantly, deaths in the general population by smoke pollution caused by burning coal.  The truth is that so far, as a result of this recent quake,  nobody has died from nuclear radiation in Japan but at least 10,000 are likely to have been killed by, erm, wave power.

Tsunami? Table for two?

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I've stopped watching coverage of the Japan earthquake and tsunami.  Endless reruns of images of destruction interspersed with ignorant, ill-informed and factually incorrect nonsense about nuclear "meltdown". But I have decided to keep an eye out for the first day the disaster fails to be the number one story in the papers and then for the day it fails to feature at all.

Remember the 2004 Indonesian tsunami? The one that killed over a quarter of a million people? Try Googling it. Apart from two Wikipedia entries you'll find that a restaurant in Clapham, south London, named "Tsunami", gets a higher rank than any mention of the 2004 disaster.

And the next big story please.

The Best Sherlock Holmes

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Give Jeremy Brett A Posthumous BAFTA Award
Give Jeremy Brett A Posthumous BAFTA Award.  Most noticeably we have the support of many people and societies, some highly influential.  To name but a few of them: actors Stephen Fry, Edward Hardwicke, David Burke, Timothy West, author Paul D. Gilbert, and several Sherlock Holmes Societies, including The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, the exclusive and upon invitation only Baker Street Irregulars Society, and La Société Sherlock Holmes de France and its chairman, Thierry Saint-Joanis, who, in 1993-1994, successfully campaigned to have Jeremy awarded the French Légion d’honneur.

Made of Straw

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Worstall on: Will Straw’s weird, weird logic

If being mission driven rather than profit driven leads to greater profits being made then those companies which are mission driven will out compete those which are profit driven. If concern for stakeholders increases profits then similarly. If higher wages for the workers, care for the environment, better pensions, cuddly care or iced buns for tea on Thursdays increase profits then profit maximising businesses will do such things.


(N)ice doggie

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The body of a Border Collie cross frozen in a block of ice, which was left in the yard of a Dawson Creek man, is under investigation by BC SPCA animal cruelty investigators. It's possible another animal ate part of the dog's intestines, but it appears the 18-kilogram (40-pound) dog was owned by somebody because it had a healthy weight.

The SPCA wants to find out who was responsible for placing the dog in the block of ice, which looks to have been made using a large rubber bin.


As usual, it's about money

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Peace might upend wealth of Israelis
With the resumption of settlement construction in the West Bank yesterday, Israel’s powerful settler movement hopes that it has scuttled peace talks with the Palestinians, too.

It would be misleading, however, to assume that the major obstacle to the success of talks is the right-wing political ideology the settler movement represents. Equally important are deeply entrenched economic interests shared across Israeli society.

These interests took root more than six decades ago with Israel’s establishment and have flourished at an ever-accelerating pace since Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the Arab-Israeli War in 1967.

Even many Israeli Jews living within the recognised borders of Israel privately acknowledge that they are the beneficiaries of the seizure of another people’s lands, homes, businesses and bank accounts.

Most Israelis profit directly from the continuing dispossession of millions of Palestinian refugees.

Jonathan Cook

Protest the Pope

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 The case for a fair fight
“Pope Benedict XVI does not deserve the honour of a State Visit. He says women are unfit to be priests, childless couples should be denied fertility treatment and potentially life-saving embryonic stem cell research ought to be banned. The Pope insists that rape victims should be denied an abortion, using condoms to stop the spread of HIV is immoral and gay people are not entitled to equal human rights. On all these issues, Benedict is out of step with the majority of British people, including many Catholics.

“Most shockingly, the Pope is accused of covering up child sex abuse by clergy. In 2001, he wrote to every Catholic bishop in the world, ordering them to report all child sex abuse cases to him in Rome. They did. He therefore cannot claim that he was unaware of sex abuse. Moreover, his letter to the bishops demanded that they observe ‘Papal secrecy.’ It did not advise them to report abusers to the police.

“Even today, the Pope refuses to open the Vatican’s sex abuse files and hand them to the relevant police forces worldwide. Many people see his inaction as collusion with sex crimes against children. Such a person should not be feted by our government,”
                                                                                                                                                                          Peter Tatchell