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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

The iPod. First for the Mac, now for the handbag... [via Boing Boing]

posted at 10:23 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Update: Tom Tomorrow comments on the way new rogue memes get started. His example is another explanation for why governments do things that are unjust towards the ordinary people which I discussed earlier in December.

posted at 8:27 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Can't afford to seethe [PhotoTravel]

I'm sorry, I get very upset when I encounter injustice. Read Nicholas Monahan's story. Judge for yourself whether the loss of liberty air travellers are encountering at the moment, and the suspicion that is raised towards those exhibiting normal humanity (as opposed to a placid, servile calmness that can only come about under these circumstances if one is on drugs), is too high a price to pay for a promise of personal and corporate security which is as yet unproven. Personally I feel insulted, demeaned and frustrated in my powerlessness as I read the story but, of course, your (air-) mileage may differ.

Why would someone in authority make up that story about Nicholas? Well, I'd suspect that he was scary to the guy that was talking to him and that guy also lost it and over-reacted. As such over-reaction on the part of the staff is probably viewed negatively (they too are probably supposed to live as if they took tranquilisers) they probably over-state and garnish all the facts of the case. I too have personally encountered this, at Heathrow, where I admit I swore at the brain-dead security guy but who, in his (verbal) report to his supervisor made it sound as if I had threated and almost attacked him. Simon Calder of the Independent also reports the heavy-handedness of the way things are implemented.

The biggest threat of all from this arrest-first-make-up-the-story-later approach is that from January 1st (according, again, to Simon Calder, in yesterday's newspaper) the US requires anyone who has ever been arrested, even if never charged, to get a visa in advance of travel. Air travel is no fun these days (not that it was much fun before). The sense of slipping back in time is so strong.

posted at 8:11 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

No Room For The Inn? [PsychoReligio]

It's not often these days that my religious tastebuds get tickled, but reading an article in Third Way magazine about there being 'no room for the inn' has kept coming back to mind this weekend. The article considers that, because of a culturally-cultivated mistranslation, we continue to assume that Jesus was born in lonely squallor as a refugee, a searing mental image for the current age. But a modern scholar suggests that wasn't how it happened, and that in fact Jesus was born in the midst of the life of his extended family

in the Palestinian equivalent of a two-bedroom semi

(In American that's a duplex I believe). For me this completes the picture. I hope it helps for you too.

posted at 8:33 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |