And the bear’s name is…

Posted on 29th Nov 2007 by essiep

6°C, clear.

"A British teacher has been found guilty in Sudan of insulting religion after she allowed her primary school class to name a teddy bear Muhammad." –BBC
It strikes me that that government could do with a law that prohibits any act of making Islam look ridiculous. That would have stopped this story. You just can’t defend a religion by acting like spoof characters from a Monty Python film- you just end up looking more foolish than ever.

Here is a funny page

"Speaking as a father I do not feel this was a well thought out plan by the teacher. However, I feel that she has done nothing wrong. The children themselves should be punished for having chosen the name of our great Prophet for a lowly bear. The teacher was misguided, whereas the children were malicious. They must be brought to answer for their blasphemy."
Abdullah Al-Zawawi, Sudan

Most commentators are saying that is was an "innocent mistake", No it wasn’t! It is not a mistake to say something that doesn’t matter, it’s trivial and frviolous, this teacher hasn’t done anything wrong! The mistake was made elsewhere, the mistake of taking offense at something that is inoffensive.

Y-generation

Posted on 27th Nov 2007 by essiep

9°C, grey, still.

Inset: Staff training session included an exercise in answering the question ” what are the main differences between contemporary teenagers and those of the 1980s & 90s? Primarily, it was an exercise in generating ideas collectively and with relatively little input from the leading teacher. This list contains some of the thoughts we agreed on;

Modern teenagers:

No politics, no idealism
they don’t exercise,
they are contained, driven everywhere, kept indoors; are “cocooned”
They are computer literate
They are measured constantly; SATS, targets, exams, body weight, health tests, ‘friends’ and ‘likes’ and so on
They are well fed
they are wealthy
they are afraid of risk
they are afraid of “getting things wrong”
they are image conscious
they are argumentative
they are shameless consumers
they are physically unhealthy
they are not ethical consumers

Muhammad

Posted on 26th Nov 2007 by essiep

9°C, dull all over. Sunset about ½ way through the afternoon.

Brain police: BBC story: my question is- why didn’t the thought police arrest the children? "Twenty out of the 23 children chose Muhammad as their favourite name." for teddy-bear…after voting.
Does it remind you of the Stoning scene in "Life of Brian"? Actually, the teddy-bear started all of this, so I hope IT gets the stoning!
Here’s another one, this time in the UK- Science A-level. What a bigoted world we live in!

Nine Kestrels

Posted on 25th Nov 2007 by essiep

8°C, cloudy, light NE winds. C=60.5 miles

nine in one ride, remarkable. The winter bike is handling perfectly, it’s not been that good for years! But I am anxious about a ripple in the paint on the top-tube. It could be a symptom of a crack underneath.

The National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas is very good. The main wall is about the same proportions as Stonehenge, but there is a slit just left of South in two walls that line up with the sun on guess which hour of which day? A slightly sad note i has been posted on the doors, apologosing about the number of memorial trees that have died due to last summer’s flooding. I can’t help thinking – what do you expect? You build your site on the flood-plane of a major British river, the land is really marshy, and much of it is below river-level. More trees will be killed next time it floods, hardly a rare occurance.

NB the iPod is working really well. I’d like to find out how to remove the built-in games, they swallow up about 400MB out of the 4Gb this model has. Those and the operating system I suppose. Now- how do I uninstall those games?

Is it really?

Posted on 24th Nov 2007 by essiep

3°C, grey & rain threatening

Woke up not really believing it is actually my birthday; the confusion is- it isn’t raining.

I have more iPods now than I did yesterday, the previous figure stood at none. saturday is definitely the best day to have a birthday, last year I was finishing off writing reports after getting home from work.

Add on a nice book and things to eat, including some cheeses that I have never heard of before).

It has rained.

Snowman

Posted on 19th Nov 2007 by essiep

7°C, Snow, slushy though.

Thaw: it seemed to melt as fast as it fell, but still someone near here built an amazingly good snowman.Good enough to take a picture of.

very November

Posted on 18th Nov 2007 by essiep

4°C, heavy rain, windy too. No cycling.

It’s getting worse, as the average height of british men increases, the average length of trousers in the shops gets shorter. The longest ones M&S do now is 33", it used to be 35". I need 36" waist to go with the 36" inside leg. Can you tell I had another frustrating and wasteful shopping trip today. why do so many people like shopping, I can’t see it- it’s infuriating.

Novermber: here we are, cold, dank, dull & grey, topped up with heavy rain. It must be November.

Now it’s snowing.

Orange skimmed rooftops

Posted on 16th Nov 2007 by essiep

6°C, cold, still and misty. C=4×21 miles

This week has been good for cycling, despite very cold air, -3°C some mornings. Both mornings and evenings (which now happen in Mid-afternoon) have seen colourful sunset/rises. Routine makes it feel like "Groundhog Day". I see the same pedestrians in the mornings, crossing at the same places, the same cars overtake and the same sun sets.
See the picture of orange sunlight skimming horizontally across rooftops and trees.

Apetite: insatiable this week. Someone suggested that it is the cold that has boosted my hunger, which is an interesting thought.
I had 513 emails tonight, all claiming returned emails, so some spammer has been using my address as return addy.
Staffroom: we debated a Virus’s right to life status. No we aren’t virus antiabortionists, I wasn’t sure if they were alive in the first place. They’re not.

The kids did charity things.

Remembrance

Posted on 11th Nov 2007 by essiep

12°C, clouds. Wind abating. C=53 miles.

Riding out across the Sittles farm estate, I heard what sounded like Opera, drifting across fields from the north. Curiosity drew me into the Alrewas Arboretum where a grand Remembrance Sunday event was held. thousands of people were there, loads of ol’ vets and military big brass. They’d just had a ceremony ( my arrival was just after 11.00am). the event concluded with a flyby by a Douglas Dakota painted in army colours- see photo.