Nato Chicago

The 25 Interesting (and Odd) Chicago Facts website advises us that Chicago takes it name from a native American word for onion field which covered the land where the Windy City would later be built.
All those onions must have been quite eye watering and there could be a few more tears this weekend as the city that 'Married with Children' was set in hosts the NATO summit.
The city has spent $65m to host the summit and have spent another $1m in riot-control equipment including long range acoustic weapons and upgrading police riot shields as they also welcome tens of thousands of demonstrators who are expected to flood the city.
The G8 summit which is also taking place this weekend was initially scheduled to be held in Chicago, but security concerns saw it was moved to the Presidential compound, Camp David, which is easier to defend against placard waving nurses.
These types of events always attract mass protests and regrettably they often escalate into violence so the heavy security is probably warranted because there are a lot of angry people around as NATO and the leaders of the G8 countries have both been acting pretty shoddy of late.
There will be people protesting about NATO's involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as well as the 99% who have been diced and spliced by the West's leaders.
Local police have arrangements in place to shut down mobile phone services to prevent protesters from coordinating their movements through social networks and the Red Cross have a large number of shelters on standby in the event of riot related injuries.
All the ingredients are there for a stormy weekend in Chicago, angry protesters and hyped up police officers armed with sparkly new riot shields, but i never understand why these events are held in major cities.
America is a big place and there are many empty spaces in it so if it has to be held there, build a special place away from the heavily populated areas that is awkward for protesters to get to and harass the leaders.
Another alternative would be to host the meetings on a ship anchored in the middle of one of the great lakes or mid-Atlantic or an even better would be for NATO and the G8 countries to not go around bombing oil rich countries and generally hacking so many people off that they feel they need to protest against them in the first place.

An Offer Greece Shouldn't Refuse

Dear Greece,

I keep hearing on the television that you have no money left so I am writing to you to inquire about the possibility of buying your country for £100m.
I have always fancied the idea of owning my own country and I am currently in a position to buy one, having recently received winning notification from Euro - Afro Asian Sweepstake International that I have won exactly that amount in their latest draw.
I have been assured that the £100m will be deposited in my bank account just as soon as I send them my bank details and the £1,000 they need to process my claim.
Speaking of which, I was wondering if, as a gesture of goodwill ahead of my imminent purchase of your country, that you might be able to lend me £1,000, as my own savings are currently tied up helping the wife of the late head of state of Nigeria, who recently emailed me to inquire if i might assist her in getting the $100m misappropriated by her late husband out of Nigeria.
Once I have received my share I will obviously repay your £1,000 in full, with a bit on top for your co-operation.
While I am aware that you are looking for as much as possible for your country, I was wondering if perhaps you'd be willing to knock a bit off as there are certain parts of it that I don't actually want: your army as it looks a bit girly with those pom poms on their shoes, Rhodes, those weird shaped guitars, your banks, the fat, hairy blokes who SHOUT ALL THE TIME, any of your football teams, Nana Mouskouri, all the statues of naked men with their junk hanging out and your olives.

I look forward to hearing from you

Arrivederci

Lucy.

The Myth Of Palestine

When you consider the hardship that the Palestinians have had to go through since 1948, it is no wonder that they have plenty of protests about their conditions but today is a special day for demonstrations because it is "Nakba Day", when they commemorate the displacement of 800,000 Arabs when Israel was created.
The demonstrations are held annually in Palestine and this years march is joined by Nakba protests in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.
Of course the Israelis don't like any criticism of their actions, past or present, and even attempted to draft a law that would ban the commemoration of Nakba day in Israel and a three-year prison sentence for any Arabs who broke the law. It was only dropped after a wave of horror from the Israeli media pointing out that it would be yet another public relations disaster for Israel.
Undeniably, Israel's actions towards its non-Jewish citizens, occupied peoples and neighbours cause insurmountable difficulties for all but if Israel had been created in another part of the globe, would the World today be a more peaceful place?
The Middle East is a hotbed of terrorism and the vast majority of that regions terrorists use the Palestinians cause in their justifications of their actions. The countries surrounding the Jewish state are not on friendly terms with it and indeed the majority of countries around the World are critical of its actions so what if Israel had popped up somewhere else?
I can almost hear the Israel supporters gasping that Palestine is their spiritual home and where they should be but that wasn't what the fathers of Israel were considering when they were gaining support for a land for the Jews, they wanted to place Israel in Argentina amongst other places.
"Shall we choose Palestine or Argentina? We shall take what is given to us" said Theodor Herzl, the founder of the movement to establish a Jewish homeland which he thought would be Argentina because it was 'one of the most fertile countries in the world, extends over a vast area, has a sparse population and a mild climate'.
Another one of the countries he was pushing for to establish Israel was Uganda and then Kenya, only for the Herzl expedition to be put off by the wildlife and the large number of Masai who made it clear that they did not welcome a large influx of Europeans to their country.
Cyprus and Egypt were even considered by the Herzl committee who died before any firm decision was made.
Palestine may be where Israel ended up but only after looking elsewhere first but it was so close to being Argentina which would have changed the course of history not only for the Palestinians and the whole Middle East, but for the world.
It also makes a bit of a sham of the often quoted myth from Israeli supporters who argue that being where it is today is due to religious reasons because if it wasn't for a few lions spooking the exploration committee, there was every chance that Israel would very well be neighbouring Nairobi or Kampala although the plains of Argentina, not the land of the Arabs, was the first choice.

Goal-line Technology

Much debate about goal-line-technology and what system football should turn to. Choice seems to be between the Hawkeye system similar to that used at Wimbledon or the GoalRef technology that sees a microchip inside the ball.
The present problem seems to be that the action happens so quick that the human eye of the referee cannot see with 100% accuracy whether the ball has crossed the line or not. We have seen many examples of the referee deciding he saw one thing only for them to be proved wrong later when the boys in the studio look at it from every angle.
Personally, i enjoy the human error part of it, my team have scored goals that should never have been as i have seen goals scored against us which should never have counted and my worry is that it will quickly creep from the game being paused while the referee looks at whether the ball crossed the goal-line to whether it was a penalty or a red card and we will be stopping and starting all game long.
Now, as a few people have pointed out but have been ignored, the large majority of these incidents seem to occur when the ball comes down off the crossbar and the crossbar is round. Would a ball come down like that if it was bouncing off a flat surface, such as a square crossbar?
I'm no expert in geometry but wouldn't it be almost impossible for a football to hit the bottom of a square bar and come straight down as it does when hitting the underside of a round bar? It would just skim off and carry on or hit the edge and come out. If i'm wrong then how about a triangle with the point at the bottom so it has very little surface area that won't force the ball into the goal or away from it? Even a hexagon shape would work.
So instead of spending millions installing technology to tell us whether it was a goal or not and force games to stop and start, why not just go the low-tech and much cheaper option of just changing the shape of the crossbar?

Drinking Tea The British Way

In my previous post i used the fact that Americans drink cold tea as an attempted humorous entry point to how they are now becoming more aware about Global Warming.
I long thought that Iced Tea was one of those things that just happened to sound like it was made from cold tea, like Dr Pepper isn't actually made by doctors or contain peppers, until it was confirmed to me by my Canadian colleague that actually, it really is just cold tea.
Apparently it is made the same way as us Brits but instead of pouring it into a cup with milk and sugar and drinking it hot with a biscuit or scone, they put it into a glass full of ice and drink it cold.
I then realised that with an expected 4.6 million international visitors coming to our green and pleasant land this summer for the Olympics, that there is going to be mayhem in cafes and restaurants around the capital with our national beverage.
We faced a choice of trying to be helpful to our guests and accommodating them in their drink choices by learning the difference between our tea and your tea but we decided nah, stuff 'em, they can have our tea and as more foreign nationals are in UK prisons for tea violations than any other charge, i think i should arrogantly point out how tea should be approached and not the wrong way the rest of you are doing it.
You will face 4 choices when asking for a tea. Leaves/Bag, mug/cup, black/white and with/without.
Your first option when deciding you want to chance a cup of tea is if you want it made from tea leaves or tea bags. The former version comes with a strainer to remove the leaves, the latter with a tea bag which is dunked until the correct tea colour is reached. Too pale and we are legally entitled to shout 'Piss drinker' at you while too dark and you will be ostracised from the local community. It is like breaking wind in a lift, not illegal but just not done.
Your second choice is cup or mug. A cup will be china and come with a saucer, teaspoon and a teapot while a mug is just an over sized cup with a teaspoon stuck in it.
The third choice is where most people get into trouble. If you choose the leaves and cup, you will then be presented with a small container full of milk. It is absolutely vital that you put the milk into the cup before pouring the tea.
Most arrests occur by people putting the water in first. This can crack the china due to the sudden heat of the boiling water hitting the delicate china which shatters the cup and sees you in front of a wig wearing judge for criminal damage and GBH charges if anyone is scalded by the steaming water.
Always, always, always put the milk in first to stop heat shock and a year sharing a cell with someone called Big Larry. If you are unsure, choose the mug option as the milk and water will already be added.
If you have opted for sugar then this is put in last and then the whole thing is stirred. Over stirring should be resisted as it does nothing to the flavour of the tea but the constant chinking of the spoon against the cup annoys everyone else around you.
I hope that in some small way i may have helped you how tea should be drank so we avoid any confusion on your visit here.

Welcome Aboard Americans

What about those crazy American eh? They drink their tea cold, call petrol gas and named a town Dicktown in New Jersey. Yep, mad as a bag of frogs but i think we can overlook their beverage drinking mishaps and mad town names considering they gave us some of the best TV and music during my lifetime.
Of course being the worlds greatest polluters until very recently should not be forgiven, nor the people who attempt to shrug off the damage to the climate which unfortunately is quite a few of the cold tea drinking Yankees.
Or so we thought because a survey from Yale and the George Mason University, have discovered that a large majority of Americans believe that the swathe of weather disasters to hit America these last few years were probably made worse by global warming.
'Most people in the country are looking at everything that’s happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another' said Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University. 'People are starting to connect the dots.'
The poll suggests that a large majority of the public, 69%, feels that global warming is real and affecting the weather in the United States although the most striking statistic is that over a third of the public reported being affected by extreme weather in the past year.
Finally and all it took was fatal tornadoes, hurricanes and heatwaves in their own backyard.
It is a well placed blow to all those who deny the climate is changing, the American public are believing their eyes over your words.
Welcome aboard, it's always better to be late than never.
Now, about that cold tea...

Halal and Kosher Meat

Evolution has made us the top predator and as human beings, living in a food rich civilisation, we have the great privilege of choosing what we eat and what we leave on the supermarket shelves.
Personally, i leave meat on the shelf and have since i was a teenager although i am not a militant vegetarian, if you choose to eat meat than that doesn't concern me, or rather it does but i'm not your conscience.
Whether you would feel the same if you ever made a trip to a slaughterhouse and watched the first act in the journey that leads a 10 week old lamb from the field to your plate is debatable, at the very least it should make you think the next time you are served a chop.
Over 40 million cattle, calves, sheep, pigs and around 900 million poultry are killed every year in the United Kingdom for meat and the vast majority of these were stunned into unconsciousness before being slaughtered. The RSPCA state that stunning causes an animal to lose consciousness, so that it can’t feel any pain until it is dead and the law states that all animals must be stunned before being killed, with a few exemptions. Halal and Kosher meat.
Animals killed that are acceptable to the religious faiths of Judaism and Islam are not stunned, they are restrained and their throat cuts and the animal dies slowly as the blood drains away.
Animal rights groups, the RSPCA and the Government advisory board, the Farm Animal Welfare Council all say that the suffering caused by this form of slaughter is severe. The FAWC report went as far as to say that 'slaughter without pre-stunning is unacceptable and the government should repeal the current exemption for religious slaughter'.
The Government are not going that far bur are considering labelling meat that has been killed according to Kosher or Halal methods so the public have a choice which isn't perfect but should make slaughterhouses think twice if demand falls, especially as at the moment they can send out any excess Kosher and Halal meat to supermarkets for the unprepared public to eat. If they are left with tonnes of un-stunned dead animals literally hanging around the place, they should reduce the amount of animals unnecessarily slaughtered.
In defense of the Kosher method, Shechita UK, a group set up to promote awareness of Jewish methods of slaughter, insist that cutting an animal's throat in a single swipe is less cruel than stunning it first. Behalal, whose mission statement is to 'educate and inform those wishing to follow the halal diet' say that Halal is actually more humane than conventional slaughter and produces less pre-stress for the animal'.
If the choices are between the RSPCA and the Government advisory board or a couple of organisations whose purpose is to promote the religious slaughter of animals, i know whose side most right thinking people should come down on.
People will always eat meat and most people don't consider the trip from the field to the fork but when the labels go on to show which animal was killed humanely and which was subject to severe suffering, your conscience should tell you, if you really have to eat meat, which to put in your basket.

Viva La Socialism

It wasn't much of a surprise that the French Presidency has changed hands and it now Francois Hollande cartwheeling around The Elysee Palace in place of Sarkozy who conceded defeat just 20 minutes after the polling closed.
Bye bye Sarkozy, don't let the doorknob hit the back of your head on your way out.
Hollande has said all along that austerity is not the only way to get France out of the Economic mess which has not gone down well in Germany with Angela Merkal and won't sit very well with our own Conservative Government who have long argued that austerity is the only way.
"I'm sure in a lot of European countries there is relief, hope that at last austerity is no longer inevitable" said Hollande at his victory speech which must be a boost for left wing parties everywhere.
Hopefully, we will now see a wave of right wing Governments removed and a sea of Socialist Parties being elected into power.
This could be the start of a momentous time where right wing policies and unregulated Capitalism have their chips cashed in and fairness, equality and a more equal redistribution of wealth is ushered in.
The trickle down theory has failed, there are far more poor people than rich ones in every developed country so anyone advocating policies that are in the clear self-interest of this majority, raising wages, reducing prices, create jobs, will be voted into office.
Voters are coming to the conclusion that since most people in the world are either poor or live below the average income in their countries, it is in their own interests to vote for politicians promising to redistribute wealth from the top of the economy down to them.
South American countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Uruguay, Chile and Ecuador reached this conclusion a while ago and turned to the left and now one of the great powers in Europe has gone the same way.
Maybe, just possibly, the penny has dropped and we will see modern Socialism replace the tired and corrupt ways of the right.
A lot will depend on how Hollande's policies fare but Karl would be proud tonight.

May The 4th Be With You

In the film 'Revenge of The Nerds', the brainiacs end up stealing the girl off the jock, winning the talent competition and inspiring the school to raise up in the cause of nerds everywhere.
Outside of the film world, all nerds get are atomic wedges and largely avoided but for one day of the year the geeks, dorks and nerds stop grumbling about how Jean-Luc Picard should speak with a French accent, turn off the Sci-Fi channel and come together to celebrate Star Wars Day.
I'm fine with that, can't stand the film myself, but each to their own. I imagine there are some people who don't like the things that i like and that is fine also. Very weird but fine.
The IT nerds at work are very helpful. Yes you have to listen to them moan about how the inadequate air conditioning affects the server but that is a small price to pay for them fixing your mobile after you spilt coffee all over it or retrieving that important file after you accidentally formatted the hardrive.
Star Wars day is different though because every nerd i came within speaking distance of today said 'May The 4th Be With You'.
Every. Single. One. All. Day.
Yes, very funny, now please fix my monitor in perfect silence or you will be removing it from your Wookie.

Tories Hammered

It's been quite a good week for lovers of schadenfreude. It began with Rupert Murdoch being declared unfit to run an International company, then the FA blew a huge raspberry at Harry Redknapp for the England job and then last night the Conservatives were handed a bloody nose and couple of black eyes by the British voting public.
Yes it was only local elections but they are a flavour of public feeling and what the public are feeling are that the coalition Government is not to their taste.
The Conservatives lost 400 seats and the Lib Dems 300 while Labour gained 700, a result which forced David Cameron to apologise to all his fellow Tories that were kicked out of the Councils up and down the country.
One minister, Gerald Howarth, blamed Cameron's decision to back gay marriage as the reason for the Tory collapse which is an interesting argument although it slightly overlooks the NHS privatisation, pay freezes, the extortionate cost of petrol, double dip recession, tax cut for the rich, the £11Bn Olympics, the Leverson enquiry, internet snooping, petrol shortage, savage cuts, redundancies in the public service, 3m unemployed, granny tax and student fees which many may argue are more on peoples minds at the moment than allowing a gay couple to get married.
This kind of drubbing should make the Conservatives and Lib Dems think twice about how they have been doing things so far although that's not the sense coming from David Cameron who said: 'These are difficult times and we need to make tough decisions and we'll go on making those decisions because we've got to do the right thing for our country."
Nothing like the arrogance of ignoring the people who voted you into power although that may soon be remedied as the array of political analysts on the TV pointed out that if the result was extrapolated for the general election, Labour would win a majority in Parliament in 2015.
Dave, Nick, the people have spoken boys and what they are saying is you suck.