Today I remembered to buy salt while in Tesco. It only took three months. I know people were on tenterhooks about this.

Sometimes you upload a photo to Flickr that you really like. So you give it plenty of tags, add it to as many relevant groups as you can find, and make sure it’s the top item on your photostream for a while. And nothing happens. It’s mildly disappointing.

And then one day you tag something with the word ‘pregnant’.

Live Earth apparently didn’t do so well in the TV ratings, and has taken some criticism for being hypocritical and inherently flawed. I think most of it’s bogus.

I agree that the message was confused. There was no consistent Thing To Do - there was vague talk of a petition, lots of generic ‘let the government know’ messages, and a confusing array of text schemes - and plenty of the advice seemed (although actually wasn’t) generically Green rather than specifically targeting global warming. This is a shame, but nevertheless I don’t think anybody came away not understanding the point of the concert: global warming was front and centre.

Firstly, criticising the singers and celebrities involved because they’re the worst offenders is silly. International rock bands cannot travel by public transport, and nobody would watch a concert without major stars, and the concerts were carbon neutral. That’s presumably why the tickets were quite so expensive (£55 each!). I think this was done with ‘carbon offsetting’, which admittedly takes a while to have any effect. But will do eventually. It is nothing like so bad as you’d think from all the goddamn complaining. It’s one of those arguments that clearly makes people feel clever, like saying ‘how can global warming be real if they can’t even predict next week’s weather?’, but is easy to refute. That’s all your standard critical chaff. The major question is: why have the concerts in the first place?

A common complaint is that ‘everybody already knows about global warming’, so what’s the point? Well, people trying to spread the word about global warming have a problem: there are a lot of global warming skeptics out there. They come in two flavours: those who think that it’s all made up, and those who think there’s still genuine scientific debate over the role of humanity in causing the problem. Most of the former are probably not going to have their minds changed, but they’ll be affecting people who’re on the fence - ‘of course I know better’ is always an appealing attitude. The latter are simply uninformed, and can hopefully have their minds changed by the evidence. It’s also a strange thing to complain about, as the problem is nevertheless there - even if it weren’t man-made, it would still be our problem. So how do the concerts help? I think they lend gravitas to the campaign.

For all the boring complaints of ‘oh, yet another major concert’, it’s still big enough to be of interest to anyone interesting in modern music.Which is a lot of people, and most of them young. And there’ve only been three major concert in two years, so shut up. For many people global warming can seem distant and, if not unimportant, something that doesn’t affect you. Intellectually we know it exists, but it’s something that Other People deal with. A massive event such as Live Earth makes it personal: if you’re a massive Metallica fan, and you see your favourite band suggesting that maybe this is worth a look, it’ll seem more of a real thing. It’s not that people didn’t believe or know about it before, it’s that this kind of thing makes it increase in stature: it’s like following a trend on the internet, and one day seeing it on the evening news¹. We knew it was cool before, but now it’s a much larger Thing, and one that now seems to matter more. Of course many people knew this intellectually, and for some reason feel patronised when somebody tries to spread the word, but we’re all affected by this kind of perception filter. Politicans, comedians, celebrities and massive rock stars all saying the same thing at nine major concerts worldwide is genuinely going to have an effect. So yes, I do think it’s worthwhile.

Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe I’m fooling myself: I was there, after all, and don’t want to think it was a wasted event. But there’s a general rule that the worthiness of a project is directly proportional to the cynicism that surrounds it. Global warming isn’t a small thing: it’s not a political issue that will fade in time. When the Live Intelletual Property Rights Concert is on at Wembley, I’ll agree things have gone too far. But this is important stuff, and saying so shouldn’t get you sneered at.

New Humanist recently ran a great (if weirdly short) interview with Richard Curtis². He said (something like) ‘Cynics Red Nose Day never raised any money or helped anyone’, which is about right. So yeah, slag off Live Earth for all the usual reasons: vain celebrities, everybody knows already, it’s naive, blah. But these people are trying to do something good, and undoubtedly succeeding, to an extent. More people are talking about global warming today than would have otherwise. What the hell good is complaining about it?

1. I’m thinking of podcasting, but there are plenty of others [↩]
2. the man is a hero, if you ask me, but is widely reviled by cynical journalists and self-important social critics - don’t get me started [↩]

The Bishop of Willesden thinks recent flooding was caused by society’s increasing acceptance of homosexuality. Being a) a bishop and b) clearly bonkers gets you coverage, and he was quite-rightly ripped to shreds and laughed at by anybody who reached the end of the article without throwing the newspaper across the room. Unless, that is, you’re the religious correspondent for The Times:

In our rational, spiritually sceptical world it is easy to laugh. Gratitude might be more in order.

For giving us yet another amusing tale of a bishop with the critical thinking powers of a nostril hair? Nope:

In any other walk of life, is there a scientist, a politician or even a media commentator with the courage to suggest that we might indeed be morally responsible for the chaotic weather systems disrupting our lives?

Well, no. Because it’s stupid. It’s nothing to do with courage. What a strange thing to say.

And if the bishops who believe in God don’t say it, who will?

Well, nobody. Because only somebody who believes that would say it, obviously. And nobody else thinks it. Because, as I mentioned, it’s stupid. I think giant lizards secretly rule the Earth. If I don’t say it, who will? Everything needs to be said!

All right, maybe she’s being sarcastic. Or making some confused point about global warming. Except, in the same article:

[The Bishop says:] “There is a view that both oral and anal sexual practice is liable to allow entry to spirits.” It is important to note here that the Bishop is not equating destructive spirits in everyday life with full demonic possession. Trained exorcists are, in fact, far more careful about diagnosing possession than most.

Obviously. What kind of muppet would think destructive spirits are the same as demons? Duh.

Part of his calling is to speak out, to “prophesy”, another of the “gifts of the Spirit”. Bishop Dow will know of prophets vilified in their own time and their own lands. But even only as myth, we ignore the lessons of the Bible at our peril. Much of what the prophets predicted came true.

That’s a good point. This also happened in Battlestar Galactica. We should not ignore the lessons of Battlestar Galactica. Prepare for the cylon rebellion now. They have a plan.

What started out as a misguided defence of raving gobbledygook under the banner of ‘it’s brave to say what you believe’ seems to end up hinting he might have a point. It must be really easy to get jobs at national newspapers.

(Sorry about the title. Couldn’t resist.)

I am back. It was great. There was a lot of this:

We left at 2300, and got back twenty minutes ago. It’s 0300. I’m going to bed.

I’m off to Wembley tomorrow morning for the Live Earth concert. I think we’re a fair way back in the stadium, but it should be a great experience. I’ve no idea whether my camera’s allowed in…I’ll take it anyway. Must get to sleep if I don’t want to be dozing off halfway through. Night!

Update: hmmm, tickets say no cameras. But I’ve had this before at concerts and not taken my camera only to find it’s just to cover their backs - the staff don’t mind at all. I doubt I’d get in with my SLR, but I think we’ll take Abi’s compact in a pocket. Chances are we’ll be too far from the stage to get anything spectacular, but crowd shots might be interesting.

Catherine Tate? Really? I’m sure she’ll be all right, but, you know, bit shouty…Could we have Sally Sparrow instead, please? I liked her. Also, series are short and she is hot.

Ten days after getting back, I’ve finally finished processing and uploading our Lake District holiday photos to Flickr: the set’s here if you’re interested. I think Flickr’s Map view is cool:

Built-in GPS is one of the few features I’d consider upgrading my camera for - geotagging by hand in Flickr (or Google Earth via Trippermap) is time-consuming and sometimes tedious, but I do like looking at the results.

In my local WH Smiths:

Yay! Let me at them!

One: the coming of the Lord

You know how it’s been raining recently? Do you know why? It’s because God hates the gays. It is. The Bishop of Carlisle says so:

“The sexual orientation regulations [which give greater rights to gays] are part of a general scene of permissiveness. We are in a situation where we are liable for God’s judgment, which is intended to call us to repentance.”

He expressed his sympathy for those who have been hit by the weather, but said that the problem with “environmental judgment is that it is indiscriminate”.

How broken does your brain have to be to believe this drivel? I could write plenty more, but Ophelia is better than me:

Funny god these bishops believe in. Arbitrary, whimsical, cryptic, absent-minded, brutal, sloppy, and stupidly vicious. We’d better hope it doesn’t exist. Oblivion is vastly preferable to being bossed around by a petty shit like that for eternity. Funny that the bishops seem to find it attractive. (But not really funny at all of course, since it’s merely a projection of their own petty shitness.)

Perfectly put. The Archbishop of Canterbury has of course been quick to disassociate himself from the remarks and to emphasise the inclusive nature of…oh, wait, never mind.

Two: it’s icky and I don’t like it

A mother has frozen some of her eggs for potential use by her daughter, who has a medical condition that will render her infertile. This is apparently ethically dubious because of ‘identity problems’:

Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, expressed sympathy with the family, but could not support storing the mother’s eggs.

She said: “The psychological welfare of the baby itself has to be the principal concern.

“Such a baby would be a sibling of the birth mother at the same time as the direct genetic offspring of the grandmother donor.

“In psychiatry we are hearing more and more of children suffering from identity problems, and specifically a condition called ‘genealogical bewilderment’. Could it possibly get more bewildering than this?

Fertilise with the grandfather’s sperm? It’s not really that complicated. Just because the child wouldn’t quite fit with either of the usual definitions of ‘child’ or ’sibling’ doesn’t mean anything - it’s just something new. I’d want to see strong evidence of psychological problems before denying anyone the chance of happiness through having children, if that’s what they want. As it happens, ‘genealogical bewilderment’ was posited as a possible problem with adoption, but doesn’t appear to exist. It’s tempting to suggest that critics are just scared of things they don’t know how to classify, but who knows.

Three: the EU is a porn merchant!

The EU created a channel on YouTube. The most watched video is ‘Film Lovers Will Love This!‘. There’s a bit of a fuss as it shows:

men and women having sex in different ways and places, and ends with the words, “Let’s come together”.

I’m always happy to suffer for my website, so I watched it. It’s mostly clips from Amélie. It’s cut very quickly, there’s no nudity, and it’s pretty funny - I thought it was actually a decent advert. Conservative MEP Chris Heaton-Harris does not:

They do have an image problem but I think cobbling together 44 seconds of soft porn on the internet is not a brilliant way of solving it

Dude, that is to soft-core porn as a monkey is to Jeremy Paxman. Take a look at the top-shelf of the nearest newsagent, and get a grip. Wait, that sounded wrong, although it might actually help. Meanwhile, Labour MEP Gary Titley (stop it) said:

European films are about more than a quick slap and a tickle. It is bonkers that this clip gets so much attention.

I like this. I picture the two MEPs cornered by a reporter, trying to think how they should respond. The Labour MEP pretends not to understand why a video vaguely showing people having sex is popular. The Conservative MEP pretends he thinks it’s disgusting. Over to people who will at least say what they really think:

A Polish MEP from the conservative League of Polish Families has accused the commission of using “immoral methods” to promote itself.

Is all sex now immoral? Somebody should tell them everything’s fine in this case: all the actors were married.

European Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr said there had been a flood of complaints from Poland about an intimate scene between two men

It’s the gays again. Not content with making it rain, they’re now trying to…er…promote the EU. Infamy! What does Martin Selmayr have to say about it?

Fuming at what he called “quasi-religious bashing of the very important cultural diversity we have in the European Union”, he said the lovemaking clips were excerpts from award-winning films, and that the commission was proud of the EU’s rich cinematic heritage.

“The European Union is not a bible belt, we believe in freedom of expression and artistic creativity,” he added.

Go Martin Selmayr! Let’s not mince words, it’s not ‘quasi-religious bashing’, it’s just religious bashing. Find me all the atheist ‘family values’ groups, and I’ll change my mind.

It’s a good job I’m beyond moral reproach, isn’t it?

A while ago I decided to start entering competitions. Nothing long-winded or complex, just the two-minute jobbies I get in my email every day. Any kind of competition that requires sending an email, or clicking through to a site and answering a question / filling in a survey etc., I enter. I get enough spam that much more won’t cause any hassle, and I use Gmail’s monkeys+whatever@gmail.com formatting so I can see exactly who’s been selling my address on.

Today I won six free dance lessons for me and a partner! Not at my local class (which might not last much longer, but more about that some other time), but at a Worcester school who run regular six-week courses. It’s where I learned the American Smooth and Argentine Tango. I’m not sure what I’ll do yet - I might hang on for an advanced jive - but there’ll be plenty to choose from. Great stuff!

I had a lot of printing to do this afternoon, and was planning to pick up an spare laser printer from a friendly company. This would have been an hour round-trip, so I instead decided to have another go at fixing my Canon iP4000, which broke after I tipped assorted metal objects down the paper feed. So I sat on the sofa with it on my lap, trying to find a way in. Printers aren’t designed to be user-serviceable. At all. But that’s never stopped me before, and if all else failed I knew service manuals were available online, for a price.

After much twisting and turning I discovered a combination of flaps that let me see directly down the paper feed tray. At which point I spotted this:

A screw was firmly lodged at the back of the tray, and much prying with the torch revealed two more. They would not come out the same way they went in. It took two hours, two knives, a nail file, two tweezers, blu-tack, at least eight swear words and a lot of lying on the floor at strange angles, but I finally got them out. I’m pretty sure I totalled the secondary paper feed tray - one of its removable parts was held by two springs which pinged inside the unit at first touch, never to be seen again - but it worked! A test page fed through without a problem. I was very happy. The drivers informed me that four of the five cartridges were empty, so I went out and bought replacements, along with labels and paper I needed for the job.

The print-head is broken. I don’t know whether it’s age, or if I somehow broke it while messing around (I was nowhere near that side of the unit, but it’s always possible) but it won’t print black. After all that. It won’t even fake it with the colours, such are the limitations of the drivers. I’ve tried blasting the print-head with hot water, but it hasn’t made any difference. A replacement print-head is £60, which is more than a new (lower quality, admittedly) printer, and I can’t afford that at the moment.

This took up most of my day, and I was a bit pissed off about it for a while. Still, learning experience and all that. I’ve picked up the laser printer this evening and it should do the trick (please don’t let it run out of toner anytime soon) although I’ll have to make do with black-and-white. I’m not sure where I’ll plug it in, mind - does anyone know whether it’s still a bad idea to plug modern laser printers into extension cords? This always used to be a big no-no, but I haven’t heard it for a while. I guess the cartridges are a write-off, unless I can sell the whole unit as ‘broken’ on eBay or something, but do you think ‘inkjet’ labels that specifically say they shouldn’t be used with ‘dry toner’ really mean it? I’m guessing so, but I’d like to think not…

The news isn’t terribly cheery, but in one respect it is a great day. The smoking ban came into effect this morning, and I think the country is now a better place.

Norm and others have argued that it’s illiberal: that the theoretical possibility of airtight rooms for smokers, which would ensure nobody else is affected, means that banning smoking is an infringement of a liberty that does no harm to others. I suppose that’s true in theory, but is it really possible in practice? An obvious objection is that non-smoking staff would still have to enter the rooms, to which the response is the staff don’t have to work there if they don’t want to. This is weak, in my view. I’m supposed to avoid getting an otherwise good job because the environment might poison me? And this is my problem? Isn’t this an infringement of the liberty to work without being physically harmed? What’s the difference between this and direct violence? Should we allow hypothetical ‘fight clubs’ where the people are free to beat each other up, and the staff should be expected to take it too, or they can work elsewhere?

Plus, there are more than adequate public health reasons for the ban. Smoking causes 100,000 premature deaths a year, and 50% of smokers will be killed by the habit. Sure, people are free to risk bringing about their premature deaths if they want to, but I’d say there’s a moral duty to make sure they know what they’re doing. Taking measures to prevent people harming themselves isn’t unreasonable: banning it completely may step into civil liberties territory (although I’ve yet to be convinced there’s no case for banning it inside houses containing children), but a ban in public places is surely a mild, and blindingly obvious, step for any government with a duty to protect its citizens.

Even if you do the balancing acts and find it is illiberal, I don’t care. The public health benefits and the ability to socialise without being surrounded by smoke far, far outweigh any possible downside, in my view. It’s mildly disappointing that a Labour government implemented it despite themselves, rather than making a proper stand, but that’s a minor thing. I am, as you might have gathered, very happy about it