Author: Mick Hartley

mplications for school dress policy in the future.

There’s an interesting range of comments at the BBC’s talking point. I liked this:

When I was at school I was banned from wearing my lip ring and nose ring, and sent home for dyeing my hair blue. I can only assume that in the light of this ruling, all pupils will be allowed to dress in a way that they choose, to reflect their own cultural beliefs. Otherwise, why are members of organised religion getting privileges of self-expression that are denied to others?

a proud nazi would you do business with the company if they said that their CEOs nazi activities were a private matter not related to the company even though they proudly displayed his award for best nazi on their company website?

They go on to claim, at the bottom of the page, that their campaign has been successful:

We are proud to announce that, following a series of discussions with Oxfam regarding its agreement with pro-Zionist multinational coffee chain Starbucks, Oxfam has decided that it will not be renewing its 1 year contract with Starbucks, which terminates this September.

We would like to thank all activists and organisations who have campaigned to ensure Oxfam adheres to its stated values and principles. This victory shows what is possible when people come together and stand united in the struggle for justice.

Ah yes, the struggle for justice.

Personally I think this should be taken with several spoonfuls of salt. The “series of discussions with Oxfam” most likely consisted of a number of the sample letters being sent, and being duly ignored by Oxfam after their courteous replies only produced more ranting. Here’s Oxfam’s announcement. No mention of the Boycott Israel Campaign. The agreement was only for a year anyway. I don’t think we should be encouraging this organisation’s delusions about its effectiveness.

more than any other Arab country, the urban middle classes are more natural allies for the United States than is the military-business elite in power since 1952.

By taking the lead for democratic reform, Mubarak may be trying to preserve the elite’s position in a new political context.

Nevertheless, while American pressure certainly did play a role, it would be wrong to ignore other factors that might have contributed to Mubarak’s historic decision. The first such factor is growing opposition to the present system within Egypt itself. For the past year or so Cairo has been the scene of almost daily peaceful demonstrations, by people from all walks of life, calling for free elections.

In the past few weeks there have also been demonstrations in a number of other Egyptian cities with a one-word slogan Kafa! (Enough!), shouted by thousands of people and scribbled on numerous walls. The demonstrators have been encouraged by the belief that the authorities would not be able to order a crackdown in the face of opposition from Washington and its coalition allies.

The second factor that might have persuaded Mubarak to embrace reform is the change of mood in the Greater Middle East.

With the failure of pan-Arabism and various ideologies, including variants of the Left, the region is now discovering democracy as the one big idea that could help it out of the historic impasse.

is it? Yes, it’s that old favourite, the straw man:

Chomsky, Fitch, and Hauser argue that Pinker and Jackendoff did not understand their initial paper, created a straw man in its place, and then destroyed it with arguments that are irrelevant to what Chomsky, Fitch, and Hauser actually said.

As Zimmer points out, the initial paper by Chomsky et al was hardly a model of clarity, and this latest paper is no better. Oh well.

Of more interest is Zimmer’s article on animal personality. It’s hardly a surprise to pet owners that animals differ in their personalities, but apparently it’s a bit of a shock to scientists.

A team of Dutch scientists is trying to solve the mystery of personality. Why are some individuals shy while others are bold, for example? What roles do genes and environment play in shaping personalities? And most mysterious of all, how did they evolve?

The scientists are carrying out an ambitious series of experiments to answer these questions. They are studying thousands of individuals, observing how they interact with others, comparing their personalities to their descendants’ and analyzing their DNA.

It may come as a surprise that their subjects have feathers. The scientists, based at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, are investigating personalities of wild birds.

Until recently, most experts in personality would have considered such a study as nothing but foolish anthropomorphism. “It’s been looked at with suspicion and contempt,” said Dr. Samuel Gosling, a psychologist at the University of Texas.

Dr. Samuel Gosling?

At least here in Britain the Bush Hitler comparison is largely confined to ex-playwrights. In Germany, it’s mainstream opinion.

called for Margaret Thatcher to be prosecuted when the Bill becomes law.) The Director of Public Prosecutions has said that this law will “criminalise a state of mind”.

Most dangerous of all are the enormous expectations that this law has raised in parts of the Muslim community. Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, seems to envision that any “insult” or “outrageous comment” about Islam or the Muslim community would become illegal. Since this is not the Government’s stated intention, at least one minister has admitted that tensions will need to be defused after the election. This does not stop them rushing the law through, however. With the Muslim Council threatening the Liberal Democrats with the loss of 25 seats if they continue to oppose the Bill, the race for the Muslim vote is well under way. […]

A modern society should abolish all blasphemy laws. It should disestablish the Church. That would give Muslims the parity they seek; not enshrining a free-for-all persecution.

erhaps even censure Syria on Monday.

“We have intelligence information that the orders came from the Islamic Jihad in Syria,” a senior source close to Sharon said. “We know where the orders for the attack were issued, we know where they were sent, and we know Syrian intelligence was involved and provided logistical support.”

proceed by simply summing the happiness of each individual. But it gets worse:

To measure happiness, we can ask a person how happy he is, or we can ask his friends or independent investigators. These reports yield similar results. The breakthrough has been in neuroscience. Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin has identified an area in the left front of the brain where good feelings are experienced, and another in the right front where bad feelings are experienced. Activity in these brain areas alters sharply when people have good or bad experiences. Those who describe themselves as happy are more active on the left side than unhappy people, and less active on the right side. So the old behaviourist idea that we cannot know how other people feel is now under attack.

So, as Robert McHenry suggests, why not just implant electrodes in that good-feeling area and hand each of us a little button to push as often as we like? Or develop some new soma-like pills we can all ingest?

Layard thinks he’s battling individualism, but his whole approach simply reinforces it. Or, to put it another way, the whole emphasis on happiness is part of the problem, not part of the solution. It makes me unhappy just thinking about it.

ys, but for wildness go to Bangkok. It’s where I bought boy number 54, in a pair of Calvin Klein white underpants in a very hard-core gay bar. The idea is that you buy a boy to have sex with him. I didn’t, but we took him out for the night and he became our guide to the Bangkok where tourists never normally go.

We went to a place where men stand on the bar and masturbate in front of you. Then there are the lady-boys who expel nuts from their anuses (or maybe it’s their vaginas?). The nuts are attached to pins, and they fly out across the room and burst balloons. The clubs with women are mad, too. You’re sitting there with 80 Thai women around your feet.

Oooh…isn’t Tracey naughty, boys and girls? She doesn’t just go to gay bars, she goes to very hard-core gay bars. But really, you know, at heart she’s a good girl: you buy a boy to have sex with him. I didn’t.

Hunter S Thompson may have gone off in his later years, but he deserves better than this.

ong friend. Japan is like a mad dog, and sooner or later, it’ll cause the U.S. great trouble,” says Zhang Yihua, 32, an advertising designer.

On Saturday in Washington, the United States and Japan issued a joint document that advocated the “peaceful resolution” of the status of Taiwan, the island that Beijing regards as a renegade province. Within days, a commentary in the state-run China Daily newspaper blasted that mild statement as “an irresponsible and reckless move that will have grave consequences.” […]

Today’s democratic Japan, whose military is constitutionally limited to self-defense, bears little resemblance to the empire that ravaged Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. But Friedman says the Chinese have “blinded themselves to this reality.”

Even those too young to have experienced the war are bitter. “Japan brought a lot of harm and pain to the Chinese people. Millions of people died,” Lu says. “This is history that nobody can erase.”

The mass famines of the Great Leap Forward, the brutal purges of the Cultural Revolution, and the occupation of Tibet, are also history that nobody can erase.