Milo is in the house

This Monday we picked up our pup from his kennel in Lincolnshire. The journey home was remarkably easy (no wee, poo, sick or whining for the whole 2 hour treck!). However, I do think we have found ourselves quite a little character here.

With all his 8 weeks of existance Milo seems to have already decided that the world belongs to him. Everything that isn't bolted down inevitably ends up somewhere in his basket, as Jo found out this morning when she was looking for her shoes. Nevertheless, I'm quite happy to have a confident dog. He's been excellent around all the visitors that have been fussing over him, and is not bothered at all by all the strange sights smells and sounds in his new home, including the thundering bark of the enormous Rotweiler across our backyard.

We've got a house!

After a long and painful proces involving way too many banks and estate agents for my taste, we finally managed to get an offer accepted on a very nice house. If you want to have a look, check this link (hopefully the estate agents won't take it down just yet...). I'll put some pictures up later just in case. I'm off now, sorting some stuff out, I'll post a more in depth story later.

Commercial? How is this commercial?

While consuming my daily news feed for the day, my wrath was awakened by a tiny article on slashdot. For those not in the mood to click through and read, the article described how citizens in New Mexico had supported, and were now adopting, a new extra tax to allow them to build the first commercial spaceport.

I really don't get what's commercial about spaceport that is being paid for by taxpayers monies. If you ask me that makes it at least partly public. Obviously then, this is just a way to sugarcoat ripping of some poor taxpayers for the benefit of a few corporations that can't be arsed to make serious investments in their own future infrastructure. And if this new facility was in any way going to benefit the people that are now paying towards it, that would perhaps mitigate this atrocity, but with an intended price tag of $200,000 per flight ( the intended price for a short space hop with Virgin Galactic), this service is obviously not going to have any real meaning to 99% of the people paying for it.

Another fine example of the failures of democracy. The right marketing will have people vote in favour of the most stupendous ideas.

Graduated!

Today I received my Postgraduate Certificate in learning and teaching in Higher Education. While in itself not a very major award (it's just the first step towards my Masters and, hopefully, a PhD) it was a nice opportunity to experience an anglosaxon style graduation.

On the right here you can see me in my fancy dress. One up front, and one from the back, so that you can see the colours on my robe. Every type of award has it's own colourcode here, made up from the basic colours of the university. For Derby those are red and light blue.

The broad blue and red bands indicate that I am a graduate Bachelor of Science, and the dark blue below that on the cape indicates that this has now been extended with a Postgraduate Award. Once I manage to complete my Masters degree the dark blue cape will get a red rim. a phD robe is different entirely and is competely blue with red accents. For now though, I'll settle for the black.

(for those interested, you can click on a picture to enlarge it)

Jack Of Clubs

I was just reading the blog of JackofClubs, someone I've had many heated but interesting debates with in the past. I came across his entry called With Friends Like These... . It is the type of post I can't read without responding to it.

In my opinion, posts like this are extremely dangerous, and are the cause of much of the problems we have today, certainly not the solution.

First of all I think this type of post is completely single sided. Extreme intolerance or agression is a serious problem in the world today. it exists and it should be countered and eradicated. But the suggestion by examples like this that the problem is an exponent of a single cultural or religious group is absolutely ridiculous. Too easily do we forget similar tendensies that exist in our own culture, or that of our other neighbours. Have we forgotten the crimes of Nazi and KKK sympathisers? Of extreme black power groups? of violence between Sikhs and Hindus or the aggression that is displayed by Zionist militants? Furthermore, are we forgetting that even in the case of looking at Muslim fundamentalism, that there is no such thing as Islam versus Christianity? There are similar problems between Islam and Hindus, or even within Islam (Shia and Sunni for instance). This whole construct of "them versus us" with "them" as the evil aggressor just does not exist.

Even worse it is the exact same type of propaganda tat is used by extremists in the Islam camps or elsewhere to incite hatred to other groups. If you want an example of Christians abusing a Muslim, or any other combination of ethnic groups, you will have no problem in finding it. And that is the second major problem. Incidents like this do not even have a proper reference or clear link to facts or truth. Did this happen? Was this the whole story? We don't know. Even if it happened exactly like this, then the question of how representative of a whole culture / religion or ethnic group this is still remains.

In my opinion posting this post contributes to the same problem that it tries to identify and condemn: The aggression of one ethnic group to another. It puts the poster on a same level as the extremist imams that try to convince their followers that Christians are evil, or the Zionist calling for the eradication of Palestinians. As long as we keep hating people, and condemning their beliefs and values, we cannot expect anything else in return.

On a side note: I do agree with the comments made here about the European Union. It is far too eager to expand, and in doing so compromises the values it claims to stand for. until the EU manages to sort out it's decision making structure no one should be allowed to join. After that only when there is a sufficient equity in the values and morals that are displayed by its people and government.