AUTHOR'S BLOG

   Actually, it's worse than that, they'll take us forward into a multi-national-owned, lobby-fed, climate denialist parliament, just as we've had the warmest three months on record.  Yes, I know you and I thought January was pretty damned cold, but... well, it wasn't.  So there.  NASA says so

And in case you don't believe it: dataset here:

and the money quote

The record temperatures we’re seeing now are especially impressive because we’ve been in “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.” It now appears to be over. It’s just hard to stop the march of anthropogenic global warming, well, other than by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that is.

 But for a bit of amusement, this from Johninnit:

With this rather amusing quote (well, it would be amusing if the eye-popping mendacity of it wasn't so bloody scary). 

Still smarting that we’re not considered wholesome enough for a Cameron marriage tax break – my wife earns a few hundred quid too much, I was cheered a bit to see Sunder Katwala’s recent post on Next Left. It looks like we’re in good company.

 

It’s supposed to cover civil partnerships too (might buy them a nice stay in a B&B), but Sunder thinks it will be hard for Cameron to find himself any beneficiaries there. Pensioners are likely to get a third of it – A very welcome boost on pensioner poverty, but would another £150 on winter fuel not be better targeting – or is divorce and anti-social behaviour amongst pensioners one of the main indicators of the Tories’ Borked Britain?

And then there’s the amount. Not enough to be a bribe, or to genuinely be of help to families – something that few people will get, and those that do get won’t notice.  Shudder the thought it might be calculated to be the cheapest way possible to avoid the embarassment withdrawing the silly policy. As is stands it seems to fall squarely into the category of ‘pin money for wives who know their place”.

For those of you thinking of sticking acres of solar panels on your roof tops (which means you clearly didn't read George Monbiot on the subject  - see The Great Green RipOff), you might want to read this and consider waiting awhiles.

A new technique developed by Princeton University engineers for producing electricity-conducting plastics could dramatically lower the cost of manufacturing solar panels.

 

By overcoming technical hurdles to producing plastics that are translucent, malleable and able to conduct electricity, the researchers have opened the door to broader use of the materials in a wide range of electrical devices.

With mounting concerns about global warming and energy demand, plastics could represent a low-cost alternative to indium tin oxide (ITO), an expensive conducting material currently used in solar panels, according to the researchers.

 

For what it's worth, it does seem to me that as long as you've insulated your house to passiv-haus standards - or at least AECB Gold Standard, then if you've got some spare cash, the solar panels are probably not a bad idea, and you might want to commit before the incoming Tories destroy the incentives (the greenwash truly won't last long)  - if you live in hope that they won't get in, or if you don't like the current technology, then the new creations might make it all more rational and more affordable.

For those of you who share my addiction to the writings of Armando Iannucci - and particularly the magical creation that is Malcolm Tucker, please feel free to follow this link to the Guardian's latest Tucker Fest.  Money quote below.

Disappointing week. I know for a fact that several key strategists spent Tuesday night, unbuttoned and semi-tumescent before the widescreen, all oiled up and ready to get busy as they watched Osborne stutter and screech like a flamingo being fed feet-first into a Moulinex. I, personally, was even planning, as suggested by a senior cabinet member, to eat a Cadbury's Creme Egg in its entirety at my moment of no return to heighten the sensation of bliss. However – don't think we should get downhearted that Osborne didn't do his lip curl or Sebastian-Flyte-talking-to-his-teddy voice. Remember, big picture, most people didn't know who any of these guys were. Most people just saw three generations of boring talking honk about shite. But the good news for us is that the focus group in my head suggests that swing voters who did watch became enraged when they learnt that after the election the boss of them was likely to be not Mr Depressing nor the Man in the Big Yellow Suit but Curious George, the albino test-tube love child of Mr Burns and Miss Havisham.

And for those to whom the above is meaningless (please don't follow the link), I offer this gem of idiocy regarding the 'lesbian finger length' debate. 

Basic premise is that we who favour women were washed with higher than usual levels of testosterone while in utero - this trends towards a longer fourth finger (ring finger longer than index finger, or digit 4 longer than digit 2 for those of you who follow basic anatomy) and that this therefore is a sign of, for instance, being able to read maps, and  - perhaps - make relationships with other women. 

Leaving aside the obvious fact that almost any woman could make a relationship with another woman if the circumstances were right  (and ditto men with men - nobody's born straight, we're just predisposed by society) it does seem to me that the D4 > D2 == lesbian is a correlation rather than a correspondence - roughly along the same lines as my so far untested theory that most women crime writers have D4 > D2.  Not all of us/them become dykes, but we/they do tend to write novels where strong women predominate.   I await a full survey of, say, the women members of the CWA (Crime Writers' Association) vs the Romantic Novelists....

Happy Festival of Oestre

Presents the best defence the world has yet heard on free speech, free writing and freedom of thought - the last word, truly, so the rest of us don't have to go round this circle:

For the record, here’s the transcript (via BoingBoing):

It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don’t have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don’t have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or bought, or sold or read. That’s all I have to say on that subject.

So.... for those of us who were in doubt that there are elements within the US military who are completely hopping, screaming, bat-shit crazy - today's news of the 'Jesus Rifles' brings us bang up to date.

For those of you who don't want to click the link - this is the bit you need to see: 

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the U.S. military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

 

Brian Ross looks at the biblical verses written on firearms.

The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.

 

This was back in January. So then we moved on to the Huffington Post, which declared that:  

In the wake of the revelation by ABC News that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were being supplied with rifle sights adorned with references to New Testament Bible verses, Trijicon, the Michigan based contractor that manufactures the sights, has agreed to stop putting the references on products supplied to the military.

 

and also:

In a press release issued by Trijicon on January 21, the company stated that it will do the following to remedy what many view as an egregious mixing of religion and the military, as well as an offense to the Christian religion:

 

- Remove the inscription reference on all U.S. military products that are in the company's factory that have already been produced, but have yet to be shipped.

- Provide 100 modification kits to forces in the field to remove the reference on the already forward deployed optical sights.

- Ensure all future procurements from the Department of Defense are produced without scripture references.

So you'd think that's OK Except it's not.  Now we have news from DailyKos that:

As ABCNews.com reports, the U.S. military, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to remove the inscriptions from the sights that are in storage first, and then wait to remove them from the sights on the weapons currently in use in Iraq and Afghanistan, after the deployed units that are using them return home, a plan that completely ignores the biggest reason that the inscriptions urgently needed to be removed.

In the havoc and mayhem engulfing the Catholic Church, a few sane voices are beginning to speak out. 

This comes from 'a reader' who has replied to Andrew Sullivan's blog posts regarding the Pope and his failure to deal  - ever - with the abuses taking place in his church. If this is real, it needs to be said again and again and again until people hear it (NB, 'B16' is the current Pope):

While I wholeheartedly agree with your conclusion that B16 should retire and that the charade of priestly celibacy ought also to be retired, I was startled by some twists in your route to those good ends.

You say that some men entered the priesthood to find a cure for their gay sexuality. I suspect that somewhere there may be such a priest, but overwhelmingly, we who were ordained gay were actually not in search of a cure. We had a rather high estimation of ourselves as sexual creatures. We were joining a fraternity of accomplished and respected gay men. Gay sex was certainly not off limits to us as long as we bought the duplicity and the premise that we did it secretly. As gay culture became acceptable, the need for this fraternity withered and the priesthood stopped attracting good gay candidates.

Also, I tried hard to understand and to feel your assertion that pedophile priests see their victims as less than human. I don't think I agree with that. I think that in most cases, pedophile priests saw their victims as convenient humans.

 

These men were largely not part of the fraternity of gay priests whose meetings would happen at gay rectories, resorts, bars and baths. As the accusations came to light, many of us who are or were gay priests were totally surprised by the names of the accused. I think that many of them felt trapped by celibacy whereas those of us who simply shrugged it off from the time of our ordinations and led active sex lives and formed healthy relationships with adults were not their associates. They conducted their pedophile sex in secret. I think the media mistakenly paints the image of a priesthood in which all priests were aware of what was happening. I, hardly a blushing flower, was among those shocked at the extent of the situation.

The fledgling group called "Catholics for Equality" hopes to derail an unfair connection between pedophilia and gay clergy. I hope their efforts are successful, but I will say that my experience of the hierarchy makes me firmly believe that a gay bishop or cardinal - especially one who has had his career boosted by not having the kind of sex he might personally desire - might be inclined to go easy on a pedophile priest because he feels guilty about his own desires, mistakenly grouping together all forbidden fruit.

I think what many Catholics don't know is that priests are simply not well trained for celibacy. Even the ones who are not sexually active have substituted the non-celibate preoccupations of gluttony and entertainment and porn and whiskey to take the place of sex. It's a sad way of life all around.

I think B16 will retire "for health reasons" but I am afraid that we do not at this moment have a cardinal ready for election who will abolish the charade of priestly celibacy. Five years from now, there may be one courageous enough to do it, and he may be an American.

 

For those of you who don't read the Independent (and therefore aren't in mourning at the news that it's just been bought for £1 by an ex-KGB agent), this letter seemed to me little short of genius.

I copy it here in its entirety for your amusement. 

Sir - 

 

A number of suggestions have been put forward as the best way of dealing with junk mail, but none capitalises on the postage-paid envelope which often comes with this type of mail. May I, therefore, suggest that the following is the best method.

Remove all personal details from any junk mail. Put the advertising material from the insurance company in the envelope from the double glazing people.  Put the material from the double glazing company in the envelope from the credit card company. Repeat this process until the day's junk mail is all enveloped up. Post the envelopes next time you pass a mail box.

The above method gives revenue to the Post Office, costs the originators of the junk mail the often first-class postage on the envelope and causes the recipient company chaos and confusion as the staff process what is now junk mail to them. 

If everyone did this, junk mail would soon end.

Gordon Whitehead, Copt Hewick, North Yorks. 

Actually, the first poem ever, but you never know, if I find others I like, I might post them.

Please Bring Strange Things

At last.  At very long, long last, Obama has pulled off what many said was impossible and not a few wanted to be impossible: he has brought something close to universal health care to the US.  This is the first foot in the door, to be sure, but it's a truly momentous thing given the forces of self-interest ranged against him. 

 One of the best reactions so far that I've seen is here in the Guardian  - a piece that's well worth reading in its entirety, but for those of you that can't, here's the best of the best:

It did not, you may have noticed, come easily. The Democrats pulled it out in the end, but they – especially the Democrats in Congress – behaved abominably throughout this process. Dozens of Democrats – mostly moderates, but a few on the left, too – acted more like members of a small-town city council considering a zoning application than legislators considering one of the most momentous votes in recent American history. And while it's certainly true that a "yea" vote last night will prove to be a risky one for some members, and will cost a few of them their jobs, even that reality is no justification for the preening and fretting we've witnessed in these recent weeks, weeks they could and should have spent promoting the bill.

 

Sometimes one had to wonder why some of these people are Democrats in the first place. Barack Obama, speaking to Democratic legislators on Saturday, sought to remind them of this, and he did so in just the philosophical terms I discussed above: "Something inspired you to get involved, and something inspired you to be a Democrat instead of running as a Republican. Because somewhere deep in your heart you said to yourself, I believe in an America in which we don't just look out for ourselves … but we also have a sense of neighborliness and a sense of community, and we are willing to look out for one another and help people who are vulnerable and help people who are down on their luck and give them a pathway to success and give them a ladder into the middle class. That's why you decided to run."

So now they've cast that vote, and they will have to defend it. Opposition will be feral. Democrats may well suffer losses in the near term. And substantively, the mandated purchase of insurance, which begins in 2014, will be a hardship for some people at first.

But here's the thing. Community hasn't succeeded very often in American politics, but when it has, it's tended to work better than advertised. Social Security and Medicare (universal coverage for senior citizens) are very popular. Once changes like these are made, well, it takes a while, but most people tend to like them. And maybe that's the real reason Republicans are so unhinged right now.

Could you have the 'Reverend Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping'

 I kid you not.  Honestly.   You might say that only in America could you need such a thing and you might be right, but a bit less shopping never hurt.

In which spirit, I offer you this (you really need to visit the site for the full effect, though:

We are finding a faith inside “Environmentalism” and “Earth Justice” and “Climate Change Activism.” A faith can support multiple movements, and carry hundreds of issues. A single belief system can sweep across culture and change us all.

Christianity did this, and Marxism. And in the 60’s we witnessed Zen Buddhism meet and unite with indigenous faith to give power to the peace movement. We have seen the failure of saving the earth through shopping (Bono’s red t-shirts) and through lawsuits (Natural Resources Defense Council) and compromising with Wal-Mart (the Sierra Club). A faith accesses the origin of all things.

This is far deeper and wider – and it is what we need to counter our man-made apocalypse. We get up in the morning and there are hundreds of emails on our computers, each from a passionate advocacy group. The thing is – nobody is wrong. Everybody’s right. That’s the problem. We have splintered into colonies of right thinkers. The question is – what is the mother of all issues? Earth-a-lujah!

Life on Earth is not the object, receiving our civilized activity. The Earth is the subject. The Earth is all of us, is more than us, and includes us. Feel the Earth’s wave inside us, the good tsunami. We can’t fight it or improve on it. We will be saved as the Earth saves itself.

Once you believe this, everything changes. The corporations that held Copenhagen hostage don’t seem so impregnable. We are relieved of our green-washed careers and marketing cynicism. We know to go to the Earth and await our instructions. Life on Earth is the best strategist.

Enjoy!

Didn't think this could still happen:

Michael Black and John Morgan, from Brampton, Cambridgeshire, had booked a double room at the Swiss B&B, Terry’s Lane, in Cookham, for Friday night.

 

When they arrived Susanne Wilkinson refused to let them stay.

She admitted she did turn the couple away because it was against her policy to accommodate same sex couples.

via BBC News – Gay couple turned away from B&B in Cookham.

While I"m busy sorting out the details of how to tell if your god is a psychotic lunatic, or something safely supportive that can help you to connect more deeply with the All That Is (hint, if it drinks blood, or behaves in ways that would get it arrested or have its children taken into care, it probably falls into the former category), this one to cheer the hearts of dog lovers

By Capt. Michael Cummings, U.S. Army
Best Defense guest canine contributor

 

Dogs are as integral to war as bullets, people or tragedy. When I deployed to Afghanistan, regulation forbid keeping dogs as company mascots. But I didn't step foot on a FOB that didn't have at least one dog. Or a resident feral cat. Or pet monkey purchased off base. Or captured python.

From John Cole at the ever-wonderful Balloon Juice

 Today's Quote for the Day (my bold):

In a country where abortion is legal, how did the anti-choice goons so thoroughly game the system that their one pet issue can not be funded federally? I have tons of things that are “moral issues” to me that are funded against my will, but no one gives a shit. And you know what- I’m ok with that, because I understand how our democracy works. You don’t get any trump cards. And unlike the anti-choice squad, my “moral issues” are not dictated to me by the lunatics at Focus on the Family or by the hypocrites in a couple thousand year old business run by old men who look the other way when child rape happens.

Having said which, I rather think they don't just look the other way - they support, promote and actively propogate said child rape and then say that if any child were 'endangered', they would, of course, have acted. Or at least would resign if they hadn't acted.  So rape isn't a danger, clearly. 

At some point, one can hope that the entire congregation of the faithful will pick up their Sunday best hats and walk out - nothing short of a worldwide boycott of the Catholic Church is actually going to get these people to change.  They loathe women and despise children.  Quite why they're still allowed to exist is beyond me.  

Johann Hari does his usual wonderfully incisive job in the Indie. He's so much more eloquent in his ranting than I am. 

Imagine if this happened at The Independent. Imagine I discovered there was a paedophile ring running our crèche, and the Editor issued a stern order that it should be investigated internally with "the strictest secrecy". Imagine he merely shuffled the paedophiles to work in another crèche at another newspaper, and I agreed, and made the kids sign a pledge of secrecy. We would both – rightly – go to prison. Yet because the word "religion" is whispered, the rules change. Suddenly, otherwise good people who wouldn't dream of covering up a paedophile ring in their workplace think it would be an insult to them to follow one wherever it leads in their Church. They would find this behaviour unthinkable without the irrational barrier of faith standing between them and reality.

Well, yes.  Imagine.  Rant over.  For now.

Found this poem on a site that referred to the blog against theocracy.

 It's written by a native american, which is evident if you read it.

I do not want your god.
You say the devil is in the wilderness,
But the greatest peace I have ever known is with the sun shining bright,
The wind blowing on my burned face,
Or the moon shining like the sun on a solstice.

 

I do not want your god.
You believe the annihilation of my ancestors is divinely authorized.
Even your religious coercions today are still cultural genocide,
As you make darkness bow its head in shame for the choices you make.

I do not want your god.
Every time you say your Devil’s name he comes and dances
Though you say he’s "under your feet."
It’s your Devil, you keep him.

I do not want your god.
And while your Religious Fascism killed my clan,
Who knows not who they are –
I forgive you, the white man,
But I’ll never forget.

I do not want your god.
I may not know where the bones of my ancestors are,
Whose culture your Religious Fascism murdered -
But they breath through me,
I know who I am.
I do not need your god to be free.
I am free of hate,
I am free of fear,
And all I see with your god is hate and fear.

I do not want your god.

And for those of you who have global warming denialist friends/relatives/colleagues, here's an article with the latest temperature details - the first decade of the 21st century is, indeed, the hottest on record, despite what they might choose to tell you.

Last month, NOAA reported the world experienced the warmest January in both satellite records. And NOAA just reported (here) that it was the second warmest February on record in both satellite records. Now the UAH satellite data shows record-smashing temperatures in the first half of March:

There's a poll and debate at The Economist - title (which is a push poll title if I ever saw one) is

This house believes that creating Green Jobs is a sensible aspiration for Governments. 

The bad news is that you have to register.  The good news is that it's probably worthwhile, because the balance is currently 47/53 and I'd like to think that anyone reading this blog does think that creating green jobs is a sensible aspiration for anyone who can do it.   So go register and vote and if you can be bothered to take part in the conversation (which is pretty good if you ignore the 'Van Jones is a communist' idiocy), then please do.

that nice man Andy Barefoot has set up a template - click the link to make your own version of the one below - best offer will be set up in Cameron's own constituency - can't get better publicity than that...

And while we're on the topic of fun things, there's a must-watch video... it's an ad, but you can ignore what it's selling - we all know raw food is best for dogs... 

Here's the URL in case the embed fails

Well... we're home.... 7 hours of driving each way (but still cheaper than the train at £120 per head and no room for all the junk , sorry, amazingly useful sewing kits, Keith Brockie pictures (they're truly not junk, we just don't have a lot of room for them) and old cameras that we dragged back from Dad's house. His new wife is clearing out the house 3 years after the death of my mother - it's a Sisyphean labour if there ever was one and she has my wholehearted support - from 7 hours' (and a migraine - not a nice journey) drive away.

So I need to wave to the various people we met at the Aye Write festival, and particularly to my old school friend who took us to what was easily one of the best Japanese restaurants in the country afterwards. I was feeling quite nostalgic for Scotland by the time we'd finished spending four hours reminiscing over middle aged women I haven't seen or thought of since we were all in our mid-teens.   Faith coped admirably.  

And thus back to business as usual. The Tory polls are falling, which doesn't stop them from throwing Ashcroft's money at the key marginals, without ever finding it unpleasant, or difficult, or  unacceptable that there are key marginals in the first place, that define the country's future,  - and that after 13 years in opposition, they have such a completely crap tranche of policies that only the injection of vast quantities of loose change can possibly sway the country in their favour.    To which I can only say, I hope this poster makes it to the country's billboards sometime soon: (it comes from MyDavidCameron.com and there are plenty of others that are worth a look.  Ditto on Mumsnet, but you have to hunt for them)

 

That aside, there are a few things that passed across the intertoobs while I was away that seemed worth sharing. 

 

First is this, the ultimate answer to all of your gay-hating christian friends - you know the ones, they've bought into the blood-and-power rush of being right all the time and enjoy the blood-sport that is gay bashing.  So send them this Letter to Louse

And in case you don't want to have to look it all up, this is the key passage:

I decided to give serious study to homosexuality and what the Bible says about it. Thank God! There was so much to learn about gays and lesbians--and the Bible--that I am so glad to have come to know. It distresses me, though, to realize that most others of our church people do not know these facts about homosexuality and what the Bible really says, and that their thinking, like my previous concept, is based on suppositions, not facts, and on feelings, which, of course, have no place in a thoughtful consideration of facts.

OK, so anyone who confuses the bible with facts is a sandwich or two short of the full picnic, but that's the level of the discourse, so it's worth having something on hand to send on.

And if you need more, this little gem suggests that Christ healed a centurion's gay lover.  Delicious - and a kind of antidote to the horrors going on in the Catholic Church  - this time it's the Pope's brother who's in the firing line. You have to wonder at what point the civil authorities are going to step in, although if they followed the line taken by Delaware, there'd be a lot of sad ex-sadists and pederasts in jail by the morning.  This from a nun who commented on the Indie's page of the above article.

Vatican Press Releasesmpturlish wrote: Tuesday, 9 March 2010 at 04:05 pm (UTC) http://212.77.1.245/news_services/press/vis/dinamiche/a0_en.htm In a press release today by the Holy See's Director fr. Federico Lombardi SJ "concerning cases of the sexual abuse of minors in ecclesiastical institutions," Lombardi parrots the Holy See's historical response to the church's widening problems of sexual abuse, particularly of minor children. The response continues to be re-active rather than pro-active while minimizing the systemic and endemic abuse of power and authority which has enabled and exacerbated it on the one hand while covering it up whenever and wherever possible on the other. The "wide-ranging context" is that in countries from the United States, Canada, Australia and Ireland to Austria, the Netherlands and Germany church authorities have repeatedly and consistently disregarded its own moral and Canon laws as well as the existing laws of the countries' in which these horrific crimes against humanity occurred. When are people of good will going to say, Enough! When are the leaders and legislators going to change the laws so that justice can be pursued for the thousands upon thousands of victims of childhood sexual abuse who have been unable to access let alone obtain justice up to now. The state of Delaware in the United States is one of a very few states in the U.S. which has removed all criminal and civil statutes of limitation in regard to the sexual abuse of children - by anyone. It also legislated a two year civil window for previously time barred cases, again, by anyone. That window closed in July of 2009. If Delaware can do it other states and other countries should be able to do it and hold sexual predators and any enabling institutions responsible, especially those institutions which chose to ignore their own internal laws. I was privileged to testify before the Senate and House judiciary committees in support of the 2007 Child Victims Law in Delaware. No rules and no laws of any religious organization or denomination should be allowed to trump the laws of a civilized society where the protection of children is concerned. The Roman Catholic Church should be held to the highest standard as a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a Convention that by any objective standard it has grossly violated for decades. Is it time to formalize those violations? Sister Maureen Paul Turlish Victims' Advocate New Castle, Delaware, USA maureenpaulturlish@yahoo.com

 

**********

 

Enough of that, we can move swiftly on to the Health Care Reform bill in America, now retitled the Health Insurance Reform Bill, and while the rest of us sit open-mouthed at the idea that the country with the world's highest GDP should have a life expectancy at birth that ranks 34th in the world (behind Cuba and Costa Rica)  and an infant mortality on a par with Qatar, Thailand and French Polynesia, and below Croatia and Poland, there are still those on the right who want to stop anyone having any rational kind of health care.  I'll spare you the horrors of the right wing talking points, but here, for your delectation and delight, is President Barack Obama doing what he's best at - setting out the facts in rational order in a way that cuts through the impossible rhetoric in Washington. If you have time to read it all, you'll realise why he is where he is.

And finally, to cheer up the horse-lovers amongst you - read this story of a rescued Appaloosa - if it doesn't make you weep a tear or two... why are you reading this blog?

We're back... Actually, we've been back for a while, but you know how it is... you take a few days off and the book rewrites itself in your head and you have to come back and re-write the entirety of the first section. Which, given that this is a two-section book means that I'm rewriting the first half. 

It started off as 3 sections , but Herself, my Wondrous Editor and I reduced it to 2 at the last meeting, to save ourselves the hell of doing it *after* I'd written it all, which is what happens last time - 4 sections down to 3 was havoc, but necessary to bring the book in at a reasonable length.

So this time, it's been reorganised ahead of time, which is good, but means that the first section had to work a bit harder than it might otherwise have done.  Not that I've finished it yet, which is why no blogs... sore arms, sore brain, sore back. 

But no migraines.  Well, only one, and it only lasted 2 days which is little short of miraculous. So we have to ask ourselves whether this is the chinese herbs working at last, the new homoeopathy (yes, I am on both. yes, I am desperate, we're talking 4-5 day migraines with a day's gap if I'm lucky in between. It's not fun.  And yes, I ought to abandon the computer and take up alpaca farming. I'm not going to), or the fact that I've been doing some serious dreaming work and as a result, have also been a) meditating more and b) working strenuously (OK, un-strenuously) at my Alexander technique... 

Is it any of these - or is it the fact that I had a 'healing' from a dozen very kind, very nice-minded Dutch people at the Lynne McTaggart course on healing and intention that we went to in the Netherlands?

I don't know, and to an extent I don't care as long as it lasts.  But given this has been going on for the past 15 years - albeit not quite as bad as the past 2 years - something must have changed.  I'm inclined to think it's Alexander and Homoeopathy because it was getting better before we ever left for Holland or I'd never have got on a plane - along with tea, coffee, alcohol, dairy, citrus fruits and the computer (!), planes have been a guaranteed trigger. I leave you to imagine 8 hours trans-atlantic flight, in the days before global warming made that unthinkable - when the entirety is spent vomiting or unconscious. It's not fun and a great way to wean oneself off traveling.

So - it's worth looking a bit more at the course.... if only out of curiosity.  We went at very short notice.  Read 'The Intention Experiment', got online, found the website and within 10 days we were on a plane - needed a break (really, really, honestly - if the next book is late, this is not the reason) and my beloved had reasons to go to Nijmegan to look at some Groovi (that's the name) felting machines (neat place, neat machines - find them here)

I went expecting... I'm not sure, but a largeish (for me) group of about 50, I suppose, sat in a circle, as per Jonathan Horowitz, or Chris Luttichau, with lots of highly specific teaching of intention that went way deeper and more focused than the book. Specifically, given that I'm about to teach a course on shamanic healing and shamanic work is *all* about honing our intent, I was looking for some new insights into ways we can focus intent for healing.  Which is what the course said it was about. 

The reality was... 260 people sitting in a theatre being talked at by someone who started out by telling us that we'd be doing an 'experiment' to prove how leaky our intent was.... And went on to precis the book  - badly (I've never heard so many unfinished sentences in one brief introduction) on the first night and continued to precis it on the second full day with added bits of the new book which, if you take them all together, were more or less the prescriptions in the Four Agreements.

To save you looking them up they are:

1: I will be impeccable with my words, inner and outer (Impeccable in this instance means 'without sin' - that is, we know that our words have power, so use them very, very wisely. Be kind to yourself and everyone else.

2. I will take nothing personally.

3. I will make no assumptions.

4. I will always do my best

Actually, the new-book bits are largely the first of those: an injunction to 'think nice', but put better than that.  The rest didn't come into it on the Saturday of the course although they might have done on the Sunday - we didn't go back to find out. The course hand-out had a timetable and it was essentially 'more of the same' and by Saturday evening we had both had enough of being talked at.  We decided we'd rather spend a day exploring Amsterdam than listen to more of the same. 

So what did we learn?  Well, primarily, I learned that if you write slick books, you can pack 260 people into a theatre, charge them in excess of €200 each and they'll happily listen to you saying not very much, not very coherently.  These were intelligent people. At least half of them were therapists of one persuasion or other and the rest were middle aged, white, middle class - the kind of people who attend self-help courses the world over.  They did seem happy with what was going on.

That said, I heard her point out that 'The Secret' is a fantasy and that 'See, Want, Take' (my paraphrase, not hers) is not a good basis for any kind of spiritual growth, which was heartening.  And if the mega bucks that result are poured into more 'intention experiments' and a dissemination of up-to-date science that challenges the Newtonian/Cartesian worldview, then it's also A Good Thing. 

And it may well be that if you had done no spiritual work, barely meditated, had no idea what intention was or how it worked,  then this workshop would have impressed you so hugely that you'd have bought Lynne McTaggart's book (Dutch copies of which were flying off the tables) and read it and that you would find it all immensely useful.

You might also go on to read other books in the genre.  I'd thoroughly recommend her book as a primer, and then  Buddha's Brain

by Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius The subtitle is:The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom. It's an excellent read. 

Certainly it seems from the write-ups afterwards as if some of those in the healing groups had amazing experiences which, given the professed levels of inexperience by most of those there, was genuinely impressive and an indicator of what a dozen people of good heart and moderately clear intent can do. - There was no meditation beforehand, no indication of where the healing might be coming from, nothing like that. 

And without question, Ms McT is an oustanding cat-herder.  I rarely teach more than a dozen people at a time and ushering everyone into the right place at the right time to get things done is always an interesting challenge.   Our tutor managed to take 260 people, divide them into 10 groups of 26 and have them revolving round a large theatre from water-jar to water-jar in fairly coherent groups.

[[There was a point to this: Each jar was filled with intent, we were instructed to feel it and report if we were accurate in our surmise. The 'hit-range' was pretty broad - if you thought 'dog' as you filled the jar with intent then a 'hit' was 'dog, cat, warm, furry, licky things, fire-hydrants (in the US, dogs colloquially pee against fire hydrants. Doesn't quite translate in Europe) or anything vaguely doggy.

One person was supposed to fill the jar with 'bad intent'.  They didn't, for which I am grateful, but then I am widely known to be paranoid about safety and the casual use of intent.]]

Anyway, that she got us all revolved around all ten jars at all was a miracle.  That she did it at 10:30 at night when the last bus went at 11 and we were all pretty desperate not to be left in the middle of a suburb of Utrecht, was doubly so.

The Saturday was much the same but the healing groups were half the size of the water-jar groups and the intent was, of course, to heal.  And I volunteered, which is a first. In a group with a woman with hip arthritis and a man with some kind of macular detachment (Dutch to English not quite perfect, I feel) that left him almost completely blind in one eye, I went second. 

It was lovely. It was peaceful. The 4/10 migraine I had in that moment dropped to about 1.5/10 and stayed that way until the night when it wasn't as bad as it could have been; maybe a 5 out of 10.  There are 10/10 nights which are hell. This one was escapable - which is to say I could run away into dreams and forget it was there. By Monday when we got our plane, it had gone and, though it returned on the Tuesday and hung around for a day, that's it.  Nothing for a week. A miracle.

 So if it was the Dutch group, I'm immensely grateful. But I"m not giving up on the dreaming intentions, the Alexander technique, the meditation, the homoeopathy or the Chinese herbs. Just in case. 

Holiday time!  That is to say, Faith and I are going to Amsterdam, then Utrecht, then Nijmegen, then back to Utrecht, then back to Amsterdam - in 4 days.  We'll see a feltmaker who has some amazing feltmaking machines, and then go on a course, of which more when we come back.  In the meantime, the cottage will be packed to the gills with twenty-somethings, their dogs, ferrets, rat-catching equipment (chickens = rats, but they'll all be gone when we get back) and party gear.  We will return to a perfect cottage and happy dogs.  Or something.

So while we're away, I leave you to ponder the consequences of privatised media.  Hopi Sen, an otherwise sane, if pro-Labour, blogger, thinks we should let Fox News loose in Britain and scupper the BBC.  That's not quite what he says, but that's the gist of it.  Which is why it's worth remembering that during the fascinating Q/A session between President Obama and the Republicans in retreat last week, Fox News - aka the cable news arm of the far right in America, cut away from the live action as soon as it became apparent that Obama was walking all over them and not the reverse. 

This is the channel that, whenever there's a Republican scandal (say, the Republican Senator who'd gone on a 'walking trip' and was found, in fact, to have flown to Argentina to be with his mistress), manages to preface the individual's name with 'D' for Democrat.  This supposes that their core audience is not capable of noticing the sudden switch (probably a fair assumption) and that they have only a passing interest in truth. 

The American media as a whole, with the exception of the magical Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, is essentially incapable of asking intelligent questions or requiring answers.  John Humphreys wouldn't survive two minutes. Paxman would be gone.  Admittedly Jon Snow and Channel 4 news is the best we have in this country, but I think the presence of a genuinely impartial BBC is what holds the rest to account.  So for my money - we need to keep them. And I'm more than happy to pay the license fee. 

So that's that, but while we're in the US, this gem from the Palin-watchers.  Ms Moosehunter has taken to buying up copies of her own book to give to other people. We all do that, it's part of being a writer, even if most of us have actually done our own writing.  But even if it's ghosted, we don't usually buy them up to the tune of $63,000.  Fascinating stuff. 

And finally, to the topic of the title: books worth reading.

I've just finished Neil Gaiman's magnificent gem 'The Graveyard Book' - the answer to the current crop of vampire/werewolf tedium (OK, I, too, read the entire TrueBlood omnibus over Christmas - but it's teenage tat, this is the real thing).  The enthralling thing about Gaiman is that he can create so much depth and texture and colour with so little extra padding.  Every word counts. His story of Bod - short for Nobody -  the orphaned child who is brought up by the ghosts of the local a graveyard until he's old enough to revenge the murder of his parents, is touching, intelligent, thoughtful and revisits vampires in a way that neither demonises nor lionises them.  Give it a look.

Besides that, 'The Carbon Diaries: 2015' by Saci Lloyd is exactly what it sounds like - a year's diary written by a teenage girl with the time scale spanning the imagined first year of carbon rationing in the UK.  It's in teenspeak, which is terrifying at first, but once your mind has adjusted to the sentence structure, her vision of life slowly disintegrating under the pressures of combined carbon rationing and climate chaos is enough to make you give up your car and walk everywhere.  Or at least take out whatever loan is available to convert the house now to renewable heat and power. The hardest bit, for those of the 70s generation is the constant background question: 'why didn't you do something sooner?' Why didn't we?  Why aren't we?

And if you want some non-fiction that answers that question, 'Plan B 4.0' by Lester R Brown is an idea of how we can go about it.  The text is updated regularly and version 4.0 was written just before the Copenhagan climate talks.  It's frustrating, because so much of it requires government-led action, but it seems as if a lot of people are taking their own action after the fall of the Copenhagan talks, so perhaps we can all do something from the ground up that will be enough to make them see that they need also to act from the top down. Not if the Tories get in, of course; half of them are climate deniers and it'll become the new Europe - a subject to be avoided because it would expose the huge rift in their ranks, but the election hasn't happened yet and there's still time to hope that the Lib Dems might hold enough of the balance of power to force Cameron towards the centre ground.

Finally, if you want something heavier, but from the UK - and from a Government think tank - the Sustainable Development Commission has a report on how - and why - we need to move away from the model of economic growth with steadily growing GDP as our basis for deciding that we've got good governance and that it's going in the right direction. They've published the book 'Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet' by Tim Jackson which goes into scary amounts of detail but seems pretty much unassailable to me. 

Sadly nobody's going to do it - the Labour Government must  have seen the Commission's report and clearly thinks its an electoral non-winner. Either that or Gordon Brown doesn't want anything that will make his years as chancellor look any worse. Given that this is the man who sold off Britain's gold reserves at the bottom of the market (and bought useless American bonds with the proceeds - why?) it's hard to see how his image could get any worse (can we say 10% tax band? Or pension fund raid?) but doubtless his minders think it can.

On that cheery note, we'll leave you and go enjoy Holland.  Back next week. 

OK, so I don't eat chocolate (migraines) but I've read all the stuff about the nice, mellow, swirly hormones it induces... and I am here to tell you today that if you're getting sick of too much sugar, then there's a far, far healthier alternative...

 ta da... 

 Dogs!  (I'd put in a cute winter puppy picture here, but you get the drift.) This article here says this: 

There is a long and fascinating thread of research about the health benefits of dogs. It turns out that the dog is a kind of wonder drug, an all-around stress reducer. Pet owners recover at a substantially faster rate from heart problems than do non–dog owners. There are other kinds of benefits, too. A child raised with a pet is more empathetic than one who isn’t. The dog—no secret here—is an excellent wingman. A 2008 study found that a man with a dog had a much better chance of getting a woman’s phone number than one without. And the dog can even tell you whether or not you’re a good person. A 1999 study found that people who strongly dislike dogs score significantly higher on the measure of anal character and lower on the empathy scale of the California Psychological Inventory, indicating “that people who liked dogs have less difficulty relating to people.”

Which is kind of what we all knew already. But the juicy bit is here:

Serpell is most excited about new studies on oxytocin and dog ownership. Oxytocin is the most important social-bonding hormone, present notably between mother and child but also in just about any interaction involving pair bonding, social affiliation, and trust. More specifically, it’s involved with the gaze between infants and mothers. Researchers at Azabu University in Japan found last year that the dog’s gaze at its owner increases the owner’s oxytocin level. No one believes, in his conscious mind, that the dog is a person. But that may not matter. The oxytocin study, while providing the key to understanding the myriad health benefits of dog ownership—oxytocin is a serious stress reducer—also makes scientifically clear what’s obvious anecdotally: The dog is an honorary human, accorded many of the same considerations. It can be a surrogate child, brother in arms, solace of otherwise lonely urban lives. Serpell’s central insight is that these kinds of social functions are at the center of the relationship of dogs and people. “Selection of dogs for the performance of specific working tasks is certainly an important part of their evolution,” he says. “But the fundamental work of dogs that has been in the background throughout has been providing people with companionship or social support.”

Neat stuff. I knew that oxytocin was released at parturition, lactation and orgasm in women, but I didn't know it had any role in men.  (although that may be because my physiology lectures were over 25 years ago, as our recent year of 84 reunion reminds us).  So this is filling in that nasty gaping gap in my knowledge base - oxytocin in blokes if for dog-love.  And we who have no kids - yes they *do* have the same function, just with a lower carbon footprint and they're less likely to decide to vote in ways we don't like...  At any rate, I now feel completely cheerful in puppy-love. Which is just as well, because she's an immensely patient little beast and deserves a bit of heart-gush on occasions. 

That aside, the pick of today's blogs is a bit more serious - and ranges over wider than usual territory (been a long day at the computer)

 This from  The Smirking Chimp is on Israeli Women Soldiers and why they need to beat up Palestinian men more often. It's immensely sad and I'd like to believe they're addressing it, but given the R4 piece a while ago on the battle-rabbis who cruise the front lines handing out leaflets saying that the enemy are the sons of Satan while the nice, kind Israelis are the Sons of Light (not daughters, but hey, what do you expect from unreconstructed Old Testament wingnuts?) and it's their god-given duty to exterminate the opposition. Which clearly they took to heart last time out.

More on mad Old Testament wing-nuttery - is this amazing article from the Independent where an openly  - and happily - gay man went undercover to a group of 'converstionists' who offer 'accredited therapy' to 'cure' gay people.  If you haven't been sick yet, have a look. That was one brave man.  The heartbreaking bit comes right at the end (after he's told both therapists who he is - and reported both for quite clear malpractice)

The purpose of this investigation was to find out how conversion therapists operate. What I didn't expect was that I would learn how their patients feel: confused and damaged. I began to constantly analyse why I found particular men attractive. Does that man represent something that's lacking in me? Do I want him because he looks strong which must mean I feel weak? Did something happen in my childhood? The therapists planted doubt and worry where there was none.

My experiences, I learn, are typical. I speak to Daniel Gonzalez, one of Nicolosi's former clients. "Conversion therapy is a very complicated form of repression," he says. "It's a way of convincing yourself that your same sex attractions have some alternate meaning. It continued to haunt me for years."

I also speak to Peterson Toscano, who spent 17 years in Britain and the US trying every different reorientation treatment available. He says simply: "It's psychological torture."

To balance that with anti-wing-nuttery, here's a hilarious picture from a group of people who turned up to protest against the amazing-crazinesses of the Westboro Baptist Church. The Fred Phelps lot who think that their god 'hates fags' and that this is no reflection of their own internal homophobia. Award for best sign goes to: 'God Hates Flags'

 Nothing to do with that, for those who want the met office forecast on their iPhone - info is here

While this is good for those with evil great-aunts. At least you know you're not alone. 

And finally, because I can't resist  - this is the entire transcript of (with Vidoe) of a Q&A session that President Obama made with the house Republicans on their retreat last week.   The US political sites have been alive with this - on the left, they've been cheering while on the right, their heads have been exploding because they can't cope with the fact that they've got a sane, sorted, intelligent man at the helm when they had a chimp in cowboy boots for all those years.  But what really stood out - and is the reason I nearly didn't post this, is that what he's asking for is that we (and yes, that means me too) stop all this rancour.  That the haters on both sides give up and start working together to get things sorted. And this matters out here in the rest of the world because it's still the case - on climate change if not on health care reform (we have it, they seem not to want it) that where America leads, the rest will follow. If you have time, read all of this, as an object lesson in sanity. If you don't, try this small excerpt:

Bipartisanship -- not for its own sake but to solve problems -- that's what our constituents, the American people, need from us right now. All of us then have a choice to make. We have to choose whether we're going to be politicians first or partners for progress; whether we're going to put success at the polls ahead of the lasting success we can achieve together for America. Just think about it for a while. We don't have to put it up for a vote today.

Let me close by saying this. I was not elected by Democrats or Republicans, but by the American people. That's especially true because the fastest growing group of Americans are independents. That should tell us both something. I'm ready and eager to work with anyone who is willing to proceed in a spirit of goodwill. But understand, if we can't break free from partisan gridlock, if we can't move past a politics of "no," if resistance supplants constructive debate, I still have to meet my responsibilities as President. I've got to act for the greater good -- because that, too, is a commitment that I have made.

And that's --that, too, is what the American people sent me to Washington to do. So I am optimistic. I know many of you individually. And the irony, I think, of our political climate right now is that, compared to other countries, the differences between the two major parties on most issues is not as big as it's represented. But we've gotten caught up in the political game in a way that's just not healthy. It's dividing our country in ways that are preventing us from meeting the challenges of the 21st century. I'm hopeful that the conversation we have today can help reverse that.

So today, the computers at Knock Hundred Cottage moved out of the stone age and into the twenty first century. Which is to say we're no longer on Tiger and have moved to Snow Leopard, or, for the brick-bat users amongst you, we changed one Mac operating system for a newer one and, because this is a Mac, in which we are well pleased, the whole thing hasn't fallen over in a steaming heap. Yet.

It also seems to have cured the irritating 3:30pm sludge syndrome where something happened in the background and it became impossible to use my machine without quitting out of all the applications and restarting which is a pretty major pain in the neck when I'm trying to write, and monitor email, read blogs (how else will I bring you the best of the day's thoughts and insights?), watch the Twitter stream and cruise Facebook.  OK, so I fail to juggle all these balls on anything but the best days and it's probably true that I do need a life, but it's not helped by the machine starting to grind as if the coffee beans have suddenly turned to stone. 

So now, we're sludge-free and the only obvious problem is that Firefox takes ten times as long to load a page as it used to. Anyone who has an idea on that, is welcome to mail me on mailto:harewood@hushmail.com

And meanwhile, in the short time we've been up and running today (and when I wasn't playing with 'Pages' which is a truly magnificent Word-replacement tool), I was reading Obama's State of the Union address - and remembering once again what a singularly intelligent, thoughtful, insightful man he is.  If the idiots sitting listening to him could grasp what he's trying to do and actually get behind him, the entire world would change for the better. Sadly, I suspect the entire world will have to change for the better - actually undergo an entire paradigm shift to a non-combative way of interacting - for this to happen.  So all of you who practice Tonglen meditation, please keep going, and perhaps at some point we'll hit whatever is the magical threshold number that'll take us all into a new state.  Something like that.

And as to the other magic of yesterday - Steve Jobs' announcement of the new iPad, can I add my voice to the chorus that says, 'What the ****? Is there really not a single woman in the entire Mac marketing team that pointed out what a truly inane name that was for a new product.  The #iTampon thread started on Twitter within minutes, and Feminist Philosophers (yes, truly, they do exist, cool women at that) has a neat piece of video to follow up.  We await a re-branding in record time. I don't know what was wrong with iSlate, but clearly someone vetoed that on some arcane grounds. Maybe it takes up too many characters on Twitter. 

On entirely another note, can I take this opportunity to blast your head to tiny bits if you were one of the other authors signed up for a particular short-story project in which you created a bit of 'what if' history.  It's been on the cards since before Christmas, the deadline was April 15th and they needed 6 thousand words. No, I didn't really want to do it either. I've got a eye-squinchingly tight book deadline, I'm trying to write a film script (and yes, guys, I promise I'll install Final Draft soon now that the OS is sorted), I'm writing outlines in my head for the next book after this one and I truly didn't need to crash into a brick wall and have to wrap my head around ways to say what would have happened if Boudica had won the battles and the legions had been kicked out of Britain in 61 AD.  Nero deposed/dead, Seneca as Emperor, Britain a shamanic country with Gaul and northern Germanies likely to follow. Severely reduced Roman Empire, no need for  Imperial religion, and Britain a confederation of warrior tribes ready to repel the attacks from the north/east if they ever happened.  No Christianity, no viking invasions, no anglo-saxon invasions, no Normans, no 1066, no feudalism, no imperialism... we're a shamanic warrior nation forever and most of the other continents can stay that way too.  Africa, America (north and south) the Antipodes... all left alone.  

Which isn't a short story, so I was a Very Good Girl and stopped everything else (ahead of a Meeting With Editor, I might add) and wrote my 6 thousand words.  Just putting the finishing touches to first draft of final scene 4 days later  - in time to get the email saying that everyone else has backed out and project is cancelled.  Consider yourselves, whoever you are, off the future Scott christmas card list. If I ever win the lottery you won't be on the cheerful end of a gift. Frantic efforts are under way to find another publisher, but the point is that nobody wants to do this so it's probably dead in the water. I'll finish the story at some point and post it on here - it brought together Pantera, Valerius and Cunomar in a somewhat different setting than TES, so will please those who want alternate endings.  But still... I am cross....

So I've had 24 hours to work out what's going to happen in the US after the grim Supreme Court ruling - and it turns out the Maya were right: The world is going to end in 2012...

The baseline is this:  As of now, corporations can legally put as much dosh as they like into political campaigns.  I give you Keith Olbermann's take on this, he's already said what I'd like to say, but much better:

In short, there are now no checks on the ability of corporations or unions or other giant aggregations of power... to decide our elections. None.
They can spend all the money they want. And if they can spend all the money they want -- sooner, rather than later -- they will implant the legislators of their choice in every office from President to head of the Visiting Nurse Service. And if Senators and Congressmen and Governors and Mayors and Councilmen and everyone in between are entirely beholden to the corporations for election and re-election to office, soon they will erase whatever checks there might still exist to just slow down the ability of corporations to decide... the laws.
It is almost literally true that any political science fiction nightmare you can now dream up -- no matter whether you are conservative or liberal -- it is now legal. Because the people who can make it legal, can now be entirely bought and sold -- no actual citizens required in the process.
And the entirely bought and sold politicians, can change any laws. And any legal defense you can structure now, can be undone by the politicians who will be bought and sold into office this November, or two years from now. And any legal defense which honest politicians can somehow wedge up against them this November, or two years from now, can be undone by the next even larger set of politicians who will be bought and sold into office in 2014, or 2016, or 2018.

So we can kiss goodbye to any climate change legislation - the US Chamber of Commerce already poured vast sums into Tuesday's special election. And, as Keith said a little later:

Be prepared for those poor dumb manipulated bastards, the Tea Partiers, to have a glorious few years as the front men as the corporations that bankroll them slowly unroll their total control of our political system.
And then be prepared to watch them be banished, maybe outlawed, when a few of the brighter ones suddenly realize that the corporations have made them the Judas Goats of American Freedom. And be prepared, then, for the bank reforms that President Obama has just this day vowed to enable, to be rolled back by his successor purchased by the banks (with the money President Bush gave them) -- his successor, presumably President Palin, because if you need a friendly face of fascism, you might as well get one that can wink, and if you need a tool of whichever large industries buy her first, you might as well get somebody who lives up to that word "tool."
Be prepared for the little changes, too. If there are any small towns left to take-over, Wal-Mart can now soften them up with carpet advertising for their Wal-Mart town council candidates, brought to you by Wal-Mart.
Be prepared for the Richard Mellon Scaifes to drop such inefficiencies as vanity newspapers and simply buy and install their own city government in the Pittsburghs.
Be prepared for the personally wealthy men like John Kerry to become the paupers of the Senate, or the ones like Mike Bloomberg not even surviving the primary against Halliburton's choice for Mayor of New York City.
Be prepared for the end of what you're watching now. I don't just mean me, or this program, or this network. I mean all the independent news organizations, and Fox for that matter, because Fox inflames people against the state, and after today's ruling, the corporations will only need a few more years of inflaming people before the message suddenly shifts to "everything's great."

That's my emphasis in there...

 Close your eyes and try to imagine President Palin, the climate-denying, vicious, paranoid psychotic with the god delusion, the woman who had a Kenyan pastor pray over her to keep off the witches - imagine her as President of what is still the most powerful nation on earth  - with  Exxon-Mobil-Halyburton-Xe pulling her strings.  And making laws to suit themselves.

So we have 2 more years of normal life and then... .pouf... all bets are off.  Blog while you can. Read what you like while it's still available and legal.  Live and be merry... and then wait and see what happens.

sigh. Someone must unmake this, right? 

OK, in amongst all the very bad news (SCOTUS just allowed corporations to make unlimited political donations - the US democratic system is hereby screwed beyond all screwdesses, even more screwed than it has been by the dysfunction of the GOP) I thought I'd throw out some of Dave's pictures.  

Dave is my partner's daughter's partner. I think that makes him some kind of son-out-law, but basically he's this seriously good bloke who turns up and fixes things for us when we're stuck, reminds me how much fun I had with air guns when I was a kid (bullseye! yay!)... and brings his stunning lurcher to play with the small white shark-monster, aka Abigail, aka Risingmist Opal (click for a link to her breeders. They have a litter just now. There's a waiting list for the waiting list, but there will be space eventually. In the meantime, you can check out the YouTube vids or go to the gallery and watch a slideshow of recent pups).

So here she is, first playing in the recent snow with Bracken, and then on her own:

She's not a lurcher, which makes it quite surprising that she is, in fact, the best dog in the entire world. (I confess to a tiny smidgen of bias.)  But she's fun, trainable, easy to be with and doesn't take up too much room on the bed. What more could a girl ask for?  She's 11 months old, so we can't do agility or Cani-x or any of that good stuff yet, but we can play at small beginnings, or we can just go out into the forest and stare at the deer.   Which we did...

 So that's the cheer-up for the day. And my chance to play with images on the new blog. 

Other stuff:  Hopi Sen's piece on the rise of the Bolicy (policy balls) is worth a read. 

That's it for today.  Still mourning the lost of Massachusetts and therefore health care reform (and anything else useful) in the US. Not sure at what point it became necessary for any party to have a supermajority to get its stuff done- certainly Bush never had one - but clearly it is now. And if companies can give unlimited amounts to potential politicians, we're down to Microsoft vs Apple, or BigOil vs BiggerOil as the likely future.  And where the US goes, so goes the UK, in time... 

Hugely sad.

Going to a meeting on sustainable ecology tonight, so have to stop early. A couple of links to keep you going:

This is a YouTube explanation of quite why we're so addicted to money and debt - instructional and funny.  

While this ghastly report on probable death under torture at Gitmo should be enough to see Bush, Cheney Rumsfeld et al behind bars - and maybe Blair for co-conspiracy...

 But if you only read one of these, make it Obama's address to the congregation on MLK day.  This man gets better and better. If you're not weeping at the end of this, you have no soul. 

 If you need a video, it's here

Blog love today goes to my hero on Twitter @meandmybigmouth  - aka Scott Pack -  who went into Waterstones in Picadilly on entirely another mission, and took it upon himself to browse through the books, find a copy of Rome (please tell me you don't want me to link that?) and stood around telling people how marvelously good it was.

So you want to get to his blog pronto and make it your favourite for today.

And while we're loosely on the subject of love, this is really quite heart-rending. Not on the scale of Haiti, but Haiti (Pat Robertson notwithstanding) is a natural disaster whereas the inability of gays and lesbians to marry in the US is entirely man made. Mostly Mormon and Catholic Church made - they ganged up to pour squillions of dollars into Proposition 8 in California which was a vote to ban gay marriage.  So now there's a court case to unban it and this deposition here comes from a live blog of the case on Friday. It's a lesbian woman telling why her marriage mattered to her (and fwiw, she's Asian American as is her partner, so her family's attitude to marriage is somewhat different to anyone I know - but it does highlight why it's necessary for some people.'

This is a small part of the quote:

Somehow it made a difference. It made a difference to our parents. When you say you’re a domestic partner. When people say “who’s this person?” I can’t count the number of times who said “Partner in what business.” We’d say “partners in life.” Often it was bewilderment. What business is life, od yo umean life insurance. It’s a matter of how our families relate to people. For me to show up at every event. People ask who’s she. For her 90-something auntie to say, here’s Leah’s friend. She must be a really good friend, suddently there were able to say, Helen is my daughter in law. My mother is an immigrant from China. She dosent’ get waht partner is. I would be around her, I could hear them say, sometimes in Chinese, sometimes in English, that’s Helen’s friend. Then it changed, she would say, this is my daughter-in-law. Whether they got it or not, you don’t insult someone’s wife, you don’t insult someone’s mother. We’re not partners in life or in some business. It changed things on a huge level.

And lastly, today's laugh out loud spot goes to Guido for his Friday Caption Competition. Usually that's a heap of sexist nonsense and not worth a visit but this one is a truly funny one of Alistair Campbell miming blowing his own brains out.  Scroll down to #9 for the video of Tucker's Law, though it might not make sense if you're not glued to every episode of The Thick of It (why are you not?). But if you cba to go through the lot, this is the best of the bunch: 

The superglue of truth meets the eyebrow of spin

No, honestly, he’s completely barking. Showers of flying Nokias all over the place, you wouldn’t believe it!

You want the truth! You can’t handle the truth! The truth is, we all got whacked out on pills and spirits and Goldsmith said throw a dart in the map and that’s the one we’ll invade. If Scarlett’s dart hadn’t been disallowed for foot over line we’d have invaded Finland.

So much to catch up on, so little time... We'll have a look tomorrow (or maybe the next day, time is a tad fluid just now) at the new advice from the Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare about the various ways in which pedigree dog breeding (in fact any dog breeding) can be tightened up - and the Kennel Club's complete and abject failure to get with the programme on any level.

But in the meantime, we have some fun stuff, starting with the havoc being wreaked by the Robertsons and Robinsons of this world.  Clearly the god of Abraham was having an off day and slipped a couple of typos into the day's to-do list. 

We'll start with Pat Robertson, the man who makes Ian Paisley look like a grey haired little old bloke sitting in the corner of the WI dunking his rich tea in his special mug so he doesn't moosh up his false teeth too badly.  Pat Robertson, you may remember  is the one who, with Jerry Falwell, another mad-as-a-brush evangelist, said that the terrorist attacks on the US on 9/11 were the fault of feminists and homosexuals. Yes, really. 

(actually, Falwell gave the money quote - see below for his comments of 13/9 regarding the twin towers, but PR completely agreed)

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."

And now here's the YouTube clip where he says the earthquakes in Haiti are the result of the Haitians making a pact with the devil way back in 1805 when they were a slave nation under France and rebelled against their overlords. (Presumably the French are only cheese-eating surrender monkeys in the new millennium. Back then, they were nice, kind, white slave-owners, not to be dissed by the uppity black slaves).

 But all is not lost and anyone who says the Yanks haven't got a sense of humour just hasn't read the right blogs. Or the right Letters to the Editor.  Here's the best yet, penned from Satan to the dear old Rev PR:

 and excerpt here (click the link to see the rest): 

Dear Pat Robertson, I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I'm no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth -- glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle.

 And then, while the big mean bully is taking it out on people who's names sound vaguely similar, dear old Iris "Nothing in the world - apart from sodomy and homosexuality - is as vile as child abuse" (yes, truly, she said that in a parliamentary debate) Robinson is revealed not only to have had an affair with a 19 year old she'd known since he was 9 (ick), but if this is true, she was having an affair with his father first.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa.  Ahem.  Thank you. Still working on it... 

 But while we're looking for genuine compassion, here's a truly heart-breaking, heart-warming blog entry, 'Nil by Mouth' by Roger Ebert. It's exactly what it says on the tin, but it's well worth a read. 

And for those of you with political interests, if you haven't yet been to the commendable Power 2010 website and voted on their list of potential parliamentary and political reforms, ought to get there pronto and vote on something. Anything

Actually, we've had enough snow, thanks.  If whoever's out there throwing it at us would like to stop, it'd be good to be able to leave the house, take the pup for a run somewhere without rampant shootists trying to blow our heads off (yes, clearly we do look like pheasant. Though why anyone is shooting anything in this weather is beyond me: I'd have thought those that survive might be strongest and you might want to allow them to procreate even if you do find it amusing to kill things, but apparently not) and it'd be seriously good if people could get out of the house to buy books.  Which is, after all, what life is about. Mine, anyway.

 So given that we've been well and truly snowed in, what can we force feed you today? 

First, clearly, is the stunning, and immensely welcome news by Nick Clegg of his party's excellent stance on lgbt issues. If you haven't read the Indie article, get over there and read it now.  The insults (aka comments) threads are full of the usual right wing rants, but as someone has pointed out, the closer they come to extinction, the shriller they get. 

We can wonder how he's going to persuade faith schools to teach that homosexuality is 'normal and harmless' when they clearly think it's the end of civilisation as we know it (while declaring war on random oil-rich countries is quite OK, thanks) but I suspect he means to end faith schools altogether, which would get my vote in a flash - except for the sad fact that it would probably mean a lib-lab pact which would keep the monster Brown in office as PM and I would do quite a lot to avoid that.  So very sad that the spineless muppets in the Labour PLP couldn't muster the guts to get rid of him last week. Wouldn't politics be a different place if they had? 

Anyway, while we're on shrill, almost-extinct and irrelevancy, we can bypass the un-news that the Pope thinks gay marriage threatens creation, or whatever drivel he's passing this week, and go instead to this truly wonderful Amazon page which sells communion wafers. And you can see what 'people who bought this item also bought most often'. And nestling in there amongst the communion bread and the annotated copies of the bible is.... well, I won't spoil it.  Get thee hence fast-ish before this goes viral and somebody manages to spam the page with wafer requests...  One can see why the Pope might be mildly miffed, tho' if our gay friends in Germany are right, he might be an Amazon-user himself.  Oh, the joys of rampant hypocrisy.

 So, having done our bit to undermine established religion in all its forms, we can get on with living the good life.  To which end, have a look at this Grist article on how to make human habitation more efficient - or, better, how to use emoticons in energy bills to get people to use 40% less energy. Or something like that. Not sure how it would work here, but it's an interesting idea. 

And while w're on climate change (we weren't, but I just looked out at the weather), for those of you who have colleagues, relatives, friends, whatever who think that because it's cold out, then global warming can't be happening, here's today's graph which should neatly demonstrate that they shouldn't assume that the small piece of turf their news media inhabits is, in fact, the entirety of the planet. Climate linky

 Finally, here's an Amnesty request to stop Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill.  Nick Clegg said he'd dump them from the Commonwealth (OK, he said he'd review their position, but that's what he meant) if they passed their bill. I assume they don't care on the grounds that this whole thing has been stirred up by the US far right christian church.  So they can form their own Commonwealth and we can boycott it with impunity.  Something like that.

That's it for today. Happy igloos. 

So.... we seem to have the links sorted. Which is fine, because other than the fact that yet another Iraq Enquiry has let Alisdair Campbell piss all over it from a great height (why are these men afraid of him?  He can't have dossiers on them all, surely?) the news today is pretty bland. 

 But the links are cool.

 Here, for instance, is Margaret Talbot in the New Yorker giving the best insight yet into the ins and outs of the Prop8 trial in California. For those who don't obsessively follow US politics, the California hate groups managed to get a kind of referendum onto the ballot at the time of the US general election which removed the right to gay marriage in the state.  It was passed, in part because the Mormon church threw an eyewatering amount of money at it (it's fine to support bigamy and to worship the Archangel Moron (yes, really) but not OK to marry your beloved if you and s/he share the same chromosomal make up), and in part because it was pretty damned confusing to know whether 'No' on 8 meant yes to gay marriage or not. (it did).

So the haters won - but now there's a law suit which will likely rocket all the way to the Supreme Court whichever side wins.  But the money quote for me (and courtesy of the admirable Andrew Sullivan) is this: 

For example, one of the arguments that the anti-gay-marriage side has increasingly turned to outside the courtroom is that allowing same-sex marriage would hurt heterosexual marriage.

At the pretrial hearing, Judge Walker kept asking Charles Cooper, the lawyer defending Proposition 8, how exactly it did so.

“I’m asking you to tell me,” he said at last, “how it would harm opposite-sex marriages.”

“All right,” Cooper said.

“All right,” Walker said. “Let’s play on the same playing field for once.”

There was a pause—it seemed like a long one to people in the courtroom, though it was probably only a few seconds.

And Cooper said, “Your Honor, my answer is: I don’t know. I don’t know.” ♦

 So there you have it. And in case you're still concerned, here's the inimitable Nate Silver with evidence that divorce rates amongst straight couples are higher in states that don't allow gay marriage. Evidence here.

This is a good old one from the Oil Drum on the Psychology of Work

Scary climate map for the day is here: 

and last but not least for today, here's Guido's take on mad Al, and his whiffle to the Enquiry.

 Enjoy. I had the migraine from hell yesterday - anyone who has clues about what to do that don't involve financing the pharmacology industry is welcome to mail me here: mailto:harewood@hushmail.com

Or even middle-aged ones... Cabin fever reached such a height that we broke out yesterday and went for a walk in the local forest with the pups.  Good pictures ensued, only I wasn't the one with the camera.  Will post them as and when they arrive (hint to Dave: send pics asap)

Meanwhile, mercury's in retrograde 'till the end of the week which is apparently a good time for revising. I use this excuse because it makes me feel better when my editor phones up, having finally read the first section of the new book, and points out the glaringly obvious changes that need to be made but that I didn't notice (wood, trees: too many of latter, can't see former)  on the strange write/rewrite process that is a first draft.  Some people work out a story and it flows  effortlessly. I seem to carve concepts out of living rock, and characters evolve with glacial slowness, gaining depth with each iteration.   This is one of the reasons why I look back on yesterday's work (when it's not a re-edit) and think that I've forgotten how to write while if I look back on work from last week, it's kind of OK and last month's is, in places, amazingly inspired. 

 I don't think this for long, mind you, and it's only in comparison to the rest, but it is part of the overall truth which is that writing, like good wine or cheese or any of the other things I can't touch, improves with work and time.  Reading should be effortless. Writing, I think, should be effortful, or there's no point in doing it. 

That apart, we're treated to the Labour PLP displaying it usual depressing totalitarian tendencies.  There will come a time when they'll realise that what they should have done after John Smith's death (besides paying a necromancer to bring him back to life) was pick almost anyone except Blair or Brown as their leader and that it'll take a generation to escape from the ghastly era of spin and poisonous back-stabbing they led us into. The first was a glamorous con-man and the second was a dysfunctional bully whose sole policy position was to 'nail the other guy' whether that guy was Blair or Cameron.  It's not a way to run a country.

 I truly don't think a Cameron government would do us any good at all, but we can't let Brown have another go - if the Labour party hasn't the courage to get rid of him now, can you imagine it happening after an election?   Money quote from Nick Robinson after last Wednesdays 'mad coup disease' -

'If they had the courage to say in public what they say to me in private, Brown would be long gone.' 

So we know they're spineless, as well as mendacious.  Why they won't just call an election and put us all out of their misery is beyond me.

 We'd have a round up of some pretty good blog posts from around the world if the links would work.   They don't, so the good stuff will have to wait.

'slater. 

So.... I was supposed to be in Telford this lunchtime, talking to the great and the good of Shropshire on BBC Shropshire radio, telling them of the wonders of The Emperor's Spy, how it's going to break all sales records and prove forever that Christianity is founded on a myth. Something like that. 

 And instead, we're happily snowed in, watching further snow fall outside and pondering the minor blood bath of the Hoon/Hewitt bombshell.  Brown must be so tired of this - kind of like being savaged by a pack of Pugs - remember them? Ghastly little dogs with squished in faces and teeth made of rubber who'll make nasty snarling noises then pee on the carpet if you take a step towards them. 

 Try seeing the entire PLP in that light. It's sad, but horribly true. When every sentient adult in the country knows Brown's a disaster and that the Labour party might actually be a decent vehicle for centre-ish, left-ish, green-ish policies (DEFRA's new Food Strategy document isn't bad and the new boiler scrappage scheme is a step in the right direction, while the decisions to buy back electricity and then heat in the next couple of years may be late, but are welcome) and every poll tells them that Labour might do moderately well - but only as long as Brown is long gone before the election - you might think that any group of thoughtful, intelligent individuals might get together to pull the plug on their socially incompetent, nokia-hurling leader.

 But no.  The current PLP is the very walking definition of spinelessness.  So don't hope for any sane action, however much Hoon and Hewitt might have opened the door to same. Mind you, if they have to keep everything secret, I want to see how they run a secret ballot on the question of whether or not to have a secret ballot. Because the decision to go secret would itself have to be secret in case the Malcolm Tucker clones in Whitehall eviscerate anyone who votes for secrecy in an open ballot....

 so it won't happen. 

 and here, meanwhile, we've had one of those wonderful days where a phone call with my editor sorted out a gaping hole in the text and plugging it was fun. It's not often that a character leaps forward desperate to get their side of the story on the page; more often, it's like mining rare earth elements in the Mongolian desert -a thousand tonnes of hard worked grit for a small nugget of worthwhile ore. But today we hit the motherload and the four-leaf-clover goodness might just spill over into tomorrow.  This is what mercury retrograde is all about: rewriting old stuff, not forging ahead with the new.

Welcome to the place where I can give vent to the kind of musings that used to be thrown at an unsuspecting public courtesy of the Glasgow Herald Saturday magazine. Today, one day after the winter solstice, with the ground frozen solid and the chickens pecking fruitlessly at frozen grass, it seems a little harsh to sound off about global warming or climate change or even acidification of the oceans.

So today, just today, we'll congratulate Craig Sams on getting "CarbonGold" off the ground, hope that by tomorrow  our boiler will be working again and we'll have hot water and heating (because at the moment, we are discovering a little too clearly what it might be like if the North Atlantic Conveyor were to switch off, taking the Gulf Stream away and we were plunged into an ice age at the same time as peak oil hits...

If we don't get logs delivered tomorrow, and/or a new bit for the aging boiler, this might be the only blog post you ever see.

So make the most of it  - welcome to the site - enjoy the book as and when you get it and, yes, I do think that men and women create their own gods so if you want yours to be intelligent, thoughtful,  
compassionate and decent, you need to start out that way yourself.   
Good luck.