I seem to have managed to get infected with something on my travels. And it’s not clearing up so easily either – so I’m going to a doctor in a few hours (once they open basically) to get some drugs in an effort to find a more heavyweight solution to this ongoing problem. I have swollen glands and what I would assume is a chest/sinus infection of some kind. Lovely.
Anyway. Aside from all the religious mumbo jumbo crap that was the official excuse for the long weekend I lost out on due to feeling crappy, I did get some things done. On Friday night, I finally got pissed off enough to fix whatever stupid ALSA bug was causing hangs (it’s in -mm now) every time I loaded up wine/cxoffice e.g. to play a video or (my favourite) indirectly by clicking on a hypertext link and having the corresponding plugin crash out my box. Not very useful for development – neither is the fact that VMWare doesn’t support 2.6.16.blah so I need to run 2.6.15.6 for the moment (yes, I know about any-any, no it doesn’t work for me, no I don’t have time to figure out why at the moment – it’s not annoyed me to that level yet).
Obligatory rant about Easter
I’m not religious. In fact, those of you who know me to any degree know that I don’t buy any of it one bit – that doesn’t mean that I’m not sensitive to other people’s beliefs, just that I have no time for any of this stuff myself. I’m happy if people want to spend Easter contemplating the live and death of Jesus Christ – just don’t expect me to even feign interest in any of this stuff (other than purely from an analytical standpoint). So, I feel it’s rediculous the level to which this country is skewed in favour of traditional Christian festivals like Easter even in today’s multicultural society (which, by the way, is a very good thing). Yes, people who celebrate Easter probably includes a lot of the populous, but I don’t seem to be seeing prime time BBC TV shows covering Muslim festivals to the same degree, for example.
The pope should STFU and stop trying to tell Iran to play nice. I’ll listen to him when he agrees to sending contraception into AIDS ridden Africa, but until then, I have no interest in anything he has to say about how other countries should run their affairs. And he should know better about trying to tell the US how to behave – or has he forgotten all about the Crusades and the many other similar events through history?
It’s about time the UK fixed its national holidays around a non-religious base. In a similar vain, I agree with the NUT calling for an end to the creation of Faith Schools in the UK. I feel that those that are already in place should be compelled to offer a completely non-religious basis to their curricula. Like politics, education should be completely unbiased and not motivated by private enterprise or the apparent will of higher powers. By all means teach the stuff, but let the next generation have a chance to form their own opinions. Believe me, I went to a Catholic school – I know about this stuff first hand.
I used to enjoy Religious Studies lessons a lot because they were heavily skewed towards the Catholic viewpoint on almost all issues, and I wasn’t buying most of it. None of the other kids seemed interested in putting up a resistance or in doing anything much beyond inflating plastic hand gloves and letting them loose, or other similar time wasting activities. I loved debating original sin – the concept that even newborn babies have sin – and the second coming of Jesus Christ. I once kept the class pacified after someone asked me to get the group out of a test – so I got the brother teaching us into an 80 minute discussion on cryopreservation and its implications upon the second coming. If someone dies now, is frozen and is later brought back from the dead at some future time, have they risen from the dead?
Football, innit, wot syndrome spreading alarmingly
Apparently, up to 25% of voters in certain districts may vote for the BNP, the white supremicist party that has infected the UK over the last few years. The reason most often cited seems to be something to do with immigration and asylum seekers and how they’re stealing jobs or something. Yet I bet most of these people who claim to be “affected” are in fact merely annoyed that people coming to the UK will take jobs they won’t do (because why work when you can live off benefits the rest of us pay for, then complain when asked about the changing population) or in fact aren’t actually asylum seekers at all. Many people from Eastern Europe have come to live and work in the UK over the last few years – this is a good thing, it’s Europe working at its best. We’re free to do the same ourselves.
Anyway. I’m pissed off with this country’s voters at even contemplating voting for the BNP. By all means hate Labour, but don’t reduce yourselves to the level that you think you’re doing anyone a favour in voting those fuckwits into office. Just in case you don’t already know, I support the Liberal Democrats in the UK and the Democratic Party in the US. I’m pragmatic – I don’t think these guys have all of the answers, but they have some good ideas about how to improve upon the status quo.
Jon.
Couple of points that I felt obliged to make:
1. In certain parts of the country, Easter is no longer the date which defines the spring holiday – many of the Scottish education authorities take the first 2 weeks in April regardless of when Easter falls.
2. Regardless of the multicultural nature of our society, the majority still regard Britain as a “Christian” country, with a Christian Queen and Prime Minister. We also have a strong Christian heritage.
3. Don’t confuse “Christian” and “Catholic”. Likewise, don’t confuse “religion” with faith.
4. Don’t think for a moment that non-denominational schools mean that the curriculum is in any way ‘unbiased’.
Pope along with all Christians implicated in Crusades! Read all about it!
The vast majority of the country is Christian, with a Christian history and Christian influenced culture. Even if a person such as yourself is not a practising Christian, you’re still a secular Christian, as are many Brits these days.
I’m sure that once the Muslim population grows beyond the 3% of population mark and the demand is there, we may see TV coverage of events during Ramadan and the like.
Interestingly my school was a Christian school, although practising Christians made up a tiny minority. Despite being a Christian school we ended up learning more in religious studies about other religions than we did about Christianity. Christianity and the Christian Church had played a far more important role in the culture and history of most of us pupils than the other beliefs we learnt about. I feel it’s a shame that most of the ‘Christian’ kids ended up being more familiar with what Sikhism’s about than the religion and church that had shaped their country.
And i’m getting fed up with arrogant twats like you telling people how they should vote.There are many reasons people are voting BNP and it doesn’t make them mindless racists.I should remember dick head that the majority of people in this country hate all this political correctness and left wing nonesense that all three mainstream parties are displaying,especially when it comes to immigration.Im sorry to tell you your sort have had your day and the right are on the rise.