Quite Random

Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat.

Scientists working on the world’s biggest machine are being besieged by phone calls and emails from people who fear the world will end next Wednesday, when the gigantic atom smasher starts up.

Such is the angst that the American Nobel prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has even had death threats, said Prof Brian Cox of Manchester University, adding: “Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat.”

The head of public relations, James Gillies, says he gets tearful phone calls, pleading for the £4.5 billion machine to stop.

“They phone me and say: “I am seriously worried. Please tell me that my children are safe,” said Gillies.

Scientists get death threats over Large Hadron Collider - Telegraph.

How many people who phoned the CERN scientists in tears, or making death threats, or sending abusive emails, or even resorting to legal action to try and stop the experiment, even bothered to look at the information on the LHC? That miniscule particles will be collided in a space less than the width of a human hair? That the whole test environment is chilled to cooler than the ambient temperature of space, 100 meters underground, surrounded by an awe-inspiring arsenal of instruments that will be able to study the experiment at the atomic level? That what CERN is doing next Wednesday has happened several hundred thousand times already with the bombardment of Earth by high energy particles from space, without any black holes appearing?

No. Looking at the information is too much to expect. These idiots have seen a video of the Earth imploding into itself on YouTube, maybe just watched Bruce Willis in Armageddon, and decided that the LHC is some kind of Doomsday machine. It’s not. It’s a bold, expensive, fascinating piece of research, the result of the collaboration of hundreds of scientists from over 80 countries over the last 20 years, and it could, just could, give humanity new information on the very beginnings of our existence, our creation – not unlike having a genetic blue print for the universe.

I should be sympathetic towards these people and their fears, but no. These fears are the product of deliberate, cultivated ignorance.

Humans have been wiped out in their millions for years by wars, religions, diseases and natural disasters, and most of these were the result of human ignorance, not human curiosity, and sure as hell not cosmic rays. Galileo was kept under house arrest by the Inquisition for the last years of his life by the Catholic church for suggesting that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the other way around, and you can bet that the CERN scientists would experience a worse fate at the hands of a band of lunatics who possibly believe the Earth is six thousand years old, and really believe that the LHC will destroy us all.

Get a grip.

Giftwrapped God

It all sounds innocent enough. Operation Christmas Child “is a unique ministry that brings Christmas joy, packed in gift-filled shoeboxes, to children around the world”. Over the past 10 years, 24 million shoeboxes have been delivered, making it the world’s largest children’s Christmas project. Every US president since Ronald Reagan has packed a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child. In the UK, thousands of schools, churches and youth clubs are doing the same. Some will fill their boxes with dried-out felt tip pens and discarded Barbie amputees. Others spend serious money on the latest GameBoy or Sony Walkman.

But what many parents and teachers don’t know is that behind Operation Christmas Child is the evangelical charity Samaritan’s Purse. Their aim is “the advancement of the Christian faith through educational projects and the relief of poverty”. And a particularly toxic version of Christianity it is. This is the same outfit that targeted eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and was widely condemned for following US troops into Iraq to claim Muslims for Christ.

The evangelicals who like to giftwrap Islamophobia | Guardian daily comment | Guardian Unlimited.

My friend Nick has received a barrage of protest letters after writing an article in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner about Operation Christmas Child. His article is a lot less strongly worded than the one above, and the one above was written by the vicar of Putney, The Rev Dr Giles Fraser. Nick expressed disappointment that there were so few letters of support for his article – but he can’t be surprised. Zealous god-botherers are bound to get steamed up and writing letters if anyone buggers about with their warm-and-fuzzies, and most people who agreed with it couldn’t be bothered to write and say so, even though they should.

So I’m working in a developing country – Siem Reap’s slick bakery cafe, free wi-fi and numerous bars are an island of affluence in a country where most are below the poverty line and earning less than a dollar fifty a day, HIV/AIDS, dengue fever and TB are widespread, and, well, you know the rest. Samaritan’s Purse shoeboxes have already already been delivered to Cambodia. It’s bad enough that a child in one of our classes at the Sangkheum Center the other day was found looking up ‘Sin’ in the dictionary after being given a copy of The Book Of Hope, now I dread the prospect of these boxes showing up, containing as they do more evangelical literature, aimed at converting children to Christianity. As mentioned in the article above, this is partly achieved through bigoted statements about other faiths, and partly through bible study courses after the children receive the gifts.

A video on the Samaritan’s Purse website features several dewey-eyed god-botherers talking of Operation Christmas Child giving gifts of unconditional love, but it isn’t unconditional love when you bribe children into adopting your belief in God with a cuddly toy, any more than it is when you ask a poor person to pray in exchange for food. If the gift is so unconditional, give it with no strings attached. Donate money to an aid organisation, come and help, do something more useful and sustainable than sending someone a teddy bear in a shoe box, and feel justifiably warm and fuzzy – but no-one has the right to force a particularly bigoted and pernicious brand of the Christian faith down children’s throats, even if it is giftwrapped.

It’s not a logo!

“It’s not a logo…”
Seb Coe

That clears that up, then. What’s everyone moaning about?

BBC SPORT | Other Sport… | Olympics 2012 | London 2012 team defend new logo.

Whatever next?

Madeleine is still missing. Parliament is being lobbied, MPs are wearing yellow ribbons. A fund has launched. Prayers are being said, and David Beckham has appealed for her safe return. Up next, NATO will be scrambled, the FBI will storm Portugal, Bruce Willis will Tarzan on a burning hosepipe through the hotels of the Algarve, and Bring Maddy Home will be emblazened upon the side of the moon in burning letters ten kilometers high.

Didn’t they just used to print missing kid’s photos on the side of milk cartons?

Meaty sweeties

Mars starts using animal products

Mars, Twix, Snickers, Maltesers, Bounty, Minstrels and Milky Way now contain rennet, a substance which is extracted from the stomach lining of calves, after they have been deep frozen, ground up, and treated with acid. It’s a by-product of veal production.

Lots of jelly sweets, trifles and, duh, jelly, contain gelatin. Gelatin is produced using pork skins, pork and cattle bones, or split cattle hides.

Children eat sweets, vegetarians eat sweets, we all eat them, but isn’t it weird that you can’t taste the meatiness?

Chicken drummers and turkey twizzlers bear little or no physical resemblance to the animals they came from. Sirloin steaks, bacon, sausages and burgers are all three steps removed from the animals they came from by processing and packaging.

I’d like to introduce a new rule, to help people make a better informed decision about what they eat. I’d like to make it obligatory to show people the entire production process for meat and meat by-products, including how the animals are raised, slaughtered, processed and prepared. I’d like to make it impossible for someone to buy packaged meat, a meat sandwich, even a Mars Bar, without having a full understanding of what went into it.

I eat meat, and I’m not saying anyone should stop, but maybe if people ate less, shopped more conscientiously, just gave a flying fuck where their food came from, less meat might need to be produced. It’s not just about cute calves. The meat production industry is the single biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions on Earth.

Meet your meat.

Planet Paris

Celebrity heiress Paris Hilton is backing an online petition seeking a pardon of her 45-day prison sentence because she enlivens “mundane” lives.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Hilton backs online pardon appeal.

Paris Hilton, eh. How nice it must be to live on her planet. Enlivening mundane lives, being on the telly… um… what useful function does she serve?

Paris, was caught driving while banned – and gave the excuse that she didn’t read the letter that said she was banned, after previously having been charged with driving under the influence. Why didn’t she read the letter? She has people that do that for her.

Send Paris to jail. She will have to read her own mail, wipe her own arse, cut up her own food, and quite possibly also perform all of the aforementioned for a nineteen stone lesbian called Lurleen. Then she can make a series out of it on MTV and enliven our mundane lives some more.

Update: Sign the petition to Jail Paris Hilton

Terror!

Terror terror terror. Terror! Terror, terror terror terror terror. Terror terror terror, terror “TERROR!”. Terror. Terror, terror, terror.

Terror:

• Terror
• Terror terror
• Terror + terror = terror.

“Terror terror terror terror”

Terror.