Tabloid Edition

Malign Creeps

Is apparently what we bloggers are: Take it away the Yazzmonster:

"Citizen journalists" is the respectable name given to the malign creeps who now pull and push the news and current affairs agenda.

I think she's right you know. Malign creep is the only possible way to describe this learned gentleman. Here and here. Showing that, breaking the news that, a government computer system was so incompetently put together that it was broadcasting the private details of applicant doctors to all and sundry.

I mean, really, what would happen if people just took it upon themselves to do things like that. Whence the salaried commentariat if such things persist?

Malign creeps we are. Obviously.

Aidez Moi, Si Vous Voulez

Well, I guess that shows that I don't speak any French then.

Some friends have a pub in Cascais outside Lisbon and would like a little help in getting some recognition from Google. Now, the first thing I find is that if I put their homepage into Google it doesn't seem to think it exists.

So does that mean it's not being indexed at all?

Will simply doing Beefeater Sportsbar get it in? Or is some other method required?

Once that's been done, I might well ask for a little help boosting it, but that's for later.

Sunbeds

So, err, it's not only Tommy Sheridan who overuses the sunbeds then?

Yet Even More on the Gender Pay Gap

Interesting, no?

June O'Neill, an economist at Baruch College and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, has uncovered something that debunks the discrimination thesis. Take out the effects of marriage and child-rearing, and the difference between the genders suddenly vanishes. "For men and women who never marry and never have children, there is no earnings gap," she said in an interview.

Exchange Rates

This little campaign of mine, working out over the years, to make a living from writin' things rather than having to grapple with the intricacies of the Russian customs system (something I still do though) seems to be working.

Various odd little jobs here and there, some blogging and so on, I can see from the accounts I've just done do indeed provide a living. Which is excellent.

However, almost all of it is denominated in dollars....Grrr. The faster I pick up a piece of extra work, the faster the dollar seems to slide against the euro, leaving me typing my fingers to the bone for no extra money. 

D'ye think that if I stopped doing the extra work the $ might rise?

The other thing is that with two incomes, how come I've not got any money?

I'm open to offers as to the reason of course but do you think it might have something to do with the team of 6 builders that have been here for the past two months? Just thinking out loud here but there might be something in that.

So, any editors looking for a hack?

Honesty Day

Today is Honesty Day. Robin Hanson asks us to indulge in some self-experimentation, to see how long we can go without lying. OK.

Polly Toynbee is the finest columnist in the country.

No, really, she is.

The judges called Toynbee “a social commentator and wordsmith of enormous judgement and influence: who is “always challenging and delivers her opinions without fear or favour.”

(Have I got the hang of this yet?)

Fire Melting Steel

Yes, this one story will be so annoying for the 9/11 conspiracists to read. As is noted just about everywhere in fact. Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, Crooked Timber (did anyone actually believe that those three would ever agree about anything? A sign of the end times perhaps?)...

A gasoline fire/explosion can indeed melt steel.

Of course, there's always those who still won't believe. Sigh.

The IPCC's AR4

You'll have noted that for a few months now the newspapers have been saying that the IPCC has released it's latest report on climate change. This was untrue.

The IPCC had released the summary of the report.

Now that the full report has been re-written to accord with that summary, that has finally been released.

Here.

Excellent Line

Over at Iain Dale's for the set up for this:

GENERAL COSGROVE: Well, Ma'am, you're equipped to be a prostitute,
but you're not one, are you?

How Odd

Very odd indeed. A Johann Hari column I agree with.

In Germany today, Muslim women have been reduced to third-class citizens stripped of core legal protections - because of the doctrine of multiculturalism, which says a society should be divided into separate cultures with different norms according to ethnic origin.

Too often this issue is mixed up with other debates and gets waved through for the sake of politeness. The right loves mashing "mass immigration and multiculturalism" into one sound-bite. Well, I think Britain should take more immigrants and refugees, not fewer - but multiculturalism is a disastrous way to greet them.

These German cases highlight the flaw at the core of multiculturalism. It assumes that immigrants have one homogenous culture which they should all follow - and it allows the most reactionary and revolting men in their midst to define what that culture is. Across Europe, many imams are offering advice to Muslim men on how to beat Muslim women. For example, in Spain, the popular Imam Mohammed Kamal Mustafa warns that you shouldn't use "whips that are too thick" because they leave scars that can be detected by the "infidels". That might be Mustafa's culture - but it isn't Nishal's. It isn't the culture of the women who scream and weep as they are beaten.

Human rights are human rights and they're universal. That's actually the point.