This joke comes from 25 Jokes Only Book Nerds Will Understand, which headlines this week’s THE LIST LIST, our weekly round-up of the best bookish lists on the internet. Check out the rest here: http://wp.me/p1TMUr-eJB
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Friends of Ralph Miliband’s say the Daily Mail’s version of him is grotesque.
… Read the restTariq Ali, a long-time friend of Ralph Miliband, who worked and campaigned alongside the academic from the 1970s until his death, has described the Daily Mail article attacking him as “utterly grotesque”.
Ali said: “It is a wild assault both on Ralph and his son, and the aim, of course, is to try and discredit the family as a whole, which is what one expects from a newspaper like this … completely crazed stuff.
“Ralph’s position was, of course, much, much, better than the Daily Mail, which was a pro-fascist paper until the war broke out – so to get lessons from the Daily Mail
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7% of pupils will receive instruction on secular belief systems starting next year. The other 93% of students go to schools run by the Catholic church.… Read the rest
In better news – the countries which I think of as Scandinavia plus Finland but which are properly called Nordic (I learned via this story) want to get rid of infant circumcision.
Yesterday, during a meeting in Oslo, Nordic ombudsmen for children, Nordic paediatricians, and paediatric surgeons agreed a resolution urging their national governments to work for a ban on non-therapeutic circumcision of underage boys.
The children’s ombudsmen from the five Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland), along with the Chair of the Danish Children’s Council and the Children’s spokesperson for Greenland, passed a resolution to: “Let boys decide for themselves whether they want to be circumcised.”
Note that it’s just a resolution and that they’re not … Read the rest
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Ed Milliband talks to the BBC about the Daily Mail’s ugly insistence that Ralph Milliband hated Britain.
… Read the restLater, in an interview with reporters, Mr Miliband said it was “perfectly legitimate” for newspapers to discuss his father’s politics.
But he said: “I was appalled when I read the Daily Mail on Saturday and I saw them say he hated Britain. It’s a lie.
“I’m even more appalled that they repeated that lie today and they’ve gone further and described my father’s legacy as evil. Evil is a word reserved for particular cases and I wasn’t willing to let that stand.”
He added that there were “boundaries” that newspapers should adhere to.
“It’s not about regulation… but it is about me saying
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Everyone in the UK is up in arms over the Daily Mail and Ed Miliband. The Mail published a horrible article about Ralph Miliband, father of Ed and David (a former Labour MP). Ed M and many other people said it was horrible, the Mail refused to apologize.
… Read the restThe Daily Mail is under fire after it refused to apologise to Ed Miliband over an article that labelled his late father “the man who hated Britain”.
The paper prompted an angry stream of reaction on Tuesday morning when it stood by the profile published on Saturday, which said the beliefs of Ralph Miliband “should disturb everyone who loves this country”.
The Mail agreed to print a right of reply
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I knew that was a very rainy Saturday and a rainy windy stormy weekend but I didn’t know quite how rainy windy stormy it was. It broke records.
1.71 inches of rain Saturday, which is more than the normal amount for the whole month of September.
The center of the storm moved ashore the center of Vancouver Island (in British Columbia, Canada) early this morning* with a minimum pressure of 970 mb, deeper than any hurricane to form in the tropical Atlantic this hurricane season. On West Vancouver Island, a wind gust was clocked at 76 mph (122 km/h) Sunday night.
And there was even a tiny tornado 40 miles south of here.
*Yesterday… Read the rest
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Nick Cohen has no time for what aboutery, for “how can you from the West talk about that instead of talking about the West,” for righteous indifference. He wrote that piece last week about the way Qatar treats immigrant labor, and got some whataboutery in response.
… Read the restAfter publication, a couple of people contacted me to say that the Open Democracy website had published a ‘reasoned’ critique of my article.
Maybe I had got my facts wrong, I thought. I did not seem to be wide of the mark. The next day Robert Booth of the Guardian ran a tough and well-sourced piece on how Qatar’s World Cup building programme would cost 4000 lives by 2022. The International Trade
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New information: women shouldn’t drive because driving bends their ovaries and that makes their babies come out broken.
It’s a Saudi cleric who discovered this, via research he hasn’t mentioned yet.
“If a woman drives a car, not out of pure necessity, that could have negative physiological impacts as functional and physiological medical studies show that it automatically affects the ovaries and pushes the pelvis upwards,” Sheikh Lohaidan told the news website Sabq.org.
“That is why we find those who regularly drive have children with clinical problems of varying degrees.”
Sheikh Lohaidan is reported to be opposed to reform more generally and granting women more rights in the kingdom.
Maybe if Saudi women did yoga as well as driving, … Read the rest
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Countries other than the US are puzzled by the US’s reckless destructive way of governing.
… Read the restThat leaders of one of the most powerful nations on earth willingly provoked a crisis that suspends public services and decreases economic growth is astonishing to many.
American policymakers “are facing the unthinkable prospect of shutting down the government as they squabble over the inconsequential accomplishment of a 10-week funding extension”, Mexico’s The News wrote in an editorial.
In the United States, however, government shutdowns – or the threat thereof – have become an accepted negotiating tactic, thanks to the quirks of the American federal system, which allows different branches of government to be controlled by different parties. It was a structure devised by
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A useful item that someone gave me on Facebook.
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So the Tories are planning to ditch the European Convention on Human Rights.
… Read the restThe Conservative party is prepared to withdraw from the European convention on human rights (ECHR) after the next election, the home secretary Theresa May has said, as she detailed a fresh drive to curb the appeal rights of 70,000 people who face deportation every year.
“The next Conservative manifesto will promise to scrap the Human Rights Act. It’s why Chris Grayling is leading a review of our relationship with the European court [of human rights],” she told the party’s conference. “And it’s why the Conservative position is clear – if leaving the European convention is what it takes to fix our human rights laws, that
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From April 2009, Jesus and Mo on Blasphemy Day:
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Sara Mayhew is still desperately seeking attention. Every once in awhile I grant her wish. Today is one such time. She fired off a bunch of tweets at me earlier today; I retweeted some; Nick Cohen (who’s a friend of mine) replied to one.
Not quite accurate.… Read the rest
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It’s International Blasphemy Day, people!
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A Greek lawmaker sought by police surrendered on Sunday, bringing to six the number of legislators from the extreme-right Golden Dawn party now in custody and facing criminal charges.
Christos Pappas — a lawmaker described by prosecutors as the Golden Dawn’s No. 2 official — was formally charged with membership in a criminal organization with intent to commit crimes, like his five fellow legislators, including Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos.
Besides the six lawmakers, another 14 Golden Dawn members and two police officers have been arrested and charged with the same crimes. Another 10 suspects, for whom arrest warrants were issued Saturday, are still at large, officials said.
They’ve been gathering the goods.
… Read the restThe prosecution
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Have you ever noticed what a terrible literary character “God” is?
Not like the Greeks. Athena, Aphrodite, Apollo – they were interesting, and they got involved. But “God”? Blegh.
That’s why Jesus, you know. People got bored, and they wanted a god who could put bums on seats, one with some good lines. Jesus can be pretty entertaining, in a rebel without a cause way. He’s uneven, but he has moments.
But “God” is so boring they had to get George Burns to play the part, so that people would think there’s someone interesting behind the name. But there isn’t. George Burns was just acting (he was acting George Burns), and the ____________ behind George Burns is boring as fuck.… Read the rest
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Education is Forbidden but murder is not. That’s a strange thing.
Suspected Islamist gunmen have attacked a college in north-eastern Nigeria, killing up to 50 students.
The students were shot dead as they slept in their dormitory at the College of Agriculture in Yobe state.
…
A witness quoted by Reuters news agency counted 40 bodies at the hospital, mostly those of young men believed to be students.
College provost Molima Idi Mato, speaking to Associated Press, also said the number of dead could be as high as 50, adding that security forces were still recovering the bodies and that about 1,000 students had fled the campus.
I suppose they were jealous of the statistics from the Westgate Mall … Read the rest
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Emer O’Toole relates the misadventures of David Gilmour and her reactions to same to, first, her struggles with devising a new curriculum for an introduction to Irish theatre, and, second, internet dating.
… Read the restYes, internet dating. I’m new in town, and I’ve joined a site for the first time. Having indulged in outrageous fanfaronade on my profile page and started shopping for mates, I noticed that hardly any of the other singletons on sale – male or female – listed fiction by women in their “favourite books” section. Were they afraid they’d catch pregnancy or menopause from female writers or something? I changed my profile to stipulate that I only wanted to hear from people who read books by women.
Then
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