Mat Bowles

First, a serious one. If you live in the UK, follow this link and do what the nice people say? I'v efootnoted some reasons at the bottom^[1] but here's a summary. Abolish Blasphemy Laws Now:

The British Humanist Association (BHA) has long campaigned for the blasphemy laws to be abolished, and an opportunity for this to happen has now come with an amendment to be tabled this week by Evan Harris MP.

We need as many people as possible to get in touch with their MP to show the support there is for abolishing this antiquated law.

That's Dr Evan Harris MP, not met him yet, think I might like to. Cross party support would be good on this one *cough*bagrec, it's not really political, more a general interest story, right?*cough* Even if you're a believer, I've yet to see any coherent defense of the blasphem laws, wouldn't it be better to let people make their case so you can try to rebut them or persuade people otherwise?

OK, on to fun stuff. A bunch of researchers in San Diego attended 66 different student parties and breathalysed a representative sample of attendees. They found that while men drink more at normal parties, women drink more at fancy dress parties, and drink much more at sexually themed parties. Quoth the guy in charge:

Dr Clapp admitted that "as his team was unable to explain the surprise finding it would be necessary to carry out further field work", concluding: "Given that some theme parties can be highly sexualised, future investigation of the mechanisms that may explain this effect is warranted." ®

Yes, that's right, you want to go to a bunch of student sex themed parties in the name of research. Gotta admire his commitment to science, right?

Now, more sillyness. The guy who runs asciimation, home of The death of Jar Jar is also a bit of a loon when not on his computer, and a Futurama fan.  Hence The Bender Brewer Project, in which he makes a life size Bender and puts a brewing barrel in its chest.  If you just want to see the complted work, half way down page three you can find him pictured playing on a TARDIS arcade console (via slashdot). How cool is that? Cue Jennie saying I want one to the TARDIS thing in 5, 4, 3...

---

( Reasons to abolish the blasphemy laws courtesy of the BHA )

There are some days, y'know, when the British legal system does us all proud. Two different stories today. Stripogram copper walks on offensive weapon rap | The Register:

Kennedy was dragged before the beak at Aberdeen sheriff court on the offensive weapons rap. However, Sheriff Kenneth Stewart ruled he had no case to answer.

Because arresting a strippogram for 'impersonating a police officer', being forced to drop those charges then chasing him for something else is a really good use of resources. But, much more importantly. BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Springer opera court fight fails:

two senior judges at the High Court said the 1968 Theatres Act prevented any prosecution for blasphemy in relation to public performances of plays - and the 1990 Broadcasting Act prevented any prosecution in relation to broadcasts.

They said it was reasonable to conclude Jerry Springer - The Opera "in context" could not be considered as blasphemous, as it was not aimed at Christianity, but was a parody of the chat show genre.

That's right, the courts have told "Christian" Voice director Stephen Green to go fuck himself--and this has to be a good thing, his extremist nonsense gives sensible people of faith a really bad name. More context on him and his censorship campaign at an old post of mine.