Sunday, November 1, 2009

top 30 - 2 November 09

celebrity culture eats its own children, and nobody profits more than editors like Abigail BlackburnAbigail Blackburn and the truth about pregorexia Celebrity culture eats its own children, and nobody profits more than editors like Abigail Blackburn.










Louise Redknapp on a more useful mission
Claire Sweeney's big fat... What exactly was Claire Sweeney's motivation to put on as much weight as possible in a short time?










Top ten songs about thomas Thomas is an acronym for Those on the margins of society. As the Cambridge magazine for homeless people, Willow Walker, looks for funders, here are songs about pathways to those margins and ways out of them.









Cannabis policy's in no more chaos than usual As Frank Nutt's supporters predict Bad Things for drugs policies in the wake of his removal as head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, I find myself in the unusual position of supporting the government on his sacking.









then three come at the same timeDon't go down the road to hell, it's jammed with bendy-buses How an amusing article by comedienne Ariane Sherine was subverted by radical militant atheists with sinister agendas.









contains spoilers!Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows From Harry Potter through such stopping points as Odysseus and back - but contains spoilers: big ones!









Top ten songs about places Sometimes songs about places strike a chord, and can stay with us over a lifetime.









an unborn crocodile inside its shellCrocs, giraffes and the vagrant nerve: inside nature's giants Richard Dawkins attends the dissection of a giraffe's recurent laryngeal nerve by,among others, Joy Reidenberg, but fails to forward his agenda with the innervation of unborn vertebrates.









no thanks, I've got allergiesG20 - all fools' day for protestors? When radical anthropologist Chris Knight and former Playboy centrefold Marina Pepper united to urge protestors to burn the banks at the G20 meeting in London on April 1, 2009, there could be only one result: short-lived self-promotion.









what if they were white British people protesting against Muslim soldiers?How diverse is diversity? On a diversity course, a left-leaning friend of mine pointed out that diversity isn't a good in itself, and pointed to Adolf Hitler as the most diversity-aware leader of modern times. I'm working on putting him in touch with his inner conservative.









Gilad ShalitThe curious case of the compassionate politician Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, has been treated with a level of compassion that, say, abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit markedly has not.









Top ten songs about ghost stories We are a narrative species. Storytelling is as fundamental an activity for human beings as eating or sleeping, and ghost stories are an integral part of this.









Oh Gillian, why didn't you become a dentist?Blood, tears and celebrity dentists An NHS dentist resembling Brad Pitt comes to the rescue of a woman badly served by profiteers.










Advent - preparing for the preparation Meditating on the Magnificat can take you to strange places.









portrait of Charles DarwinThe ichneumon delusion Review of the first of three programmes in which Richard Dawkins ostensibly celebrates the bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birh, but in reality announces his self-apotheosis.









Bridget Driscoll - first driving casualtyDrink driving campaigns - a worked out example Bridget Driscoll was the first driving casualty in 1896, and unfortunately the deaths haven't ceased. Here's one example of a national anti-drink-driving campaign.








New Labour's science propaganda would shock soviet censorati into silencePropaganda in words and pictures An actual GCSE Science paper, showing the sort of propaganda our children are confronted with daily as regards issues related to the beginning of life.









Dame Kiri Te KanawaThe passions of Kiri Te Kanawa Dame Kiri Te Kanawa will soon be retiring from Opera, but will remain active in teaching singers how to produce the music she is so passionate about. Simon Cowell need not apply.









Takako Fuji stars as KayakoHalloween - don't grudge horror from Japan Takashi Shimizu's The Grudge, starring Takako Fuji as the ghost Kayako, marks the end of Hollywood's ego-fuelled grip on the horror film.









there's more to life than teethThe orthodoxy of orthodonty There's more to life than perfect teeth.









population control is a fatal misconceptionFatal Misconception - the struggle to control world population Indira Gandhi's first government collapsed in chaos because of population control measures drawn up by white westerners, but eugenics has returned.









Children in need of morally competent adults Children in Need is unusual in the modern BBC, in that it not only presumes but demands moral givens.









An early appearance of the golliwog in gallant modeGolliwog-gate:the racism of anti-racists When Carol Thatcher, daughter of the former prime-minister, was accused of racism, were there sinister undercurrents at play?









The Willow Walker looks for a funder Having secured a fund to ensure that the Autumn 2008 issue of the Willow Walker is published, editor Kirsten Lavers and the English Churches Housing Group are looking for funders for this valuable service that gives presently and formerly homeless people in Cambridge a hand up instead of a hand out.









Good taste back on the horizon - how mad are you? A documentary recreating David Rosenhahn's 1972 experiment involving "pseudopatients" admittied to a psychiatric ward - with surprising results.








Jimmy Saville presents Top of the Pops in 1979Margaret Thatcher - it was 30 years ago today The anniversary of the election of Great Britain's greatest peacetime prime-minister.









BBC: bullying has Brucie baring his teeth When yet another insult from Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel-Horwood proved the last straw for Brendan Cole as he struggled to shield Jo Wood from bullying, it was also the last straw for Bruce Forsyth.









Rizla - a smoke or a toke? Did Rizla protest too much when it objected to being mentioned in an anti-cannabis campaign?









There's nothing British about Nick Griffin on Question Time Labour's posturing over issues of the British National Party's access to the machinery of democracy disguises the lack of distance between far-left and far-right views.









desecration of a Catholic Church - a sinister prologue to Halloween?Desecration and Hope The Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs was recently targeted by a self-styled "Magus" who claims to have raised an "elemental" in it.