Of popes and body armour for children

I was reading on The Times website today(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk//article1552956.ece) that parents in the UK are buying body-armour for their children to go to school in. Before we go any further, I just want to say one thing; "THIS IS INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!!"

These parents probably think that they are doing their best for their children, but they are not. Looking at it purely financially, these flak-jackets are hundreds of pounds, money which could be spent on getting the children protection that will last a lifetime, such as martial-arts training. More importantly, I cannot think of a better way to flag up to the school bullies that there is a target than to put your child in body-armour. Most importantly of all, these parents are showing a complete lack of proportion. A few deaths have happened in a few weeks, but this is a combination of coincidence and media panic-mongering.

Terrifying one's children about the risk of death is not a good way to bring them up - it is more a form of abuse than many of the things we are told to worry about. The chances of it happening are very small - there is probably a greater chance of any given child being killed or seriously injured by falling downstairs. If you are one of these parents who has bought, or is considering buying, body armour for your children, please stop, take a long hard look at your priorities, and if you still feel that body-armour is the way to go, find out where your nearest psychiatric clinic is, and check yourself in, because you do not have a healthy mind-set. The world is a both a bad and a good place, and you do not do your children any good by wrapping them up in cotton-wool (or kevlar).

On a slightly different note, the pope has been busily re-establishing the catholic church in the 14th Century again (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1572646.ece).

Apparently, hell is real - it says so in the bible. Weeeellllllll, here is the rub: there may be a god, or more than one - I don't know. If there is/are, they are so far removed from us that it/they have no interest in us as individuals at all. Personally, I prefer to believe that gods are just a primitive way to explain the inexplicable, and that therefore gods are made in man's image, and not the other way around. If a being as powerful as a god were to make beings in its likeness, those beings would be gods, too. From this, it seems to me that holy books, of any religion, are not from the gods, but from humans. In general, they were written in good faith, to give rules about how people should get along with each other, and in this sense they are ethical guidelines.

However, greedy people - such as popes - add bits, or take bits out, or emphasise certain its over others in order to gain and maintain power. The Crusades needed a bit of judicious bible editing in order to allow th church to make a lot of money and try to grab a lot of land. There is increasing evidence that the bible has been heavily modified to keep women out, and allow the clique of perverts, pederasts and aggressive homosexuals that have always made up a significant portion of the catholic church to have their fun. These modifications sully the people who they are supposed to honour - ethical guidelines designed to help people get along with each other should not be modified so as to hurt people for personal gain. There is a place for amorality, or hedonism, but people should be honest about it. It seems to me that so many religions are hypocritical.

Introduction and first rant

Well, since everyone else seems to have a blog these days, it seems churlish not to have one myself. As the name of the blog suggests, it is likely to be on whatever takes my fancy at the time, but there are some things that will keep coming up. There will be quite a lot on identity cards and other forms of surveillance. I am doing a PhD entitled "Biometrics and Social Exclusion", and it seems likely that widespread use of biometrics will cause a lot of people a lot of trouble. I really do not like the proliferation of surveillance technologies - it is clear that the government does not trust the population, and, since the population has not really changed, except maybe to become more informed through the use of the internet, it is clear that government has changed. That is a bad thing.

There will also be quite a lot on "global warming", as I just cannot see how people can buy into the rubbish being put out by people that should (do?) know better. Maybe, just maybe, there is climate change happening, but so what? It is a natural process. It has happened many times before, it will happen many times again. I honestly think that our ancestors, as signs of "global warming" took away the ice sheet 11000 years ago were having the same sort of panics because something was happening that they had no control over, and which meant that their world-view was changing. They may even have sacrificed precious things to try and appease the gods. This is no different to today: superstitious people are clamouring for us to sacrifice one of the most precious things we have - technology - to appease the gods/gaia/whatever, because they want to feel in control of things. They have even created an evil spirit - carbon dioxide - as a measure of what we have done wrong. Well, CO2 isn't evil - without we wouldn't be here. In the history of the earth, we are actually living in a CO2 depleted atmosphere, and life has done very well, thanks very much. It is time for humanity to stop being so parochial, and recognise that what humans are doing to the planet is, at worst, trivial, at best, negligible. Celebrate the incredible ingenuity that is mankind's greatest survival strategy,but stop being so arrogant as to believe that we have any real effect on the planetary system.

Thanks for reading this first post. Comments are welcome.