Oh for fuck sake!

We have the tabloids ranting every day about how Britain is descending into anarchy with the youth of today increasingly running riot with seemingly little punishment for misbehaving and a emphasis on rewarding acceptable behaviour rather than punishing unacceptable behaviour. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised about this piece on the BBC News website.

It seems that a school in Northamptonshire has decided that swearing is something which should be tolerated in the classroom and has taken to allowing their pupils to say "fuck" up to 5 times in every class. Every time a pupil swears a tally is kept on the board. Those children who don't swear will be sent "praise postcards".

Now obviously, I myself am no stranger to swearing, in fact I probably swear more than I should, but the point is that I understand in which situations it is appropriate and in which it is not. For example I'm not going to be on the phone to a client and say "What the fuck do you want?". Part of the point of school is to teach young people how to behave when the leave school and move into the real world.

The headteacher has justified his stance on the scheme by saying "The reality is that the f-word is part of these young adults' everyday language,". How is that a valid justification? By curbing the use of swear words in the classroom, maybe it will be less of a part of their everyday langauge.

If fighting was part of a pupil's everyday behaviour are they going to allow that in the school. The school's stance on the matter is a little confusing as well, if they don't see swearing as a bad thing, why is there a 5 time limit? Also, can they say shit as many times as they like? Who knows?

You can't make this up

If I was gonna make up a news story then a Croatian Catholic priest who plays in a heavy metal band and loves Marilyn Manson might be a good place to start. Alas, I've been beaten to it by reality :(

Croat priest stands up for Manson

Flying Spaghetti Monster!

Well I discovered religion this morning, I am now pretty sure that I'm a devout Flying Spaghetti Monsterist (Pastafarian). Started by Bobby Henderson in an open letter to the State of Kansas education department regarding their vow to teach Intelligent Design alongside The Theory of Evolution; Bobby insists that Kansas also teach that the Earth was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Read the letter here

Some of the things that make Flying Spaghetti Monsterism so attractive is the belief that the increase in Global Warming is directly related to the decrease in pirates since the 1800's and that you must dress as a pirate when teaching the religion.

Also the three major benefits of the religion make sense:

* Like the great noodles they worship, Flying Spaghetti Monsterists have flimsy moral standards.
* Religious holiday every Friday.
* Promise of a stripper factory and a beer volcano in Heaven.

So, I hope there are a number of you out there who are touched by his noodly appendage and join us.

Read more here.
And here.

Piracy is bad mmmkay

So, those of you who've been to the cinema recently have probably seen the amazing new anti piracy advert. It starts like a trailer for the Fantastic Four, but stops and says something along the lines of "The cinema isn't the only place people will be watching this film when it is released; some people will choose to watch it on an illegal DVD, the picture will be smaller, the sound tinny and THE VIEW WILL BE OBSTRUCTED BY ANYONE WHO STANDS UP DURING THE MOVIE"

Well it's fucking lucky I came to the cinema instead because that never happens at the cinema, no siree, I didn't go and see Crash and have some moron stand up 10 minutes before the end and hover about in front of me, and don't even get me started about the number of weak bladdered people who went to see Bad News Bears last night. I mean if you can't go 2 hours without having to leave and go to the toilet then choosing a seat at the end of an aisle down near the front is the least you can do.

I think a new trailer is in order something along the lines of "The cinema isn't the only place people will be watching this film months before it's UK release, some people will choose to download a high quality screener from the internet; the sound will be good, the picture clear and there won't be people talking through the film and getting up all the time to go to the bloody toilet."

On a serious note though, piracy is wrong, don't do it, go to the cinema and put up with the morons instead.

Scottish Executive Individual Learning Account

Ace, the Scottish Executive have a new scheme where adults can get a £100 a year towards learning new skills. According to their website:

"ILA Scotland is a Scottish Executive scheme that will help you pay for learning you want to do. It’s available for anyone aged 18 or over and living in Scotland."

Cool, I want to learn Japanese so maybe I can get £100 off the £300 I'll have to spend on Japanese lessons ...

... or not ... further down the page ...

"With an individual learning account you will be able to claim up to £100 a year to put towards a range of courses to build your computer skills."

OK, so it's towards what you want to do; as long as what you want to do is build your computer skills. That's cool, maybe I can do a course in advanced Perl or MySQL or C or Games Programming or something ...

... A quick search later for courses reveal that there is absolutely sod all courses which would build my computer skills; and of the ones which wouldn't very few are in Edinburgh. OK, so I realise I'm taking the piss a bit, this initiative is obviously not aimed at Computer Science Graduates, but if you are going to offer the money to everyone, why limit it down to only computer related skills.

I'm all up for offering subsidised training to help individuals improve their skills, but the help should be targeted at those who need it and not just offered willy nilly to everyone with big generic promises to make it sound good.

Poor old Koji Suzuki

It seems that at every opportunity to do so, Koji Suzuki (author of the original Ring trilogy and Dark Water novels) gets fucked over by the film industry. Not content with continually making up new sequels to his first book Ring despite the fact he himself has written two sequels, they are now misleading people in the advertising for the new film Skeleton Key.

When I first saw the posters plastered all over buses for the film with the tag line "From the writer of the Ring" I was reasonably intrigued, I thought someone must have taken a Koji Suzuki novel which hasn't actually been made into a film in Japan and made a film out of it, rather than waiting for Hideo Nakata to make the film, the remaking it for the West.

But no, Skeleton Key has nothing at all what-so-ever to do with Koji Suzuki, when the say "From the writer of the Ring" they actually mean "From that guy who rewrote the original Ring movie for an American audience".

So spare a thought for poor old Koji Suzuki. If there are any hot shot directors out there reading this; maybe you could phone him up to discuss buying the rights to make Loop, the third book in the Ring trilogy, into a film.