MaW’s Blog

By now just about everybody knows or thinks they know intimate details about what happened in London on the seventh of July 2005. Four bombs; three in the Underground, one on a bus. About fifty dead (so far), several hundred injured to varying degrees. I’ve been trying to think what to say about it, as I feel it deserves having something said about it, but I really haven’t been able to come up with much. I’ve read a number of other people’s comments on the matter, ranging from the sensible to the sympathetic to the absolutely absurd and offensive, to the absolutely absurd and offensive to the French. Some people clearly don’t have a clue.

Much has been written about the response to the attacks by Londoners. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised by how people dealt with it. They have, after all, faced years of attacks by the IRA and carried on going to work in the morning. This is still a significant event, of course — fifty people are dead — but we have seen and endured worse. We can endure this without losing our culture or our way of life.

I find myself completely baffled by the mindset of the people who could orchestrate and carry out such an attack though. The concept of deliberately causing such explosions, at a time and place to kill and injure as many people as possible, is something I cannot hold in my mind with any consideration that I might carry out such an action. Yes I know, I engage in simulated violence playing Grand Theft Auto on a regular basis, but that’s far removed from the real world. When real people suffer as a result of my actions, I simply cannot conceive of doing it.

So what kind of mind does a person have to have to do such a deed? That’s what worries me.

What’s the worst evil you should be worried about in the world right now? Microsoft? Nope. Dubya? Nope. Nameless terrorists who may or may not be organised? Nope.

Jamster. The ringtone people.

‘But why?’ I hear you ask. ‘Why are they the most evil evil in the world today?’

Because they have Flash adverts. With sound.

I’d like to express my congratulations to Scaled Composites, who yesterday successfully became the first private organisation to send a person into suborbital space without any government funding or facilities. Congratulations — a big step towards winning the Ansari X Prize.

Unfortunately it seems there were some problems with the craft during the flight, so they’re going to want to check things very carefully before they think about doing another flight. I would guess that we’re unlikely to see them win the X Prize before October or November, which is cutting it close as the competition expires at the end of the year. But then what do I know?

What I do know is that Alanis Morissette’s new album ‘So-Called Chaos’ is excellent. I just wish I found it easier to remember how to spell her surname — I usually end up adding too many ‘r’s, and have to check it every single time.

I also got hold of a copy of ‘Liege and Lief’ by the Fairport Convention, which I had high hopes for as it was voted the most influential folk album of all time by the Mike Harding show on Radio 2. Unfortunately it was very disappointing; some of it’s excellent (’Matty Groves’ and ‘Tam Lin’ stand out particularly) but their version of ‘Sir Patrick Spens’ can’t hold a candle to June Tabor’s recent rendition of it on ‘An Echo of Hooves’, and ‘Reynardine’ likewise is nothing next to Maddy Prior’s version on ‘Arthur The King’. So four or five good tracks out of 10 surely doesn’t qualify as the most influential of all time… does it?

Still, I bet it made an impact when it was first released. Maybe I’m just spoiled by June Tabor, Steeleye Span’s new works, the sublime Kate Rusby and the rather surprising Jim Moray.

Looking at this article from BBC News Online about a farm which dyes baby chicks different colours by injecting dye into their eggs before they hatch, I came across the following attempt to prove that the dye isn’t harmful to the chicks:

“The dye, which the farm insists does not contain chemicals”

So if it’s not got chemicals in it, what does it have in it, exactly? Good intentions? Quick science lesson people: every substance is a chemical or combination thereof. The stuff you extract from plants is no less a chemical than the stuff that comes out of enormous chemical plants — and that probably came out of a plant somewhere along the line as well.

People automatically think chemicals are bad, but where would they be without their sodium chloride, eh?

Bouncing a TrackBack back to Alex again after he responded to my response to his entry on the subject of a religious experience taking place in, of all places, a church.

Yeah yeah, I know the location’s not a shock.

So Alex had some things to say about the things Carl said in his response to Alex’s entry, and Alex also had some things to say about the things I said in my response to that same entry. Now I have a few things to say about the things Alex said in response to both the aforementioned responses to his original entry.

Gosh I love this, it’s amazing how convoluted the sentences can get when you’ve just got a few levels of TrackBack. Imagine what it’ll be like when we’ve been at this for a few more weeks.

And now to the point.
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