South Park and Mormonism…

South Park, the other night, poked savage fun at Mormonism in general and Joseph Smith Jr.  in particular, portraying him as a cynical conman (the narrative was bookended by a Greek chorus intoning Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb). Now, I know little about Mormonism, beyond wishing the buggers would stay home and stop bothering people, so I had a rummage online for info about Smith, and I think cynical conman is a tad too generous – deranged fruitcake being more apt. With, almost certainly, a corrupt form of genius at work there too.

As regular readers will know

Internet Explorer 8 – faulty straight out of the box…

All is not well in IE8 world, and it falls at the very first hurdle – importing Bookmarks/Favourites. Though as you’ll see, it’s more a case that IE8 was actually lying to me. Doesn’t fill me with confidence.

I’ve just installed IE8 – purely for reference purposes – I operate an email advice service for people with ME/CFS, with computer problems (and for the benefit of DWP snoops, it’s free). IE8′s installation allows you no input whatsoever and simply overwrites IE7, which is totally unacceptable. It’s my PC, and it’s my choice as to where a new app is installed – something MS seem to have lost sight of. Mozilla did exactly the same thing with the first release of Firefox 3 (but reverted to the convention user-choice installation destination in later versions).

So what to do?

Formula 1 2009 – a clean season coming up? Yeah, right…

I’ve not watched F1 for a while, because the toxic anti-McLaren bias of Mosley and the FIA made it a pain in the butt. That, and Hamilton’s habit of coming unstuck under pressure – and he almost blew it last year!

I was, though, looking forward to a “clean” season this year, with new teams, no aggro, a clutch of young drivers hitting their stride (and the hope of Massa reinforcing his No. 1 position at Ferrari, a sport with too few nice guys at the top), but the diffuser

Maintain your security – or stay offline!

Rummaging around online, I came across a blogger who had not installed a single XP update since SP2 – that means all the security vulnerabilities that MS has patched since SP2 in 2004, not to mention all the functional fixes, have been ignored.

If XP is treated in such a blindly irresponsible, cavalier, fashion, what about anti-virus software. Is that up to date? Does it actually

The pimp in the corner…

Late-night TV on the commercial/digital channels are swamped by adverts for women – seemingly dozens of ways to text women for “fun”, the subtext being call these numbers, get laid. In the run-up to the Easter break, this minor irritation is completely out of control. My TV has turned into an electronic pimp…

There’s a problem, though.

Why me? Why not?

I came across someone a little while ago, regarding ME/CFS, who asked the question “why me?”

I have to say that this is one question it’s never occurred to me to ask. One might as well ask, with equal validity, “why not me?”.  It simply doesn’t matter.

Likewise, it’s never

On Blogging, part 2

For a dizzy day last year, I made it onto WordPress’s Growing Blogs list, at 68. Didn’t last, and I dropped out again shortly afterwards. For a while, though, I had an ambition to get back there, or even snaffle a blog of the day spot. I didn’t obsess about it, you understand, but it would have been nice. And then I stopped fretting about it and got on with what I do best – writing.

The last few hours, though, I’ve been having another

Twitter – why?

Twitter describes itself thus:-

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

Twitter also says:-

* Eating soup? Research shows that moms want to know. Really? Just who are these mothers with a worrying obsession about my soup (and anyway, right now it’s a meat pie!)?
* Running late to a meeting? Your co-workers might find that useful. Indeed – and I could simply text or phone one person and ask for the message to be passed on.
* Partying? Your friends may want to join you. Quite. But what’s wrong with the phone, text or email? Or even IM?

Possible alternatives for Motability…

This is another item from the search engines.

Motability electric bicycles.

No such thing, I’m afraid, though I’ve always thought that just offering cars, powerchairs and electric mobility scooters a tad short-sighted. Why not motor-scooters and electric bikes, especialy as the latter are much improved, and lighter, with the introduction of lithium-ion batteries? The qualification for the higher rate of DLA is that your walking ability must be impaired – I don’t see that would prevent

Throwing granddad on the bonfire…

Yes, I know the title might be perceived as distasteful – I find the whole idea of what follows  distasteful, if not downright offensive.

There is, apparently, a campaign by a Hindu, Davender Ghai, in the High Court, to get outdoor funeral pyres allowed, because that’s the only way to “set the soul free”. I don’t think so… Interestingly, Jay Lakhani, writing in the Guardian, says:-

“The demand for such a ritual is illogical, morbid and risks damaging the credibility of Hinduism in the UK.”

Can’t argue with that.

You know, I get awfully tired of people coming here from other countries and trying to turn Britain into a replica of the country they left (if it was so wonderful, what are you doing here?). More often than not