igb’s posthaven

There are 3127 maintained secondary schools in England and a further 814 in Wales, Scotland and Ireland.  As 12% of the secondary population are educated independently, and indies tend on the whole to be smaller than state secondaries, it's conservative to add to the 3941 state secondaries a further 459 indies, round down a bit and call it 4400, which equates to a 90/10 split of schools.

http://www.scribd.com/gawker/d/81877124-Abuse-Standards-6-2-Operation-Manual

It's a wild world, Facebook's "standards".  You need a dictionary of smut to understand what's banned.

Blatant (obvious) depiction of cameltoes and moose knuckles

And clearly Turkey has got heavy on Facebook's ass:

International Compliance/IP Blocks:

 Photos AND/OR text making fun of/attacking/depicting negatively/criticizing, Ataturk.

 Burning the Turkish flag[other flags are ok to be shown burning]

 Maps of Kurdistan [as of now, only maps are escalated; other references are merely confirmed]

 Holocaust denial[any discussion of holocaust denial that contains hate speech should be escalated]

And yet again, the dictum that seeing someone breast-feeding is shocking, but shooting her in the head and then stamping on her body is OK comes to the fore:

Not OK:

Breastfeeding photos showing othernudity, or nipple clearly exposed

OK:

Crushed heads, limbs, etc. are ok aslong as no insides are showing

And the "Sexually explicit language and sexual solicitation policy" is just priceless.

I love watching the Tour de France. Ever since, about twenty five years ago, I found myself trapped on a campsite because the road outside was closed for the Tour to go past, I've found it magical: the publicity caravan, the tactics, the teams, the history, the mystique. I look forward to it every year, watch as much as I can on the TV, sometimes even spending the afternoon watching the live coverage. I've been to stages, been to preludes: it's great.

Unfortunately, it's also as fake as WWF wrestling. Each great break-away, each glorious mountain-top victory, each yellow jersey on the Champs Elysee, is provisional until the drug results are in. There's hardly an overall winner of the past twenty years to whom some suspicion doesn't attach, and in some cases --- Pantani, Riis --- a great deal more than suspicion. But every time someone is caught, there is a disingenuous cry of "who knew? not me!" to the point that Alberto Contador can advance the argument that he doesn't associate with drug-users, even though his team manager is drug user.

339. Mr Contador stated in his defence, among others, the following: “I have never taken doping substances in my life. And not only have I not taken doping substances, but I have always been surrounded by people (cyclists, doctors, trainers, etc.) who categorically reject the use of doping substances.”
340. WADA disagrees with this statement.
341. In its appeal brief WADA presented a list of 12 former or current team-mates of Mr; Contador who have been banned for doping and states that criminal investigations are pending against the Astana Team and the Athlete’s former team manager, Mr Manolo Saiz, while in the “Puerto” criminal investigations, initials corresponding to those of Mr Contador were found in certain handwritten documents of Dr Fuentes and Mr Jörg Jaksche testified accordingly in his own doping case. Finally, Mr Contador’s current team manager, Mr Bjarne Riis admitted to having used performance-enhancing drugs during his career.

The problem is that cycling says it wants to be clean of drug use, but tacitly realises that drug-using cycling is superficially better to watch than clean cycling. A fresh-looking Pantani accelerating at the top of Alpe D'Huez is to the casual viewer more exciting than watching an exhausted man hauling himself over the line, and sponsors like casual viewers. That this comes at a horrible price, not only in the lives of cyclists but also the long-term credibility of the sport is almost ignored. Young men believe themselves immortal, and just as F1 has to deal with the fact that most drivers would take a car that is more dangerous in exchange for 0.5s a lap, you cannot rely on the health self-interest of cyclists to keep things clean.

So the solution is, I think, draconian penalties. In the event of a drug test proving positive (A and B sample, well-proven methodologies, accredited laboratories) then the whole team is banned for life. All the riders, all the management, all the sporting staff are, to use the phrase from horse racing, "warned off". The entire team, for the purposes of the sport, ceases to exist. The only way for someone finding themselves in a team where drug taking is happening to escape this fate is to blow the whistle: the people who blow the whistle on a team would not be themselves banned. This would stop all the artful looking the other way, as anyone who sees drug use happening has a powerful incentive to tell the authorities.

The penalty would only have to be exacted once, if that, do have its effect. Just as Denise Lewis was only persuaded that employing a drug-tainted javelin coach was a bad idea when Nike threatened to pull her sponsorship, the reputational risk to any sponsor would be so great that they would impose strict governance themselves, just as Sky have done today. The hideous sight of obvious drug users being recycled around various teams would go away, and anyone even suspected of drug use would become an immediate risk to the livelihoods of everyone around them.

Drug use is killing the sport. Who would like to place bets on the last non-drug TdF victor? Fignon? LeMond? Longer ago? If it wishes to avoid a descent into farce, it must deal with drug use swiftly. Reason has failed. Appeals to better nature have failed. The time has come for savage punishment.

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/644941-rdfrs-uk-ipsos-mori-poll-1-how-reli...

Some churches have a clear policy on what you have to believe, but they're mostly pretty cult-y. Even Catholicism, which was in the past beset by the Inquisition, is a pretty broad church these days, and many people who see themselves as perfectly mainstream Catholics would be at odds with some of its doctrine (contraception, notably). And the churches that have strong views on what you must believe don't really like you reading the bible too widely, and have a preference for one set translation and those strange "red letter" bibles with Jesus's purported words picked out. But in general, membership of a mainstream protestant church --- Methodism, Anglicanism, Catholicism --- doesn't have a entry exam, and even if you take things like confirmation seriously it doesn't have any sort of ongoing scriptural correctness requirement.

So it's odd that, in an age where a belief in God is pretty much all you need, to Have Richard Dawkins resurrecting the Spanish Inquisition, with a formal definition of "being Christian" that I don't think any Christian denomination would actually recognise. "Indeed, many Christian practices, including regular reading of the Bible and prayer outside church services, appear to be unsupported amongst respondents self-identifying as Christian". Recognised by whom, exactly? Is he saying that literacy and a bible in your native tongue is a sine qua non for being a Christian? That's going to come as news to about the first 1500 years of Christianity. "One in six (15%) admits to having never read the Bible outside a church service, with a further one in three (36%) not having done so in the previous three years;" (admits is an interesting verb, wouldn't you say?). So what? He then goes on to various issues about physical resurrection and the power of prayer which have been the subject of learned debate within churches for millennia, but for which he knows the right answer that Christians should hold. If a theologian mis-represented evolution like this, Dawkins would be apoplectic, but he now knows Christianity better than the Christians.
And to compound his stupidity, his must stupid claim is that few Christians know the name of the first book of the new Testament. Leaving aside, again, the theological irrelevance of that --- the ordering of the New Testament was a political fix at the Council of Trent, if memory services --- he was then on Today this morning asked what the full title was of Origin of Species. He didn't know.

As a life-long atheist (which is more than Dawkins can claim), can I just say that he doesn't speak for me, and I'd like him to shut up, please?

ian

 

ETA: Listen here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9696000/9696135.stm

Over Christmas, my elder daughter pointed out that KT Tunstall and Eliza Carthy, both of whom she's seen play a few times, were touring with Robyn Hitchcock, of whom she had of course never heard, and Howie Gelb and Crystal Warren, with whom I was unfamiliar as well. This being 2012, the tour was to be "curated" by Hitchcock. I must confess that it was only recently that I realised that people who "curate" exhibitions in art galleries do more than sweep the floor and make sure children don't smear their sticky fingers all over the Gilbert and Georges, but I presume that for a concert tour it implies a certain organisational and artistic influence over and above "turn up on time, play all the hits bar one, that's the encore" (in memory of Jackie Leven's untimely death, all artists should henceforth stop doing encores "going off, coming back on, what's the point? Cuts into drinking time"). My heart was fairly heavy when I bought the tickets, though: I've really enjoyed both Tunstall and Carthy gigs lately, especially as Martin (Eliza's father) has been playing a lot with her, and Hitchcock's brand of whimsy is perfectly amiable. But together I suspected that the whole thing would be a rather cosy and back-slapping muso event, with an audience where not only would Sarah reduce the average age, but _I_ would reduce the average age.

To make matters worse, it was in the appalling Butterworth Hall at Warwick Arts Centre. The theatre at the Arts Centre has always struck me a tolerable venue, but that opinion is helped by the only three gigs I've seen there having been extraordinary in their different ways: Martha Wainwright with Kate McGarrigle sitting in on piano and hi-jacking the whole evening to Martha's evident delight, Jane Siberry being Jane Siberry, and an amazing David Thomas tour with Jackie Leven, Linda Thompson and what appeared to be a lorry load of psychiatric turmoil. But the larger Butterworth Hall is for people who find lecture theatres too exciting, and with its shallow rake and wide seat spacing can remove the will to live from the most energetic band and the most excitable audience. As gigs I've seen in there include Everything But The Girl at the time they themselves have said they were just tired of touring, The Blue Nile at their most taciturn and Lou Reed with his bloody Tai Chi master on stage with him, the calm can perhaps be rather appropriate, but last year it also sucked the life out of a Richard Thompson gig with Pete Zorn in the band, which takes some doing.

But anyway, when you're fifteen as Sarah is, perhaps you're not so jaded, so I tried to remain positive in the car on the way down. Reviews of earlier gigs on the tour seemed quite enthusiastic; Martin was sitting in with them, by the sounds of it doing a musical director thing. And as Sarah's just recovering from dislocating her knee, had it been some scuzzy standing venue she wouldn't have been able to go anyway, so on this occasion the hall wasn't quite the annoyance it normally would be.

Sunday turned out not to be Martin Carthy stage right: he had a previous appointment in Cheltenham. I'd seen some press which implied there would be a one-off appearance of someone in his stead, but the name seemed so implausible that I almost discounted it. So when we walked into the (barely half-full) venue and there was a very expensive-looking custom bass and a couple of mandolins, I knew whose they were, but was surprised nonetheless. Because indeed, on a wet Sunday evening in Warwick, for the delectation of a half-full hall of middle-aged folk fans, John Paul Jones was stepping in as super-sub.

KT Tunstall may have at one point remarked "this'll be OK, I played this to him five minutes ago and he says he's played songs in G before", but it was all a great deal more than OK. He didn't sing, he didn't do any solos (indeed, he hardly played an extraneous note) but Tunstall's tweet "So, I just soundchecked 'I Want You Back' with John Paul Jones playing bass.#HOLYSHITILOVEMYLIFE" pretty much sums it up: what might have been a rather polite noodle through some odds and ends, in the manner of a BBC4 "Transatlantic Sessions" programme without the drug-crazed mayhem, turned into an extremely competitive session with everyone on their top game. Reviews of the other nights on the tour complained of endless tuning: not for this show. No-one was going to waste any time. Mostly Jones played mandolin, pushed up in the (superb) mix, driving along some material that might otherwise be a bit polite (yes, driving along with a mandolin), dropping counter melodies in against the vocals. Three or four times he picked up his bass and applied some muscle to the proceedings, which presumably hadn't happened on other dates on the tour. He had the grin of a man enjoying what he was doing, and everyone else on stage was smart enough to know the best way to deal with someone good is to be better. It was a one off, and it was the last night of the tour anyway. It probably won't happen again. But I can imagine that back stage, Tunstall and Carthy, at least, were signing Jones up to play on their next albums. Folk music is often too polite, and when it attempts to rock it's rather akin to professional opera singers essaying Sondheim: the notes are all in the right place, but although your head is engaged, your heart and your feet are unmoved. And yes, obviously I know that Led Zeppelin had a folk influence and worked with Sandy Denny (although given the way she died, their collaboration is rich with post-hoc poignancy). But this struck me as a genuine cross-over of people from different genres, which is what Hitchcock had set out to do, and everyone came out of it really well. It was a genuinely enjoyable thing, and the people who weren't there (and there were a lot of empty seats) missed a treat.

ian