Solar Torch.

I'm in mock the stupid mode. Here's another one: Solar Powered Torch. Anyone who thinks that's funny doesn't know the meaning of "charge". I mean, think about your mobile. It's not very mobile when it's plugged into the wall, is it? No, that's why you CHARGE it. Poop-face.

Squirell?

Moonbuggy is an awesome site, but one picture kinda worried me...

Stoner Squirrel.

Yeah, that's a chipmunk. Idiot. Other than that, take a look around. That site almost violates the First rule of StumbleApon. By being decent, at least 40% of the way through.

My science teacher is a twit.

I have a lot of blog posts stored up in my head, there's a pretty huge backlog, but i want to take this opportunity to take the piss out of my Lucretia Science teacher, who we affectionately refer to as Quinna. People who have played Final Fantasy IX are now equipped to pick her out from a line up. They would also probably recognize her from a phone call. Those who haven't, imagine an androgynous, spherical thing capable of making George Bush look eloquent in deference. Seriously. Oh, I do really like her, I just don't think she should be teaching science. Not even Lucretia Science (That is, Biology, a Scientific way of saying "elementary".) Anyway, This poor woman said something so fantastically stupid I had to post it.

She Cited what happened to Richard Hammond as a reason not to speed. She said it as if Richard Hammond was reckless and stupid and ought to have learned his lesson (She might not have meant that, but I got that impression). (Richard Hammond is a star of Top Gear, a program about cars, who recently had an accident. Wait for the funny). Now, this is why you really need to research your references.

• Richard Hammond Wasn't speeding. He was in the middle of a field sectioned off for filming, ie. no legal speed limit.
• Richard Hammond is a presenter on Top Gear, he is contractually obliged to drive ludicrously fast quite often. Otherwise the program would only be quite awesome.
• He was driving a fucking rocket car.
• Knocking Richard Hammond is a mockable offense. You do it, I mock you. Well, unless what you say is a pertinent witty and good humored jibe. Like the fact he's the most anally rape-able top gear presenter (Jonathan Ross said something roughly to that effect. Although it might have been a different top gear presenter. it is also true to state that if it involves anal rape, it will probably be received well, at least by me.

She also made us make cubes to calculate the surface area to volume ratio of varying sizes of stuff for the purpose of studying her vapid biological heat-loss lessons. Here's a quick demonstration. I'm going to avoid doing any scripts, but I could make something so fucking awesome if this wasn't blogger.

1^3 cube	Surface area = 6*1^2 = 6	Volume = 1*1*1 = 1	SaVR: 6:1
2^3 cube	Surface area = 6*2^2 = 24	Volume = 2*2*2 = 8	SaVR: 3:1
3^3 cube	Surface area = 6*3^2 = 54	Volume = 3*3*3 = 27	SaVR: 2:1
4^3 cube	Surface area = 6*4^2 = 96	Volume = 4*4*4 = 64	SaVR: 1.5:1

Guess how many cubes I had to make to do that. None. Took me fucking ages, but thanks to my extensive knowledge of the 32 times table (computing gives you an eerie understanding of the subtle properties of the powers of two. Mostly from finger binary and buying drives.) I didn't even have to use a calculator. (By the way, I don't do the SaVR calculations as a hobby, these could be totally wrong. My point still stands.)

Sweet Asperger's Syndrome. You can work out the highest common denominator of 96 and 64 expressible in the form 2^n, but you can't criticize your Lucretia Science teacher without using exponents. Also, giving Biology a nickname? Well, at least I avoided using nested brackets. (Irrational quantities of brackets, but not nested).

Vegetarianism: a link.

Eumaldicto: My Less than Usual Top Five (plus one) Reasons to be a Vegetarian

That is exactly ow I feel about vegetarianism, his reasons are the same as my own. Oh, except I have a few more, personal, ones.

How Beautiful you are.

I was just listening to the song "How Beautiful you are" by the Cure (awesome band and song, peeps- seriously, buy Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. Then Seventeen Seconds. Then all their other stuff.). At the line "and all six eyes stared fixedly on you" I was like "weren't there three of them?" Man, I shoot way to many three-eyed monsters in games. Or I'm just not so quick on the math. Or both. Yeah, it's probably both.

Taglin'd.

Oh, I thought of an awesome new tag line for the blog, but FF had crashed and wouldn't start up like a bitch so I forgot it.

I still changed it though. Give me credit.

Oh, Violent Acres made me play with my dog. I think my dog hates her for it. Also, I now know she's scared of the dark. There are now fairy lights in her bedroom. Man, my dog's a spoiled brat.

Morality

I know, I have no children and my qualification to talk on the subject is there is a child being raised in my house, and not particularly well, but one think I don't think many parents get is teaching their child morality. As a parent you need to teach your child two main things constantly: What is right and what is wrong, and that is always better to do the right. Particle theory is also good, but those are the main ones.

This means you must never, ever pass an opportunity to tell you child when they are doing something wrong. And you must never do anything wrong yourself. No smoking in front of your child, as it can't be justified. No swearing. You swear, you tell you child swearing is okay. "I'm older" is NOT, absolutely NOT an excuse. Kid's brains are not that well developed, but they are well developed enough to know that that is not a reason. "There are times you can swear and times you can't" is a reason, but "I'm older" is not. You're older so you should know better! "I'm older" is a feasible excuse for drinking reasonably, as your liver is better developed to process the alcohol correctly, and you understand the risks to your health enough to make an informed decision. Tell your child that, when something is good or bad, tell them why, explain it to them.

My mother did this so well for me. I'll tell you a little story. I once stole a piece of card from school. Yeah, a piece of card from the materials tray. She told me off and made me put it back the next day. Yeah. I never stole again. Okay, it isn't important that your school get their card back, on any level. What is important is that your child knows that stealing is wrong. When you turn a blind eye to your child stealing her friend's hairpin, you turn a blind eye to your child stealing from you. From shops. From banks. From old ladies. From houses. Are you going to wait until your child mugs helpless old women to teach them stealing is wrong? Or are you going to let them know as soon as they take olives from the fridge without asking?

It works all the way around. You let your child be rude to you, or your friends or other children, you are teaching them that it is okay to be rude. Okay to be rude to their teachers, their bosses, casual acquaintances, enemies, shop assistants. Everyone. If you let them insult some people and not others you are teaching them that is okay to be rude to some people, sometimes, or worse. Let your kid kick a dog, you are letting them kick a person. The morality they get from you must be absolute. It must be very, very clear. And don't just shout at your child, make examples of people. Make sure they know that everyone has a responsibility to be good. Daddy is not allowed to take office supplies from work, not while you have children.

Teaching them that you should do what is good is hard. Teaching them what is good is easy.

One more thing: Never really yell at your child for a first offense. If your child says crap or bloody or something else you don't like, and you yell at them, you are teaching them that the world is full of random traps they can trigger unsuspectingly. If you tell them politely that you should not do what ever it was, explain why, make sure they remember, and THEN yell at them whenever they do it, they learn not to do that thing.

Somewhere, my parents and teachers did this awesomely for me, I am completely incapable of doing anything even remotely immoral.

Britz

(This is a program shown on British Television a while ago, I have been meaning to comment.)

I would like to state, nothing I say here is motivated by racism. I am not at all racist. I believe all people should be judged absolutely only by their actions. I don't have a problem with stereo types "women are bad at maths", "French people smell". These are often well founded, however, if I find a woman who's good at maths, I'd hire her for a maths intensive job. If I found a French person who didn't smell, I'd believe it. No, what I say is based on religious hatred. Religious hatred based on actions taken by religious people. I appreciate there are a lot of "Christians" who are not homophobic. I don;t hate them. I just think they're stupid. See earlier post: I hate Christians... for an explination of why it is okay for me to hate organised religion.

Synopsis of the second half, coutesy of the Chanel 4 Website: "Nasima is a medical student in Leeds who becomes increasingly alienated and angered by Britain's foreign and domestic policy after witnessing at first hand the relentless targeting of her Muslim neighbours and peers."

HERE BE SPOILERS

I didn't watch all of Britz, just the second half. Now, I didn't have any quarrel with Muslims, although I did think this might be though ignorance. Britz made me dislike Muslims more. It is designed to show how poorly we treat Muslims in this country, or something. They show how they keep Nasima's friend under house arrest because they think she might kill innocent children, or something. They then show how when Nasima finally picks up the courage to tell her parents about her non-muslim boyfriend, and admits to having sex with him, her parents take her to India and try to force her into an arranged marriage. Her Boyfriend tries to come and save her, and they kill him. She runs away to suicide bomber training camp.

Man, the British government are so awful, allowing that innocent girl to be raised by those Muslims. What a failure of the domestic system. Was anyone else thinking that? I mean, they killed her boyfriend. They drove her to become a suicide bomber. This girl was university age, and they shipped her of to India to a forced marriage and killed the man she loved, just for loving her. Man, the British government are so fucking out of line! I'm not chritisizing Muslims, because I don't think they would really do that. It's just that the directors and authors of this program seem to be a little misdirected. That's not the story I would use to convince people that these people are civilized and we should combat terror legislation. A good story would be if they had her become a suicide bomber because of how they treated her friend, rather than because her Muslim parents were cunts, donchathink? Or, possibly, a story were she wasn't a suicide bomber, would imply we should trust Muslims not to bomb us? The overall message of this piece is "Musims are fucked up, and will probably kill us over their own domestic issues". Well done, Peter Kosminsky. (Director).

Pretty Persasion.

Yesterday I watched two awesome films (and Scary Movie 2, which was okay). One was Napoleon Dynamite. You've likely seen it, if you haven't you might want to. It's nice.

The second is Pretty Persuasion. You probably haven't seen it. Firstly, it is an 18 for a good reason (that's the worst certificate there is, for you folks living in countries that don't use the system. It's fairly self explanatory.) By no means let anyone with a mental age bellow 18 watch it. Seriously. (Most films are rated high for no good reason, if there was a 21 certificate, this would have it). It doesn't contain the kind of "Friends" style sex references a child could miss, at any point. Also, ignore the title. It's a bad title, case in point, I couldn't remember it after watching the film. Also, the blurb doesn't describe it very accurately. It's not similar to Mean Girls. Okay, it is similar to Mean Girls. In about the same way Jungle Book is similar to Mean Girls. There's a mean, manipulative girl in Jungle Book. She seduces Mogli and takes him out of the forest. There are mean girls in Mean Girls. They make another mean girl fat and unlikable, and steal each other's boyfriends etc. There are mean girls in Pretty Persuasion, I'm not going to tell you what they do. That would ruin the film. While I'm on the topic, Mean Girls is awesome, watch it. Yeah, and the Jungle Book is pretty decent.

Oh, I'm now slightly more motivated to replace my boyfriend with a girl. Taking applicants. No, Cam, must have been a girl for at least 6 months, not "soon".

So, I've been meaning to post,

It usually goes like this.

M: Whoa, I'm having so many intriguing but meaningless and opinionated thoughts, I wish I was at a computer so I could blog.

M(@X): OMFG, LOLCATZ! Oooh, Advent children. Now I'm going to stare blankly into space while I wait for my bf to wake up notice he's got messages tand tell me to go away, Ktouch-type! (That's like a Linux game).

X is Xaugua, my computer.

Oh, I now play Guildwars. I'm Morgana Astute of the Stroud Dragons.