Lightning up the game.

Lightning does not strike twice in the same place, unless you are playing football in the Democratic Republic of Congo - in which case it strikes 11 times, killing all involved.

Mystery abounds, particularly given the state of the match (1-1 at the time) and the surgical precision of the bolts, such that one side was totally unharmed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/203137.stm

Don't despair

Watch and enjoy. Global warming is happening, but that does not mean that we are obliged to do anything to prevent it.

The corpus of climate science is clear: global warming, partly of anthropogenic making, is gradually choking the planet. Using this evidence, the beard-and-sandals brigade infer that we must intervene now to conserve the environment, principally so that future generations may enjoy the same benefits that we do today.

After all, the class of 2014 will be dead long before the up-tick in the earth's bunsen burners and sea levels immerse the UL. So if it were just about us, we could do as we liked. We might even start using crude oil as a sexual lubricant.

In other words, there is a lot riding on presumed obligations to future generations. But let's unpick this argument.

Clearly we cannot owe obligations to everyone or everything. It would be absurd if trees had a right to social housing, or shoes had a right not to be tortured. Instead, we allocate rights and privileges to the things that matter most to us, allowing them to flourish at the expense of the not-so-lucky ones. Typically, the golden gaggle are human beings, something then rationalised and justified under the guise of 'objective' criteria. (This normally consists of using scarily complex words or phrases, like 'sentience' or 'capacity for rational thought'.) Sometimes, these same criteria persuade us to broaden our moral caring to incorporate animals and other cuddly organisms.

So far, so fair. But where do unborns feature in this rights equation? The truthful answer is that they don't. And we should stop treating them as if they do, since, whatever the metric used to assign rights, they wouldn't qualify. Prospective humans aren't alive. Hence they don't feel or suffer. And they can't construct essays.

Naturally people always will care about their kids. Yet this debate isn’t about them. Ultimately, it’s about the great, great grandkids; the ones you never meet and who will never remember you, where the only attachment is a sentimental and species-ist one.

So let’s rejoice that we’ve managed to avoid the future, and enjoy the present while it lasts.

Buster: babe or bedevilled?

Animal beacon Girton have become the first college to formally adopt a pet. Buster, 7, (if you trust the markings on his tail), is the lucky cat. A plump, black-and-white specimen he was discovered by the porters some three months ago and has since become a college sensation.

Buster has certainly won mixed opinions. One student of the college, Grave McKelvey, described Buster as a 'babe' and 'totally lovely'. Another student, however, claimed that 'it' was an 'abomination', only capable of 'hissing' at passers-by.

And mere months after seeking refuge, Buster is already purporting to be Girton royalty. Favourite activities of Buster include: huddling by radiators; attempting to break into the library (shockingly, without a membership card); and slinking through the corridors around the porter's lodge (probably in search of insider knowledge).

It seems that the feeling is mutual. Girton even commissioned a portrait of him. (Naturally the commissioning proved easier than the painting - the artist had to up-easel and move location on six separate occasions to keep pace with the peripatetic Buster).

This stray cat has been fed by the porters until now. No longer. The porter's magical supply of cat food (not to mention everything else) is running out. So Girton are staging a fundraiser, hoping to use the money gained to buy Buster some more food. Just imagine: every day, little Buster walks 2,000 millimetres to find water...

Women only, please

Very often, perspective is everything. What is funny to one person, may be deeply embarrassing or downright upsetting to another. But some events are deserving of universal laughter. Sometimes, it is worth acknowledging that what happened was, frankly, hilarious. Earlier today saw one of those excruciatingly-awkward-but-retrospectively-hilarious moments.

Two friends (don't be over-awed by my popularity) informed me that Sidney Sussex was hosting the Women's Forum this evening. Naturally, I was interested, not least because I'd been before and found it intellectually edifying. Soon, they'd persuaded me that I should go, albeit separately (because I wanted to grab something to eat beforehand).

I arrived to be greeted by pin-drop silence. Odd, I thought, but maybe the're reading a text. They weren't. Maybe I'm late. I was. I sat down, expecting the tension to subside. At this point, the chair piped up, "this is a self-defining space," she mumbled. "That means men aren't welcome", she concluded.

The tension had reached insurmountable levels. I got up and left, hearing a huge collective sigh as I exited the door.

A threat or a bonus?

"http://ifttt.com/recipes" seems like a fantastic way of short-cutting our way through social media. One of the benefits of this form already is its directness; you simply click on the person you want to talk to, and bloviate. So we've reduced some of the formalities associated with face-to-face contact. A handshake, a 'how d'you do', a nervous smile are all replaced by a simple 'heya' or even a continuation of last night's 'convo' ('...sex is fun, you know').

Now, however, we can even automate those basic and arduous greetings and thankings - the computer says 'hey babe'. All of which leaves me wondering, who am I speaking to? Am I even needed for this conversation to happen?

'via Blog this'

Procrastination

The only conceivable purpose of this post is to distract me from more pressing matters - an overdue essay - glaring accusingly at me, yet refusing to self-complete. Frustrating, you might say.

I've been writing it for over a week now. And still, I'm yet to devise a coherent structure. Sometimes the sheer guilt induces me to write a paragraph or maybe two. (Three is pushing it now). So progress is slow. So slow.

And this is hardly helping. According to some reports, it may even be actively disincentivising the onward march of the keystrokes. That, if you believe in willpower.

Booting gender myths into touch

In response:

You may be mistaking correlation for causation in your reading of the statistics. The fact that men express a higher interest with sport is more likely to be the result of socialisation rather than an inherent interest in sporting activities.

It is easy to see how this arises. Gender stereotyping happens even before children are born. Baby boys are handed squishy footballs and told that manly men take an interest in football, while their sisters are handed dolls and told that sport is a manly activity. So the first explanation for the statistics may simply be that they are conditioned away from sport from a young age.

But even if conditioning does not change women's internal attitudes towards sport, social pressure may shape the one they are willing to voice in public. As in, when the interviewer asks whether they like football, they feel obliged to give the womanly answer since that is what is expected from them.

So yeah, the whole 'interest' thing is a bit spurious, particularly since the study was probably conducted in a biased way by men to trying to prove a point.

(Charlotte is probably also right about the unrepresentative nature of the data sample, by the by.)