Daisy chains

My sources tell me that it is currently too darn hot in the south of England. Here au Canada at least à l'ouest, it has been pleasantly warm and I for one would be a happy bunny if'n it didn't get any warmer.

Yesterday I spent a happy afternoon and evening chained to my computer, which I really rather like, finishing up a couple of tasks. Around me things continued and changed, the sun moved overhead then sank into the west, Kevin took the girls to the Mall, collected them and then barbecued for us. Later in the evening they watched 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose' which is one hell of a loud film, and we watched 'The Motorcycle Diaries' which isn't particularly.

On Netdoctor this morning, I see that next to each other are the usual conflicting messages about weight. On the one hand, girls who are overweight when young may die earlier, on the other, there is a pre-emptive loss of weight in women who go on to develop dementia. Beware the Ides. It certainly isn't suggesting that you should avoid losing weight in later life, but rather that if your weight is taking an unexpected downward trend in later life, then it could be signalling trouble.
I can foresee the day when instead of leaping like a startled small furry animal everytime the words 'die younger' appear, we might look at the article with renewed interest.
'Ooh, die younger,' we might say, 'that'll save a lot of misery later.' Let's face it, if the weight loss were actually causal in dementia, who wouldn't take the weight gain in earlier life and avoid the madness? Yeah, ok, I KNOW I'm torturing this one to my will, but it's one of the ways of avoiding dementia.

In other news, now inappropriately blonde Avril Lavigne has married someone called Deryck Whibley. How wrong is that? In the first place, Derick in any of its spellings is not a name for a man under the age of 60, and in the even more first place, it's pretty obvious that Deryck Whibley is a thinly disguised form of the name Dwayne Dibley, the ultra geeky alter-ego of the Cat in Red Dwarf. Just check out the photo and you'll see that it is indeed Dwayne Dibley. Avril had better hope he turns back into the über cool Cat.

Canadians are being warned not to travel to the Lebanon under any circumstances. Phew, thank goodness someone mentioned that, because it's not something you can work out for yourself.

In Britain, the Teaching union NASUWT is calling for teachers who are members of the British National Party to be banned from teaching.
I dunno.
Simmi gave me the heads up on this one a couple of days ago, a teacher working in a pupil referral unit has been given classes that only contain white kids which has sparked a lot of controversy. Ten percent of the kids in the PRU are non-white.
It seems to me that if the British National Party with its stated racist aims is allowed to legally exist in the country, then you can't just decide to ban their members from doing any job. It's like the preposterous old argument, fortunately long since died an official death, that homosexual men shouldn't teach because every gay guy is a kiddie-fiddler. What pure garbage from people who can't deal with their own prejudices and or sexuality.
I don't like the idea of the BNP and I think that its tenets are unconstitutional, but it doesn't automatically mean that their members carry their political ideals into the classroom. I have known several teachers who were members of the communist party and they managed to teach very effectively indeed without proclaiming Marxism at every moment. Likewise people's religious persuasions.

Maybe it's just the heat talking - again.