I'm crap

It's the last week before Christmas week. Have a I sent my Christmas cards? No! I haven't even written my Christmas cards, including those that have to go abroad. I think that's only one this year in fact, unless you count Taiwan cards, which the Dragon has taken care of. So, if you happen to live in Canada and are expecting a card from me, it's not that I don't love you, I'm just crap. And I just realised that I have friend iN NZ I need to send a card to aswell. I am so crap.

It's going to snow this weekend apparently - oh goody. That means that the entire public transport network will become unusable for several days. We were planning a trip to friends on Sunday by train. Talking of the British transport network, I see that BA is threatening strike action, baggage handlers and check-in staff are planning to walk out at Heathrow and Aberdeen, Flyglobalspan has collapsed stranding thousands, and Eurostar is threatening a strike over the exchange rate affecting meal rates. Might be a good idea to stay home for Christmas.

On the plus side, the buses are still running, though one of those turned over and injured several people in Battersea yesterday I noticed.

There was a big argument here last week about why -1 x -1 = 1. Apparently this is a question one of my colleagues, who is a part time academic at Oxford, was considering asking his potential undergraduates. When he brought the subject up in the office there was a clash of academic egos and it almost turned into a proper riot. It's not enough to say "two negatives always make a positive" by the way, you have to prove it algebraically.

When that riot settled it moved on to how to prove e to the power of pi was greater than pi to the power of e, or something., I went for a wee wee anyway.

I have next week off. I don't come back to work until 4 Jan, Hooray. I'm taking my laptop home with me though. Not to do any work of course. I may update here if I get bored enough.

Did you see Prime Minister Berusconi get smashed in the face with a model of the Duomo? Why couldn't that have been Tony Blair? Tony seems to be frantically back peddling over his reasons for going into Iraq. He's currently about as popular as a dose of clap. It would have been so awful if he'd managed to land the Euro President job wouldn't it?

It's late, I'm tired, going to bed. I like this video.

Genitals

There is a story about genitals in this post, but it's right at the bottom. Feel free to skip the boring stuff and go straight to the final paragraph.

Apparently one in four British teenagers admit to "sexting" regularly. And for those not sufficiently fluent in street speak, that means they send nude, or partially nude pictures of themselves to each other using mobile devices. That is obviously a fairly shocking figure, except of course, you can't believe it. Children don't always tell the truth when you ask them questions, especially when the answer could have a negative impact on street credibility. I'm surprised these researchers don't know that. I have a three-year-old that regularly tells me he's seen a dinosaur. I have learnt to take these statements with a pinch of salt.

The data was collected using a voluntary online survey which was distributed to schools. So far, more than 1,000 children have responded. Only schools in the South West have been involved. It would appear that 39% of teenagers, "admitted sharing intimate pictures and videos with a boyfriend or girlfriend via sexting", and 25% said they were, "personally involved in sexting regularly or all of the time". I'm not sure what "all of the time" means there. Presumably even the most prolific sexters must stop occasionally. The survey also found that 50%, "admitting to being aware of at least two sexting incidents this year."

So, 40% admit to doing it, and 50% admit to, "being aware" of it. Do those figures seem odd to anyone? I'm pretty sure that at any school I attended, if 40% of the children were sending nude pictures of themselves to each other, just about 100% of the school would "be aware" of it. If only 10% of the children not actually doing it are aware of it, that's remarkably well contained. And that rather destroys the conclusion reached by the researchers. They seem to think that the danger of this sexting trend is that it's not well contained and that the pictures will find their way into the public domain. They also claim that if these pictures get into the hands of paedophiles, the children in the pictures are likely to be targets for grooming. That also seems a bit a of a leap of faith to me. I can't see the causal link myself.

Well I'm not going to write this study off, but it appears to be full of holes to me.

I came across an interesting story in the Independent. Apparently a male teacher (44) who worked at a girls' school in Brighton, is in court accused of "grooming" an unerage girl (15) who was his pupil. This grooming seems to have taken the form of conversations covering such topics as loss of virginity, oral sex, and condoms. The conversations took place online, on the phone, and via mobile text messaging. No physical contact seems to have taken place, and all this appears to have begun after the girl confessed to the teacher that she had some feelings for him. Make no mistake, I suspect that these conversations were wholly inappropriate, but they don't amount to "grooming" in any reasonable sense of the word. Apart from anything else, it would appear that the girl has made the first move in this case.

The jury is still out on this case. I hope they are considering the ramifications of a guilty verdict. Being found guilty is possibly going to result in a custodial sentence, signing the sex offenders' register, and the end of this man's career.

Finally, this is a really great story. A man from Wales has landed up in court charged with possession of a pornographic image involving a tiger. He's been specifically accused of, "possessing an extreme pornographic image which portrayed a person performing an act of intercourse with a tiger which was grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character." OK, that's weird but not great. The great bit is the fact that he has also been accused of, "possessing an extreme pornographic image which resulted in or was likely to result in serious injury to a person's genitals". Yes, apparently there is actually specific legislation that makes it illegal in Britain to do something, "likely to result in serious injury to a person's genitals". It makes you wonder how often that legislation is used, and what prompted it to be drafted in the first place.