Sim-O

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The Spectator is requesting nominations for its’ Parliamentarian of the Year award and guess who’s been nominated…

Richard Hamilton proposes Nadine Dorries. Hamilton commends Dorries for addressing the issue of term limits for abortion with a ‘tenaciousness and passion that caught the public’s attention in a remarkable way’. He applauds her for explaining how the 1967 legislation has resulted, against the intent of the original act, in half a million abortions being carried out each year and for her courage in carrying on in the face of hostility from her opponents.

For carrying out her campaign with the help of lies, bullshit, half-truths and a blinkered single minded determination that comes from knowing that you are right and everyone who disagrees with you is either a vicious nasty bastard that is out to get you and not just pointing out where you are mistaken or a vicious nasy bastard that wants to kill babies and not protect the welfare of women.

Bloomberg:

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling used anti-terrorism rules to take control of assets held in Britain by a troubled Icelandic bank.

I don’t know what it says more about. The blanket coverage of the anti-terrorism laws, that the government are trying to expand as we speak, or the governments’ abuse of laws.

The Economist September 2008:

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A beaut of a rant from In Through The Out Door But Then Back In Again III:

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no beardy-weirdy, tree-hugging, hemp-snorting, mung-bean sex machine. I recycle, but only because the council’ll fine me if I don’t. And I use energy-saving light bulbs not because they’re easier on the earth, but because I’m a skinflint and they save me money. I’m sure I could do more … if I gave much of a shit, which I don’t.

But the difference betwixt a shitbag like me and the major corporations is I don’t pretend to be saving the world when I am, in fact, pissing all over it. I don’t boast – like they do – that I’m up there with the likes of Alec Baldwin and Sting and the recently deceased Paul Newman, because I’m not. They, on the other hand, pretend they’re saints of the environmental movement … and then go off on an orgy of eco raping and pillaging and hope nobody notices what liars and hypocrites they really are.

The Washington Post:

“Palin was loosely on topic, but a couple of times she really bungled the pivot,” said Daniel J. Simons, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has studied how people can miss things that are right under their nose. “In one case, she made it explicit she was going to switch topics. That was not a smooth transition, whereas if you had watched a McCain or an Obama or a Biden make that transition, they would not have said, ‘I want to talk about taxes,’ they would have answered the question in a way that led into taxes.”

A review of the debate transcripts shows Obama, McCain and Biden all repeatedly dodging questions, adroitly transitioning from questions they were asked to questions they wanted to answer.

In a series of particularly relevant experiments, psychologists Todd Rogers and Michael I. Norton recently showed that most people are extremely poor at spotting even dramatic discrepancies between questions and answers. They found the failure was especially acute when answers were semantically linked to questions — for example, when a question about the war on drugs is parried by an answer about health care. Audiences seemed to notice dodges only when answers were completely unrelated to the question — such as responding to a question about illegal drugs by discussing terrorism.

The psychologists found that irrelevant answers delivered fluently and with poise scored higher with audiences than answers that were accurate, on-topic, but halting. And when they had actors deliver the same answers to audiences — once fluently and once with “ums” and “ahs” — audiences judged the hesitant responses as intellectually inferior to the fluent ones.

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A City of London Reverend has suggested that gay people should have a health warning tattooed on their arses.
Apparently it was satirical.
BBC:

[The Rev Peter] Mullen said: “I certainly have nothing against homosexuals. Many of my dear friends have been and are of that persuasion.

“What I have got against them is the militant preaching of homosexuality.”

What I have against vicars is the militant preaching of religion especially around Christmas when you get stigmatised for being a miserable bastard (or you could say, seen through the bullshit), forced to endure fucking carol singers whenever a sortie into town is needed or encourage to give up something for lent or countless other occasions the god botherers use to shove the almighty down your throat.

I’m not exactly a fan of the Pride marches, myself. But if the organisers get the relevant permissions etc, go for it. I don’t need to shout about my heterosexuality, but then I’m not being told I’m not normal all the time. At least not because of my sexuality.

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…is the response I got to this question.

No surprises as Iain doesn’t ‘diss’ mates.

The Devils Kitchen:

Wandering over, I saw Nadine talking to Dizzy and overheard her say something like, “I suppose that Devil’s Kitchen person isn’t here yet.”

“Ahem.”

Dizzy turned to introduce me, and Nad and I shook hands. “I’m not talking to you,” she said, “You called me a liar.”

“Well, yes. But you did lie.”

“I got those figures from [such-and-such] a hospital.”

“It was rather more the Hand of Hope picture that I was referring to.”

“It was a great picture.”

“Yes, but the point is that it didn’t depict what you said it did. The actual surgeon who did the operation said that the child was anaesthetised and that he pulled the arm out. The baby did not reach out and clutch onto his finger.”

“They are doing that operation more and more. I am going into my local hospital to see it done: I hope to get some pictures.”

“That doesn’t alter the fact that that picture did not, and does not, depict what you said it did.”

And so on and so on; having rehearsed this circular argument for some time, we bloggers wandered out for a cigarette and Mad Nad and I didn’t really talk much after that, or nothing more than desultory pleasantries. There seemed very little point…

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