Deaf Note

There has been a report this week that mobile phones 'show no evidence of harm to human health' .... the report by the UK's Health Protection Agency confirmed that hundreds of studies of mobile exposure had found no conclusive links to cancer risk, brain function or infertility.

However has anyone considered the possibility of mass deafness in the coming decades, caused by generations of people playing very loud music on Walkmans, MP3 players and phones, via ill fitting earphones jammed onto their eardrums?

Old Fashioned File Sharing

 
There is some evidence that was published in the journal BMC Neurology, that those listening to loud music in this manner for more than an hour every day are more likely to suffer headaches than others, but no evidence gathered on the long term consequences for hearing ..... and I include the poor person sitting next to them on public transport in this thought.

Going Native

In India, its cricket, not football that attracts the big money and the big crowds, and the real BIG MONEY is in the 20/20 form of the game (20 overs of bowling and 20 overs of batting), known as the Indian Premier League cricket. These games are played at night and are packaged for television with all the razzmatazz of the US Super-bowl, and this includes cheerleaders.

Western Women Perform For Indian Cricket Fans

Up to now the cheerleaders have been 'western style' ..... with skimpy uniforms and raunchy routines, both considered too risqué for 'Good Hindi' girls to perform, so they imported western women (who are considered to have less morals anyway), to dance for the titillation of the Indian male cricket fans.

Picture Worth A Thousand Words

Pictures sometimes tell you all you need to know about the way the wind blows in a place .....

Muslim Brotherhood Libya - First Conference

In Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood had its first political conference ever last November. It was a strict affair, Men on the front two rows, Women at the back ...... but wait, what have we here?  

If You Hide Your Face ....

A woman can join the front two rows. But only if she's prepared to cover her whole face, wear gloves, and sit with an empty seat  between her and any man (can't be too careful of those lustful glances). To be fair, the temporary Libyan authorities have banned the formation of political parties based on religious principles, ahead of elections scheduled to take place in June ... but no one expects this to last..

Lessons Of History

Spain is in full-blown economic meltdown .... a 'depression' rather than a 'recession', with the overall unemployment rate at 23.6 per cent, which is comparable to the US/Europe in the depths of the Great Depression of the late 1920's and 1930's (with the youth unemployment rate over 50 per cent) .....

Communist and Nazis Street Fights - Berlin

This simply can’t carry on without risking the kind of social breakdown last seen in the 1930's (Street fighting and extreme political parties on the march .... Communists and Nazis), as the rise of the Far Right and Left in France, and perhaps more worryingly the Far Right  'Chrysi Avgi' ('Golden Dawn') in Greece illustrates.

Extremist Parties Rise In Economic Crisis

This is an era that modern Europe is starting to replicate in ever more faithful detail.

Greek Political Factions Fighting Over Economic Ruins

The 30's depression only ended after countries exited from the gold standard, which is the equivalent  of an exit from the Euro today, and the restoration of national currencies .... as an alternative to carrying on imposing ever-harsher austerity on countries that were already suffering Depression levels of  unemployment. However its the course of  imposing ever-harsher austerity that the European governments and ECB have reinforced.

It's hard not to conclude that rather than admit that the policies being followed are wrong, most European leaders seem determined to drive their economies and their societies into the ground  ..... you would think the Germans and the French leaders would be worried. Certainly many others fear that the whole world may pay the price.

Sarkasm

There have been press reports that Sarkozy is the most 'hated' President in French history ... the suggestion is that its because he tried to break the cozy political French establishment which existed post war, in which the intellectual arguments were always on Leftwing terms ... the Right was only allowed to say that they could manage the socialist structures of France, better than the socialists could.

But then Sarkozy came along and said that the Right had valid arguments and philosophy's, and started to enact them .... cue 'hatred'. Irrational it may be, but heart felt it undoubtedly is. The film director Mathieu Kassowitz was reported as having said that if Sarkozy wasn't knocked out in the first round of the presidential elections, then it would show that France was a "neo-fascist collaborationist" country ... whatever that may mean.

Pres. Sarkozy - Hated By The French Leftwing

 
He may or may not win the elections, but I suspect that in the privacy of the election booths, he will have more support than the largely left wing (polls have indicated that between 80 and 95% of French journalists are on the left or far-left), French press suspect.  I seem to recall that Mrs Thatcher was (and still is) as hated by the same groups in the UK ... and look at the elections she won.