Observations and musings on life as seen from a western island
On a more amusing but perhaps just as serious topic you should read the Times Online article about The QI equation for an enriched IQ - which can also be found on the QI news site.
I’m a big fan of QI and have learned many quite interesting things from watching and reading their publications. If you haven’t either watched, visited their site or read one of the books then you should be asking yourself: why not?
I read a couple of interesting articles on Richard Dawkins’ web site over lunch today:
The former discusses what sounds like a state of war between ministers and parishoners within the Church Of Scotland. A situation which has arisen, in part, because more people are prepared to question what they are being taught/told by the church. And about time too, I say!
I remember getting into a few scrapes as a kid because I had the nerve to question what I was told in Sunday school, in Bible study and by a few well-meaning (and one or two not-so-well meaning) members of our local congregation. I think the thing that annoyed me most, even then, was that I would never get a proper answer. I was always fed lines that just referred to verses of the Bible and told that because it was written there it must be so. As a result I could never take what anyone in church had to say seriously. So I’m glad to hear that there are parishoners out there who are questioning doctrine; maybe doing so will lead them to some real answers.
One of the other sources of conflict seems to be the introduction of a band to accompany hymn-singing rather than the more traditional organ. If some church members are that deeply mired in tradition then it should be no surprise to them that churches are growing emptier. The organ is a pretty cool instrument when played well but it seems that many church organists play every tune as a mournful dirge or at best in the same slow time. Not very uplifting or cool, especially if your young and full of life and certainly not something you’re going to want to sing along to.
Of course, the bottom line is that if mediators are being sent in then it won’t be long before the pickets are out en masse, blocking access to churches with cries of “Heretic!” instead of “Scab!“.
All this brings me to the second of the articles about which I’ll say is that Einstein got it absolutely right! 
Well, David Weir is the luckiest man in Scottish football!
I read about Craig Levein’s concerns about the refereeing of the game between Rangers and Dundee United this weekend and thought it all sounded a bit extreme. However, I’ve now watched the highlights and I have to say that official-wise things look pretty shambolic.
David Weir brought Noel Hunt down inside the box to deny a clear goal-scoring opportunity = Penalty! Red card! The referee looks at it and gives nothing even though the highlights and action replays clearly show Weir bring Hunt down. Then Dundee United had the ball in the back of the net (Goal!) following a shot which was obviously deflected off David Weir and yet, the assistant referee gives an offside decision against a Dundee United player who isn’t interfering with play and couldn’t even have reached the ball if he had been.
Later Daniel Cousin uses his head to butt a Dundee United player in an escalating case of handbags at two paces following a tackle. Both players were yellow-carded but clearly Cousin should have been sent-off for confusing Ibrox with a wrestling ring - easy mistake to make some might say 
.
Had all of these incidents been dealt with correctly then things could have been very different but there, of course, is the rub. I don’t know if Craig Levein is right to claim a bias in favour of the Old Firm in these situations but I certainly think that the ongoing brouhaha over Rangers’ chance to win 4 trophies and their fixture backlog is preying on minds throughout the footballing sphere and damaging their impartiality.
Saturday’s referee, Mike McCurry has had the decency to come out and admit his mistakes but his apology does not make up for Dundee United missing out on a chance to play in the UEFA Cup next year. Nor does it excuse such poor application of the laws of the game. Obviously the SFA can’t change the outcome of this game but they do need to do something about the standard of refereeing in Scotland - apologies from referees are becoming all to common on the SFA’s Whistleblower site and these are more damaging to the credibility of the Scottish game than the fuss over Rangers’ congested end of season timetable.
In Uist and Barra the populace have access to their sports centres 7 days a week. In Lewis and Harris we do not share that privilege. This creates an imbalance in the level of service provided by our local council which is unjustifiable in light of pleas such as the one made by Dr. David Rigby, the Chairman of the Western Isles Health Board’s Coronary Heart Disease Managed Clinical Network. It is also an infringement of the rights of the population of Lewis and Harris.
The local council claims that there reasons for keeping the sports centres closed is not religiously based. I suspect that it is, at least in part, as some councillors are church-goers and others are afraid of offending members of the community who are church-goers - I imagine because of the impact on their seat in the next election.
As with Sunday sailings of the ferry, we should have the right to choose whether or not we use these services - paid for with our money whether raised by the council tax or taxes raised by the overnment in Westminster - irrespective of any concern over one’s religion or one’s seating arrangements.
That’s why I signed the online petition asking for Sports Centres [to be] open 7 days a week in Lewis & Harris. I urge anyone who reads this post to do the same.
Okay, so I’ve now stumbled upon my first site, wikisky.org. This is an online sky map which allows you to search for and view images of stars, galaxies, and other celestial objects. There are some very nice Hubble images on display, as well as lots of useful information, including the coordinates needed if you want to try and see some of these objects for yourself.
As a first site to stumble upon, this was quite a good one as it matches one of my main interests. So we’re off to a good start!
I figured it might be worthwhile joining StumbleUpon to see if that:
I’ve set up my profile and installed the toolbar so now I’m going to Stumble! and see where that takes me - sounds like a bad trip home from the pub on a Friday night.
I guess that the tupperware party must now be a thing of the past. Why? Well, our American cousins have moved on to something altogether more stylish and, well, dangerous: the Taser party.
I mentioned this to one of my work colleagues and he said that he “can’t think of a worse place to be than a room full of partying women armed with tasers.”
Given that at least one of the women mentioned in this article said of the taser that she “thought there would be more of a kick to it, becasue I’ve shot guns before”, I suspect that in America at least, there probably is a worse place to be.
As Ranger’s continue their attempt to inveigle their way to 4 trophies in one season, Iain sums it all up very nicely.
If Celtic were trying to get the SPL season extended there would be hell on at Ibrox! Imagine if, in 2003, the SPL had ‘helped’ Celtic to win the UEFA Cup? What would the Ibrox contingent have had to say about that? The air would almost certainly have been blue for miles and miles around Rangers’ stadium.
I see in the news today that if you are a British citizen with a criminal record you can’t get a job working airside at a UK airport. But, of course, if you are a foreign national with a criminal record you can?!? I guess that’s just what you need to know if you’re intent on masterminding a scheme to steal from traveller’s baggage, smuggle drugs, commit an act of terrorism, etc.
Apparently it would be too time-consuming and complex to check with agencies overseas to determine if a crime has been committed by someone who’ll work in a sensitive area. Mmm, I wonder how our government stacks that against the time and complexity required to process the bodies in the event of an airside terrorist attack?
Clever Britain!
As those who inhabit this nook within the blogosphere will know: Tesco is coming to Stornoway.
Most of the people I’ve spoken to about this see the arrival of a major supermarket in the islands as a good thing. A very good thing! There are some rumblings about Sunday openings and Sunday licenses from the usual quarters but what’s important is that we should see a better range of food available and at better prices than we have previously. Good old fashioned competition!
Of course, our other major supermarket views this somewhat differently. The Co-op clearly view the arrival of Tesco as a threat. So much so that on one hand they’re bombarding us with adverts reminding as about how good they’ve been to us over the years and as a result where we should be placing our loyalty. What about the other hand? Well, with that they’re putting up their in store prices across the board in order to screw us for as much as they can boost their profits before Tesco arrives.
Naughty Co-op!
Now I know where the Co-op’s loyalty lies (with ye olde pounde sterlinge) you can all probably guess where I won’t be shopping over the next few weeks. I hope that the few remaining independent local retailers on the islands will see an uptake in sales as other shoppers vote with their wallets.
