Fuck off. It’s all taken apart here and here anyway. Nowt to add. Go to those places.

When some comedian emailed me a link to our Bren’s latest foray into the Mouth of Madness™, titled Down with the Dalai Lama, I was expecting an account of an evening’s particularly hardcore chanting, but no — rather than getting down with the Dalai, the invertebrate ‘contrarian’ has laced on his kicking boots, laid into old baldy’s slats, and launched into a king-sized moan about what a bastard he (Dalai) is.

Has there ever been a political figure more ridiculous than the Dalai Lama?

Yes, but who really cares? The Dalai is a ‘battering ram’ in a ‘culture war’ with China — not that Dalai Lama supporters would recognise this. Why are these ‘westerners’ so attached to the Dalai Lama? It seems that many set store by obscurantism, if you consider the cures and soothsaying peddled everywhere — horoscopes and reiki and homeopathic remedies. Many, who have absolutely no ‘problem’ with modernity, are merely revolted by cruelty, and the Dalai Lama appears to them to offer a more humane alternative to Chinese occupation — unless you seriously believe that Tibetans are desperate for the reintroduction of feudalism and serfdom. Still others — hiya! — don’t really care one way or another about the Dalai Lama, but support the cause of Tibetan self-determination.

Granted the Dalai Lama has done really bad things, such as edit an edition of Vogue and appear in an Apple advertisemment — if he’d done Nuts and PCWorld and signed up for the new series of Big Brother he’d be alright.

There is a glimmer of hope in the CiF comments. One wag asks:

What next? Aung San Su Kyi: A Right Bitch”?

More like Your Pets Are Trying to Eat You — Eat Them Now or better The Strawmen are out to get us — we must kill them before it’s too late.

This week we’ve had the excellent news that the British government has decided to overrule a faction within the military which insists that the use of cluster munitions is justified. This despite the fact that the bomblets have a tendency to take the limbs and lives of inquisitive children.

Another dodgy military technology in the news this month is depleted uranium, which is added to shells and armour-piercing bullets to give them added oomph. The problem is that residual amounts of the U-235 isotope present in depleted uranium can persist in the environment for decades, damaging internal organs and triggering cancers. Decontaminating battlefields involves collecting and disposing of munitions fragments by hand, but this crude litter collection cannot deal with the uranium dust that coats the sites in question.

There is a solution, however. Researchers led by Geoffrey Gadd at the University of Dundee have found that several common types of fungi can grow on depleted uranium and digest it. When the fungi are put into contact with the metal, it becomes coated with a yellow substance that includes several forms of uranyl phosphate. These compounds can lock-in the uranium, preventing its uptake by plants and animals.

Obviously the best solution would be to cease using munitions that contain depleted uranium. But in the short term at least the fungal fix is good news. Apart from military enthusiasts for depleted uranium munitions, I imagine that the only objectors are those who claim that environmental amelioration technologies give license to polluters.

Over here

(click the ‘new’ button for more over there).

This Utube is great on a number of levels.

As the source says … “she would give Chris Rock a run for his money…”

Enjoy: