parents

Currently, I’m rather pleased with myself: recently I sent out messages to a few old friends about my current lacck of PA, and this morning I got a very prromissing response. It kind of prooves my methods do work and that I can sort myself out, sometimes.

This morning, me and my parents had an argument, about who got me where I am today. I think I did a lot of the work, but I wouldn’t have got anywhere without the guys. When I only got a D at GCSE maths, it was they who insistid I could do better. They got me a tutor, and after hating maths for many years, I realised the beauty of the subject, and got a C the next year. It was my parents who read to me and my brothers every night, as children, impressing upon us a deep love of literature. I also remember sitting at the kitchen table, watching dad demonstrate chemistry and physics, which may have began Mark’s love of the subject. My parents got me a computer so I could tap out my thoughts from an early age: my brothers benefited from this too, and Luke is now doing bioinfomatics at university. It was he who made this site.

I do not give my parents enogh credit. They brought up two geniuses and a lazy ninny, but even the lazzy ninny is going to university (apparently it’s quite rare for a person who went to a special school to attend university). I don’t give mum and dad enough credit, and too much grief.

Moors

[img description=”Rageh Omaar” align=”centre”]/images/rageh_omaar_islamic_history_of_europe.jpg[/img]

Before I turn in, I better draw your attention to Rageh Omaar’s documentary, An Islamic History of Europe, which aired tonight on BBC4. In the middle/dark ages, Moors, Jews and Christians lived side by side in Spain. The Islamic Moors contributed vastly to European culture. How sad that we so often forget this.

Anyone but Mr. Howard!

‘Jake R’ left a few interesting comments on my post about the election yesterday, and these naturally need to be addressed. Firstly, he points out that Mr Howard claims that immigration costs this country £2 billion. Be that as it may, the (fiscal) cost of the war in Iraq was $82bn, with the UK paying a large sum of that. See this, for example. Why is it that Mr. Howard was not opposed to spending such large amounts on blowing up innocent people, when he begrudges it to refugees? Moreover, although the exact figure varies from source to source, Howard’s figure is a pittance compared to the total sum of money the UK is making.

So why is Mr. Howard so concerned about this issue? The UK is wealthy and prosperous, and to turn away these refugees would be in breach of the 1951 Geneva Convention, the text of which can be found here. Thus, I feel that underlying all of Mr. Howard’s arguments is basic and bog-standard xenophobia.

Similar things can be said of his attitude towards schools. He preaches discipline and an end to what he terms “yob culture”. This is all very well and good, but Mr. Howard does not address the underlying causes of this culture. More worryingly from my perspective, he has pledged to overturn Labour’s inclusive education policy. Inclusive education is the first step towards a society more tolerant of disabled people; although Mr. Howard claims that many “good” special schools will be closed, most research suggests that there is no such thing. To quote Navin Kikabhai’s “No Such thing as a Good ‘Special’ School – The Expropriation of Education” (2002):

[quote=”Navin Kikabhaiurl:http://www.inclusion-boltondata.org.uk/FrontPage/data39.htm”%5D

Thomas (1997) found that 70 per cent of special schools do not enter any pupils for GCSE, Thomas further went on to use the 1995/6 school performance league tables to show that 93 per cent of mainstream Year 11 students obtained at least one A* – G grade, whereas only 16 per cent of Year 11 students in special schools obtained at least one A* – G grade. This overtly revealing statistic draws concern given that the largest group of pupils in special schools are labelled as having ‘Moderate Learning Difficulties,’ nearly 55,000, and yet in mainstream schools students would have all entered for GCSE (Thomas, 1997).

[/quote]

Thus in wanting to reverse the trend towards inclusion, the Tories are doing a very dangerous, stupid thing. However, when this subject has been broached on this site before, it has caused animosity between me and certain people whose opinions I otherwise respect in the utmost, so I better not go too far into this.

Either way, the above is an outline of why I will not vote conservative. There are, naturally, other reasons, but you get the picture. However, labour is not much better: they led us to war on a lie, and introduced tuition fees. The war I have discussed before, so it is tuition fees which I will turn to. How can everyone have access to education, when you have to pay for it? After all, innate intelligence pays no heed to how rich one’s family is; therefore access to education – all education – should be free. No matter how much Blair tries to sugar coat this issue, it’s still wrong. On the other hand, from a personal perspective, through various Labour initiatives I have access to the help I need to go to university: I can pay the wonderful Esther to help me, and it was labour who brought about Home Help, without whom I’d be stuck. Labour also introduced Direct Payments, which helps out millions of disabled people, giving them the independence they deserve.

Without any reasonable opposition from the liberal democrats, labour must get re-elected. I keep worrying, probably irrationally, that the Tories would cut the DP system and home help. Then where would I be? Stuck at home with…Grandma.

*Shudder*

Election

So, Blair has called an election on may the 5th. It is interesting in that I am not at all sure how I’ll vote. Of course, it won’t be conservative: I find them loathsome, given their backward stance on inclusive education. Their insistence that being opposed to immigration is not racist is frankly laughable: no matter what Howard might like to think, it is racist, and that particular party slogan is an attempt to soothe the consciences of racists who like to think they’re forward thinking. The fact remains that, as a western democracy, Britain has a duty to cater for immigrants, and we have more than enough infrastructure to do so. Further, the Tories’ stance on discipline in schools and crime is archaic to say the least: one gets the distinct impression that Michael Howard would bring back hanging and caning,, given the chance.

On the other hand, Blair isn’t much better. He lead us into a deeply unpopular and foolish war, an action which saw one million people march in protest against him. As it stands, the situation in Iraq is still chaotic, and it does not show many signs of improving. Moreover, Labour’s stance toward top-up fees also worries me – health and education should be free for all.

But what is the alternative to these two cretins? Charles Kennedy seems to induce narcolepsy. I like some lib-dem policies, but nor all. Besides, do the really have a chance of forming a government? Probably not.

As for UKIP, no zarking way!

So, looks like it’ll have to be labour. They lead us into a foolish war, but they’re better than the Tories. How sad – is this the state of British politics? We’re voting for the least worst candidate, rather than best. What a terrible state of affairs.

lmao moment

by far the funniest occcurence of today – and one that has to be recorded – was my broother pronouncing Papys as ‘peppies’. When I heard that, I simply sannk to my knees and howled. Wooohoo.

Mind you, it tells you what a trruly dull day it has been. Did a bit of work, watched some Time Team. That’s about it. Cant wait to get back to college next week.

“and so to bed”

It’s a fine day, and I have been out in my chair. Through Bilbo Baggins, Tolkien once said that roads are dangerous because you never know where they will take you. He was right: I can tour town and the countryside around Congleton for endless hours, seeing what there is to see, shopping, talking to people I meet. It’s great and far better than being cooped up inside. There is something about travel that refreshes the soul.

However, upon my return, I found this page open on my desktop. No doubt, Luke found it to encourage me to blog, but I’m grateful that he did. I find it both novel and fascinating: as a historic document, Pepys is invaluable, and the fact that someone has chosen to place it online as if it were a modern blog shows a great scholarly wit.

1Voice

Recently, I’ve been communicating with tamsin Coruthers of 1Voice. This charity aims to teach young disabled kids to use communication aids through rolemodelling. This is a great idea – you have no idea how solitary lives of young disabled kids can be, when robbed of the ability to communicate. Therefore I must help, however I can. Of course, I can be quite a prat sometimes, so role-model may not be the right term, but I must help however I can.

I was lucky: with what speech I have I am able to brag, bully and wheedle sufficiently, and have a very supportive, if sometimes imbecilic, family. I am, however, aware that others will need support and help, and I could potentially be of service. The right to communicate is inalienable, for to deny it is to deny people free speech, upon which democracy is founded. Given that I have some expertise in this field – that is to say, I can use my Lightwriter with some proficiency – I have no choice but to offer my services. Not to do so would be negligence, and too many disabled people have been denied the right to speech before now.

I will help however I can. There are events to go to. The review of the fun day, appearing in their newsletter which I have in front of me, looked rather cool, although I doubt I could cajole the Lukester into taking me to such an event. I need a new PA! Either way, I’ll look seriously into joining, should be cool.

the schiavo case

this is sick. I like a joke, but to make fun of this poor girl appalls me. as for my opinion on the case, as usual I can see both sides, but I think life should be preserved just in case. after all it isn’t so long ago that people thought us CCPers were brain dead, and I can’t help thinking of anne mcdonald. Of course, the two cases are totally different, but I think it shows hope remains.

Why am I so tired?

Ok, so my blog is back up. Thing is, I’m rather tired, so I won’t write too much, but we went to visit my baby grand-nephew Jake in Sussex. Cute little tyke. Saw uncle Rich, aunt Jill, Adam and Ellen, and generally had a good time. Anyway, here’s a link to my [file=”1″]opera review[/file].

Yay!

I’m back. after a period if about three weeks, I’m back blogging with my own domain. Our server basically screwed up. please update your favorites to http://www.matthewgoodsell.co.uk/ as the old address will not work for much longer

It’s the easter holidays. not much out of the ordinary happened. my fairy outfit made an appearence at the last disco of term. and I wrote a review of an opera I went to see at the RNCM, which was cool. I’ll post said review here soon.

[yawn]

yay. the sites bacck up. lord knows what went wrong. oh wait…thought we agreed he didn’t exist.

rather a dulll week anyway

Michael Behe is a fool.

I am getting worried about our American cousins. Some – but by no means all – of them seem to have taken aboard some truly scary ideas. I was in the bar on monday evening and got talking to two siblings from South Carolina. We got on to the subject of politics, although I’m not quite sure how. What I found scary was that this guy – they were a brother and sister – was very opposed to political descent. He thought that people should always support their government, and protests were wrong.

I didn’t argue, I just got scared. I believe protest is the cornerstone of democracy; without political protest, no government is accountable to its people. After all, was the United States not founded on the back of protest against Britain?

It occurred to me that this was symptomatic of thought in certain quarters of American society, or rather lack there of. I see parallels between this sort of statement and creationism: this is a “science” which seeks to prove that the Earth was created. As such, it is a science with an aim, which itself is not scientific. Science seeks to define and describe things, not prove. Darwin was simply describing one model of how life on Earth may have developed, and it just so happens that there’s a hell of a lot of evidence to support it. Furthermore, evolution is logical: all living organisms mutate randomly, some of which will be (by chance) better able to procreate than others. However, the creationists deny this logic, claiming that we were all created. Michael Behe has proposed an inteligent design theory on the basis that some organisms are too complex to evolve. Keh? Behe has also proposed that ‘inteligence’ itself is a force like matter and energy, or some such gibberish. OK, so he’s ignoring most scientific data, and bending what data he has to fit his ideas. Then he accuses scientists of being in some kind of priesthood. is this a joke? Such arguments are so easily debunked that it is worrying that people cling to them, just as the fellow on monday night worried me.

matt teaches writing

I was in writing 1 today, and it turns out that we are goint to have a lesson or two on writiing online – blogging, fanfic etc. the tutor, however, claims sshe knows nothing about these things, so guess who she asked to write the smegging lesson.

ME!

“Matthew, can you make me a list of sited…?”

[derranged spastic laugh] she has no idea what she has got herself into!

happy birthday luke

jjust having a lazy sunday morning here. the family are sitting in the conservetory in the jammaria (conservetory) reading the sunday papers. last night we went to the italian resteraunt in town – it was lovely. not that this matters, but I wore some cool trousers, with FLIES. i’ve been secretly craving decent kecks recently, not joggers. anyway, the night ruled. the waiters were excellent at makking us all layugh, and the food was superb, if hard to cchew. dad chose somme excellent wines, especially thee chianti.

what we have

what do we have here.

1 undergraduate bioinfomaticist, having used computers since he cam walk… can program the hind legs off a donky

1 phd student in physics, who can take apart a computer in seconds and then e have a troll, using a punctuation mark because sshe or he hasn’t the wit to find an alias. kiss goodbye to your computer!

and now for something completely different

…the arbouritum

It’s somewhere approaching freezing outside, but this place makes me feel tropical. I am sitting in the Arboretum – a place in the middle of the canteen with a high roof. It has tables to sit at, and beds planted with trees and shrubs. There is a palm and a pond with fish. It echoes in here with the sound of water. For some reason it reminds me of Stapely Water Gardens, and makes me feel botanical and scientific, which could explain my recent interest in dinosaurs and natural history.

a bit of housekeeping

well, last nite was cool in both senses ocf the word. I suspected it might freese so i took the chair to the disco; i didn’t fancy my chances of getting home safely. at 11,, security pushed me home, and the plan worked a trea.

I notice quite a discussion going onover my computer. becca vursus dad. its quite cool to have a friend fight my ccornerr for once – i appreciate it becs. however I just want both sides to know one thing: from what i have seen, both parties respect eachother loads. my parents seem rather fond of becca, and becca seems to like mum and dad, and for that matter the Lukester, aka afroboy. thus, if there appears to be annimosity on the reply threads, I strongly suspect it is an illusion.

that having been said, the quite insulting repliees of “.” really do nnot help. moreover, the fact that this person leaves comments while hiding behind a punctuation mark seems cowardly.

i’ll write a proper entry later.

the idiots

the idiots is the second dogme 995 film, and i watched it this evening. i found it both appauling and hillarious. its about a group of young people who ‘spaz out’ i.e, pretend to be mentally disabled, as a form of expression. they take it in turns tto be the minder, and go to public places like the swimming baths, where their assumed disability seems to give them carte blanche to behave abominably. the funniest scene is where one of them leaves his ‘retarded’ brother with a group of bikers, who end up takingg him to the loo. what is telling, though, is a scene where a few people with down’s syndome come to the house, and they act with prejudice.

please note, though, that this film is highly pornographic in parts.

howdy mr. bush

today I just want to say that I for one am welcoming bush’s visit. at last he has decided to mend fences. in iraq, although there is a long way to go, there is democracy, and I’ve always thought that democracy is a good thing. thus, the time has come to put aside our differences and work together.

surely this is a step in the right direction at last.

croisants

i know i shouldn’t laugh, but it was funny. this morning for breakfast i had croisants, but my helper didn’t know how to cut them properly. sh tried cutting them sideways, like a rolll, and squidjing the butter and jam in, then cutting them into chuncks forr me to pick up. You know me – i slowly started to chuckle at these totally desecrated lumps of warm french bread. I then proceeded to eat them, getting rather sticky in the process.

reading

this week is reading week. having written most of yesterday, i spent most of today reading. the fifhtieth chapter of summon the lambs appeared online, and it continues to be a sleek and sophisticated – and rather addictive text. I am also quickly finding how much off s git charlie chaplin was: mr. lynn’s biography of him exposes him as a hard and fast comunist. however, I’m starting to think lynn may be a little biassed. its still an exceelllent read though.

6 degrees!

we just got back from my grandparents’ housse in london. my maternal grandparens arrived in london from cyprus in the late 50s, relatively poor. they met, and raised 3 children. these gave them 6 granchildren.

sitting in the front room of haycroft gardens an amazing statisic hit me: those grandchildren all hold or are doing degrees; 3 are doing PHDs; 2 wen to oxford. oddly, tho, I am unique in studying an arts subject.

Not bad for immigrants, eh mr. howard?!

Evolution

Given the recent upsurge in the debate between Darwinism and Creationism, I will attempt to objectively compare and contrast the merits of the two theories. Both need to be given equal respect if one is to be methodical. However, if one has only empiricism in mind, the discussion will be one sided.

Working in the Galapagos Islands, Charles Darwin proposed that all beings on Earth had evolved, and were adaptive. This happens through the process of random mutation and natural selection. It follows that life on Earth has been in a constantly changing state for millions of years. This gives us a time frame from which to work from. The bible says, on the other hand, that the Earth was created 7000 years ago. This offers us a nice contrast which we can use.

First we can use plate tectonics as a test. The Earth’s crust moves at precise speeds, causing continental shift. There is strong evidence that Africa once met South America. Fossil remains of one species exist on both sides of the Atlantic, suggesting that they were once joined. At current continental speeds, they split about 150 million years ago.

This number does not marry up with Genesis. Moreover, the creationist claim that man existed alongside dinosaurs does not add up. Bones decay at a pre-defined rate, showing that the dinosaurs etc existed at a time which agrees with the tectonic data. If such fossils are only 7000 years old, then our theories about decay must be wrong. These decay rates are based on ions, which are part of nuclear physics. If these decay rates are wrong, it would throw all of physics out the window. The fact remains that there is no mention of such beasts in the bible.

WE see similar tales in Cosmology. When we look at the most distant stars, they appear red. The Doppler Effect suggests this is because the stars are moving away from us. Apparently when the paths of such stars are traced, they all originate from one point – the site of the Big Bang.

However, creationists claim that this evidence was planted by either God or the Devil to test our faith. If so, why did God go out of His way to so convincingly disprove Himself. All the available evidence points to a lack of God, from atomic physics to fossil evidence of ancient fish in the Himalaya. It’s true that I myself have heard this evidence second hand, and thus could have been lied to, but on the sheer volume of evidence 9including my experiences at Hebden) All my instincts rule out the existence of a creator. One can argue even with this, but then one might argue forever. What, then, is the purpose of asking the question?

interesting project

I heard about this while I was eating breakfast. it’s quite an interesting project, and I think it would be good for preservation, which I strongly believe in although I reserve the right to eat meat. however, I think it’ll take two or three centuries to complete. good luck to the scientists!

Not that we see much of that around here! we at alsager are too busy playing football and hockey in the name of sport science to do much proper science. what the smeg is sport science anyway?

whatever it is, it seens to be rather noisy.

titarses!

god frigging dammit. microsoft wants me to install the new msn messager, but my pc won’t let me because of the security protocol bullshit luke set up. now i can’t talk to anyone.

NOT FUCKING HAPPY!

curr du drake

I read last nnight that ellen macarthur has beaten the record for sailing around the world. she impresses me a lot. if it was up to me, i’d comission her as an admaral in the royal navy.

ouch, my ‘ead

boy, did i overdo it last night? started off ok, but my friends kept topping up my beer. the disco was rather cool, and at one stage tthey played Greenday’s Basketcase, which is one of my all ttime favourite songs.