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News roundup
Monday, July 5th, 2004 09:35 pmIn a day dominated by news of Microsoft's appeal against its conviction of crimes against humanity and Internet Explorer causing holes in Slobodan Milosovitch, some of the more important news may have passed you by.
American English and tastes in censorship have definitely arrived in Britain. The British advertising watchdog, OFCOM has banned an advert for faggots on the grounds that the term is offensive (I should point out for the benefit of American readers that in Britain a faggot is a kind of food). The company claim that no innuendo was intended, though it's hard to believe that with a line like "I've nothing against faggots, I just don't fancy them." Still, it seems to be over-reacting, considering that OFCOM received a grand total of three letters of complaint. And this only a week after Dick Cheney demonstrated his mastery of political repartee with the comment "go fuck yourself". This makes Berlusconi's unfortunate remarks about concentration camp guards seem like the epitome of Churchillian political wit.
Speaking of auto-impregnation, the Telegraph reports that girls as young as fourteen are seeking fertility treatment. Four of them, to be precise - the rest is extrapolation: if four teeny-boppers at a clinic in Swindon have asked for IVF in the past year, then either thousands are doing so across the nation, or Swindon is not the kind of place you want to send your daughter to school. Perhaps Swindon is getting back to traditional values: in most of the world and most of history, fourteen is a pretty normal age to have your first child (the Spartans were considered strange because their young women didn't marry until they were eighteen).
The sport for modern Spartans, cage-fighting, is also causing some controversy in the UK, with calls for it to be banned. Despite the dramatic name, which calls to mind Thunderdome, most of these events are, IMHO, a lot safer than ice hockey or mountaineering, so I am rather skeptical of claims that it leads to brain damage. I could make some snide comments about activities which I think are more likely to cause brain damage, but on to our last item ...
Surgeon's have just performed the first "ex-vivo" liver operation. In other words, they extracted the patient's liver, removed a tumour, and re-inserted the organ. This strikes me as such a sensible way to do surgery, I'm surprised no one has done it before. Presumably there are very good medical reasons why, but it just strikes me as common sense: whip it out, clean it up, put it back.
American English and tastes in censorship have definitely arrived in Britain. The British advertising watchdog, OFCOM has banned an advert for faggots on the grounds that the term is offensive (I should point out for the benefit of American readers that in Britain a faggot is a kind of food). The company claim that no innuendo was intended, though it's hard to believe that with a line like "I've nothing against faggots, I just don't fancy them." Still, it seems to be over-reacting, considering that OFCOM received a grand total of three letters of complaint. And this only a week after Dick Cheney demonstrated his mastery of political repartee with the comment "go fuck yourself". This makes Berlusconi's unfortunate remarks about concentration camp guards seem like the epitome of Churchillian political wit.
Speaking of auto-impregnation, the Telegraph reports that girls as young as fourteen are seeking fertility treatment. Four of them, to be precise - the rest is extrapolation: if four teeny-boppers at a clinic in Swindon have asked for IVF in the past year, then either thousands are doing so across the nation, or Swindon is not the kind of place you want to send your daughter to school. Perhaps Swindon is getting back to traditional values: in most of the world and most of history, fourteen is a pretty normal age to have your first child (the Spartans were considered strange because their young women didn't marry until they were eighteen).
The sport for modern Spartans, cage-fighting, is also causing some controversy in the UK, with calls for it to be banned. Despite the dramatic name, which calls to mind Thunderdome, most of these events are, IMHO, a lot safer than ice hockey or mountaineering, so I am rather skeptical of claims that it leads to brain damage. I could make some snide comments about activities which I think are more likely to cause brain damage, but on to our last item ...
Surgeon's have just performed the first "ex-vivo" liver operation. In other words, they extracted the patient's liver, removed a tumour, and re-inserted the organ. This strikes me as such a sensible way to do surgery, I'm surprised no one has done it before. Presumably there are very good medical reasons why, but it just strikes me as common sense: whip it out, clean it up, put it back.
