Forty days without the iPod
IT'S AN INTRIGUING call that senior Anglicans in Britain have made on people – to give up their iPods for Lent, and in that way help save the planet. Usually it's chocolates and booze and that sort of thing.
I don't quite get what they mean, possibly because I'm not entirely sure what an iPod is. I'd always been under the impression it's some sort of device that downloads music from the Internet, and the user then listens through an earpiece.
This does result in people walking down the street with jerky movements, snapping their fingers in time and looking ridiculous. I suspect it might even lead on to male earrings, tongue studs, other body piercings and hideous tattoos.
All this is no doubt highly undesirable and anti-social. But does it really threaten to destroy the world as Richard Chartre, Bishop of London, and James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool, seem to suggest?
Perhaps the iPods they have in mind are something different, something more like Triffids, the evil, invasive carnivorous plants of the John Wyndham science fiction novel. It's a bit of a mystery because Anglican bishops are usually not given to hysteria.
Whatever, the bottom line is that I neither own nor use an iPod. Does this mean I have discharged my Lenten obligations in advance? It would appear so. Chartre and Jones are big hitters, churchmen to be taken seriously. Or is my reasoning flawed?
I tried phoning Archbishop Tutu for advice but there was no reply. I hope he wasn't listening to his iPod.
Global warming
EUROPE and North America have blizzards and freezing conditions. Global warming is a nonsense. We have days of the clammiest heat anyone can remember. Global warming is here.
Round and round the argument goes. Aren't we missing the point rather? If there is global warming – and the bulk of the evidence suggests there is – can it really be attributed entirely to human activity? What about natural cycles?
Reader Greg Pettit sends in an argument based on the Chinese circumnavigation of the globe in the early 15th century.
"We have them visiting Greenland (which really was a green land in the 1400s). We have artefacts depicting life there, complete with sheep farmers. The Chinese went via the North-West Passage. To circumnavigate the earth by way of the North-West Passage, there had to be no solid pack ice north of Canada. Today there is solid pack ice.
"It is colder now than it was in 1412. So before we can complain about global warming, as perpetrated by mankind, we have to get to a warmer temperature than we had in 1412, simply because man started his industrial revolution only at a point after the year 1412."
Either manmade global warming, as propounded by Al Gore, is a load of nonsense or the Chinese explorers/circumnavigators were a bunch of liars, Greg says.
"How many countries and their leaders are prepared to call the Chinese a bunch of liars?"
A fair point, methinks. What think others?
Medical terms
IN THE interests of public health, a glossary of medical terminology follows:
* Antibody: Against everyone.
* Artery: The study of fine paintings.
* Bacteria: Back door to a cafeteria.
* Bandages: The Rolling Stones.
* Barium: What you do when CPR fails.
* Benign: What you be after you be eight.
* Botulism: Tendency to make mistakes.
* Bowel: Letters like A, E, I, O, U.
* Caesarian section: A district in Rome.
* Cardiology: Advanced study of poker playing.
* Catscan: Searching for one's lost kitty.
* Cauterise: Made eye contact with her.
* Colic: A sheepdog.
* Coma: A punctuation mark.
* Congenital: Friendly.
* Cortizone: The local courthouse.
* D & C: Where Washington is.
* Dilate: To live longer.
* Enema: Not a friend.
* Enteritis: a penchant for burglary.
* ER: The things on your head that you hear with.
* Fester: Quicker.
* Fibrillate: To tell lies.
* GI Series: Baseball games between teams of soldiers.
* Genes: Blue denim slacks.
* Hormones: When a prostitute doesn't get paid.
As a further service to readers, the glossary will be continued as space allows.
Tailpiece
Artist: "What's your opinion of my latest painting?"
Critic: "It's worthless."
Artist: "I know, but I'd like to hear it anyway."
Last word
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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