Friday, June 15, 2007

 
Fascinating piece here by Brian Whitaker. A suitable rebuff to those who seek to blame the death of Banaz Mahmod on almost anything but the people actually responsible — the male members of her own family.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

 

Get this…

…apparently poor Banaz Mahmod wouldn't have died if the British authorities hadn't been so 'culturally insensitive'. What a bloody nerve.

 

Who’s your dæmon?

Fans of Phillip Pullman will know doubt be aware of the fact that the movie version of The Northern Lights, irritatingly changed to 'The Golden Compass' so as not to confuse our American friends, is due out next month. I gather (though admittedly I haven't heard it from him) that Mr Pullman is said to be happy with the script, which will come as something of a comfort to those of us who were worried that the plot would be stripped of it's anti-religious subtext by the Hollywood machine.

Even more exciting — if you pop across to the official website for the film you can answer 20 quick questions and claim yourself a dæmon! I was delighted to find that mine is a tiger called Thalius, daughter was slightly bemused to find herself teamed up with a grey whippet with an unpronouncable name, and son was not at all pleased to get a goose — he didn't care what its name was. Still, neither of them have hit puberty yet, so there's still time for their dæmon to change. The best thing about it is that you can bring your dæmon with you into cyberspace — just got to work out how you do something technical like that…

 

Cultural excuses won't do

Excellent piece in today's Independent by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, which illustrates once again why justifying archaic practices on the grounds that they are 'cultural' or religious is so very wrong. It's terrifying to think that this sort of crime is on the increase.

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