A chemist who worked on testing of the Shroud of Turin says new analysis of the fibre indicates the cloth that some say was the burial linen of Jesus could be up to 3,000 years old.

Even if we could conclusively prove that this sheet of cloth was wrapped around the body of a man named Jesus around 2000 years ago, what more would we really have learned?

Testing this cloth appears to me to be an excersize in destroying people’s beliefs for very little, if any, scientific gain. And that’s not right.

The original Guardian article from which the above quotation is taken can be found here.

I’m sorry. It just seemed silly to write a post about a poster without posting a picture of said poster. But it also seemed silly to post a picture of a poster that supported the party I’m criticising. So I butchered it. Anyway…

Is there any more time less appropriate than when election campaigning to be insulting large parts of the population? Probably not.

I’m certainly not of the opinion that this poster was designed to be Anti-Semitic, and I’m not even particular against it on that level. It just seems foolish to start a poster campaign that will insult a lot of potential voters.

But the worst part of this story is the response of the Labour bigwigs, as reported in this Guardian piece:

Labour has insisted that this is over-sensitivity and it can be argued that we now live in a culture in which squads of the thin-skinned are on 24-hour alert.

As usual, despite having made an honest error, Labour can’t bring themselves to apologise. Let me just reiterate on that point: The party which is being strongly criticised for being unable to admit mistakes and say sorry is refusing to apologise for it’s election campaign insulting large swathes of the population.

And, not only that, the party which wants to limit our free speech by virtually reintroducing blasphemy law claims that the public is ‘over-sensitive’.

This was a silly and simple mistake by Labour, but their response has made it far, far worse.

Update:

It is one of four designs e-mailed to Labour members, who were asked to vote for their favourite.

This seems to be something that’s circulating about various news stories, such as The BBC’s. But this is not just circulated by email – it’s also freely available on the Labour website, from where I downloaded it. I am not a member of the Labour party (doesn’t that go without saying?), and I don’t receive emails from them.

Mutant Fish With Human Faces Discovered (Sky News)

Another quality report from Sky ‘Never Wrong for Long’ News.

RFID plans trigger Tesco boycott call

Tesco is too big for this kind of boycott to make a significant dent in their profits. I do think that RFID technology needs more careful monitoring, but it’s certainly the future of stock control. Imagine the convenience it will bring to stores – no more unloading of shopping onto a conveyor belt, products which customers have abandoned on the wrong shelf can easily be found, and stock levels checked at the touch of a button – all of which will contribute to a great saving in man hours, at the same time as making a more pleasant experience for the customer – there aren’t many innovations that can make a promise that big and economical.

However, care in regulation does need to be taken to ensure that the chips are deactivated when the customer exits the store, which, I believe, is something with which Tesco agrees.

RFID is undoubtedly the future, no matter how much people try and boycott it.

Man charged over Kilroy ‘attack’ (BBC News)

As much as I disagree with his methods – it’s not a terribly good idea to go pouring slurry over people – I do think that Kilroy has somewhat walked into this kind of abuse. If he will insult great swathes of the population, does he not expect that he might end up in some trouble because of it sometimes?

I also particularly like the way the Beeb has chosen to put ‘attack’ in inverted commas, and refer to it throughout the article simply as an ‘incident’. I’d just be interested now to find out exactly what David McGraths three counts of criminal damage were in relation to. Three different parts of Kilroy? His jacket, tie, and trousers? I don’t know the details of the incident, but three counts seems slightly excessive to me, especially when combined with a public order offence. Though, of course, I do think it’s right that he is punished.

History is blue. Discuss (Guardian)

Looking at this piece, I’m beginning to think that John O’Farrell has ingested a copy of 1066 and all that. Except this version isn’t nearly so funny.

I also feel the need to point out that the extensive use of blue on this site is not a sign of political affiliation – it’s a sign of me liking that particular colour.

‘Third’ of DVLA car records wrong (BBC News)

Cars would seem a very simple set of items on which to keep a database since, other than ownership details, very little changes from the day they are created to the day they land on the scrap heap. But this report implies that even the registration numbers, which (for the majority of vehicles) do not change over the lifetime of the car are wrong in many cases.

If the Government can’t even manage to keep a correct database of cars, how on Earth am I expected to beleive that it can keep an accurate database of people, which will inevitably have many more variables which change more frequently?

Earlier this month, I wrote to the local council to inform them that me and my housemate were exempt from Council Tax, enclosing the relevant exemption certificates. They then wrote back, requesting my Council Tax. They had applied the certificate, which had my name, date of birth, and address on it, to the wrong account, and so had someone incorrectly registered as exempt, and me incorrectly registered as owing money. Again, this seems a relatively simple process of updating the records of the person whose details are sat in front of you, and yet the council were unable to do this.

If the Government has a proven track record of failures like these, why does anyone trust them to keep an accurate database of information as the back-end to an ID cards system? And is it not worrying that mistakes could easily be made in an apparently ‘infallable’ system, which could lead to terrible consequences for those whose details are wrong?

As I’ve said before, ID cards are unnecessary and I would’ve voted against them. But these recent developments just reminded me how dangerously fallable the system could be.

Following repeated requests, I’ve now ordered the monthly archives in chronological order, which really makes a lot more sense than reverse chronological order. The category archives remain in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post in a given category appears at the top of the page. I’ve also tidied up the Permalink structure a little, though old-style links still work too.

Because of comment spam, I’ve implemented a system whereby a security code will be randomly generated and shown in an image. In order to post a comment, you must type in this security code. I realise that this adds an extra barrier to the commenting process, but I do hope that it will prevent the blog becoming flooded with spam, as it has been on a couple of occasions recently.

I’ve also corrected the minor error that meant that Permalinks for the old system weren’t working on this system – they were bringing up a ‘Page not Found’ error. You should now find that all Permalinks, whether generated from the new or old system, will always take you to the same page on the new system. Using old-style Permalinks, the page will take a little longer to load due to the increased processing time taken to find the equivalent new page, but all of my TrackBacks that I left under the old system will now work with the new system. So it’s a good thing.

I hope you like the changes – if you have any other comments or suggestions, feel free to get in touch in the usual way.

‘This must not happen again’

The Holocaust was an utterly repulsive event, and I don’t think that anyone living now could ever be accused of even considering anything remotely similar today.

But it concerns me that the seeds of the institutionalised and popular Anti-Semitism that fueled the processes that lead up to the Holocaust seem to be being planted once more in the USA – though this time, involving Muslims rather than Jews. I don’t even begin to suggest that the murder of Muslims for their religion has ever crossed George Bush’s mind, but I do wonder whether the Holocaust taught the Americans anything.

Racial profiling may not involve killing people because of their race, but the idea behind it suggests that there is an inherently different morality according to race – and doesn’t that feel like the very early beginnings of something we’ve heard before?

Shipman killed while training as GP (Guardian)

I’d just like to assure you that, to date, I haven’t murdered anyone during my medical training. Nor do I expect to do so. But I’ll keep you updated 😉