..flies to wanton boys ...

I was on something of a high earlier - Igor has emerged from the ether! Those in the know will know how much that means for me - Russia has many connections and people I am fond of, Igor and his family more than most.

But hubris I'm afraid - the Gloucester effect kicked in: Blood shall have blood.

Good Day

• 1935: Penguin paperbacks are launched to make books affordable to all, creating a revolution in publishing.

• 1948: The British Nationality Act is passed, giving Commonwealth nationals the right to British citizenship.

• 1966: England, the host nation, wins the football World Cup with a 4-2 defeat of West Germany at Wembley.

Thank you BBC!

Oh course - paperbacks have cost me a fortune and even been responsible for educating the masses - not sure how good a thing that is.

Some people would question the advisability of extending British Nationality - but hey, look what an improvement to English Food resulted!

And the English cheated in order to win the world Cup.

So, good day!

Suffer the little children

The BBC seem to have been theming their 'On This Day' today:

• 1939: Nazi Germany begins the systematic 'euthanasia' of disabled children, killing many thousands.
• 1968: All forms of artificial contraception are condemned by Pope Paul VI in his encyclical 'Humanae Vitae'.
• 1978: Britain's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, is born at Oldham General Hospital in Lancashire.

Children are central.

The first reminds us that the Holocaust was not only targeted at one group but all humanity - narrower definitions of the term exist, but its origins in the Ancient Greek, ὁλόκαυστον, meaning an offering to the gods which has been completely burnt indicate the modern usage has roots far beyond the modern world.
It was an English atrocity in the 12th Century which gave us its first usage in the modern sense and its first connection with one religious group (quite a long connection too) - although the word was used before the Second World War to describe the treatment of the Armenians by the Turks in the previous world conflict.
It should not be confused with genocide - the targeting of one specific group - for fear of forgetting the mass of humanity affected -

John Donne got it right in his meditation XVII - No man is an island -

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume

Which brings us to the second abuse - one I cannot get my head around at all. How a supposedly benign institution can condemn anything which prevents the birth of unwanted children and forces extra population onto the world is just mind-boggling. Idiocy (like something else in the toilet) rising to the top. Religion at its worst.

Number three though is great (and Happy 30th to the lady concerned) - science at its best.

Technorati Tags: BBC, Holocaust, test tube baby, Catholicism

Cris the Fish!

Being in separate cities or even countries it is difficult to celebrate those passing moments.
Cris, the Fish, makes it through to the final year of his second decade today - I'd love to just sit and have a glass of wine with him (and associated), but it will not be.
You don't need to be physically with people though - when a relationship has secured, it is enough to know you are thought of, (even though it feels better to be with).
My thoughts ... well, need I say more?

Big day:

• 622: The Muslim era begins from the first day of the lunar year of Mohammed's flight from Mecca ('hegira').

• 1918: Tzar Nicholas II of Russia and his family are killed by a Bolshevik firing squad at Ekaterinburg, Siberia.

• 1945: The world's first atomic weapon is tested by the US at Alamogordo Air Base in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Now that is a series of events which can truly be said to have consequences.

Not sure which I'd pick out as the most significant - but each and every one has had an impact on the world I live in now.

Technorati Tags: BBC

Furious Storms

Hail the size of cricket balls! Roof tiles smashed, trees down, rivers flooding - all, if happening in the UK would be international news - because it's here in Romania and only of 'local' interest, no reports on the BBC or CNN!

On this Day

As the BBC are pleased to tell us all:

1789: The French Revolution begins with the storming of the Bastille prison during a popular uprising in Paris.

And pretty revolting the French have been since.

Technorati Tags: French Revolution, French BBC

Wrong about the Williams

Good job I'm not a betting man - I'd have picked the wrong Williams for the title.
What a game - despite all the pundits saying it would be lack-lustre.
And what a pair of players - not only did they hammer it out hell for leather over every point, they took a quick interval then went out and won their third doubles.

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Williams wins Wimbledon!

Isn't it just wonderful that you can say that a day before the final?

One of them will win again - my money is on Serena; but who would have bet on this combination to be in the final in the first place?

I was humming and ahhring over whether I'd bother to watch the ladies, now I know I shall. As I said last year, there is something about a Williams that makes you sit up and watch.

Fascinating too how Wimbledon messes-up the form cards.

On a different note, July the 4th is of course the day the silly colonials lost their final grip on reality and separated from the English throne - It's their own fault - every shot dead child since is a consequence of the 'militia's right to fight and own guns' that argy-bargy spawned - and the stupidity of keeping such a law beggars belief.

Today is a day Poland should hang its head in shame - July 4th, 1946 - the worst post war progrom where 42 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust were killed in Kielce. My own, brief, experience of living in Krakow was stained by the current generation of Poles expressing deep seated anti-semitic sentiments: Some things never change.

Technorati Tags: Tennis, Wimbledon, Guns, Poland, America, anti-semitism

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