Sectarian

Ah, you’ve got to love a good bit of “OK ’til it affects me” hypocrisy when it rears its head.

In today’s great instance, Isaac Hayes has decided to stop doing Chef’s voice in South Park. Why? Because South Park is “bigoted” and has an “inappropriate ridicule of religion”. OK, now neither of those points are exactly revelations – if you’ve ever seen South Park you’ll know it doesn’t take any prisoners, and doesn’t really care who it offends.

What is offensive, though, is Hayes’ attitude. Over the years (as the creators say in the story) they’ve aimed at Christianity, Islam, Mormons and Jews. And Hayes has never complained. Now, though, they’ve aimed at Scientology, which just happens to be the religion Hayes is a member of. And all of a sudden it’s not funny any more.

How come? Is Scientology somehow better than any other religion? Or is it more of a “Not in MY Back Yard” (AKA “NIMBY”) reaction where it’s OK to take the piss out of something a person doesn’t believe in, but it’s not OK to poke fun at that person’s own beliefs? You know, I think it might just be the latter option…

Actually, I think that South Park might just be one of the more balanced programmes – in that it pokes fun at everything, rather than just one specific item.

Cold Feet

On a day that is, in short, fucking freezing, what on earth would make someone decide to walk to work in sandals?

(I should point out, this was something left over in my head from the other day, when it was attempting to snow first thing in the morning, and was bloody cold, but I spotted one person at the train station who was walking around in sandals. Madness)

Minutes

Gah, how come it takes so damn long to take typed (word-processed) minutes from a meeting, and then convert them from the abbreviated note-form style into a presentable document?

The ones from last Sunday’s charity committee meeting have just taken me somewhere around three hours to re-do into something presentable. Admittedly that includes sorting out some of the financial data into formatted tables etc., and generally make it readable, but three hours is about as long as the original meeting, which means it’s taken me six hours all told to get it sorted.

Thats, like, pretty much a full working day. Bizarre.

Maybe I need to type stuff out better in the first place, I dunno.

PIN

I can’t find the exact list, so I’m going to run this one from memory. Anyway, yesterday’s Times newspaper had a list of the most popular (and thus least secure, most easily guessable) PIN numbers that people choose. In a lot of ways it was really scary how unoriginal people are. In order, they were…

1. 1234
2. 4567
3. 6789
4. 9876
5. 2000
6. 1966
7. 1999
8. 1379
9. 0070
10. 1402

Apparently, 1966 is memorable for being England winning the world cup, 0070 is used a lot by people thinking of James Bond etc. (bit dubious about that one, myself), 1379 is the corners of the keypad, and 1999 is the year Manchester United won the triple.

But the sheer number of people who use “1234” is quite gobsmacking. I guess it’s the same breed of gimp that uses “Password” for their password – of, if they’re feeling inventive, “Secret”.

More to the point, we’ve had PINs now for at least twenty years – I suppose I don’t really understand how people can still get in a flap about remembering a four-figure number. I should, because I found out recently that my father actually writes all his down in his bloody diary – for which he copped an epic amount of flak from both me and Herself – but there we go.

Personally, I’ve never had a problem remembering PINs. I’ve got at least four different PINs for different things, phone banking, cards, SIM PIN and so on, and never have a problem. Mind you, I also have a nasty habit of remembering my Switch numbers too, which just amply demonstrates that actually I need to get out more.

And did yesterday’s predicted Chip-and-PIN chaos actually happen? Did it fuckaslike. Yet another piece of epic “Milennium Bug” hysteria.