In Which I Note That Moore Is Less

Sir Patrick Moore is no more. Many will mourn his passing, and will say such things as “he was the longest running presenter for any television show ever,” and “he helped map the moon for the Apollo landings” and so on and so on. He was notable for having a monocle and drumming up interest in astronomy by twatting about on a xylophone. I have already heard it said that he was one of a kind, and his like will not be seen again. Good. Sir Patrick Moore was one of those people who seemed to deliberately set out to prove the maxim that “only the good die young”. He was a product of a less enlightened time, and his antiquated views evidence this. Here is a man who was sexist, homophobic and racist. On a totally unrelated note, here is a picture of a baddie from the James Bond film "A View to a Kill" next to a picture of a racist astronomer:

Sir Patrick

Bond Villain

During the previous decade, the Radio Times interviewed Sir Patrick to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his magnum opus, The Sky at Night. He decided to discuss astronomy by taking this less than conventional approach:

“I would like to see two independent wavelengths- one controlled by women, and one for us, controlled by men.”

To be fair, the man's right. There is literally no way that a man and a woman could enjoy the same television programme. To the unenlightened interviewer's horror, he carried on talking.

“I used to watch Doctor Who and Star Trek, but they went PC- making women commanders, that kind of thing. I stopped watching.”

Again, he's right. The very idea that a woman could be in a position of authority is a shocking one, unless its being in charge of a television channel for women or being the leader of a knitting club. We shall assume that no-one told him that the longest serving Prime Minister started HER term back in 1979, a full 28 years before this interview was conducted. To be unaware of this, Sir Patrick would have to have his head far in the past, and far in the past is exactly where it was:

“The trouble is the BBC now is run by women and it shows soap operas, cooking, quizzes, kitchen-sink plays. You wouldn't have had that in the golden days.”

Where to start? Yet again, the man is right. The BBC is run by women, although somewhat subtly as the BBC has yet to take the disgustingly liberal route of appointing a female Director General. Quiz shows are a bastion of the ladies- I can think of nothing more feminine than an episode of University Challenge presented by the physical embodiment of all things female Jeremy Paxman. The BBC showed its first cookery programme in 1936, so we shall assume that these golden days of which Sir Patrick Moore spoke of occurred before he was a teenager (he was born in 1923), and probably before the BBC started showing television programmes at all. It would also be fair to assume that the good old days he pined for included terrible working conditions, capital punishment and none of these johnny foreigner types coming over here. Fair to assume? Actually, there's evidence for it. He was noted for his opposition to the Race Relations Act (essentially a law saying let's not be racist because it's a bit of a dick move), and he openly discussed joining the BNP. It's interesting to note that every time I've typed that Sir Moore is right, the computer has offered to tack a hyphen and another word onto the end. Even a word processing program knows that he's right-wing.

“How dare you! How dare you speak ill of the dead! It's not like he can defend himself now, is it?” Ah, so I shouldn't say that Hitler was a nasty man on account of the fact that he's dead? “Well no, but that's different. You can't say that Sir Patrick Moore and Adolf Hitler were similar...” Actually, I can. And will. Unfortunately, Sir Patrick's wife was killed by a German bomb in 1943. This might explain, but not mitigate his attitude towards the Germans. First of all, he referred to the Germans as krauts, which isn't exactly the most PC of terms nowadays. Nowadays? Yes, he said this as recently as 2012:

“The only good kraut is a dead kraut.”

This seems a little extreme to me. I mean, the Germans have some strange ideas about which species are okay to have sex with, but saying that 80 million people are responsible for an event 69 years ago is a bit unfair. He might as well have said you and I are responsible for the massacre at Amritsar, or the invention of Marmite. I'm sure he didn't really mean it. After all, a man as learned as Sir Patrick would be able to see the irony of calling for the death of an entire people when that's exactly the sort of things the Nazis were known for...

Today's Tune

In Which I Point Out That Political Correctness Can Be Politically Incorrect

Right. Racism. In Britain, someone who is black and British would be classified as black British, and in the U.S, a black American would be classified as African-American. So far, so alliterative. But isn't this second term a bit... silly? Certainly if you trace the genealogy of a black American, you'll get to a point when their ancestors lived in Africa, but isn't that true of everyone? Conventional wisdom is that homo sapiens originated in Africa, and then some migrated. Now let's assume that you have an Arab who's from Egypt, and a white South African. If they become American citizens, and go to, say, Harlem, and start telling one and all that they are African-Americans, they'd get a bit of stick for it, to put it mildly. But aren't they just as much African-Americans as people whose roots are in Cameroon or Senegal? This Afro-American terminology just enforces the idea in American minds that all Africans are black. That's an ignorant and somewhat racist view. Why don't they call all the white people European-Americans? 

Today's Tune 

In Which I... Ugh.

I do like the BBC news website. It's a good source of news, not too up its own arse, not too “The country's gone to the dogs ever since Diana died.” It's about as unbiased as it could be expected to be, and it gives fair attention to events happening outside the country. One of the most startling news stories I've found is this:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20523950


For those of you who are so interminably lazy as to not click on a hyperlink, the gist is this- the current German government is calling for beastiality to be made illegal. That means sticking it in and wiggling about a bit, or having it stuck in you and have it wiggled about a bit, with and by animals. “Hurrah!” the more pleasant of you think, then “Jesus CHRIST, beastiality is currently legal in Germany?!?” I was astonished when I read this. Apparently, West Germany legalised it back in 1969, I do not know why. I'm going to have to assume there was a strong political group lobbying for it, and many people marching until they were given the right to fuck a sheep/cow/slow loris. I can't look into this because I fear I will lose all faith in humanity- I'll certainly never look at bratwurst the same way again. “This meat has been individually tenderised by-” “AHLALALALALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALALALALA!” One crumb of comfort is that for ze Germans, the sex with animals is over if they cause them significant harm. Ron Jeremy wouldn't be allowed to go to Hamburg for a spot of zoophilia, then. Wiki answers says that man possesses a 9.8 inch long sausage stick (and that's only the circumference lololol). I wouldn't normally trust wiki answers as a source of information, but again, I am unwilling to research this further. So yes, people in Germany are permitted to have sex with animals unless it causes the animals “significant harm”. The trouble is, you can't really give an animal therapy lessons. How d'you tell if an animal is suffering flashbacks? Also, its ability to provide testimony in court would be suspect at best- “So, Rover, can you point to where the man touched you on this Scooby Doo doll?”


Did I mention that this story is deeply unsettling? I mean, hurrah for cultural identity and vive la différence and all that, but you're fucking animals for God's sake! This is almost like a German discovering that the British had just started to make rape illegal, and rape only being a bit of a no-no previously if the victim was caused “significant harm”. Worse still, it would be like the Germans discovering that we were considering the punishment for rape to be a hefty fine. They're only going to fine people that fuck animals! No, that's not right, they're only CONSIDERING fining people for fucking animals. Fining people for committing this “misdemeanour” would mean that the German people would equate buggering a badger to be in the same area as fly tipping! Ugh. It's going to take a lot of mind floss for me to be able to get over this one...

Today's Tune

In Which I Enjoy Sinking to New Depths

One of the things that you might not know about me, but would square with everything that you DO, is that I like participating in flame wars. That's not to say participating in a war where the Americans try and burn down Canada, and instead have the White House and the Capitol Building and the treasury torched by the British. I mean getting involved when someone says something on the internet and then someone violently disagrees with it. The traditional forum for this discourse is Youtube comments, and my somewhat unique style is engaging people in cogent debate whilst being backed up by facts. There are a few scientific laws which the internet adheres to, and on of them is Godwin's Law:

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

For those of you who are not familiar with this sort of thing, it might take this sort of form: “even tho he isnt doing it th best he cud, Obama is tryng to save the counrty.” “Thats bs obama is hitler.” These are the heights of Elysium of which we can expect discussion to rise. So, I was watching a video of Paul Merton presenting Room 101, a show about celebrities' pet hates that they get to “banish” to the eponymous chamber of hell. Alexei Sayle was the guest for this episode, and one of the things he chose to get rid of was the Cirque Du Soleil, a sort of weird post modern Canadian circus where not a single custard pie is thrown. Please bear in mind that I didn't check back daily to see if someone had replied to my comments, Youtube e-mails me when that happens. With that in mind, I include a transcript of the conversation below:

Anything out of Canada is shit.
Topite 8 months ago

do you like telephones? insulin? electric ovens? or hey if you're a girl the wonderbra is Canadian. Yeh...everything out of Canada is really shit...thank god we have the US eh!
88adamjohn in reply to topite (Show the comment) 5 months ago

Alexander Graham Bell had U.S citizenship as well as Canadian (Scottish too, he was born in Scotland. Most people think of the phone as a Scottish invention, and that even that was stolen off of Elisha Gray, an American) and Canada didn't invent insulin, it's what the body produces and the Wonderbra was trademarked in the States. Come on you Canuck, you can do better than that?
chenkton 4 months ago

You are an illiterate and incorrect in your findings.

Please correct my spelling you pompous jack of nothing because im sure your a troll with no actuall knowledge...
That you can find the time to be so ummm...lets say, "notoriously pathetic pilgrim"- defetes the purpose of any comment you have being held apon this vid...

Go find something informative to spew nonsense at while the rest of us have a laugh.
 Or better yet something simple for you, shut up please you rude under educated wanker.
technicolournaruto in reply to chenkton (Show the comment) 6 hours ago

Deary me. There's you calling me an illiterate, despite being unable to spell defeats, actual, and upon. These are rather basic words that are taught to people who are quite young... Is English your second language? Your punctuation and grammar's a wee bit off too. That I can find the time to write fifty or so words is rather shocking, I must admit, but surely it's even more distressing that you take time out of your busy schedule to do the same? So in conclusion, less hypocrisy please.
chenkton in reply to technicolournaruto (Show the comment)

After this little exchange, technicolournaruto deleted his comments, and most likely felt very bad about himself. Being petty's fun..

Today's Tune