Because everyone knows you've got a right

A British backpacker has "defended" himself against the breach-of-privacy charges laid against him for covertly filming a young woman in a 'uni-sex bathroom' at a Queensland resort by saying 'I just wanted to see her naked.'

Spot the weasel word here. Yes, that's right: 'just'.

'Just' as distinct from what? The unavoidable implication here seems to be 'I only wanted to see her naked, which is my perfect right as a man and anyway what's the harm, I didn't rape her or anything so what are you all going on about?'

His lawyer calls his actions 'a lapse in judgement.'

Me, I'm off to the bottle shop to see what Scotland has to offer. Somehow a glass of wine just isn't going to cut it, after that.

Family matters

Just had a text from my 83-year-old father, the latest in a longish exchange this morning, saying 'Point taken. xx' I had to stifle the impulse to text back saying 'Who are you and what have you done with my father?'

All women's fault(line): whoever would have thought?

It's not very scholarly of me, but I'm going to assume that the Doonesbury page, in its 'Say What?' feature, is accurate both in its quotation and in the attribution of the quotation:

Many women who do not dress modestly... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes.

-- Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi

One has heard of the earth moving but one never realised this was what they meant. I guess that little earthquake here in Adders the other night was caused by the number of people rudely bonking other people's wives and husbands reaching critical mass and causing some kind of butterfly-effect electro-magnetic earth-vibration thingy. It was Friday night, after all.

Next time you see someone say 'Human rights trumps cultural sensitivity', this is the kind of thing they're talking about. Mind you, I wish I could say that one never sees this kind of staggeringly wilful, or wilfully staggering, ignorance wheeled out to support ideological oppression and the maintenance of social power structures in the West, but unfortunately it happens all the time.

Sounds like the tip of the Tripp iceberg to me

In today's Doonesbury (see sidebar) strip 'Say What?' feature, in a quotation from this article, we hear from one Bristol Palin.

Who? I hear you cry, and people, I cannot tell you how grateful I am for the fact that one needs to be reminded who she is; it could so easily have been very different. No, c'mon, you remember Bristol Palin: the one who could have become the US's first Second, or, if we and Senator John McCain had got seriously unlucky, first First Daughter.

Sounds as though the bonding process with the first Almost-Second Grandchild might be a tad rocky. That, or someone needed better sex education and access to contraceptives. For here is what she said:

"If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex. Trust me. Nobody."

Can it be possible that she thinks every other teenage girl is as ignorant and unprepared as her Mommy made sure as she was? Does she have any idea what a devastating indictment this remark is of her mother?

I really am having a bit of trouble getting my head around this one. What was she expecting, a pony?

Obama controversy

And in breaking news just in from my friend R ...

Obama's Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy
Stunning Break with Last Eight Years

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.

Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama's appearance on CBS' "Sixty Minutes" on Sunday witnessed the president-elect's unorthodox verbal tic, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.

But Mr. Obama's decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since after the last eight years many Americans may find his odd speaking style jarring.

According to presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota, some Americans might find it "alienating" to have a President who speaks English as if it were his first language.

"Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are in agreement," says Mr. Logsdon. "If he keeps it up, he is running the risk of sounding like an elitist."