Apprentice Pope

With the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, The Hole See is unfamiliar territory.

Fortunately popular culture has learnt a lot about how to best promote the previously dull selection process.

We now know that to succeed to the top today's candidate cardinals must be brash, arrogant and have ready-prepared cheesy but memorable sound bites. And if your recruiting for a successor, what you also need is the assistance of Nick and Margaret.

11 Cardinals, 1 Papacy, but which one has what it takes to become... The Pope.

Heading to Rome, 11 ambitious cardinals keen to lead the Catholic Church.

8AM. The Vatican

Pope Benedict XVI will see you now.

Self Portrait: An Image of my Soul

The eyes, they say, are the window to the soul.

I am, alas, deficient in the soul department to the tune of one. As a rationalist, I prefer to concede that I am a mere curious and improbable sequence of naturally occurring molecules rattling around an infinitesimal yet rather fortuitous point in space and time. No more.  No less.

Nonetheless my innate human arrogance (as evidenced by this self indulgent blog post), leads to the overwhelming conviction that I am far more than the sum of these unpretentious constituent parts. This conviction, I suspect, is universal.

I therefore sympathise with the premise of the soul, even though the traditional interpretation invokes a rather whimsical supernatural definition that sits disagreeably in my empirically evidenced world.

In the absence of a shiny faced physics professor adorning their Sunday night TV screens, perhaps the early architects of the now established faiths each factored in the notion of an ethereal element of the self to account for the delta in their reckoning of the sum of constituent human components and the wonders of life. In much the same way that Einstein concocted the cosmological constant to excuse the fact that his theory of relatively was slightly shy of the then anticipated stable universe, perhaps the soul was the philosophical fudge employed to account for an inexplicable consciousness that is intuitively far more than the miscalculated agglomeration of squidgy grey tissue.

But many things appear to be far more than the sum of their parts. The Dark Side of the Moon is nothing more than a sequence of 7 basic notes at varying octaves produced by a band of vibrating objects. Although as Eric Morecambe once demonstrated to André Previn, the exact sequence of those notes is of the upmost importance. Nonetheless, it sounds far more colourful to my ears than a mere canny succession of pressure waves.

Unsophisticated theologians might view this comparison and conclude that the brilliance of the music comes ultimately from the creative genius of its composers, and therefore argue that we too must require that same creative genesis. But there’s no reason for the body to be any more mystical than the Compact Disc, the essence lies in precious bits of data encoded in it.  I therefore regard the unfathomable elements of both life and music to be derived from simple earthly origins. From our experiences, our relationships, our memories, our family, our imagination, our knowledge, our fears, our cunning. It is this volatile accumulation of stuff that makes us more than mere flesh and the music we hear more than just notes. This stuff seems like a far more satisfactory explanation of the soul.

Having defined a more rational soul, I’m now proud to own one. Furthermore I’ve attempted to visualise mine. Although my natural soul is comprised of many things, it is music that has shaped and defined me most. The music I listened to as a child. The albums I taped from borrowed records I couldn’t yet afford. The first records I bought with the pocket money I purposefully saved. The LP’s I bought with my first wages. The CD’s I replaced them with. The rare vinyl and first releases I watched on eBay before placing my bid and the mp3’s I’ve downloaded.

If you really want to see a person’s soul, look closely at their record collection.

Michael Gove: This Year's Academy

(I'd Rather Send My Kids to) State School

Taxpayer money used to fix, outstanding schools that will not switch
He offers bribes and then predicts
Academy status he'll inflict
He gives a little incentive to ease the squabble
But there's no place here for Schama's twaddle
Building Schools for the Future was labour's model
They call him Govey but he's Cameron's fool
I'd rather send my kids to State School
Oh no a new academy
Thanks a bunch to Michael Govey
I don't want your Kings James Bible
I don't want your Tory misrule
Id rather send my kids to State School

Everybody's got their cut backs
Michael Gove must face the facts
We don't want creation taught
And we don't need a royal yacht

English GCSE's all to cock
even though they passed their mock
teaching unions anger's fuel
Id rather send my kids to State School

Oh no a new academy
Thanks a bunch to Michael Govey
I don't want your Kings James Bible
I don't want your Tory misrule
Id rather send my kids to State School

Taxpayer money used to fix, outstanding schools that will not switch
He offers bribes and then predicts
Academy status he'll inflict
He gives a little incentive to ease the squabble
But there's no place here for Schama's twaddle
Building Schools for the Future was labour's model
They call him Govey but he's Cameron's fool
I'd rather send my kids to State School

Oh no a new academy
Thanks a bunch to Michael Govey
I don't want your Kings James Bible
I don't want your Tory misrule
Id rather send my kids to State School





Source: Cash for academies: Michael Gove 'bribes' schools to change their status

Situations Vacant: Pontiff

Since quickly knocking up and posting the Papal parody job advert last week I've been surprised and delighted to see it popping up all over the interwebs thanks to some kindly tweets and blogs from the likes of Stephen Fry and the friendly Hemant Mehta.

I spotted it again today on Jerry Coyne's blog and when reading through the comments noticed that a helpful pedant had pointed out a gramatical error in the advert. Once I had noticed the error it became extreemly infuriating, so I've had to edit the orginal image to correct it.

I guess it's to late to replace the original image now as it has escaped the confines of my blog, and it's  old news now anyway, but if you do still link to or tweet the image it would be most appreciated if you use the corrected image. Partly so I don't get annoyed every time I re-read my original gramatical cock-up but mainly because I've now stuck my name on it.

Much obliged, Crispian.

The Tragedy of Findus Lasagne Act V. Scene IV

SCENE IV. Another part of the kitchen.

Alarum: excursions. Enter NORFOLK and chefs; to him CATESBY 

CATESBY 

Rescue, my Lord of Norfolk, rescue, rescue!

The king eats more horse than a Frenchman,

Daring an opposite to every danger:

His lasagne is eaten, and all on pork he dines,

Seeking for Richmond sausages in the throat of hunger.

Feed, fair lord, or else the day is lost!

Alarums. Enter KING RICHARD III

KING RICHARD III 

A lasagne! a lasagne! my kingdom for a lasagne!

CATESBY 

Birdseye, my lord; they'll help you to a lasagne.

KING RICHARD III 

Slave, I have set my life upon a Findus one,

And I will stand the hazard of choking:

I think there be six Richmond sausages in the field;

Five have I eaten to-day instead of lasanum.

A lasagne! a lasagne! my kingdom for a lasagne!

Exeunt

A long time ago in a Cyberspace far far away…

With the recent demise of high street giants like Jessops, Blockbusters, HMV and Comet it's hard to understand how traditional businesses can compete with high-tech e-commerce companies.

The premises of high street retail outlets provide huge overheads, how much more so then would the extensive running costs of a Sandcrawler effect enterprising Jawas.

Indeed the Jawa business plan sketched out by George Lucas may have looked perfectly sound in 1977, but to todays internet savvy magnate must look laughably unfeasible.

To survive in a technological age the Jawas will need to adapt.

BTW You may need to open the images in a separate window to read them properly.

But it's far worse than that.

Despite the fact that sound cannot travel in the vacuum of space, most of us are happy to accept that Tie Fighters make a jolly impressive noise as they whizz past. But some things are less easy to accept.

Are we really meant to believe that an ancient galactic civilisation once mastered interstellar space flight, the jump to light speed, laser guns and moon sized battle stations before they had perfected basic social media usage?

Why would Princess Leia bother to take the plans for the Death Star to Alderaan by hand when all she needed to do was simply share them on Reddit so the rest of the Rebel Alliance could access and analyse them.

And why give yourself away on an intercom, when you can simply send a text message without emoticons.

and could Lord Vader make it that high up in the Galactic Empire without a LinkedIn profile.

Furthermore,  why would Luke be sat with his Aunt and Uncle when he could be in his room facebooking them from his laptop.

Finally,  if Vader was that desperate to disclose Luke's parentage to him, why not just send him an email.