Well to be fair, we've been to the zoo, Colchester zoo that is. The pics are up in a gallery now. It was a lot of fun but to be fair it would have been nicer if there weren't quite so many children there. Ah well, das ist Leben ;)

Apparently there are some very outspoken and utterly moronic public figures here in the UK, first up is Michael Gove, Education Secretary (seriously? This guy is possibly the least qualified person for the job) who believes that whilst the law prohibits discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation such provisions should not apply to the teaching materials in 'Faith' Schools.

Then there's Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury and a walking anachronism. He's a fucking idiot too, he and Michael Gove should host a bigots only tea party. As for his statement about gay marriage:

"If marriage is redefined, those who believe in traditional marriage will be sidelined. People’s careers could be harmed, couples seeking to adopt or foster could be excluded, and schools would inevitably have to teach the new definition to children. If marriage is redefined once, what is to stop it being redefined to allow polygamy?" - Lord Carey, writing in the Daily Mail here

Really? Explain to me exactly whose lives will be negatively affected by allowing gay couples the same matrimonial rights as straight couples or shut the fuck up and stop trying to rationalise your own irrational prejudice. It's blanket statements like that in which he spreads FUD whilst citing no evidence or tangible reasoning whatsoever that make my blood boil. In the Daily Fail article he claims that studies show that countries that allow 'non-traditional' marriages are less stable and have higher levels of 'serious crime'. Is that so? Y'know which countries have already recognised and legalised gay marriage? Let me give you a little list.

• Argentina
• Belgium
• Canada
• Iceland
• Netherlands
• Norway
• Portugal
• South Africa
• Spain
• Sweden

And here's a list of countries that recognise civil unions and registered partnerships:

• Andorra
• Austria
• Brazil
• Colombia
• Czech Republic
• Denmark
• Ecuador
• Finland
• France
• - New Caledonia
• - Wallis and Futuna
• Germany
• Greenland
• Hungary
• Ireland
• Isle of Man
• Jersey
• Liechtenstein
• Luxembourg
• New Zealand
• Slovenia
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom
• Uruguay

Note that Britain/UK already recognises civil partnerships and yet the sky still appears to be up. Now let's have a look at the statistics for national crime rates of all these countries compared and see how they stack up. Notably Lord Carey doesn't define what he considers 'serious' crime, so as a metric I'm going to go by murder rate. I think murder is a pretty serious crime and I'll be using the statistics gleaned from here. I'll use the data from the 2000s table as that actually includes several countries that aren't listed in the other slightly more recent data set and I'll even put them in order for you cos I'm nice like that. In order to prevent skewed table results I've removed countries/regions for which no data is available, it's also notable that the following data is relevant to Baroness Warsi having a whinge about 'militant secularisation threatening Europe', seriously, she actually said that, so let's proceed to look at how crime figures, gay marriage, poverty and religiosity stack up.

Murders per 100,000 inhabitants

As you can see there are countries here from both extremes of the scale and there is no apparent correlation between crime and marriage law. I really don't see any evidence here to suggest that allowing gay marriage is somehow going to cause greater crime and societal instability. If we look at the % of population living in poverty we get the following picture: (data sourced from here. Countries for which no data is available have been place at the bottom of the table.

Factoring in poverty

I'm really not seeing any evidence here to support Lord Carey's claims however there does appear to be a slight correlation between poverty and increased crime but I suspect a plethora of cultural factors are at play there as well. But maybe Lord Carey's other area of study, Religion will make people better individuals? Lets throw in the data from here. Once again listed from most to least.

Factoring in Religion

I'm still not seeing much in the way of correlations here, certainly no indication that legalising gay marriage will bring about some kind apocalypse as Lord Carey appears to believe. The only thing I can draw from this at the moment is that extreme poverty and crime tend to go hand in hand with high levels of religiousity. So Lord Carey I challenge you to actually show us the evidence that backs up your bigotry. It's time to put up or shut up and to be perfectly honest I'll very, very surprised if you can find anything that stands up to even the most cursory scrutiny.

A couple of weeks ago I ordered a new PC, thing is I've got a whole load of old games that simply don't run on Linux no matter how much I mess about with wine. That and there are a good few modern games that wouldn't run on my old laptops even with Windows installed. So I went online and looked up a good place to order a custom box and eventually found these guys. I had a look through their various models and then spec'd up a custom machine and put the order in. They delivered promptly on the nearest Saturday that was convenient for me and when I unwrapped it I fell in love (don't worry Kiki, I still love you too ^_^). Seriously, I recommend these guys as highly as I possibly can, everything worked perfectly out of the box and now all my games are playable once again. It's a dream come true. I literally spent my entire weekend playing all my favourite oldies: 7th Guest, Privateer: Gemini Gold (technically a modern remake but still awesome), Fallout 1 and 2 (these do actually work really well on linux under wine but the performance on windows is better), Myst, Riven etc.. And now I have a Steam account and I bought "Dear Esther" last night but have yet to play it. I'll see about giving it a go and reviewing it later in the week. Anyway, enough gushing from me, I need to go write a character history for Vampire: Requiem.

There is the most amazing Poe on the unreasonable faith blog at the moment. Check it out here. I reckon whoever came up with the phrase "Homoerotic bulldyke carpet munch humping" deserves some kind of medal.

It's Operation Black March next month, don't forgot to do your bit for the internet you love so dearly.

evilerik: why do I still have 1 and 2p's in my wallet?
TiberiousR: because FUCK YOU, that's why.
TiberiousR: I have two pint glasses full of 1p and 2p coins at home.
TiberiousR: I really should do something about that
evilerik: Women's knickers don't have pockets in them
TiberiousR: I consider this an oversight on the part of lingerie designers
TiberiousR: I shall write to Victorias secret and demand they rectify the situation.
evilerik: I have a horrible mental image of Nick in bloomers full of copper coins.
TiberiousR: You sir, are a filthy pervert.
TiberiousR: I wear boxer shorts. Which, incidentally, are also devoid of pockets.
TiberiousR: I figured you were alluding to the fact that you can't stuff 1 and 2p coins in a strippers thong.
evilerik: wonder bras would be easier if if they just stashed all their copper under their tits
evilerik: jiggly jiggly
alterego: jiggly jiggly
alterego: chink chink
spb: racist
evilerik: fag
alterego: indeed