S’all over

Yatta! Exams are over!

Baby got Gilbert and Sullivan Back

Theory exams over. Now I’m revising (lol) for the practicals, so here’s a video that made me giggle - Sir Mix-a-lot’s Baby Got Back, Gilbert and Sullivan style:

It’s the beef of the sea

I’m told this is a real Australian advert… :/

Fish!

Without making it obvious what I’m currently revising, I absolutely love this Wikimedia Commons image of how glaciers work, originally apparently from NASA

Educational and fishtastic!

The Hysterical Masses vs the PDA Police

Once again, the blogosphere (I love that word) is awash with people expressing their disgust and outrage at how our once free society is being stripped of our civil liberties.

[Not that I've ever done that]

This time, an article from that reputable journal of opinion, The Sun, set it off:

Alton Towers’ new PDA ban

The much quoted line (and it makes up around 20% of the article):

Any parent seen tapping on a PDA will have it confiscated by special wardens at Alton Towers.

Predictably, this set off the geek brigade. They’re going to steal our PDAs?! Our PDAs, which we use for everything in life? The story was pretty soon picked up by two news sites that I generally trust (ish) - Slashdot and BongBoing (with the fantastic headline “Amusement park hires parenting cops to confiscate smart phones/PDAs”). I won’t quote the comments here - go read them for yourself.

To be fair, if I thought someone was going to steal my beloved, held-together-with-sticky-tape XDA, I’d be pretty pissed off too. I’d probably be on here writing a rant about it! However, I actually went and RTFAed. From the Alton Towers press release:

Alton Towers Resort will be piloting a “PDA Free Zone” during May Half Term (May 25th - June 1st inclusive), to encourage parents to disconnect from the office and reconnect fully with their families

It even includes a scary picture of those mean PDA police!

What amuses me most is the BoingBoing comments - part way down, some poor sensible soul suggests reading the original press release. A few people pick up on this - unfortunately the majority just add a “me too!” message of indignation along the lines of “I use my PDA as a phone, it’s up to me if I want to send emails, yadda yadda”.

Firstly, I like the idea. People don’t spend enough time just having fun. And secondly, no-one is going to “steal” your phone because you were taking a photo of your kids with it. The point is just about chilling out with your family and friends, which some people have obviously forgotten how to do.

Please, lets calm down, and go back to using The Sun to look at fake breasts than treating it as a sensible news source (for Pete’s sake, it’s owned by Murdoch!).