Organ operation obsession...

The BBC reports on new research published by BJOG (British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology) that more and more women are having surgical operations to create more aesthetic genitalia amid a "shocking lack of information on the potential risks of the procedure".

Operations to improve the appearance of the sex organs for both psychological and physical reasons are on the rise.

Talking of designer vaginas, here's a perfect cunt that's won another prize.

Crisis, what crisis?

Andy Warhol's 1962 [a good year] silk screen print artwork called 200 One Dollar Bills (for obvious reasons) was sold in New York for nearly 44 million dollars - the second highest auction price for a work by the pop artist (click on image for BBC article)

One official option...

Apologies for posting this on Armistice Day but slimy snake Mandy Lying Hypocrite Mandelson is being tipped as the sinister sounding Information Minister: the business secretary could hold weekly televised news conferences to explain government business... [The Guardian]

Here are some tips from someone I think is not too dissimilar:

1. Propagandist must have access to intelligence concerning events and public opinion.

2. Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority.

4. Propaganda must affect the enemy's policy and action.

6. To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.

7. Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be true or false.

9. Credibility, intelligence, and the possible effects of communicating determine whether propaganda materials should be censored.

11. Black rather than white propaganda may be employed when the latter is less credible or produces undesirable effects.

12. Propaganda may be facilitated by leaders with prestige.

13. Propaganda must be carefully timed.

14. Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.

a. They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses

b. They must be capable of being easily learned

c. They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations

d. They must be boomerang-proof

And so on...Based upon Goebbels' Principles of Propaganda by Leonard W. Doob.

Update: Just reading some of the comments on that Guardian link (Andrew Sparrow exclusive) Just hilarious; clearly none too popular is our Mandy.

Once once...

It Is The Soldier...

It is the Soldier, not the minister who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the Soldier, not the reporter who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer who has given us freedom to protest.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Soldier, not the politician who has given us the right to vote.

It is the Soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.

Original poem by Charles Michael Province.

Sorry, just had to post this; a very pretty girl with the welcoming name:

I Getmanova!

Irina Getmanova, 19, a student who looks very much like one of my sisters-in-law, won the Miss Siberia 2009 beauty pageant held at the end of October. (click on image to enlarge)

The lovely Irina was only one when the Cold War officially ended but seeing her in such a competition is just one on the - albeit less serious - benefits of the end of that war; also, today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of one of the most infamous borders ever that came to symbolize the Cold War and the 'Iron Curtain' between Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc.

Photo credit: RIA Novosti, Valery Titievsky

Just as quick update to last week's Overt overpopulation blogpost, do we now have the Whiff of a smoking gun? By David Leppard, Times Online (opens in one-page print mode)

Labour's 'open door' immigration policy knowingly risked allowing dangerous people to settle in Britain unchecked, according to documents seen by The Sunday Times.

"There is the added difficulty that at least 20 Labour seats, including Jack (Straw’s), depend on Asian votes".

With up to 80% of ethnic minorities voting Labour, it is obvious that the more immigrants who get the right to vote, the greater is Labour’s electoral share.

We're talking about law-breaking by ministers and officials at the highest level; another nail...

Observer opens ossuary...

The Observer has opened the ossuary, the charnal house, revealed the bones of the dead; there is no life in Labour now, just a shadow. No meat, just dry bones crumbling; how many more nails does this coffin need banging into it? Secret Labour plan to axe spending on training for young people: "Leak reveals cuts of £350m", "Business fury over jobs plan". Confidential papers have been leaked to The Observer proving that...

"while Brown and his ministers have suggested they are raising investment in training, skills and apprenticeships, behind the scenes they are preparing some £350m of cuts for 2010-11 that will slash the number of training places on offer by hundreds of thousands."

Now we all know that cuts will come and they are essential, but the pile of Brownstuff has consitently "sought to contrast Labour's determination to boost investment in training with what he claims is a Tory agenda of cuts that would prolong the downturn." Tory cuts vs. Labour investment...I know you know and he knows we know but again and again in Parliament Brown has knowingly lied:

"Now more than ever is the time to invest in our young people, their skills and their talents in training them for the future."

Empty rhetoric; I wouldn't mind betting the quaint Brownstuff already has soundbites prepared and written out for 2010 and 2011 when, presumably with a Conservative government, he can savagely decry their cuts...that he made. "What's particularly shocking about this document is that the bulk of the cuts are in front-line services" said Two Brains last night.

In Britain the first official Poppy Day was on 11th November in 1921, and the flower itself was inspired by the poem In Flanders' Fields written by John McCrae. The poppy wasn't chosen for it's historical symbolism of sleep and death although it is entirely appropriate [much of the bloodiest fighting of WWI and certainly among the worst battles in human history - trench warfare, chlorine gas - took place in the Flanders and Picardy regions of Belgium and Northern France: between 1915 and 1916 the Second Battle of Ypres and Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele), Battle of the Somme and Verdun. Names that still conjure up horror that most of us will never, thank God, know; the numbers of dead, wounded and MIA are staggering. Mind boggling.] no, basically, the poppy - a pretty, wild flower but also a hardly, common weed in Europe - was the only thing which grew in the aftermath of the complete devastation (click on image)

Oborne on odurate ogre's oligophrenia...

Peter Oborne in today's Mail online really puts the boot in and rightly so; I sincerely hope most people in the UK now realise that although Brown claimed the credit for the fact that the strength of the economy allowed him to boost spending on schools and hospitals he never once acknowledged that the conditions for his initial success - that he soon wasted by the rape and pillage of Prudence - were due to the actions of the previous (Conservative) administration.

Now, in fact all this year, Gordon Brown is in a very similar position to John Major in 1996 - 97 but there is no sign of the "magnanimity and sense of public duty" shown by John Major (or for that matter Jim Callaghan in 1979).

Very much the opposite: it now looks very much as if he has launched what some Whitehall officials describe a 'scorched-earth policy'.

What is clear, and what Oborne goes on to say, is that Crash Gordon is now "governing Britain purely for partisan or even personal advantage rather than in the national interest." Many have thought this for many months, because clearly, realising that the next General election is probably already lost (not a foregone conclusion but not many will be putting money on a Labour victory!) Brown is basically making sure the next Administration is deep in the brown stuff...oh I say!

Gordon Brown's only motivation in office now seems to be to try to guarantee that Britain is ungovernable if Cameron wins power. Not only is this tactic reckless and shameful, it means that the British people will pay a devastatingly high price for the last six months of Brown's profligate government.

Read more from Peter Oborne. "You may be doomed, Mr Brown, but stop dragging us down too": Daily Mail

Image credit and hat tip to Conservative Home: image and first link take you there.

oligophrenia: n. - feeble-mindedness
obdurate: adj. - obstinate; hard-hearted.
ogre: n. - a hideous, cruel giant of fairy tales/folklore that feeds on humans: a monster: a dreaded person

Our overflowing orifices...

Not only one's orifices, everything; although many strongly prefer the oily sites that our orifices provide. I'm on about our bacterial populations (hopefully you realised!). We're covered in trillions of different microbes, diverse populations; the University of Colorado at Boulder has developed the first 'atlas of bacterial diversity across the human body'; interestingly this diversity "Shows Wide Interpersonal Differences" [Link]

We know from a previous skin map that armpits "Are 'Rain Forests' for Bacteria" [NGN] so I guess it's logical that each human "continent" would have diverse populations albeit with some similarities. Or, as Julia Segre (National Human Genome Research Institute) said about the skin map, "The bacteria in my underarm are more similar to those in your underarm than they are to those on my forearm". Nice. And don't forget either that we are not as human as we think: for every hundred cells in your body, 99 are bacteria.

The new 'atlas' work - according to the lead researcher Dr Rob Knight - is "the most complete view we have yet of the microbial side of ourselves, one that our group and others will be adding to over the coming years...

...The goal is to find out what is normal for a healthy person, which will provide a baseline for further studies to look at people with diseased states."