You are what you eat (allegedly)

I'm now in a Telford hotel room, just a few miles from where the local BBC news has reported that a special "God's Acre" service has recently been carried out on the grave of Richard Munslow, the last known sin-eater in England, at St Margaret's Church, Ratlinghope.

The Reverend Norman Morris explained that "It [Sin-eating] was a very odd practice and would not have been approved of by the church, but I suspect the vicar often turned a blind eye".

The BBC report also helpfully explains that sin-eaters were generally poor people who were paid to eat bread and drink beer or wine over a corpse, in the belief they would take on the sins of a person who had died suddenly without confessing their own sins, and so allow the deceased’s soul to go to heaven in peace.

So logically, as a sin-eater wouldn't have been able to acknowledge these unknown sins prior to their own demise, and would therefore always need someone to consume their unconfessed sin collection, isn't it surprising that there were ever any believers unable to see the flaws in it as a career choice?

So the pot said to the kettle ....

Walking across London because of the tube strike, I've just (30 minutes or so ago) been handed a religiously-focussed magazine (Awake) which states in the first 2 sentences of the first article,
"A new group of atheists has arisen in society. Called the new atheists, they are not content to keep their views to themselves."

As the views of the distributor weren't sought either by me, nor anybody else who politely took a copy without first looking to see what it was (I admit to thinking it was one of the free Time Out style supplements & just dropped it into a conference bag), it's got me wondering whether the irony is deliberate, or is the writer subtly advocating some form of theocracy where people like Stephen Hawking are prevented from making assertions like the one last week?

The proof of the pudding is in the (ch)eating..

"This is only an allegation," says Ijaz Butt, chairman of what is surely an utterly discredited Pakistan Cricket Board, adding that, "At this stage there will be no action taken because there is still no charge or proof on that account." Possibly not proof as defined by a criminal law court, but the evidence of cheating described in the News of the World at the weekend is as damning as anything you could ever hope to see.

Unfortunately, according to some of the participants in today's plagiarism workshop, the PCB's lack of decisive action is not unique and draws parallels with the attitude of some senior educational managers who fear legal action if students are penalised by lecturers, moderators and exam boards for collusion, plagiarism and the passing off of other's work as their own prior to some form of "official investigation".

Noting that both the PCB and the International Cricket Council are currently striving to maintain any semblance of credibility with their very public failure to act, surely it's time for Education's default position to be one of trusting the lecturer who identifies malpractice and place the burden of proving innocence on the accused student?

Herd of cows? Of course I've heard of cows...

If today's Food Standards Agency Summary of investigation on cloned animals statement that "no milk ... has entered the food chain" is true, how come all my glasses of milk look exactly the same?

With a reverential nod to 1942's "Ride em Cowboy"
Bud Abbott: No, not heard of cows, that's a cow herd.
Lou Costello: What's a cow heard? I don't care what a cow's heard, I haven't said anything to be ashamed of.

Never mind the quality mark, feel the myth

Sitting on a train on the way home, I've been reading the TES on-line where one of the headline stories is about the Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm (which somewhat coincidently is located near Bristol which is where I've been for a JISC meeting,) controversially receiving the Government-backed Council for Learning Outside the Classroom's “quality badge”, a kitemark developed last year to accredit outdoor activity centres, museums and stately homes as suitable for children's education.

Hopefully the institution's name ought to be a clue for any educators wanting to broaden the mind of their charges, but the presence of an official badge might sway the unwary into inadvertently exposing enquiring minds to religious propaganda presented as fact.

Now leaving aside problems which are presumably issues of faith, such as where did all the water come from and where did it go, or why did Noah leave all the marsupials in Australasia, the likelihood of the story having any actual, and therefore significant, educational basis can be illustrated with simple mathematics.

Ignoring what we actually know to be the highest peaks on earth (Everest, K2, etc) and instead using Mount Ararat as reference point since that's where the biblical story says the ark ended up, we're left with water covering land at an elevation above sea level of to close to 17000 feet (to be precise the elevation of said mountain is 16945 feet). Since the story says it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, that means in each twenty four hour period the water rose an average of 425 feet (17000/40), or to put it in another way, 17' 9" each and every hour all around the world for nearly 6 weeks, not just local to wherever Noah's menagerie was floating around.

That's an awful lot of water in anybody's (good?) book, and if the family who run the zoo want to believe that it really happened and put on a show about it then that's up to them, but handing out an official educational endorsement is surely not something that's going to help anybody involved in the planning of school trips now that we know there's no apparent care taken in deciding which organisations can be trusted to deliver objective supplements to the national curriculum.

Mad Mullahs Mullets Matters

News today that Iran is going to ban "decadent cuts" such as mullets, spiked-tops and ponytails as part of a crackdown on "Western hairstyles" after an organisation devoted to Islamic fashion issued a list of what they claim to be culturally appropriate haircuts for men.

The list, endorsed by the culture ministry, includes pictures of models with short hair (curly and straight), long sideburns and in one case a 60s-style quiff, but none of collar-length locks. The "... proposed styles are inspired by Iranians' complexion, culture and religion, and Islamic law", and will be promoted at the Modesty and Veil Festival, the organiser of which, Jaleh Khodayar, said "We are happy that the Islamic Republic of Iran's government has backed us in designing these hairstyles."

Wonder how many more new persecution categories could need adding to the world's asylum claim forms now that even skipping a visit to the barbers could result in a visit from a coiffeur copper cluster?

Monkey Business

In the middle of what are always my busiest two weeks of the year, I'm now in a Peterborough hotel with a copy of the regional weekly newspaper where the main story is about a local woman who went to Thailand in an attempt to overcome a fear of monkeys.

Apparently, 56-year old Dee Darwell was trying to overcome a lifelong primate phobia by travelling to an area near Phuket called Monkey Island as a way of "confronting her fears". The story doesn't say whether the indigenous crab-eating Macaques could smell Dee's fear, or could just detect utter stupidity and found the temptation to mischief too hard to resist, but within minutes of her getting off the boat they attacked "like a pack of animals" (as opposed to????).
Now recovering at home after treatment for bites in a Bangkok hospital, Dee says she owes her life to the intervention of local fishermen after the other sunseekers on her boat trip fled in panic, adding that at the time she thought "This is it, I'm going to die, I'm going to be savaged".

Now personally, although psychoanalysts and motivational speakers might say that this is the way to go, I can't see that in her case it was even remotely necessary. Obviously there are many things round here that having an irrational fear of would be more than worth the effort to cure.
Fens for instance.
Or shoe shops.
But monkeys?
I've only been here for about four hours, but unless the city centre resembles a safari park on weekends, or gibbons plague the bingo, it seems to me that the best thing to do if you have a fear of monkeys and live in Peterborough is to forget all about finding a cure and not go on holiday to somewhere called Monkey Island!