Vivat Libertas

Thousands stage opposition rally in Tunisia - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Thousands stage opposition rally in Tunisia - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Salami, the best cat ever A lot of people say that music is their life. Well, I wouldn't go quite as far as that; while my life does consist of cool things, like music, experimental physics, my wonderful, loving boyfriend, and the best cat ever, it also consists of less cool things like chores and familial arguments. But I still love music - not in the sense that I get my panties wet over yet another manufactured idol with shitty hair, but...well... ...Let me tell you something about myself. My mother was a music teacher, pianist and chorister for years, and as a child I grew up with a piano in the house that I would plink and plonk at until I actually learned to play. I also grew up with one of those old record players in the same room as the piano, and I distinctly remember dancing around to an LP. My dad also loves music - OK, so his taste is crap and now mine is forever crap too, but the point is that both my parents got me to love music. It was always playing in the ...

Shiny, happy Earth photobombs Saturn snapshot - space - 22 July 2013 - New Scientist

National Secular Society - Same Sex Marriage Act - time to separate religion from politics

Egypt: 'In Sinai, I saw hell'; refugees are easy prey for brutal human traffickers - Washington Times

Thanks to the excesses and recklessness of my parents' generation (bankers, I'm looking at you here), my generation don't have a future. Right now there are 5.43 people applying for every job, and so us lot, with hardly any experience in the workplace besides a week making tea at the local shop, are screwed unless we can kiss enough ass to land a job based on connections rather than merit. In recognition of this fact, schools and universities everywhere are trying to make courses "relevant", trying to get us to do ALL the work experience and make us into employable human beings, and generally preparing us for a life of practical white-collar tedium. I have a bit of a problem with this. This is less because I secretly want to make Britain unemployable so that the Chinese can rule the world, or something stupid like that, and more because I don't believe the end goal of education is to get people into work, or even into higher-paying jobs; it's to ge...

Jamaica pushes back human trafficking - In Focus - Jamaica Gleaner - Sunday | July 21, 2013

Something upset me. That's pretty normal; a lot of things upset me, because I'm a very negative person. It's also pretty normal that I blog about things that upset me, because I have to get them out of my mind and laid out properly somehow. Not so long ago, I was on a CERN trip with my school to Geneva. (End result? I'm not a fan of Geneva, but CERN is an awesome place even if it does look like a bunch of industrial sheds.) When getting from the airport to the station side of the city - which is the side with a lot of shops that all close at 1 in the afternoon - we decided to plop ourselves down outside a Starbucks. Now, we're all English-speakers. I get that people don't like English and American tourists for various reasons, but normally the English are treated civilly if coolly by the rest of Europe. Such was the case in Geneva, too (well, for me anyway, because I was speaking French for most of the trip)...except for one woman in Starbucks who over...

United We Sweat | Bill McKibben | Orion Magazine

Trafficking of west African children spawns Gabonese hell | theSundaily

I'm a grumpy person who always needs to find something to complain about. This time, it's more of me being a dick, of course, and complaining about being a voice for the voiceless! You see, the term disquiets me. And you see, the term doesn't disquiet me because I think it's absolutely shameful that privileged people should do something to help oppressed people - I'm not that  evil, you know. It disquiets me because...well...I don't really know how to explain it in a couple of succinct sentences, so let me explain it by digging out my old copy of To Kill A Mockingbird . If you ever had to study this book, "those poor Mrunas" probably stuck in your head a bit. At least, they did in mine. According to Mrs Merriweather, "the most devout woman in Maycomb" (for which read: pious but wholly disagreeable), the Mrunas live in "sin and squalor" and need to be saved by the "saintly" J. Grimes Everett. You know, because the M...

Open letter: Time to take our head out of the tar sands | rabble.ca

Afghan boys: silent victims of human trafficking | Connect Asia | ABC Radio Australia

Human trafficking gang busted 

United Nations News Centre - In Afghanistan, UN deputy chief reiterates commitment to country’s long-term development