Roads, lingerie, Septuagenarian Bandits and the Benefits of Cannibalism

From the BBC today:

M&S Christmas TV ad 'offensive': I'll say. It's over a month to go and they're advertising already. Could be worse though, there's some people advertising in October.

....oh, wait, apparently it's cos it has some girl in her underwear and some character who is evidently supposed to be a boor goes "hubba hubba" or words to that effect. This is demeaning to women!

Can't get too worked up about this myself; I just wonder why M&S are catching flak for it and why it's making news. It's not like there aren't about a million TV programs and adverts which show scantily-clad women, and it's been this way for years. Sex sells, as they say (and the whole world is buying, quoth Creed.) Maybe society's becoming more Victorian or something.

(It probably will be soon enough anyway. Society's attitudes regarding sex, nudity &c. are not static, and are subject to oscillation. At some point the pendulum will swing the other way - helped by the fact that a large chunk of our population is now from various former colonies where people are more socially conservative. New Labour, according to recent reports, thought it would be fun to spite conservatives by racking up immigration levels...)

FBI hunting elderly bank robber:

The FBI is hunting an elderly man who is said to have robbed five banks in California in the last three months.

The man - in his seventies - has been dubbed the Geezer Bandit.

In the US a geezer is a word for an eccentric old man: in a previous heist he was reportedly seen wearing tubes connected to an oxygen cylinder.

...Law enforcement officials say he should be considered armed and dangerous.

UK to pay for safer roads abroad: apparently our roads are so fantastic we're evangelising for road safety in third world countries. Hopefully we will insist on them driving on the civilised side of the road, unlike (sadly) the vast mass of the rest of humanity. (Samoa recently made the switch despite fears of accidents, chaos, doom and destruction; I have been unable to find any news stories about such accidents actually happening, so must assume it passed off without a hitch.)

Immune tribe 'indicates CJD hope':

The Papua New Guinea tribe developed strong genetic resistance after a major epidemic of the CJD-like disease, kuru, spread mostly by cannibalism.

Medical Research Council experts assessed more than 3,000 survivors of the mid-20th Century epidemic...

Kuru, a prion disease similar to CJD in humans and BSE in animals, was transmitted at mortuary feasts where - until the practice was banned in the late 1950s - women and children consumed their deceased relatives as a mark of respect and mourning.

I seem to remember a Chesterton poem remarking of a strange and exotic individual "his ways were strange. He/ate his papa... but reverently."

It's noted as being amazing that evolution took place so quickly. Not really - it would be amazing if this gene were simply not present beforehand, because a random mutation conveniently happening so quickly and just when needed would be a highly unexpected thing. But if the gene were present beforehand, it would be pretty much what you'd expect, just as if you killed off everyone whose last name didn't begin with an "F", you would have a society whose family names all began with "F" for quite a while. Also... I guess I'm not much better by thinking "awesome!" and blogging about it, but the scientists' response is a bit creepy on places. "It's a fantastic demonstration of natural selection", one says, about an epidemic that killed large numbers of people. You don't see theologians and ethicists happily pointing at horrible crimes and saying "this is a fantastic demonstration of original sin" or "what a wonderful demonstration of man's inhumanity to man". Well, I hope you don't.

Also, months after the rest of the internets, I have finally discovered Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog, which is quite thoroughly awesome.