That constant hunger for attention at any price: "Around 30 people have staged a naked protest against GM food. The protesters spelled out 'no GM' with their bodies in a meadow at Forest Row, East Sussex .... Organiser Mike Grenville said he hoped it would send a message to the Government of people's concern, particularly over commercial planting of GM crops."

Hasn’t the USA done enough already?: "Pressure built Monday on the United States to contribute to a peacekeeping force in Liberia, with West African leaders asking for 2,000 U.S. troops

It doesn’t pay to insult people: “French wine sales to the US, once French winemakers' most promising market and now one of their greatest competitors, are going down the drain... Because of the greater competition during a global glut, France turned 9.5 million litres of unsold beaujolais into industrial alcohol last year. There is so much on the market that some French table wine is now cheaper than expensive mineral water.”

It takes an Italian Prime Minister for a fiery response to insults! When a German socialist questioned his honesty, Berlusconi replied: “"Mr Schulz, I know there is in Italy a man producing a film on the Nazi concentration camps. I would like to suggest you for the role of Kapo. You'd be perfect." Italians don’t have good memories of German socialists.

Arlene Peck’s latest article is here. She points out how indifferent mainstream U.S. newspapers are to Jewish deaths while at the same time agonizing over Palestinian deaths. Pretty disgraceful.

China Hand has been blogging up a storm lately -- with some amusing stories from his trip to Manila.

There is a post on PC Watch showing that it is now a legal hazard to offer anybody free drinks!

I have recently exchanged emails with Father Mike Walsh of the Maryknoll Organization on the subject of priestly celibacy. He has an interesting defence of it. I have posted the emails here

I put up a link yesterday to my academic article “Towards a more pragmatic penal system”. After it was originally published in a Criminology journal some years ago, it attracted a number of critical comments from other academics. My published reply to those comments is here (or here). The reply gives a shorter and simplified version of my original argument about how imprisonment should be used if we are to prevent crime.

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