omouse's blog

WTF is going on in Britain??

They're inventing all sorts of weapons to get youths away from public spaces and are monitoring almost everything. The density of CCTV cameras is ridiculous. Now they're turning to A Clockwork Orange and using classical music as a weapon against kids:

In January it was revealed that West Park School, in Derby in the midlands of England, was “subjecting” (its words) badly behaved children to Mozart and others. In “special detentions,” the children are forced to endure two hours of classical music both as a relaxant (the headmaster claims it calms them down) and as a deterrent against future bad behavior (apparently the number of disruptive pupils has fallen by 60 per cent since the detentions were introduced.)

They do the following in some malls in North America:

Across the UK, local councils and other public institutions now play recorded classical music through speakers at bus-stops, in parking lots, outside department stores, and elsewhere. No, not because they think the public will appreciate these sweet sounds (they think we are uncultured grunts), but because they hope it will make naughty youngsters flee.

It's disgusting that they're using music of any sort in this manner.

I'll never go to Britain if I can avoid it. It's just way too Orwellian now and I wouldn't be surprised if they start abusing the sciences and start taking notes from A Brave New World.

Olympics and Drinking on the Ice

The Canadian Women's Hockey team won their game against the United States 2-0 and after the fans left the building, drank some champagne and smoked some cigars. The trouble apparently is that a few of them are under-age! A blog on the Globe and Mail talks about this, saying it's just another puritanical thing.

The deeper problem is with the journalism of Associated Press. The journalist is the one who chose the words "swigging" and "guzzling". They didn't have to, they could have said "sipped" or "drank" or some other word with less of an alcoholic connotation. Instead they wanted to emphasis a supposed conflict between the IOC protocols and the celebration. Later in the article the journalists points out another athlete "guzzling" beer and holding the pitcher with both hands. How else could he hold it? By saying that explicitly, it's meant to have a negative connotation.

The Associated Press are also the ones who informed the IOC about the celebration.  They seem to be going out of their way to make the team look bad...