Reasons to Be Cheerful

The sky is gray, it's in the low 60s, it's Monday morning, so why are there so many things to be cheerful about?

No jokes about pushing please (link from Drudge):

"A French clothier is testing the limits of the maxim that sex sells with online commercials that use hard-core pornography to hawk $100 T-shirts."

"What is important is that this is not a 'push' campaign," Cretin said, referring to advertising that is imposed on the audience. "Every person seeing this is willing to see it. We would never have done this on TV, because on TV you push the message to people."

"Many people have decided to take a look. More than 2 million visitors from 117 countries have come to the site in the last four months....but the company has yet to sell many shirts, pants, skirts or blazers."

Lots good in the Sunday Times yesterday:

Here's an article about how wiping your hard drive is nigh on impossible:

"Will reformatting a computer's hard drive prevent it from later divulging your secrets? Not necessarily - even free utilities, downloaded from the internet, can dig up old files from a reformatted machine..."

"In the end, experts advise, the only way to be absolutely certain that your hard disk won’t betray your secrets once you’ve handed the machine on is to put it through a grinder. A waste, don’t you think?"

"So, here’s a challenge for Bill Gates: instead of wasting time on designing flashy see-through menus in Vista, the next version of Windows, ensure that pressing the delete button does what it says. Until that is the case, anything you drop into your computer’s Recycle Bin really could be recycled."

Must be why the British Security services took away all the computers in those internet cafes last week.

"Later in the day police raided three internet cafes, one in Reading and two in Slough, taking away computer hard drives."

Then this paragraph jumped out at me from the Terror in the Skies report in the first section:

"The operation was regarded as so sensitive that when The Sunday Times hinted at it in an article published earlier this year, it was threatened with legal action by the Treasury solicitors."

Yay! We need this kind of security in the States, as American newspapers are losing circulation and advertising dollars so dramatically that they will publish anything even if it helps terrorists kill thousands of innocent plane travellers.

---hello? New York Times? Yes my dear I agree, it's only good for lining the kitty litter tray, lol.

There's been a lot on the internet about the mum with a six month old baby who was in on the terror plot. I don't see why it's hard to imagine that she would blow herself and her baby up. These women are subjugated and oppressed and not allowed an education or to grow up believing they have the right to life, libery or the pursuit of happiness.

I went to the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition on Friday with a group that included a lady who had a phd in Islamic Art. She was fascinating to talk to and said some things about the Muslin religion not allowing anything to be depicted, not Mohammed, no family snaps, so many images were off limits. She said creativity blossomed when artists' minds could range freely.

I've thought about this since and I'll bet it affects one's imagination and ability to empathise, which is what suicide bombing is all about, the total inability to imagine what happens after, all the feelings involved.

Saturday I picked up some dry cleaning from a local shop. The owner was there, back from holiday. "Where did you go?" "Home to Afghanistan to see my family." "Do you have some holiday photos?" "NO!!!" he recoiled and stopped talking to me. I've felt so guilty since, thinking - how could I be so insensitive, obviously he's concerned for his loved ones' security and isn't going to bandy personal photos around. Then I realised his religion doesn't allow him to have photos of his loved ones. I like him too. It's really sad.

There's an experiment that's been done with photos. Saliva was tested, then people were shown neutral photographs like trees and their saliva was tested again, no change in hormones. When they looked at photographs of loved ones, immune system supporting hormones were found in their saliva. We are designed to be healthier when we look at depictions of people we love.

The Summer Exhibition had works that ran the gamut, some stupendous, some embarrassing.

As soon as Blogger allows me to upload images I've got a few to share.

Great customer service:

My sister flew from London to Detroit this past Saturday. They took away her biro and chapstick and patted her down twice. You're not allowed to carry on much but she talked to someone at WHSmith who said she might be able to get a book through. He advised her to show the book and receipt at security, proving it had been bought in duty free and if they refused to let her take it on, he would give her a refund.

She was full of stories of having her passport scanned a few times and being asked unusual questions and she said the pilot made jokes over the tannoy.

Everyone is rising magnificently to the occasion.