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The latest media beat-up, picked up today by breakfast radio and television, along with various newspapers is the “NSW schools political correctness controversy”. The line taken by all media outlets is perfectly illustrated by Simon Benson, State Political Reporter for the Daily Telegraph, who wrote a short article entitled “’Mad’ bureaucrats censor Jesus Christ” on March 3, 2005.

The son of God has been written out of parts of NSW school English texts.

“Before Christ” (BC) has been removed from literacy test history books and replaced with “Before Common Era” (BCE) in what the NSW Opposition described as political correctness gone mad.

About 150,000 students who sat through the English Language and Literacy Assessment (ELLA) test on Tuesday were confronted with the new term in an extract entitled “The Surveyor’s Problem”.

It described an event which took place in 509 BCE in Northern Egypt where a Government surveyor had been ordered by the Pharaoh to find out why the Nile River kept flooding.

A footnote to the extract explained BCE means “Before Common Era” (also known as BC).

This story has been successful because it is really three stories in one. Firstly, the NSW Liberal State Opposition and Federal Liberal government get to sink the boot into the NSW State Labour government. Secondly, it’s seen as an attack on Christianity; it didn’t get to be the world’s dominant religion by taking this sort of thing lying down. And thirdly, it’s the familiar “meta-story” of “political correctness gone mad”, and a perfect opportunity to piss on the Australian “Elite” – which, surprisingly, doesn’t mean politicians, millionaire businessmen and media tycoons but rather middle-class teachers and public servants.

As Benson’s article goes on to mention, “…the BCE footnote is used in international scientific, academic and museum contexts”.

So the controversy boils down to a high school English exam using a term used by academics, and experts in the field, rather than the general public.

One morning TV presenter perhaps missed the point of English comprehension exams in general when he pointed out that the footnoted term might confuse students.

The argument that the term should not be used, as it is not understood by the general public falls over entirely when applied to any other high school subject.

• Computer science - Every component inside a computer is now going to be called a “chip”, no matter what it is.
• Physics – the term “mass” to be replaced with “weight”. “Centrifugal force” (even though, despite public opinion, there is no such thing) will take the place of “centripetal force”.
• Chemistry - sucrose, fructose, glucose etc will now just be referred to as “carbs”.
• English – “verb” will be replaced by “doing word”, adjective by “describing word”.

Benson and his knuckle-dragging cohorts in the media and State Opposition should leave academic standards alone and dedicate themselves to a task more suiting their Stone Age intellects…like, say, a quest for fire.

Self indulgent Valentine’s Day post coming sometime soon…I’m missing my spunky girlfriend.

Self indulgent Valentine’s Day post coming sometime soon…I’m missing my spunky girlfriend.

Christian Evangelist minister Ray Comfort, author of How to Make an Atheist Backslide, has released a new book - What Hollywood Believes, “An Intimate Look at the Faith of the Famous”.

Expect some serious insight from the great thinkers of our time such as Britney Spears, Pamela Anderson and Chuck Norris.

My favourite quote from the book is from Jim Carey, and takes on a whole new meaning when you remember his past problems with alcohol.

“We’ve always tried to humanize him in some way. He’s probably just a shaft of light in a doorway or something like that. I’ve always been big about faith. Everything in my life has happened for a good reason. Generally, when I’m on the beam, man, it’s like the blessings just come one after another, like rain. It’s unbelievable.”

There’s an old superstition that whenever you say The Devil’s name, you attract his attention. Thanks to advances in search technology, the Internet is kind of like that. A casually dropped phrase in your low-traffic web log easily becomes the focus of precisely the person you don’t want to read it, and quicker than you can say “naked Disney characters” or “Britney Spears mp3s”, someone calls in a surgical strike of lawyers waving cease-and-desist letters.

Then there’s the problem that storage is so cheap now. This, combined with the aforementioned search technology means that you may come to regret using your real name when you delivered those cutting insults in a Usenet flamewar back when the Internet was a whole lot less popular.

I bet that Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, regrets divulging back in 1991 that his favourite porn movie was “Dickman and Throbbin“.

Tres embarassant!

There is a hairdresser on Burke Road, Camberwell called Hair Fetish…well you can’t say you weren’t warned.

I will leave the cheap and smutty jokes as an exercise for the reader.

I’m starting to worry that the Internet has given me a short attention span. I haven’t been able to sit through a movie on TV for months. The last thing I tried to watch was a french version of Carmen - Karmen Gei, set in Africa. I lasted 10 minutes and, from what the critics say of the movie, I probably saw the highlights. I can’t watch TV by myself anymore, but I can still watch TV “socially”.

Oddly enough, I still enjoy reading books for hours, so maybe it’s just the passivity of TV that I don’t have time for.

A co-worker was moaning that his six-year old girl has passed her ballet exam, and now he was going to have to buy her a present.

“She will probably want something expensive,” he sighed.

The next day I inquired how his shopping expedition had gone.

“The most expensive thing she could find that she wanted was $15, and she didn’t want to wait or go to another store.”

“Well, you got out of that one easily then,” I said.

“What she got wasn’t expensive enough. I’m going to have to take her shopping again…”

It’s funny how parents project their values onto their children.

A friend used to tell the story of how he used to only take a bottle of soft drink to drunken teenage parties.

The typical exchange with, for example, the younger brother of the hostess, would go something like this…

“What have you got there?”
“Vodka and coke. It’s really smooth. Do you want to try some?”
“Wow. This is pretty good. You can hardly taste the alcohol.”
“Do you want to swap it for your bottle of Bundy?”
“Are you sure? Okay!”

Truth be told, he probably still got the raw end of the deal. Bundy. Ugh!

How stupid do marketers think people are? Actually, more worryingly, are they right?

I heard an advertisement yesterday for low-GI water endorsed by Olympic gold medalist Ian Thorpe. I must have missed the “swim star sinks to record depths” headline.

Did everyone sleep through their Health Ed class in high school? Are we getting our nutritional education from Oprah now? If you are going to put the time and energy into some kind of fad diet, don’t you think you should get some basic facts on how the body works beforehand?

Two other products I love…

• Weightwatchers(tm) low fat mashmallows - all marshmallows are low fat. They’re just puffy balls of sugar.
• Nutella - advertised as good for children because it’s “low-GI”. In other words, it might be high in sugar, but it’s high in fat too!

And what about the Shane Warne incident a couple of years ago, where he was banned from professional cricket for taking a banned drug. In this case it wasn’t performance enhancing, it was a diuretic so that he would lose weight. Professional sportsmen may not be valued for their intelligence, but how can you make a living from your body and not know that dehydrating it is not a useful way of losing your beer gut?