Although unique, I am not in fact a minority

Around this time of year, my Inbox gets overloaded with news of various fellowships that I can apply for. It's the academic equivalent of being bombarded with adverts for budget dick-stiffening remedies - everyone gets them, even though they only apply to a tiny minority (pardon the pun) and 50% of the recipients aren't even eligible to apply.

Even if I was a US citizen, most of these fellowships are of no interest to me, because I am not a member of an 'under represented group' (one is not allowed to say minority any more). I did once try to argue that there weren't enough aging British misanthropes in American academia, but to be honest when you look around the faculty we are still the dominant force. One has to a 'person of color' [sic] these days, or a woman. (Am I still allowed to say woman? Person of oestrus, perhaps?) Not that I object to promoting a more cosmopolitan intelligensia, I just wish they'd stop emailing me tell what I could have won if I'd been born a one-legged lesbian.

The new undergrads turned up this week. They all seem to be 'persons of challenging ability' (i.e. thick as shit). It's a sad fact that as one gets older, the freshers don't just get younger, but more stupid as well.

'I'd love this country if it wasn't for all the fucking foreigners'

An aquaintance from my long defunct undergraduate days, let's just call him 'Trevor'*, recently got married. Trevor has always had a fairly flexible sense of morality and a unique view of good taste, which has led him to be dubbed in some circles as The Filthiest Man in the World. Ultimately his heart is in the right place, but he is a man who thinks that ethics is a county just outside London, and that scruples is something you might catch from one of its women**.

Trevor is a fur trader. Let's face it, there's only so many ways you can make a living with a degree in Slavic languages, and he's not the sort of person to lose too much sleep over the welfare of a few cute rodents. (In all fairness, it's not surprising that he has no love of nature, given what it's done to him). Although Trevor can speak several languages he can't say 'no' in any of them, so it was fairly well known that when he was out east at trade shows he enjoyed the company of the models from time to time. Trevor, bless his filthy soul, is not what you'd call a prime catch. He combines the chiselled good looks of Lemmy with the winning charm of Wayne Rooney. Presumably a western income and an EU passport added a certain something to his pulling power. Anyway, after ten years of philandering, karma finally scored a direct hit and one them finally managed to get her claws into him. They were married last year.

The wedding photos are a fine indication of just how far out of his depth he's ended up this time. I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that his new in-laws are gangsters, but that's only because I wouldn't dare. These people have a long reach and a short temper. I would rather describe them as buccaneers of the alternative economy, entrepreneurs who aren't afraid to push the boundaries of eastern Europes burgeoning free-market opportunities. I would put good money down that the self-same wedding photos are on file somewhere at Interpol.

The point is that, outside the normal loving marital devotion, Trevor has some very good reasons for keeping his new bride happy, most notably an aversion to swimming in the Thames with his mouth filled with cement. She knows this well and by all accounts has been making full use of the opportunities afforded to her by moving to London with a reasonably affluent husband. She does not work of course, because her English is 'not yet good enough'. She has picked up sufficient English to fully express her views on England though. When asked how she was settling into her new home she promptly stated that she liked London, but that there were too many fucking niggers. This masterful summary of one of the World's great cultural melting pots was made in the middle of the day, outside a pub, within ear shot of any passers-by.

How does one follow that one up? How do you respond to someone telling you that your country is too multi-racial, when she's only in the country in the first place because of a drunken shag at a trade fair? Personally I have no idea, but I'd be interested to hear your views.


* I've changed the names. Not to protect the innocent (there aren't any in this sorry tale) but to protect myself
** Note to foreigners - 'Ethics' sounds a bit like Essex, which is a county just to the north of our fair capital. And thus a joke, if it may be so called, is derived. Essex is very much the San Fernando Valley of Britain, being notable mostly as a dismal hive of wannabe-cockney wideboys and ugly but ever-willing women. David and Victoria Beckham are the unofficial Royal Family of Essex.


Update
Vote now on my racist bitch poll!

Nobody expects a Spanish Inquisition

I was only saying that the Islam isn't exactly the most liberal faith. I didn't expect a Spanish Inquisition - Pope Benedict XVI

Well, nobody expects a Spanish Inquisition, least of all the Holy Roman Pontiff. Historically, Pope's are more into the business of instigating religious holocausts (or in Benny's case just helping out). Personally I think that he's got a point - he quotes somebody else as saying that Islam is a faith of violence and hatred, and the moslem clerics call for his death. Quod erat demonstrandum, as they say in the Vatican bar.

I don't suppose that the majority of muslims are actually that intolerant at all, any more than the majority of christians give a stuff what that old fool in Rome says. When you get right down to it, this Pope vs Ayatollah situation is just a bunch of cloistered, celibate old men arguing vociferously over some really obscure and abstract ideas - much like a scientific conference, in fact. The only difference is that at a scientific meeting the PhD students don't start hacking at each other with swords every time their advisor's get into a minor but intensely personal disagreement. Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing, mind you. With my vicious nature and military training, I could probably eliminate a fair amount of my future academic competition before I've even finished my dissertation. Forget 'publish or perish' - science red in tooth and claw is the future.

Some muslims spreading their message of love and understanding

I have the serenity of a Buddhist monk

Protagonist?!?!? You make it sound like it's a bad thing....

So says mushroomcloud_2. She's wrong of course, I was merely making an observation, and had no intention of involving myself in pointless value judgements. As a scientist I am the model of objectivity, and therefore I am above such base concepts as 'good' and 'bad'. There is no 'good' or 'bad' in climate change, it just is. On the one hand millions starving in the predominately undeveloped tropics due to disruptions in the monsoon might be considered 'bad' if one was to take a subjective moralistic view, but then again sea level rise will wipe Florida off the map which I think is a fair exchange. Being subpoenaed by the senior Senator for Oklahoma to a McCarthy-style hearing and being accused of making up climate change to raise some research funds sounds bad, but on the other hand watching Jim Inhofe make a tit of himself in public as he tries to grapple with some High School physics makes it well worth the air fare. A Well-Known West-Coast University has no 'good' or 'bad' undergraduates, only the barely tolerable and the intensely irritating.

Good, bad, right, wrong, to me they're just meaningless comparatives. I am very much like the Dalai Lama in that respect.

Why did the antelope cross the road?

Who cares why the antelope crossed the road, just so long as it crossed in a safe manner that was considerate to other road users? One can barely travel a mile on a Fremont County highway without seeing some pathetic evidence of mammalian slaughter. It's the fault of the deer and antelope, of course. Majestic roamers of the Open Range they may be, but if a group of chimpanzees in West Africa can work out the Green-Cross Code when the only traffic they see is a UN truck on the way to the brothel every three days, then Wyoming's herbivores have no excuse.

Surely it's not a difficult concept, even for a ruminant. Most creatures would, I imagine, treat a long thin concrete structure littered with the corpses of it's own species with some trepidation, rather than rushing headlong at it. There are barely any thoroughfares in the entire state (actually, there's barely anything), so it wouldn't be hard to avoid roads completely. However, after over sixty years of mass car-ownership in the USA, these moronic Artiodactyla are still trying to stare down trucks. Darwinism works in mysterious ways here.

The natural majesty of Wyoming's wildlife

Lander, in Fremont County, is home to the world famous One-Shot Antelope Hunt. Why bother? They probably bag more Antelope on the way to the liquor store than they ever do whilst staring down the sights of a rifle.

Update

It appears that I was wrong, the presence of unroadworthy ruminants is considered, by the Swiss at least, to be an important safety feature. Mind you, Switzerland is a nation who's defence strategy over the years has been to facilitate the illegal pillage of both sides during any major conflict, and arming their military with shotguns and a tool for taking stones out of horse's shoes. One should not be surprised of their traffic safety measures are somewhat agrarian.