Hell In A Handbasket

They're going to make students at Oxford not only sign contracts, but contracts which require them to go to lectures? Tutes I can see, but I do wonder if this indicates a rise in the significance attached to lectures (for those who don't know the place, this traditionally ranges from minimal to minor so far as arts and humanities are concerned, it isn't key to the way Oxford undergraduate teaching works). (And see also the proposal to take control of admissions to the university level, which I suspect is going to go down like a lead balloon.)

Belloff-drafted contracts at that... Not sure how I feel about the contract idea itself in principle.

Apropos of something slightly different, the comments thread on this linkpost of mine about feminism and related matters is still vaguely alive and lots of people have said interesting things. People always seem to comment more on my throwaway rubbish and linkposts than the proper ones.

I spent lunch being suckered by the HMV Sale. In theory one of the real financial benefits of being on the island is the lack of VAT: usually the benefit somehow vanishes amid mutterings of transport costs (coincidentally always precisely the same as UK VAT would be, how strange), but CDs are an exception. (Hence a certain major online seller of such things being based here, and, indeed a client of ours). Completed Belle & Sebastian and Garbage back catalogues, plus Isobel Campbell and Wossname from QotSA's new album, plus Jeff Buckley's Grace and DVD's of Amelie, 12 Monkeys, and Casablanca. All ridiculously cheap, to be fair.

Laugh or Cry

In commemoration of the chap who fell down the stairs at the Fitzwilliam the other day and bust a trio of 300-year-old Chinese vases the Guardian asks for other smash hits. Horrifying and hysterical, all in one. And then there's the ones from "Moses", the reply from "PC Plod ("Just to let Moses know that we found the aforementioned broken stone tablets and as nobody came forward to claim them, they were auctioned off and sold to the lady at the back with the pink hat for £0.75 who we later found out was a member of Opus Dei and Dan Brown's writing a book all about it"), and Doris who was "dusting the controls of the superlaser in the original deathstar"....

Cartoons

Many are aware already that The Religious Policeman, a Saudi dissident, is well worth reading and often extremely funny. But his take on the Danish cartoons story, particularly today, really deserves attention.

ETA: In the meantime, various newspapers reprint them, for which the editor of France Soir is sacked (by the Egyptian owner). And (via Ritu) the New York president of the World Jewish Congress weighs in with a letter to The Times

I have to wonder whether it would be a criminal offence to print the cartoons in the UK, ECHR not withstanding, had the Government managed to reverse the Lords amendments on the question of incitement to religious hatred. I think there would be a real issue there, which to my mind highlights why it was so important the Government lose that one.

Seems to me it's a grave insult to any religion to suggest that it is so weak it requires threats of penalties under the civil or criminal law or of violence to protect it and the faith of its members from criticism, comment, or satire.