The veil is not Islamic

Its really not!

I hate how this has been blown out of all proportion but the media is giving it so much attention that the stereotypical image of a Muslim women as wearing the headscarf now dominates the public consciousness. And its not true. Most moslem women don't cover their heads and nowhere in the Koran does it say they should do- the proscripton states that modesty is the goal, not invisibility.

Ah, the torrid corruption and hypocrisy of Western Society!

Robert Fisk rocks onwards once again, carefully describing how the US and Britain gave Saddam all of his chemical weapons and then expressed public horror as he deployed them against the Iranians and Kurds whilst patting each other on the back in secret about how they had developed a lucrative little export market. There's more in this report from the same paper.

Another little gem here about how a nation's religious beliefs are negatively correlated with its social health. 3 guesses as to who has the least healthy and most religious society of all of the developed Western democracies . . . . . . .

Woman beaten on a bus in Israel for refusing to "sit at the back"

I found this on LGFwatch- Little Green Footballs' alter ego.

http://haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=801449

Dirty, nasty little bunch of mysoginist fucks- that's what the haredi are.

Fuck religion.

Lipid quantification

I posted earlier about Bligh & Dyer's assay for total lipids and how I had arse results. A little reflection has led me to consider that user error may remain a possibility but before I can test for it I need a working lipid assay to validate it with. So I have been pndering the different techniques open to me, including a plate assay that quantifies triglycerides, cholesterol and phospholipids- thereby giving me quantitative values for storage, physiological and structural lipids. There is also the opportunity of developing an HPLC method to give me more detailed data, however lipid HPLC presents a fecking minefield of challenges from co-eluting peaks to the avilability and appropriate nature of standards. Finally, I have the option of running an alternative to the Bligh & Dyer assay developed by Frings et al which look straightforward.

Whatever I decide to do it has to be developed rapidly, without excessive cost and it has to be feckin reliable. I am sick of non-Ronseal assays- i.e. things that do not do exactly what it says on the tin!

Oh well, at least my Scope For Growth work is progressing in a positive direction due to the excellent advice of Prof J I Spicer ["Spicey John"]. That chap rocks.

finally- the conclusive evidence of Blair the Warmonger's lies

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2076137.ece

Carne Ross, Britain's key negotiator to the UN, dodges threats of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act to relate how, in the run up to the war, British Officials had no reason to suspect that Saddam either had any WMD or represented a threat to British interests.

We all knew it was lies. Its such a shame that 600,000 Iraqis, nearly 200 British Service Personnel and several thousand US Personnel had to die before it was established.

Thanks Tony! (You cunt.)

I'd be proud to be branded an Idiotarian

I was browsing Wikipedia when I encountered the entry on Little Green Footballs. Its interesting how they brand anyone who disagrees with their messages of hatred as an "Idiotarian". I was half tempted to get into their comments and mince up their cosy little ball-cupping session with a few carefully chosen words as I did earlier this year to the blog Neo-Neo-Neo-Neo-Con. But then I recalled that that experience merely angered me further at the ignorance of these people and frankly I've got better things to do with my time. That and the fact that the comments are not publically accessible so as to ensure that people such as myself, bent upon introducing silly things like reason into their world, can be prevented from doing so.

Anyway read the wikipedia article and see if you are an "idiotarian". Seems like pretty much everyone in the world is apart from the Israelis and the LGF residents themselves.

my 13 hour day

I was at work at 0930 this morning and left the lab at 2220. I feel amazin! (if a little knackered :) )

Spent 8 hours doing LC-MS and then another 4 and a bit playing with worm pooh! Yeay!

Should get me some goddamn kudos when this gets published though ;)

Science tigers, ho! Raowr!