I support #BoycottStarWarsVII

Every time I go on the damn internet there’s this terrible annoying “SQUEEEE!” noise everywhere. Some new movie trailer is playing on half the computers on the network, I think.

I confess, I felt a strange Force tugging at me too when I saw that — I saw the original on opening day in 1977, I enjoyed The Empire Strikes Back, felt the disappointment of Return of the Jedi, although I had a kid then who was totally into it. And then came the horrible, awful, tedious prequels, and now JJ Abrams is in charge? Bleh. I’m not expecting much, which means I might actually enjoy it, thanks to diminished expectations.

But then there is other optimistic news: the racists have announced a boycott, because it features a black character in a leading role. I approve. Just stay home, racists, from everything.

Apparently the two leading characters are a black man and a woman. Can we dare to hope that the MRAs will also announce a boycott? If all the awful people would just withdraw from the world and sit and stew and fume all by themselves in hermitic isolation, the world would be a better place.

“A nasty little theocracy in a shopping mall”

I’ve heard a lot about Dubai, but honestly, it’s one of the few places on the planet I never want to visit. Zero interest. Actively repelled. And I’d like to visit Antarctica someday!

Building giant skyscrapers and “entertainment complexes” has no appeal — it doesn’t make for an interestingly human place. Here’s a wonderfully brutal rant about Dubai.

Dubai, on the other hand, markets itself as fun in the sun, a kind of Las Vegas on the Persian Gulf. Yet it has far more in common with Saudi Arabia than you’d imagine. Before you say, “But Alex, Dubai is the forward looking part of the Middle East that wants to engage with the world,” I invite you to consider the case of Marte Deborah Dalelv.

Dalelv is a Norwegian fashion designer who was on a business trip in Dubai in 2013. During an evening out, she was raped. She later reported her attack to the police. The authorities’ reaction? Ms Dalelv was charged with perjury, having extramarital sex and drinking alcohol. She received a 16-month jail sentence.

It’s full of entertaining bon mots, too.

Bigger, better, higher, glitzier, nastier: it’s like an entire city designed by Donald Trump.

Aaaah! Run away, run away!

OMG, I’d spend all day in bed

So many choices…but I don’t think they’d be to my wife’s less nerdy taste (or in other words, she’s not quite as tasteless as I am). It’s a whole collection of cephalopod themed bedding.

octobedding

And then we’d have to redo the ghastly 1950s-style floral wallpaper in the bedroom…I wonder if they have wallpaper with tentacles somewhere?

It would improve the resale value of the house! Wouldn’t it?

A useful paper for conversations with those obsessed with health trends

Last year, Nature Chemistry published an article by Alexander F. G. Goldberg and CJ Chemjobber titled “A comprehensive overview of chemical-free consumer products“. Everyone should read it. It’s a thorough description of all chemical-free products, and the paper itself is a free download. Here’s the introduction.

Manufacturers of consumer products, in particular edibles and cosmetics, have broadly employed the term ‘Chemical free’ in marketing campaigns and on product labels. Such characterization is often incorrectly used to imply — and interpreted to mean — that the product in question is healthy, derived from natural sources, or otherwise free from synthetic components. We have examined and subjected to rudimentary analysis an exhaustive number of such products, including but not limited to lotions and cosmetics, herbal supplements, household cleaners, food items, and beverages. Herein are described all those consumer products, to our knowledge, that are appropriately labelled as ‘Chemical free’.

It really is complete. But don’t worry, it won’t take you long to read it.

Poetry? At a science event?

It’s true. This is what happens at a liberal arts college: worlds collide! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria! And poets and scientists talking to one another!

This is precisely what the Christian fundamentalists are warning us of with the Blood Moon Prophecy, which is happening this weekend, and culminates with poetry in a coffeehouse on Tuesday. If ever you wanted to witness an apocalypse, get yourself to Morris stat.

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