richardarblaster’s posterous

My posterous experiment has come to end for the time being. I would have really liked comments here to be autoposted to my wordpress blog, so they don't become disjointed. I don't want people to cut and paste their comments over to my wordpress blog as it will put them off commenting in future.

Until posterous come up with an option to autpost comments. You can catch my usual missives over at:

www.wizzardsblog.com

I have been sitting on my hands on this subject for quite a while now, I can no longer prevent my fingers from gracing the keyboard. The time has finally come.

The final straw for me is the e-coli outbreak, where petting farms have now been closed to the public because children who were at the farm contracted the disease after handling and stroking the animals.

Those farms would have been closed anyway, without the scrutiny of the media. Sure draw attention that there is an outbreak, but let's stop with the scaremongering. Move on to a new story.

I was a child once back in the 70s. I used to get covered in cow shit and mud, I used to stroke animals and put my fingers in my mouth, I also would eat sweets without washing my hands before hand. Did I once contract e-coli during my childhood? No I didn't.

If you tell your child to wash their hands because of the slightest bit of mud on their hands, isn't going to help their immune system.

I grew up in a era where children respected their parents and their elders and those in authority because we knew we would get a hiding from our parents or our teachers if we misbehaved, or didn't do our homework.

You would respect the police because we would get a clip on the ear and taken to see our parents.

When I used to get cuts and scrapes, the teachers would patch me up without a second thought and really look after you.

You could catch the bus and walk home without any trouble.

Do you know what has changed? It is fear.

Fear generated by the government, fear generated by the Health and Safety people. Teachers now fear repercussions if they dare to patch up a childs knee after a fall, for fear of being labelled a "child abuser".

Paedophiles have been around for generations, so what's different now? Nothing, just that the media strike fear into people, children are still going to get snatched or abused despite the best intentions of their parents, despite the media attention. If you are really worried about your child, get them a mobile phone so they can call you if they feel they're unsafe.

Wrapping up your children in cotton wool isn't helping to prepare them for the world.

Take some risks, let your children live their lives with the same freedoms you had when you were growing up.

We are in a really dangerous era in our evolution as a society, ruled by political correctness and FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt).

Don't get me wrong fear in small doses prevents us from doing things that could endanger our own lives or those of others. But we do not want to become paralysed with fear so we end up doing nothing at all.

When posting on an internet forum, please be more descriptive with the title. "Any good?" what kind of title is that. If you're talking about a company or a product put the name of the company or the product in the title. It isn't rocket science. Or are we really becoming that lazy?

I like to have a little bit of warning about what the content of the thread might be, so I don't waste my time reading something that isn't anyway in the slightest of any relevance or of interest to me.

Well over a month ago Facebook announced they were rolling out a new search function as detailed here:

http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=923

It's taking quite a long time to reach my account, so when do I get to play with the new toys?

"Can you hear me mother?" is a saying normally used when you have problems communicating, as in my case dodgy internet connection again. I promise I will stop complaining, but I don't know when :D

I was going to have something meaningful to say yesterday, but the time flew by again quite quickly.

I hope you all had a great weekend.

Until the next time.

I've been absent from my blog for a couple of day because I've been busy doing a PC upgrade, tearing my hair out regarding my internet connection and getting my sites online.

It feels great to be busy, the time is just flying by. I'll have something more meaningful to say tomorrow :)

I don't think I ever told you, I love bats, no not the willow type bats or the metal bats that you use to play cricket or baseball. I mean the furry flying mammal variety.

They are awesome creatures that strike fear into lots of people, I just find them fascinating.

This post was prompted by a tweet by @psomom she took a photo of this beautiful little bat:

I thought he might be a Pipstrelle as per this web page:

http://www.first-nature.com/bats/pipistrellus_pipistrellus.htm

However he seems to be smaller than that or he could be a baby?

Any thoughts?

Sorry for the lack of content yesterday, it always happens when I have to leave the house to do things :)

Well what a funny old day yesterday, another 2 icons have shuffled from this mortal coil.

Patrick Swayze and Keith Floyd R.I.P.

Who will be classed as icons of the future? Say in 30 years time, who will stand out from the current crop of fresh faced celebs, who  will stand the test of time?