Dengl 15 Some Road Safety Conundra

If and when we creatures from below Hadrian's Pale enter true Lothistan we find a drivescape which is both puzzling, threatening and distracting - puzzling because nowhere (out of towns) does it say what a speed limit may be, in the jurisdiction one has entered (not do locals, upon enquiry, seem to know - or to let on if they do ...), threatening because there seem to be either actual speed cameras at very many points along the way, or the semblance of cameras (boxes with diagonal stripes - though these may carry feed for local zebras ...), and distracting because all the attention thus focused on photo-options takes one's mind away from other aspects of the road scene, let alone the marvellous countryside, AND there is the Chief of the Lothians Police Forces instructing his minions to remove the pencils from behind their ears and write letters to brave people who have ventured north, demanding payment for driving at supposedly illegal speeds (though vehicles protected with little blue signs with a diagonal cross are able, evidently, to go as fast as they please). And, of course, there are many jurisdictions south of the Pale where things are as bad - some even more stringent.

Now, I have come across an article which first of all helps one feel less guilty about driving, or at least wanting to drive sensibly, on whichever side of Hadrian's Pale one inhabits. It may also help change how the roads are run - though don't summon up too much hope - there are entrenched interests, not least those of the makers and installers of speed cameras, and the ways in which central (even Lothian?) government funds trickle into even-more-local administration coffers without being 'ring fenced ...'; then, there are the latter-day Savanarolists who would have us all in brown robes spun out of echt all-bran, with the remains of any body-heat evaporating from our tonsured tops, and nasty metal and electrical machinery abandoned - somewhere - possibly joining the tens of millions of television and radio sets which are due for dumping when the digital age dawns upon us....(these might be stacked up neatly within the giant cubes soon to be redundant, too, at Torness, Orford Ness and similar places)

I am only a learner in this world and am pursuing the website(s) advertised in the articles I attach, for a start.
www.safespeed.org.uk
If you are interested, there is a great deal more via Mr Smith's website .....

Dengl 14 Recognising Christmas and the Sabbath

My cousin Zaki Cooper has a piece in the Guardian (see link below) in their series Face To Faith, in which he very ably and correctly points out that "some of the staunchest supporters of Christmas come from other religions". Writing as an orthodox Jew, he is supported in at least one of several comments shown by the Guardian, from a Muslim.

A parallel scenario is the depressing error made by John Major's govt - mainly to oblige Sainsburys was it? - to allow widespread shopping on Sundays - in effect this "blanked out" public recognition of the rest day as such - that is a secularisation of the "public realm" and a dissipation of the human right to rest, which has been a great loss to a humane culture in England and Wales - I am not sure how these things are symbolised in Scotland - it is worth finding out!. And, as Don Giovanni's Jeeves Leporello pointed out "Ma - in Northern Irelandia (or however they say that in Italian - thirteen thousand (Santas)
here are a few of them ....lined the walls of the city - looks like a load of ketchup ...
who supplied the costumes?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/07/uk_enl_1197214026/html/1.stm

this link shows how the Guardian ran Zaki's piece, and also lets you see the modest pile of rather unimpressive comments which followed ....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2224160,00.html

Dengl 13 No Blasphemy in the Sudan

The British teacher Gillian Gibbons has accepted a pardon to emerge from jail in the Sudan. A pardon implies that she had been guilty of something - in this case not just misnaming a teddy bear, but doing so in a blasphemous way. Monotheistic religions presumably define blasphemy as insulting the Divinity. Islam should not agree, therefore, that to disparage Christ is to blaspheme (Islam has indeed inscribed this distinction on the Dome of the Rock : "... God, ... hath not taken unto Himself a son, and ... hath no partner in the Sovereignty"). To accept that insulting the Prophet Mohammed (whom we respect - but who Islam declares in this inscription can not be a 'partner in the Sovereignty') amounts to blasphemy is to imply that a human being, Mohammed, is a part of or 'partner to' to the Almighty - and that is itself surely a blasphemous thought.
Ideally, Mrs Gibbons would have argued that, in Islamic terms, she had not committed any blasphemy; we can understand, though, that she used a formula to escape cruel chastisement (we can not accept calling it punishment - which must be defined as a retribution for a valid crime). Ironically, all those party to the "pardon", the Sudanese authorities and the British, have covertly committed a blasphemy, though not in the way originally headlined.

Dengl 1 uptaded Explaining The Word Dengl

The first Dengl in history was number 1 in this list - and tries to explain the meaning of the word ...

it said:

Nowadays, with the lack of awareness of the history of a word, plus a certain amount of carefree creativity – we have new words boiled down from parts of two, to one – thus web log becomes the supremely inelegant blog - not a word which a sensitive person (Veper?) might wish to use. Similarly, these examples of “Mad English” or of Bad English could be called Denglishes – or just Dengls.
Party Conferences may become Tycons;
Sensitive Person(s) might be Vepers;
(mind you, so would insensitive persons)
tax incentives (are there such things?) would be Axinces; ....
Solar eclipses would be Larecls

keep going!!!

I'll perhaps put up some more examples - what about suggestions?