S is for... Swooning over James Holmes

Err... yeah, GOOD.

Just a quick one to voice my disbelief. So girls everywhere are declaring their love for Batman cinema shooter James Holmes?! Yeah, sounds feasible.

Check this out:




Astounding!

"Wow, look at that murderer's face! Isn't his bone structure something else..."

Totally, totally what I was thinking... NOT.

S is for... Selfish Reproduction?

Read a horrible article yesterday from the New York Times, who have run a piece on China's one-child policy, featuring the story of Pan Chunyan who was kidnapped and forced into having an abortion by officials.

According to the 2010 national census, the average birthrate for a Chinese household is 1.181. The number is lower in cities and higher in rural areas. There are around 22 ways in which parents can get around the one-child rule- rural couples and ethnic minorities are allowed to have more kids, for example. But experts say the strict quota "remains among the so-called one-veto criteria for promotion and is about as significant a goal as maintaining stability or growing the local economy," and that the orders come from higher up in the government. Even when parents are ready to pay the $7,200 fine a third child warrants, officials will pressure or force mothers to have abortions to make sure "targets are met."

Horrid.

However, it did get me thinking about my own issues with the population problem we are currently facing. As a reductionist I am guilty of over-thinking and over-simplifying things. As a worrier, my reductionist perspective has been known to get the better of me, and I often find myself awake at night worrying about global issues. One thing I spend more and more time thinking about is whether, in the future, I could ever even justify having children? Let me explain...

P is for... Princess Culture.

My inspiration for this post actually began at an "after party" of sorts in the early hours of Sunday morning. This "after party" was at the flat that I used to live in actually, and consisted of a lot of heavy drinking and partying, followed by a LOT of deep and meaningfuls in the kitchen... Classic... And it was one of these deep and meaningful conversations in particular that got me thinking...

N is for... "Nessie" vs Evolution.

So since my post on Christians vs Cosmpolitan magazine I have recieved quite a lot of constructive emails from people about other religious topics to consider for future posts (after the hate mail subsided, that is). Although I have been looking into them as and when I've had a moment, I've tended to reply saying thank you very much, but that I didn't want my blog to turn into a atheist debate forum. It's not in my interests to focus solely on religion and limit my readership as a result.

B is for... Buffet at the end of the catwalk.

Wahey! A practically naked girl! You can all breathe a sigh of relief that I am no longer talking about science. Soz about that.

H is for.... Higgs Boson!

How could I not?

I'm not going to get all bogged down in science in this post, as much as it would reflect my entire day today. I have been asked a couple of times throughout the day to "calm down" and explain "simply" what it all means (when I have been getting over-excited etc.), so it would seem that not everyone has a shared level of interest in this subject. With that in mind, I won't be concerned if this leaves a lot of my readership disinterested. I understand that it's probably a bit weird that I'm so into stuff like this.

Anyway, I think I'm going to explain it all as simply as I can (as Einstein said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."), after which I will mention what it means in terms of its future implications. I feel like I have to do this, as today is such a monumental day for physics and I want to document my reaction, so ten years from now, when this is completely old news, I can look back with nostalgia and say things like "If only I'd known then what I know now....".

So here we go, the Lucie Guide to Finding the God Particle...

The Large Hadron Collider is something which has been a source of much excitement and disappointment for me. When it was first built back in 2008, it was around the time that I'd firmly established myself as an agnostic atheist and had really started to become interested in science. The LHC felt like an exciting step in filling the gaps of scientific knowledge I so desperately sought. But when there were problems with the cooling system, I was a little disheartened, especially as it then took a whole year to get it working again, and it wasn't actually until March 2010 that the first collision occured. I guess it was a bit of an anti-climax for me, but I still never lost hope in it! I'm glad I didn't.

I suppose an explanation of the LHC is necessary as the first level of understanding...

T is for... TomKat's Scientology-Scam Marriage.

This is one of those funny posts where my conspiracy blogging mind meets my topical blogging mind. This post is about how, according to Scientology insiders, Katie Holmes' marriage to Tom Cruise was in fact merely a carefully constructed Scientology contract. And now the contract is up, resulting in their divorce and some tricky decisions for Suri's religious future. I'm sure you've heard? But if you haven't, I know it sounds elaborate; I can only explain what I've heard...



Those of you who have ever heard my rant on Scientology, I would like to apologise to you- you may ignore these next few paragraphs. Because, if there's one thing I'm less open to tolerating than extreme Christianity, it's Scientology.

For those of you who aren't so clued up on the world of Scientology- I will keep this brief: it's a scam. No, ok, I'm being impertinant (again), here are the facts...

L is for... Legalising prostitution.

Heavy topic! And not one that can include a lot of pictures really, so sorry about the heavy amount of text.

This one was actually another request from Gabby, who I'm highly suspicious, likes to know stuff, but prefers someone else to do the research? She's a snakey one, but it suits me. I love reading. So here you are Gabs: My opinion on the legalisation of prostitution in the UK. This one's for you.