Posts Tagged ‘ kids ’

Photos: Mudfight!


Remember when you were a kid at school and there was even the vaguest hint of a scuffle somewhere on the playground? Everyone would flock to see what was going on and to chant ‘fight! fight! fight!’ at the brawlers until a teacher came over to put a stop to it. Well apparently that behaviour is not limited to playgrounds, nor to children.

These photos are from an incident very similar in formula to that above, but this time involving adults and a lot of mud. What started as a few people watching a playful mud-slinging contest ended up as a dense ring of onlookers. It even made it to the big screens by the stage.

The victor…

The usurper…

The reassertion of victory…

Myths & folktales: the prototypes of all narratives? [short version]


The short version…

By simple virtue of the placement along the human temporal spectrum of the oral telling and retelling of myths, folktales and fairytales prior to that of written retellings, that they are the prototypes and origins of all narrative. There was speech before there was writing and therefore contemporary narratives, immortalised in all their media and versions, must have as their prototypes the myth, fairytales and folktales ‘of old’ as that is, historically, where our concepts of storytelling, the structures and links therein, derive from. However, the full gamut of narratives cannot be reduced down to the theoretical models of Propp, Lévi-Strauss or even Todorov because they were not formulated in the face or light of modern and postmodern narratives. Moreover, as Barthes describes above (1975), narrative is extremely diverse and many contemporary narratives are deliberately constructed to deviate from exactly the conventions that theorists have sought to map.

The long version…

…is on my uni assignments page, here.

“Homosexuality is wrong, kids, God says so.”


happy to hate

Rachel Williams reported in the Guardian about the so-called U-turn performed by the government regarding sex education in faith schools, i.e. allowing Catholic schools to teach that homosexuality is wrong and ‘discourage’ the use of contraception.

What I’d ike to know is, how has this been passed? Religious freedom notwithstanding, surely it’s better to teach kids all sides of something and let them make their own minds up. Teaching that homosexuality is wrong because ‘God said so’ (aside from the ambiguity of the actual ‘truth’ here) is just going to perpetuate and exacerbate hate [crimes], misunderstandings and inhibit diversity.

In the words of Stonewall:

Some people are gay, get over it.

In addition, does the country need any more breeding teenagers, really? With very few exceptions, having a baby young is a waste of the lives of all concerned – the teenagers who don’t get to have a life until they’re in their 30s, the kids raised by kids who haven’t probably learnt some of the most valuable lessons to pass down.

A spokesman for the Dept for Children, Schools and Families, has said

“…schools will be required to teach full programmes of study in line with the principles outlined in the bill, including promoting equality and encouraging acceptance of diversity. Schools with a religious character will be free to express their faith and reflect the ethos of their school, but what they cannot do is suggest that their views are the only ones.”

However, this translates to ‘a Catholic school will be required to teach the factsabout contraceptives and contraception, but would be free to contradict it all by foregrounding and reinforcing their views on the subject.

The question remains: who ensures that a balanced message of tolerance, objectivity and free will is  getting across?