UK today

The death toll is at 37 now, according to the BBC.

A website claims (a) to represent a group of terrorists that (b) are affliated with al-Qaeda and (c) to have caused the blasts. The related BBC article includes the text of their statement.

The Archbishop of Canterbury was at an interfaith gathering today.

“As it happens I have spent this morning with Muslim colleagues and friends in West Yorkshire; and we were all as one in our condemnation of this evil and in our shared sense of care and compassion for those affected in whatever way.

“Such solidarity and common purpose is vital for us all at this time of pain and sorrow and anger.

“We in the faith communities will have to continue to stand and work together for the well being of our nation and for our shared understanding of the life that God calls us to. I hope that we shall all keep that vision alive at this deeply sad and testing time.”

- from his official statement.

Quote of the day:"we've told a better class of bastard to fuck off"

You know, full sympathy for those who suffer loss from this inexcusable behaviour, but for the rest of us, lets carry on without the slightest whiff of terror and remind the rest of the world that when this happens to us we neither look snarling for the nearest person to hit, veins a throb in our head, nor rush en masse to the psychiatrist chair.

As has been said elsewhere by better people than me, we`ve told a better class of bastard to fuck off.
[...]
They want Terror. Give them never going to bed on an argument. Give them never letting a kind act left undone. Give them the hateful sight of you remembering to share your love with everyone you care about. Give them your turned back whilst you share the beauty of life with your nearest and dearest in the fullest way possible.

There will be no Terror. There will be no erosion of civil liberties justified by this non existent Terror. For that is the British way, all of us, race or creed be damned and we will simply not allow these things. - from a post by markeris

This may seem a strange response to the carnage in London from one of Britain's own. I disagree. I find it comforting that someone who was as much a target as the rest of the dead can choose to respond instead of blindly reacting. I find it comforting to focus on life and not death, love instead of fear.

On how Title IX came into being...

U.S. Rep. Edith Green, a Democrat from Oregon, was shocked at what she heard one day in the late 1960s, several years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. A panel of school superintendents spoke at a hearing about a special program for potential high-school dropouts.

One superintendent boasted that his state was having great success with its new program for disadvantaged boys. Many more of them were staying in school. Two other superintendents chimed in that their new classes for boys were a hit as well. ( ... )

"Well, was there not a need to have classes for disadvantaged girls?" she asked. She knew for a fact that many girls dropped out of high school, too. "Couldn't you have classes and include both boys and girls?" she wondered.

Oh no, the superintendents said, it was better to have classes just for boys. The boys needed them, they explained, because they "are going to have to be the breadwinners."

Mrs. Green was stunned. Certainly, she thought, the laws of the United States wouldn't let public schools give boys opportunities that they didn't give to girls. But when she looked up the laws in place, she learned that "It was perfectly legal to discriminate in any education program against girls or women." ( ... )

Source: Wall Street Journal (paid registration required)

As for what I think about this, er, um, gee. I was a 3.mumble student in high school; if the sort of quotas this describes had been in place when I applied for college I wouldn't have a Computer Science degree.