Purple Hair! (by sarah)

I have dyed my hair purple black!

The hair was still slightly wet when I took these so I'm hoping they will look more purple than this!

Science Budget Cut by 600 Million (by sarah)

I follow New Scientist for the little snippets of news even though I decided I had to stop my subscription. And yesturday the thing that stuck out at me was the proposed Science Budget cut of 600 Million - they can't be serious - please tell me they are joking.

But they are not - in fact I am seeing reports now of 68, 000 🙁

And so this country will sink due to arttrition - with out science research our international standing will falter. With cuts that mean students will not be supported as well - 5-10 years down the line shortages will begin to appear in medical research, in defence, in Industry, in the infurstructor of the country that keeps buildings up and the like.

It will have knock on effects in medical care, food production and believe it or not business and the economy - you will be wiping out the innovationalists. They will have no way to foster their brains or their ideas.

And so the Uk will crumble and become a pantry backwater living off of the tourism of a by gone age.

We will also have an unemployment problem - a bunch of over qualified people competeting for the same jobs everyone else is trying to get - suicide rates will go up. Intellegent crimes like frued will go up. Unrest and dissent.

I look around and I see other things coming into being like the idea that ISP should spy on their customers to check what they are looking at - this is the UK and not China I am talking about here - look.

I am starting to feel we are in a slow under cover war against those people who actually think! The inventors and innovators, anybody who thinks - and the scary bit about this is if you get rid of those people who is going to stick up for those too scared or too busy looking after families or those who just don't have the mental campacity?

Such as the situation with this kiddy database where they ask lots of questions about what you eat when and if your scared to be with your perants etc.... (this is for like five year olds so the parent has to fill it in :/) it was not obvious it wasn't compulsary and when asked some of the parents had been scared that non compliance would have their children put on some list and taken away. This is not a good state of affairs 🙁

And what has this latest fiasco shown me? It's shown me that the government is going to break even their most arduant promises and that I can not trust a single thing they do or say.

Free-e-Day Stuff (by sarah)

Though I couldn't get to the actual physical venue in Oxford yesturday I did spend alot of time online taking part in the discuessions and listening to the free music. As a result I found three new bands that I like and bored everyone silly in the online chats.

Although to my suprise I got good feedback on a poem of mine I linked too and stuff and got thanks today for participating in the workshops 🙂

But this does mean that you had better steady yourself for a few long rambling posts on the nature of language and the future of the novel, the internet and equality etc...

I really did enjoy this event - just having deep discussions about things reminded me of university alot. It also made me think about my status as a writer and artist.

It was a shock to have people saying things like I'm a pioneer and and other generally heady things.

But mainly I was again struck by the fact that the distinction between the truelly artistic and truelly sciencentific mind is false. How creativity is about those too things - I know I rabbit about this alot but this particular false dicotomy is bad news for everyone leading to loathing when open discussion should be being broach.

I am side tracking myself again!

Any way - basically I really enjoyed it and I think that I can't really deny I am an artist and writer anymore even though I feel grrr... about using science to write poetry and scifi rather than saving the world with it.

Oh and the Wiggly Pets really enjoyed it too - its the first time anyones said that actually like the Wiggly Pet blog rather than just saying how cute the Wiggly Pets themselves are.

Free-e-day (by sarah)

Today is Free-e-day, it is the worlds largest celebration of Indie culture - but that doesn't mean what I thought it did!

Indie means independent and not everyone dressing like Jarvis Cocker from Pulp or indeed like Olly used to at uni (and maybe me sometimes but shhhh). Though I am assuming that in my teens I was just simply not ofey enough with the music culture to realise that Indie was probably short for something else.

It is a celebration of Artists, Writers, Musicians... you get the picture - but brilliantly there are loads of cool free downloads and access to peoples writing and the like!

Yay!!!

And for me best of all - the Wiggly Pets went and put themselves forward for this - thinking that their community blog needed abit of an airing and that it might well lead to some adoptions 🙂

They are currently excitedly sitting around watching me type this! Getting impatient with me to get on with it so they can get to the free downloads!

Also there is a culture cafe things going on this evening in Oxford too 🙂 The Brochure and flyers etc... can all be found here along with some really quiet interesting web-chats 🙂

I will no doubt post a few things here today so be prepared!