Gardener's whirled

My dad, watching a gardening programme on telly last night:

"They need the compost to get plenty of nutrients into the plant's bloodstream… I don't mean bloodstream, do I? I mean sap-stream."

IE7 v Firefox 2

(Non-nerds, please feel free to skip this public service announcement.)

Yesterday I upgraded my Internet Explorer web browser to version 7. I upgraded my Firefox browser to version 2 about a month ago. When you run a self-programmed website like Gruts, you need to check it looks OK on both of the major browsers.

For those of you who haven't tried it yet, IE7 is a bit of a curate's egg. It has some very nice new features like tabbed browsing, automagic RSS feed detection, and ClearType font technology (which makes reading web pages much easier on the eyes). But…

The menu, address, search and button bars at the top of the browser on IE7 are a total mess. Pretty much everything has moved, and there is no way to reposition anything, meaning there is an awful lot of wasted screen-space. The address/search bar now takes up an entire (fixed) row. You can't turn off the search box, which means you duplicate on-screen functionality with the Google search bar (if you use it), which is now forced onto its own separate row. Worst of all, the familiar navigation buttons are now all over the place: the back/forward buttons are top-left (before the address field), the refresh button is after the address field, the favourites button is second-row-down top-left, and the rest of the buttons are second-row down top right. Really, a total mess. I have had to become a bit of an expert in keyboard shortcuts in the last 24 hours, which is a major step backwards.

The conspiracy theorist in me suspects that Microsoft is not allowing me to rearrange my menu/address/button/search bars to force me to turn off the Google search bar: it now takes up too much valuable screen-space. To claw some more space back I have also been forced to turn off the menu bar. How bloody annoying is that?

So, despite some nice new features, IE7 completely blows it with the user interface. Which is odd, because Microsoft are usually pretty good at that sort of thing. If I were you, I would wait until they have sorted these issues out. At the moment, Firefox 2 is the much more user-friendly browser. It is also now noticeably faster.

Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Jehovah Prayer

BBC: Ban organised religion: Sir Elton

Sir Elton John has said he would like to see all organised religion banned and accused it of trying to "turn hatred towards gay people".

What a total pillock!

It's pretty damn rich for a gay man of all people to call for an activity practiced by millions of others (often in private, amongst consenting adults) to be banned.

What we really need, Sir Elton, is for people to work out for themselves that homophobia is wrong, and to work out for themselves that it's pointless praying to Empty Sky.

We need people to overcome their irrational beliefs by becoming rational, not by trying to persecute the irrational beliefs out of them.

Laughable

More Soundbite Science, courtesy of the Beeb (my emphasis added):

BBC: Is this the perfect comedy face?

Hilarious FaceScientists have used computer software to come up with what they say is the perfect comedy face.

The University of Stirling team blended together 179 different facial aspects of 20 top comedians…

Researcher Dr Anthony Little, a psychologist, whose work was commissioned by Jongleurs comedy clubs, showed faces with a range of different features to volunteers, and asked them to rate how funny they thought the person was.

Why does the BBC keep giving free publicity to corporate-sponsored rubbish like this on its News website? For some bizarre reason, they've filed it under health.

Motes and Planks

BBC: Archbishop attacks public atheism

The Archbishop of York has condemned what he called the systematic erosion of Christianity from public life.

Dr John Sentamu told lay readers illiberal atheists were undermining Britain's religious heritage.

In exactly the same way, presumably, that the arrival of St Augustine on the Isle of Thanet, the Synod of Whitby, the Protestant Reformation, heliocentrism, Catholic Emancipation, the Theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection, the legalisation of homosexuality and the enthronement of the first black archbishop all undermined our religious heritage.

Sometimes change can be for the better, archbishop.

The day your practising-gay successor is enthroned by a female Archbishop of Canterbury will be the day, perhaps, on which we should start discussing the issue of illiberal atheists.

See also: AC Grayling: Gotta have faith? (Guardian)

Conspiracy x 2

BBC: Saddam verdict timing 'suspect'

Former Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind has accused the US of delaying the verdict in Saddam Hussein's trial to coincide with the mid-term polls.

I have to say, the same thought had occurred to me. In fact, I'm kicking myself for not mentioning it on Gruts a couple of days ago, because I could now be suing yer man Rifkind for plagiarism, probably.

What are the odds, do you reckon, of the Americans capturing or killing Bin Laden just before the next presidential elections, with Republican candidate, Condoleezza Rice, taking the credit?

Remember, you heard it here first.

(Unless you've been listening to Jason Calacanis on the Gillmor Gang podcast, that is… Don't want to get sued for plagiarism!)

Bad News

BBC: BNP leader cleared of race hate

B[ritish] N[ational] P[arty] leader Nick Griffin and party activist Mark Collett have been cleared of inciting racial hatred after a retrial at Leeds Crown Court.

The BNP are a rotten bunch. And I speak as a former, fee-paying member of the National Front. We don't need their sort in West Yorkshire. They should go back to wherever they came from.

Erratum: National Trust; I meant National Trust. I always get those two mixed up.