If Gwyneth Said It, It Must Be True

So, I read in the paper yesterday that the chrity Sense About Science has had to publish a leaflet for the second year in a row warning people not to listen to scientific advice from celebrities and that public should check their facts before making scientific statements.

I find it hard to believe that this is actually serious, but I am regretfully aware that it is. What does it say about the state of our society when people will believe science advice from celebrities? You know, people famous for doing things distinctly other than science? Are we really living in a country so stupid, so gullible that they will take the word of Sarah Beeny or Stella McCartney over a qualified doctor? Apparently, yes.

It boggles the mind that someone would take the statement: "...and up to 60% of what you put on it is absorbed into the system. Lots of skin products use the same petrochemicals as the antifreeze in your car!"From the daughter of one of The Beatles as a fact. Or the piece of gold from Gyneth Paltrow that a vegan diet helps decrease the risk of tumours, or how about Gillian McKeith telling people that obesity runs in families.

Why do people believe this?!

There was a time, centuries ago, when the only people that were famous were those that were excellent at the job they did. Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Isaac Newton, people famous for being the best people that society had to offer. Now, look to even thirty years ago; Malcolm X, Robert De Niro, Stephen Hawking, people famous for being the best society had to offer. Now? Now we have Jade Goody, Paris Hilton or Victoria Beckham, or television "personalities" like McKeith, those cleaning ladies or Gok Wan. As pleasent as these people may be, do they really hold such sway in peoples minds that when they make a statement on more or less anything that it becomes news and truth?

When the actor Gwyneth Paltrow, a person good at acting, makes a statement on tumour prevention, why does anyone pay attention? If a bus driver gave you advice about how to alleviate the risks of heart diesease based on eating organic meat pies, would you believe him? No. Why? Because he's a damn bus driver. It doesn't matter what his theory is, he knows nothing about the subject. So why do people listen to Gwyneth? Because she's famous. Sure they have been crackpots like Uri Geller that appear from time to time, but they are quickly swept back under the dappy coloured carpet from whence they came. But "celebs"? Everything they say seems to be treated as possible fact.

And the real facts? The important stuff? That's relegated to the dull, dusty corners of a website, or the fourteenth page of a newspaper (unless it's something glamourous like a cancer cure or anything to do with drinking or obesity), because what an Oscar winner with a child called Apple is far more knowledgable on cancer prevention than a doctor of radiotherapy is. It's a sad testament to the depths to which our society is plunging into. And the sooner we find a cure for this, the better.

A New Years Message

There are a few things I have learnt over the past twelve months that feel are important to note and be aware of in the world we live in today. I think that New Years is a good a time as any to expouse them:

1) We must not allow ourselves to be cowed into a culture of fear by our Governments or our media. All too often right now the news media and the Government pumps out a massive amount of fear mongering that seem designed specifically to keep us afraid in order to get us to continually surrender civil liberties in order for them to protect us. In 2007 this could not have been more beautifully encapsulated by the attempted attacks on Glasgow Airport, which the Government span into an effort to get Parliament to give them the increase in detention without charge. We must stay aware of this rather effective political tool, which has become used more and more often since one fateful day in September 2001. Do you remember in so many films and news broadcasts before that day we heard the often quoted line of "We get a hundred terrorist threats against this country everyday, we just don't tell the public about them." Of course, it's pretty clear to see that in 2007, and moving into 2008, they tell us about each and every one. Because the more threatened we feel, the more protection we want, even if it means giving up certain freedoms. Watch for the assassination of Benezair Bhutto, and the instant blame placed on "al-Qaeda" to be thrust in all our faces very soon. Remember, bad things have always happened all over the world, we just didn't always get told about it by Reuters, Fox or Sky before.

2) Faith & belief are tenants that exist independent of proof, and therefore need to remain personal. Having an opinion is one thing, but your thoughts on the way somebody should live their life should remain yours, and not thrust in anyone elses face. In a year where - in America - the creationism vs evolution debate raged out of control, and in this country Islam vs everyone else became a staple talking point, it is important for everyone of any faith to remember that just because you think you know what is going to happen when you die still doesnt make it true. Until someone comes back from the dead to tell us, you will never know; so please, stop telling everyone that doesn't follow your beliefs why they should. And for the record, God does not make people hate others, people do.

3) Finally, we all need to realise that it is the emphasis on our differances, that Governments and politically correct organisations love to highlight, is driving us further and further apart. We are all humans, first and foremost. You skin colour, heritage, religion, sexual preferance or ability to walk is secondary to the fact that you are a human. The continued highlighting and celebrating of every minority and insignificant speck in the great void that is humanity is only fuelling the desire for those groups to become more and more prominent and foreign to those that are not of them. Why does it matter if someone is gay, or black, or Hindu or Romanian? You can get on with them in spite of this, as you are both humans, there is no need to see, acknowledge and judge the differances in you before you get to know each other. The focus on our differances is keeping us apart as a species, and allowing for the exploitation of hatred of those groups by bigots.

I Know Where We Are Trying To Go Into The Future, But The Only Way We Are Going To Get There Is Together.

HUMAN : TOGETHER

Happy New Year




REVOLUTION 909

Bigotry: A Necessary Evil

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7149525.stmMy thought process on this subject started when this whole pointless Pogues debacle started with the BBC. Short story if you can't be bothered to read the article, BBC Radio One censored the Pogues "Fairytale", bleeping out the word "faggot" and "slut". The problem stems from the fact that the song had been played for years and years but has never been censored, so why now? Also, Radio Two was playing the song uncensored.

To me, the whole mess (now resolved, leaving an uncensored song), was totally pointless, but revealed an interesting truth about our society. In our enlightened search for "tolerance" for all the people in this world, in our desire to uphold the tenants of free speech, human rights and social acceptance for everybody, we are slowly stripping away said rights from a group that, while dwindling in size, still makes up a sizable proportion of people.

The problem with the "right" to free speech in this enlightened, 21st century society is that not everyone in the world will always agree on what can be deemed as "free speech". There are a large group of people in the world who are bigots. Nowadays the "pc brigade" (that is often made up of two groups; ultra vocal loudmouths from minorities, and middle class, married white people who feel they should be offended), that is so often mentioned and demonized by the media, espouse that everyone has the right to free speech or equal rights - particularly those who don't have them, such as poor Iraqis (so we invade and help destroy their country so they can have them).

Now, coming out of this push for free speech and equal rights for everyone, comes the logic that there are certain words you can no longer say; nigger being an oft cited example, faggot being another (for the most part it is words that are used to descirbe some kind of minority group that are the words that shall never be uttered). The popular line to toe nowadays is that "you have to be responsible with free speech" which, I suppose is okay, but kind of turns free speech into limited speech. Moreover, this does away with the rights of bigots.

I posted a transcript of a sketch George Carlin did a while ago that was based around the notions of language, which I would like to reassert here: "For instance, you take the word "nigger". There is absolutely nothing wrong with the word "nigger" in and of itself. It's the racist asshole that's using it that you ought to be concerned about. We don’t care when Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy say it. Why? Because we know they're not racist. They're niggers! Context! Context! We don't mind their context because we know they're black. Hey, I know I'm whitey the blue eyed dough boy, honkey, patty ass motherfucker myself. It don't bother my ass. They're only words.You can't be afraid of words that speak the truth, even if it's an unpleasent truth about the fact that there's a bigot and a racist in every living room, on every street corner of this country."

I think that this is the crux of the problem with free speech and equal rights. The more vocal the outspoken sections of a minority become, the more they emphasise how we MUST accept gays or blacks or asians or handicapped and how important it is to celebrate all our diversity, the more people who don't buy into that idea dislike these minorities. I am all for the removal of bigotry in the world, but it is very important that we all recognise that bigotry and bigots do exist. We cannot cocoon ourselves from the problem and hope that it will disappear. Just as much as minority groups have a right to jump up and down scream about how everyone is equal and wonderful, bigots have a similar right to jump up and down and scream about how everyone is not equal and not wonderful.

Bigotry reminds us minorities that not everyone thinks it's great to be gay or black or disabled. It reminds us that not everyone likes "us". And you know what? That's fine. If we want to espouse the values of equal rights and free speech, then it has to be applicable to everyone, not just those who didn't used to have them.

So say nigger, say faggot, say whatever you want. I will never agree with you if that is a view you have, but you have a right to have it. Just as I have a right to disagree with you. Invariably the people that are most vocal about how such words must never be used are the ones causing people to hate the above mentioned groups; the ones that think that you can ram your own special culture down everyones throat, while preventing them from ever disagreeing with you because that would be racist or homophobic or sexist. That causes as much hatred for minority groups as anything else. Emphasizing the differances between staights and gays, blacks or whites, Muslims and Christians only serves to widen the gap between the two co-existing peacefully.

In building this culture of free speech, eqaul rights and total acceptance of everyone, the architects have created a world where we are becoming more and more distant from one another than ever before. The closer we move towards actually getting along with one another, the more the "pc brigade" demands that many of the unfashionable lot that don't share the same views give up their rights to free speech, so that we will not be bothered by their views or opinions. Our world will never be without bigotry, it's a simple fact, so we have to learn to understand it in order to combat it. Sweeping it under the rug so that everyone feels better about themselves is unrealistic. If you think that the word nigger should be banned, or that homophobes should all be done away with, then the only bigot around here is you.

Heading Down The Primrose Path

I've noticed a growing trend over the past eighteen months for our leaders, our politicians, our military and the all powerful news media to continually refer to the threat to our way of life that exists today. The threat of terrorism. The threat of extremist Islam. The threat of brown people in deserts across the world that "Hate us for our freedom" and other equally catchy slogans.

Am I the only way that is beginning to view the coverage of this growing threat as something very, very similar to the way that communism was portrayed in the west during the '50s and '60s? The threat to democracy, to freedom, to what is good and right in the world. How long will it be until we start seeing McCarthy-esque witch-hunts? Here in Britain we've already seen a woman convicted for the crime of writing poetry.

Think about that. Convicted for writing poetry.

Her work sympathised, some might say glorified, the actions of the insurgents/terrorists/freedom fighters/threat to democracy/whatever you want to call them over in Iraq. While I disagree with the woman’s desire to view the acts in such a positive light (doing so through those ever present faith based glasses that everyone attached to this conflict seems to be wearing nowadays), I am shocked that she has been convicted for writing them down. I mean, think about it, what this conviction means is that, essentially, your opinions are not safe anymore. You may not write poetry about something that doesn't agree with the official party line. Taking it a step further, it indicates that one may not produce a play sympathising with the enemy’s plight, or create a sculpture showing the true horror of the war that the politicians want to forget.

That to me seems to scream out as a precursor to the return to McCarthyism.

We have our Prime Minister telling us he wants to turn our city centres into concrete barracks, our lives to be monitored, observed and watched every day for our own security. Well, call me crazy, but I want to retain my individual freedom to choose how to live my life. I want to see glass windows in shops; just because a bomb might turn the material into dangerous flying shards does not mean that they have to be done away with. A boiler blowing up could demolish a building full of people, should we get rid of them as well? We cannot bubble wrap the entire world and make everyone live indoors just because of the "threat". If that was the case then no one would ever leave their house for the "threat" of being hit by lightning.

If we were able to survive thirty years of the IRA bombing us from an island less than half an hours plane flight away then I'm sure we can survive the "threat" of freedom endangering extremist Islam. Of course, we all know that the last thing that the governments of Britain and the United States want to keep their citizens from realising that. Keeping the populace afraid makes them easier to control. It makes their opinions easier to mould when the threat to their territory is always in the back of their mind. It keeps the wheels of Government constantly greased to surrender new powers to the leader of the day so that they may better help us fight terrorism.

That's how Hitler got started.

I do not mean to be alarmist, but after yesterdays bombing of the U.N in Algeria, I am sure we will once again see the scaremongering of our overlords put into full effect, telling us that no one is safe! Just remember that sometimes risk is necessary. Sometimes it's necessary to have principles and opinions that fly in the face of prescribed opinion. Mark Twain once said "Patriotism means supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." Well, the bumblers and botchers that are currently in power do not deserve it, let me tell you. They have the gall to try and impose on the spot street searches, fifty two days of detentions without charge, or arrest a young woman for her opinions, citing that they are doing nothing more than protecting us from the threat of terrorism when THEY STILL HAVEN'T CAUGHT OSAMA BIN LADEN.

The threat of communism was real, but the world kept turning. The threat of the IRA was real, but the world kept turning. Do not let the threat of extremist Islam be blown out proportion as an excuse to stop the world turning. In this technocentric age, all we have that is safe is what is inside our heads. And I would rather retain that and live under the threat of attack than surrender it completely and not ceasing to really be living at all.

No Choose We Lose

NEW RULE (Yes I love Bill Maher and you should to): Religious people have to stop campaigning for protection from "religious hatred". It's not enough that the rule only applies to brown people anyway, but there's a reason why no rational person should give a shit if they upset someones religious sensibilities: They chose them.

Unlike the laws that protect against racial hatred, sexual or minority discrimination (otherwise known as the George Bush happy hour), religious people deserve absolutely nothing of the same sort. The simple reason is that they chose to believe in whatever supernatural spook is their cultures flavour du jour, and therefore have to deal with it when someone pokes fun at them, says they're idiots, bigots, intolerant, extremists, fascists and general nutjobs.

You see there's a common misconception that Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and the rest are some kind of race of people, like someone might be oriental, black, middle eastern, white or aborigine. Or that they're some kind of nation people Chinese or Kenyan or French or Brazilian. Or that they're some kind of minority people like the handicapped, the transsexual or those that don't blindly support causes they don't understand just because the papers tell them to. There are no religious children. If you were born in Tehran, chances are you would be raised as a Muslim. If you were born in North America you'd be raised as a Christian. Why? Not because you were born that way, but because your parents chose to raise you that way. Irrespective of belief, you would still be brown if you were born in the mid-east, and Caucasian if you were born in North America. You can't change that.

But you can change your beliefs. And the reason that belief deserves absolutely zero protection in the eyes of the law is because people CHOOSE to follow whatever religion it is they're into. Do lawyers get legal protection defending them from lawyer jokes? No, because they chose to be a lawyer, no one forced them. Should dustmen get protection from having to work with waste? No, because they chose to be dustmen (though they seem to be trying their damndest to change this). So Muslims or Christians shouldn't get any protection from someone calling them on their intolerant bullshit because THEY CHOSE TO FOLLOW THAT RELIGION. You can't argue otherwise, because if you had any proof for your belief, it would be fact and not belief.

So stop whining when someone shows an image of your prophet, or when someone slaughters one of your TB infected sacred cows, or when someone puts Jerry Springer The Opera on television and a judge laughs you out of court when you try to sue the producer on the grounds of blasphemy. You chose to follow that particular fiction that talks about talking bushes, men floating into the sky, six thousand year old earths and babies surviving attempts on their lives which end up shaping their destiny (the last one was actually from Harry Potter, but it's a similar load of absolute fantasy), so stop complaining when rational people disagree. Also, stop complaining when your employer tells you (or should if they had any spine) to shut the fuck up when you whine about having to handle alcohol, not wear your cross (and what is the point of wearing that by the way? If Jesus does come back the last thing he's going to want to see is a cross) when on company time or when logical people, the establishment or the mass media tell you to stop discriminating against women, gays, liberals, the poor, or other religions. Using the old "God says..." trick is a cheap way to disguise your hatred. You chose to believe in first century belief system in the twenty first century, so stop whining when the rest of the species decides to try and get along with one another for who we all are, and ignores you crying out that your crumbling papyrus pile of bullshit tells you that women should subservient to men. Or that gays should be executed. Or that rape victims are to blame for tempting their attackers.

You chose to live in a framework of myth, superstition and fear of change and the unknown. You'd learn that the modern world is a far more interesting place when you choose not to.

Sony's Problem

A year on from launch, and the PS3 is still not selling. Here's why (my opinion):

1) The PS3 is still too highly priced for what it is. While the technology might be great, the average consumer (i.e. person who is not on the internet reading about videogames or writing about them like me) does not care about its Cell processor, 204 GFLOPS single precision float and 15 GFLOPS double precision, 256 MB of Rambus XDR DRAM, or RSX "Reality Synthesizer" when, essentially, the Xbox 360 graphics look the same and the console is much cheaper. This problem is further compounded by the rampant success of Nintendo's Wii, which is proving that you don't need insane levels of technology or graphical beauty to be a success.

2) The BluRay drive. Sony has made the very dangerous move of committing to as yet unproven successful. While they try to push it as a selling point, the fact is that it is null and void because the mass market isn't ready to decide whether it likes HD or BluRay more yet, meaning that consumers are hesitant about investing in a technology that may be obsolete within a few years. Like the VHSvs Betamax conflict, or all those people that invested in MiniDiscs (remember them?) consumers are wary of buying loads of BluRay DVDs only for the amount of new films being produced and put onto the format to dry up. Should HD win out, Sony has a massive problem on its hands, as it has a console with a built in DVD player, the technology of which is obsolete.

3) The ridiculous lack of marketing for the console or its games. I haven't seen advertisements in media stores, magazines or print for anything. When the 360 came out it was everywhere. When Halo 3 was released the hype was insane. People need to be reminded that your product is out there and that games are being released for it. The user base is so small that word of mouth alone won't do it. IT doesn't matter how many good games you have, they won't sell themselves.

4) Lack of good, exclusive games. Name me one big, exclusive game on the PS3. One. Bet you can't. This is the system's major problem, every game they have has been delayed or lost its exclusivity. Hell they didn't even launch with a killer app. "Resistance: Fall of Man"? Really? The good game was met with no marketing, and followed up with... Nothing. GTAIV, Devil May Cry 4, Killzone, Assassin's Creed. Every major game the console has had. Of the above three only one has been released, and that was a full year after the consoles US launch. GTA was delayed because the PS3 port was nowhere near finished. The only shining light the console has is MGS 4, and even that is in danger in terms of exclusivity, as Konami have said they're considering porting it to the 360, and Kojima doesn't mind.

The four add up to a monumental problem that I don't think the system will be able to overcome. The 360 has killed it in Europe and the US, and the Wii is dominating both. The Wii which has no built in DVD player, limited online functionality, no true HD and far underpowered hardware. And it's kicking the crap out of everything. It - in my opinion - suffered from a lack of decent games after the initial launch batch (aside from gimmicks that have zero replayability), which is why I sold mine, but it is still dominating everything. Who's have thought that Xmas 06 would have been the best chance you would have had to get a console for Xmas 07? A year of selling out everywhere, compared to not even selling out on launch day. To me, the PS3 looks like it is destined to be the Gamecube of this generation. And while the Gamecube had a definite marketing strategy and approach that failed, the PS3 was something that was expected to sell because of its past reputation. It didn't. And it's nobodies fault except Sony's.

The Blame Game

There has been a worrying trend in the past decade regarding blame. I don't where it comes from or who thinks up the clever links, but I think that - in the light of another tragic school shooting (in Finland) this week - I can already see the parallels popping up again.



Condemned Number One: Christopher Michael Benoit
May 21 1967 - June 24 2007

Over three days from June 22 to June 24 the professional wrestler Chris Benoit killed three people. He strangled his wife Nancy to death to a phone cord, killed his seven year old son Daniel with a choke hold and then took his own life by hanging himself using the cord from a weight machine in his home gym.

A tragic occurance.

Any rational, logical person would rightfully condemn Benoit for these horrific crimes. But in 2007, this is not so. For some strange reason, the blame seems to have been placed at the feet of Benoit's employer: World Wrestling Entertainment.

The link between professional wrestling and steroids/prescription drugs is much like Tom Cruise's sexuality; an open but dirty secret within the entertainment industry. Merely looking at the attached picture one can see that Benoit - a decidedly normal 5ft 10 inches tall - was built like a small truck. He was receiving shipments of steroids from his GP (Dr Phil Astin) on a monthly basis. While nothing may appear out of the ordinary (too much) for a professional wrestler to be receiving prescription steroids, it quickly came to light that Benoit was receiving enough steroids to last a normal user TEN MONTHS. That is nowhere near the realm of "normal usage". The history of steroid abuse in wrestling is a long and storied one, and not one which I will go into here, and is something that seems to have become the sole media focus of the entire tragedy.

Once the media had a nice, juicy story to get their teeth into with professional wrestling they were stunned to learn that in the last ten years over one hundred wrestlers and former wrestlers under the age of forty have died, almost half from drug related issues. The seedy underbelly of the carny world of professional was even more salacious than the media had thought.

Now Benoit becomes the figure head, a Christ like Messiah for the attackers of the faux "Sport of Kings". And with Benoit as Christ, there can be only one Satan: The owner of WWE, Vincent Kennedy McMahon. Benoit - a prolific steroid abuser - committed these horrific acts under the watch of World Wrestling Entertainment, and it seems that they are the ones being held responsible for his crimes.

I ask three questions:
Who was taking the steroids prescribed to Chris Benoit?
Who killed Nancy and Daniel Benoit?
Who killed themselves to avoid answering for his crimes?




Condemned Number 2: Cho Seung-Hui
January 18 1984 - April 16 2007

Cho Seung-Hui marched into Virginia Tech University on April 16 2007 and murdered 35 people. He wounded 25 others. He was armed with a Glock 19 and Walther P22 semi-automatic pistols, which were loaded with hollow point bullets - bullets designed to expand on entering the human body, resulting in greater tissue damage. He shot himself in the head when police breached the doors of the building he was in.

He also made a video tape, chronicling himself preparing for the attack, and listing his alleged motivations. Of course, the media quickly pounced on this story, and must have been overjoyed to find images of Cho mimicking the poses of the actors Choi Min-sik and Kang Hye-jeong from the South Korean movie "Oldboy".

Media organizations, including Newsweek, the BBC, the Daily Mail, MSNBC, Reuters and the Associated Press all ran stories linking Cho to the influence of the movie. They described the more graphic scenes of the film, those which would fire the imagination of the reader and created maximum reaction, in an attempt to draw some kind of direct parallel between Cho and his actions and the movie.

Not only does no one get shot in Oldboy, Cho had not even seen the film.

I ask three questions:Who purchased the guns and ammo weeks before the shootings?
Who pulled the trigger?
Who killed themselves to avoid answering for his crimes?




Condemned Number 3: Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold

April 9 1981 – April 20 1999 / September 11 1981 – April 20 1999

The Columbine shooters. I will not go into graphic detail, as pretty much everyone knows the sotry (Michael Moore even made his last good film about it). On April 20th 1999 Dylan Harris and Eric Klebold walked into Columbine High School armed with automatic and semi automatic weapons and murdered thirteen people and wounded twenty three others before committing suicide with single shots to the head.

The world was shocked by such a tragedy, and the search for rationale was on. The media looked high and low for what could have caused two seventeen year old boys to commit such a horrifying act. They seemed to gloss over the apparent answers that were evident in the lives of these two troubled, bullied and isolated boys, and the media machine seemed to settle on one target: Marilyn Manson.

It did not matter that neither Harris or Klebold were fans of Manson, it didn't matter that they only quoted his lyrics a few times in their recovered journals, while they mentioned the movies The Matrix and Natural Born Killers far more often. The media had fixed their target, and they ran Marilyn Manson into the ground.

Every rumour and myth the lanky goth rocker had courted to increase his noteriety earlier in his career came back to haunt him, especially the small matter of the Priesthood in the Church of Satan that his friend Anton Szander LeVay bestowed upon him in 1995. Manson was hounded and turned into a hate figure. An easy target for a relentless barrage of criticism, revulsion and finger pointing. It closely resembled the witch hunts of years gone by.

I have three questions:Who wrote about what they were going to do?Who pulled the triggers on their respective guns?Who killed themselves to avoid answering for their crimes?
No one ever bought up Charles Manson's LSD usage when discussing the murders that The Manson Family committed under his orders. No one ever rifled through Hitler's CD collection to check what he was listening to. No one ever checked out Geoffery Dalmer's all time favourite movie list.

So why then, in the (allegedly) more enlightened times that we live in, do we see blame being placed so recklessly at the feet of people that had nothing to do with the crimes?




My conclusion is two fold. One; the perpetrators of the crime are dead. They cannot be hounded, they cannot be interviewed, they cannot be photographed, recorded or reacted to. Without a live body that can react to their blame, the media believe they have no story. Charles Manson is alive, so all the blame for his actions can be placed on him. But Chris Benoit is dead, so it must be Vince McMahon's fault. The media turns tragedies into ratings wars, where they act as God like entities, positioning every party they choose to deem accountable on collision courses with one another in order to generate maximum ratings. Look at the McCartney/Mills divorce, the McCann drama or any daytime chatshow. And all the while, the media companies remain unaccountable for their actions, above the squabblings of the people whose lives they may ruin, quietly reaping the rewards.

The second part of my conclusion is something that is more telling about our society as a whole these days: No one wants to accept responsibility for their own actions. No one wants to place blame on Cho Seung-Hui, because the violent movie industry is a much bigger and easier target. No one wants to condemn Eric or Dylan, because the music industry is a much more accountable focal point. No one wants to admit they're overweight and weak willed when one can blame skinny models, McDonalds or advertising that emphasises beauty, good taste or luxury.

This is the overarching problem of the three cases highlighted, and the wider problem with our society today. People refuse to accept that maybe, just maybe, they have to be responsible for themselves. Feral, "hoody" gangs of teenage kids are influenced by violent culture. It has nothing to do with the fact that their parents drink as much as they do and are practically non existent entities in their lives. People with a weight problem are bullied into eating by advertising and fast food. It has nothing to do with the fact that they spend too much time on the couch in front of the TV, not exercising and feeding their face. "Ladettes" who get too drunk every weekend are influenced by cheap drinks and the actions of Charlotte Church or Paris Hilton. It has nothing to do with their lack of ability to know when they've had enough, or their questionable moral and sexual scruples.

Until society learns that sometimes you have to be answerable for your actions, cases of misplaced blame and trial by media will continue to happen. It's an unpleasant truth that Europe allowed Hitler to become the problem he was, but one we cannot hide from. It's time society started acknowledging the unpleasent truths in its midst and actually doing something about them before another tragic event cum media circus happens again.