Like, Really up-to-date, like.

Ok, a post against the BBC's being modern. How popular that will be (and does one care, really?)! Well, to be modern is one thing; to be stupidly so is another. To reflect the views of modern people one thing; to reflect the views on a certain kind of modern person another completely.

The BBC is often replete with ridiculous tales of modern science. Often British science, sad to say. Take this one: fatness can be 'in the mind'. I'm not at all sure it wasn't more tabloid than that, even, earlier on- but with the BBC's stealthy editors one never quite knows. Yes, there's a vague possibility of some assistance for eating disorder types, but speaking as a person who goes up and down in weight (with significantly differing responses from the opposite sex a not unnoticeable result), and knowing others similar, I can most certainly say it's not in the mind that one is fat or not. One speaks as a potential fatty, very sceptical of the mental explanation for all ills, having made perhaps too much use of a long and introspective memory of one's ups and downs. I also have contact with science-types in central Europe for whom British 'science' (thanks mainly to the Beeb's presentation of it) is a running joke (they make allowances, but find it all hilarious).

But also there's the priority thing. The Beeb's rationalism only goes so far. When it comes to the great homosexual debate they're treating it as though some real and tangible 'type' of person were being persecuted by the Catholic church. Evidently it's not a thing that's, so to speak, 'treatable'. Nor is it just a choice, evidently. I think the BBC is the confused party (and I do mean 'party'), not the Catholic church (for all its sins).

The Beeb article about the RC's latest pronouncement has been up all day, and immediately points out that 'it treats homosexuality as a "tendency", not an orientation'

Well, why not? What's the big deal? There's ample evidence out there it's just one of those personal choices. Some like blue, some like green; some like soft things, others hard ones (I mean it- they do). Girl says, I don't like men, they cause wars etc., plus Dad's a b******; later becomes lesbian. Ditto boy says he's too clever to be like other men and settle down- 'a-hole's a-hole'- and besides women are too cagey about sex (ie. he fears not getting any of any quality); so he becomes a bit gay. I say a bit, because so often we have alot of this bi-talk, and where does that, er, fit in?

Oh, and while we're about it- a mention for Justin Webb, the BBC's chief moist-eyed I-love-to-Hate-America journalist, and now scientific expert:

'The dinosaurs, he informs me with great authority and aplomb, are millions and millions and millions of years old. I could have hugged him and his parents; we are, after all, inhabiting the same mental planet.'

I am sure few will take the trouble and the angst of tendering a refutation of his statements, but the passion is just a little like a perverted religious fervour: loving only the Chosen. The idea that the feelings of a BBC journalist about a source hang on the agreement of that source (and the source in this case is just a child) with his own views is such a telling one. As so often Webb just tells it like he is. And that makes it rather like the rest of the BBC's 'science': long on prejudice, short on patient judgement.