“My name is earl is a television show and not reality”. Just thought I’d point that out to Sharon Stone who this week claimed that the Chinese earthquake that killed 80,000 people was Karma, settling the score because of Chinas human rights record in Tibet.

Apparently stone has an IQ of 154 - I imagine the figure of 154  was plucked out of the air between her ears, since surely no one with such a sharp brain would be so flippant as to attach a world wide disaster to a flaky belief like karma. I mean, even if she truly believes in Karma, can she not see how offensive it is to tell a family that they in some way deserved to lose their children.

I remember when an English football manager once said a similar thing about disabled children, claiming that they probably were evil in former lives and so their birth defects and disabilities were punishments.

Its one thing to have an opinion... its quite another to allow unfounded theories to be flaunted as a lesson to others.

Since Sharon so famously opened her legs in "Basic Instinct” perhaps Karma will be so kind as to shut her mouth.

Seems like Microsoft Live account services have been down for most of the day. It's strange as I had no idea just how much I relied on my live login. I use it for everything I can, my Microsoft money account, MSN messenger and of course Hotmail. Seems like the case for open Id (myopenid.com) and de-centralised authentication is stronger than ever. At least then if the identity service stops working it's your problem and not the service provider.

Do you notice themes in the news? Themes that seem to run just under the radar, themes that gradually build an opinion. Today I've noticed one theme and its a consistently reoccurring one: British school Children are becoming stupid!

Firstly I'd like to point out... no their not. Children have more or less the same mental capacity as previous generations, there are clever kids and stupid kids.

When I was in senior school I had a boy in my class that you could get to run around the playground by promising half a twix, he'd run all the way around the playground and then you'd say "tut tut not fast enough" and not give him the twix... you could do this daily but he didn't learn - He was the stupid kid.

There was a girl in my uni that could write a 4000 word essay in one 2 hour sitting with out pausing, 'one take orla' could spew out a perfectly formed essay without stopping for a break or to review the spelling, it was incredible, perfectly constructed paragraphs first time - She was the clever kid.

Gradually, however, we're being told that children are performing worse than other countries and children in the UK are becoming stupid. In the last month there have been programs and articles about children that can't read, can't behave, and can't learn. And were presented this information as if it's a new thing, as if up until 1990 there was 100% literacy, perfect behavior and unquestionable intelligence. The way some journalists go on you'd think Stephan Fry was the lowest common denominator in 1950s Britain.

People like to believe that in their era or country things were better, things were safer. They look back on their history with rose tinted glasses forgetting all the bad things and exaggerating the good.

Intelligence, sexuality, promiscuity these are just 3 of the hundreds of traits that make up human nature. Across generations, across religions, things don't change as much as people imagine, what does change are peoples perspectives.

For example in Iran their President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says homosexuals don't exist. If you were from the west and you've never been to Iran, you might believe it, you may believe the Muslim religion is so strictly adhered to that homosexuality doesn't exist.