There cannot be two skies

So Planescape: Torment is probably the best game ever written. An RPG crafted with obvious love and care, set in an utterly unique and wonderful world that to my knowledge has never been recreated since. Though it plays like a traditional isometric RPG - it is from 1998 after all - there hasn't been a game before or since with the intellectual depth, or that dared to leave so much of its plot unexplained. This is not the kind of game where you will visit everywhere you hear about, or understand every riddle and question - what you get out of PS:T is what you put into it.

The initial plot is somewhat cliched - the Hero With Amnesia - but with the twist that your character, The Nameless One, is immortal. Hundreds of lives stretch out behind you, each ending with death, and rebirth on a mortuary slab. Finding out who you are and tracking down who killed you leads you on a tremendously ambitious journey from Sigil, a city where every door could be a portal to another world, to lands where reality is so weak that it can be swayed by belief alone. Playing a pre-built character has huge advantages over games that give you more freedom, not least because it allows the writers to truly embed The Nameless One in the world he inhabits. You've lived and died for a long time, so don't be surprised when echoes of your past lives come back to haunt you - you've been everything from a virtual messiah to an insane tyrant and the game world bears the scars you've given it. Winding its way through your journey of self-discovery is a persistent and seemingly-vital question that will likely have you scratching your head for weeks after completing the game: "what can change the nature of a man?"

The Planescape setting is jammed with evocative and original ideas and blessed with a happy-go-lucky approach to realism. Unlike other fantasy RPGs it isn't afraid to recognise that a fantasy settings means you can do anything. So yeah, Sigil is a giant torus-shaped city floating above an infinitely-tall spire, there are factions who believe ascension to godhood is a matter of self-belief (who knows, they may be right) and there are planes of existence formed entirely of shapeless, ever-changing energies that can only be given form by a sufficiently disciplined mind. The level of detail is mind-boggling, the imagination frankly astounding. I guarantee you will not have encountered anything like this before.

Artist's impression of Sigil (ever tried to draw an infinitely-tall spire?)

There really isn't much I can say without spoiling the magnificent plot (don't go on Wikipedia either, it lays it all out there) so I've come up with a list of some of the random things I love about it. I've stopped at six because the more I think about it, the more I have to add and I don't want to spend all evening talking about it - frankly, now I just want to play it.


1) The chant, cutter. One of the things I love most about PS:T is its refusal to throw you a bone. The new player starts off just as disorientated and confused as The Nameless One, not least because everyone speaks in thick slang; you'll have to explore and talk to people to get the dark of rattling your bonebox in Sigil. Immersive doesn't even cover it.

2) Ravel Puzzlewell. A complex and intriguing character, Ravel plays a huge role in your quest for your identity, and your past. Aside from the wonderful writing, the meshing of humanity and plantlife in her character goes beyond the obvious - her personality twists through the planes like a giant tree, branches reaching out and flowering in all sorts of unexpected places. One of the great, morally-ambiguous characters of fantasy fiction.

3) The Circle of Zerthimon. This curious item, carried by one of your potential companions is well worth investigating if you have sufficient intelligence and wisdom. For me, it represents everything that is different and unique about PS:T. Here, the fluff isn't just something you collect as you go along (as in Dragon Age, Mass Effect etc) but is an intrinsic part of the experience - your character's personal development is tied up in the study and comprehension of an incredibly-detailed philosophical system that reflects on ideas of self-knowledge and discipline.

4) Companions. No elves, dwarves or any of that bullshit. Instead, you will undoubtedly find yourself assisted by mutant tiefling thieves, flame-addled sorcerors, a reformed succubus, a clockwork robot, floating skulls and the ghost of a lawman bound into his armour by the strength of his resolve to dispense justice, to name but a few. Very few RPGs have managed to so deftly sidestep fantasy cliches as easily as PS:T. The whole Modron Maze section of the game is a perfectly-pitched parody of all the things that drive most people away from D&D and other fantasy licenses.

5) The Blood War. An eternal conflict waged between demons and devils over the correct approach to evil: gibbering hordes of insane demons clamouring for an orgy of chaos and destruction on one side, ordered and tidy-minded (but no less cruel) devils campaigning for the disciplined sadism of a classical hell on the other. Think Mephistopheles versus the things from Doom. On the edges, the rest of the planes nervously hedging their bets and hoping that neither side wins out - because then they'll really be in trouble. I personally love the idea of the Blood War but it is woven so carefully into the game that you feel its impact and its importance even though you never directly experience it. A lesser game would have thrown you in at some point and had you fighting in it, but then this isn't an ordinary game.

6) Adahn the Imagined. Though you could probably find out about him on the Internet in seconds, you'll have more fun if you discover him for yourself. Just be aware of the particular metaphysics of the Planescape setting and pay attention when people talk to you about belief and willpower.

2D game world, 3D character development

Torment is a gaming experience without equal, regardless of how you feel about the admittedly out-of-date graphics and the mundane nature of in-game combat. This game isn't about hacking and slashing, but instead is a thoughtful, adult take on role-playing games shot through with dark humour and a beating philosophical heart. I've been playing it for over a decade and I am literally still just realising things about the story, working out plot points, and pondering some of its questions. PS:T has just been re-released and you can get hold of it on Amazon - I guarantee that this is a better Christmas present than that DVD you were thinking of asking for. With the new widescreen mod, which shows off the beautiful hand-drawn backgrounds of the game at larger resolutions, and the various fix packs and tweak mods that re-insert cut content there hasn't been a better time in years.

They don't make them like this any more, and it's a damn shame.

Sigil's ruler, the Lady of Pain. Don't worship her, or piss her off. She will fuck you right up.

Protest narrative

The papers this morning are full of screaming headlines about student mobs and rioting and - of course - numerous pictures of students committing outrage after outrage against National Treasures (tm) like Charles & Camilla, the Winston Churchill statue in Parliament Square etc. I would have some sympathy for their point were it not so cynically put together.

Anyone who has been to a protest in the last few years can't have failed to notice that "kettling" is a bit controversial. Certainly anyone who's faced a line of bobbies who won't let people leave the protest zone, provide any kind of facilities or in fact do anything to defuse rising tension until it breaks out into violence will know what I mean.

You try not to be too conspiracy-theorist about this kind of thing, for fear of being put with the rent-a-mob anarchists who *always* turn up to protests with their faces covered like they're some freedom fighting heroes instead of middle-class kids with a GCSE-level understanding of politics. Nonetheless, this morning when I look at the pictures doing the rounds in the papers I have to wonder - why aren't any of them mentioning the fact that students were kettled in Parliament Square most of the night without toilet facilities when they bring up the urinating on statues thing? What do you expect them to do, piss themselves? Come to that, why did the police abandon a van in the middle of the kettled area in the first protest? Why, when every wannabe political reporter - regardless of whether they were there or not - gets to have their say in an editorial, are there no stories discussing the twitter postings from people actually in the protests, many of which allege police brutality? Why is the discussion all about students pulling a mounted riot police officer off his horse rather than the appropriateness of charging students and schoolchildren with horses in the first place? The Mail has even whipped itself into a frenzy about it, asking rhetorically "what kind of sick mind would do this to a horse?" I think when you're being charged by a police horse, all bets are off frankly.

Most terrifyingly of all, we're being told with deadpan seriousness all over the news that the students were jolly lucky not to have been shot while they were mobbing Charles and Camilla's car. Personally I find it far more worrying that we're supposed to be grateful that these taxpayer-funded security guards didn't fire wildly into a crowd of teenagers or that, in fact, they showed commendable restraint. "If they were throwing petrol bombs, we could have had a serious tragedy here" one talking head sagely threw in on the lunchtime news. Yes, probably, but they were throwing paint. Paint. Dial it down a bit, mate.

Whether or not the violence was justified, or at least understandable, is another issue and not something I want to write about until the dust is settled a bit. I think it's worth asking some questions about coverage while the iron is hot though, because as time goes by the specifics will fade and be replaced with the standard narrative for all of these protests: "student violence".

Life isn't fair

Sometimes, life is difficult. Life is unfair.

Its always struck me as odd that that phrase - the sentiment that life is unfair - is somehow childish. That admitting this self-evident fact is naive to the point of deserving mockery. We take children at a young age and drum it into them that they should settle down, shut up, and accept unfairness as it comes. For an adult to say so is so unusual that it rarely passes without comment and, sadly, without a sense of scandal. They're playing outside of the rules; they're saying aloud what we're not meant to say. They aren't accepting what we as a society have accepted as 'just the way things are'. Pointing out unfairness correlates pretty well, for most of us, with immaturity.

Far be it from me to suggest that the world is fair. It patently isn't, and we should have no expectations that it should be. We live in a purposeless universe that is not attuned in the slightest to the plight of humanity; of the individual social, economic and sexual concerns of an individual out of five billion, of a single species out of millions on a single planet among countless billions. The numbers don't add up. I don't think this is what people mean by 'life isn't fair' though. After all, many millions of us believe that the great amoral disasters that we face - earthquakes, floods, storms, volcanic eruptions - are driven by purpose, that a god or gods have a plan that involves the wholesale and indiscriminate destruction of people and propety. God will know his own, indeed.

So life isn't fair, but it should be. More than that, it can be. Humanity alone out of any species we know of has harnessed its environment to dizzying heights. Throwing ourselves into space, bouncing invisible electronic signals around the world to communicate, manipulating the fundamental building blocks of life itself to create more productive crops, to give parenthood to those unable by genetic accident to have children. The things we have achieved are marvellous, truly staggering, but we have not achieved fairness. We are dissuaded from so early on to accept the pitiless random happenstance of the world that we live in that we fail to distinguish between unavoidable unfairness and unfairness that we have created and maintain.

Last year UK shoppers spent approximately four billion pounds on their credit cards at Christmas. That's £4,000,000,000,000 in longhand. Granted it's a tired old rote to go on about capitalist excess, especially as I type this on an expensive computer in a well-decorated house just before I head to town for a night out, but I think my own hypocrisy probably isn't so important in the grand scheme of things. I try not to spend frivolously, I give money to charity every month and I tend to buy the Big Issue (so should you - the reviews are tremendously honest!). It's kind of beside the point though - while individual effort is of course valuable, it's kind of like multinational corporations telling us to wash our clothes at 30 while throwing out billions of tonnes of pollutants into the atmosphere. We're important, not because we can necessarily make a difference, but because we can pressure those who can.

Yes, our gross consumerism means that shops open with Christmas stock in October but they operate like everyone else through supply and demand. Just because we can do our Christmas shopping that early doesn't mean we should. Just because it's there doesn't mean we have to buy it. Why not make your own birthday cards instead of buying them? You can't honestly tell me that mass-produced cards (featuring the two themes of "you're old!" and "you're going to be drunk soon!") are better than the ones you could make yourself. Why buy things you don't need at all? Why not suggest the company you work for gets involved in charity work? Life isn't fair, but that's not the way it has to be; we are advanced enough, civilised enough, to stop dismissing unfairness as a fact of life and start working towards something better.

News: facts not necessary

This one has been brewing for a while.

I've taken a bit more of an interest of late in the sheer unbelievable cheek of the mainstream press. Everyday I sit on the Tube, watching people reading the Metro, the Mail and the Express. This morning I was reading The Sun over someone's shoulder and wanting to just snatch it out of his hands. He was tutting over some completely made-up story about banning Christmas, or schools making all the children dress in burqas, or some other fanciful rubbish.

The problem I have with these newspapers - which I will henceforth refer to as papers, until they actually start reporting facts - is not ideological. Granted, anyone who knows me knows that I'm not exactly sitting square in the Mail's target demographic. I think immigration is a good thing, I wish Parliament would bloody well hurry up and turf the Royal Family out of government, I understand that you vote for the party not the PM and I actually quite like wheelie bins.

Chances are that even if these papers were the bastion of journalistic integrity, I would find much to disagree with, but that's not the issue. I think it's a good thing that there are papers that promote both sides of the argument, that focus on different issues. I think it's great that The Guardian wants a liberal government, and I don't have a problem with other papers pushing for a conservative one. There's only one thing that I really care about in journalism and, rather cornily, it's the truth.

Like reporting facts honestly. Being open about your sources. Not just making stuff up. Unfortunately on these fairly basic points both the Daily Mail and the Daily Express fall flat on their faces. Other papers aren't exactly in the clear either - watch The Times spectacularly missing the point of the current "Don't Label Me" campaign by referring to the children in the advert as 'Christian children'. Look at the smug point-scoring and ask yourself: is this meant to be the news? Is this delivering the facts to the readership, or just leading them down the editorial line?

Bias is inevitable. I mean, even by selecting stories to cover there is selection going on. However, that can be done without being dishonest. Bloggers have been speculating for a while now why the Mail worked itself - and its readers - up into a hysterical rage about the student who pissed on a war memorial while blind drunk, but has said absolutely nothing about the repeated, deliberate desecration of graves in Manchester. Is it too far to speculate that this is because they are Muslim graves, and that this story wouldn't go down well with a readership already whipped up into a frenzy about immigration?

Immigration is a good topic to discuss actually, because in reality it seems only newspapers like The Guardian are willing to be adult about the issue. Search the Mail's archive for 'immigrant' and see what I mean. Yeah, fear-mongering much? A conspiracy of silence! £30,000 pay-outs! There's nothing wrong with a rational, evidence-based discussion on immigration, but neither the tabloids nor their readers seem to want that. Richard Littlejohn has been caught lying time and time again about this - about how much immigrants get on benefits (he doesn't actually know), about how most of the crimes in the UK are committed by Eastern European immigrants (he made it up) or about how a judge who made up a load of bollocks about immigration figures was being persecuted over his 'sensible' stance on the issue (he wasn't, he was just an arse). And that's just one columnist. I won't even get onto Jan Moir or Melanie Phillips here (who has the time?)

That's not even touching on their insane fucked-up relationship with sex and (oo-er) 'flesh'. That simultaneous celibate attitude whereby sex is something scary and dirty that good, moral upstanding people entirely repudiate. It's so bad, what this person has done (worn a strappy top, kissed a person of the same gender in public, slept with a few people) that you need to see full-size gloriously-coloured HD images of it! It's a weird self-hating attitude that screams of protesting too much. It takes some real balls to print this and describe it was 'disturbing' and then print dozens of stories a day about how healthy-looking celebrities are 'fat'. Hell, let's just look at Natalie Cassidy, whose revelation that the pressure of staying in shape for the tabloids almost led to her developing an eating disorder didn't stop them printing this revolting piece of shit just a few months later.

The bottom line is this:

The Mail, The Express, all of those trashy right-wing papers, lie. They make up figures, they deliberately fail to convey the truth behind stories and most of all, they fucking lie. They do it shamelessly, cheerfully, and all the while claim they're just telling it like it is. All the fucking time. The worst thing is that people swallow their poison, totally without question. If you're reading a paper like the Mail and just believing in it without doing your own research, you are doing it wrong. Critical thinking, rational inquiry, scepticism: without employing these while reading the news you may as well just be sitting under Rupert Murdoch with your mouth open.

For example, take a look at this superb take-down by Tabloid Watch of the Express' ridiculous headline about breakfast. Turns out the study that indicates that breakfast is, like, totally super-healthy was funded by cereal manufacturers. The independent expert they pulled in to confirm the story has done work for them very recently. Oh, and by the way nutritionist is not legally protected; I could call myself one apropos of nothing - it's that prestigious a title. This is no isolated incident: most of the 'science' stories you read in the papers are little more than trussed up PR exercises for companies looking to shift more products. The papers love using science as a shiny meaningless bauble, which is probably why this patently transparent rubbish makes it unadulterated into print, while the LHC, vaccines and global fucking warming get an absolute mauling. As soon as something is more significant than a minuscule lifestyle improvement it's dangerous and scary. Honestly, this attitude - this fear of progress - totally baffles me.

Actually, just for good measure take a look at this, because it's classic Mail: it starts with a leading headline that sounds like a definite conclusion, which is hugely reinforced in the first few paragraphs with phrases like "something terrible, unimaginable, was amiss..." They then back up the insanity with what they fondly imagine is science: "a small - but not zero - chance" that it will "rip apart the entire universe". They even refer to the absolute mentalists (or "twats" if you're Brian Cox) who think that this is at all likely as "maverick scientists". Maverick's a great word: it implies that you're going against the grain but that, ultimately, you'll be right. You're Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day, you're Dennis Quaid in The Day After Tomorrow, you're Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park! Then, right at the bottom, the last three lines - the last three fucking lines, after all the talk of doom, and the massive pictures of black holes destroying the Earth and tearing the universe apart - there's a bit from the scientists, who treat the idea with total derision. Whether or not there are any scientifically literate journalists at these papers is a good question but whatever the answer, it's pretty clear that there are no scientifically literate editors.

What else can I say? These papers have no ethics. They lie, they cheat, they even pay immigrants to break the law so that they can write stories about how immigrants break the law

There is no sound argument to be had in favour of them being anything other than opportunistic vultures who distort the truth and whip people up into terrified balls of hatred who are impotently angry that their country is going to the dogs even though the only 'evidence' of it is within the pages of the Mail. So when I attack the Mail, or the Express, it's not because I'm a liberal who can't stand to hear the 'truth', or even an opposing viewpoint. It's because they are not offering an opposing viewpoint. If you have to outright lie to make your point, then your point is bullshit. The sooner people realise that, the better, because at the moment the thought that the Mail is the second most widely-read newspaper in the country makes me feel sick.

I am genuinely terrified

OK, so looking at some pictures of Glenn Beck's "9/12 Project" protest I have come to a sobering and terrifying conclusion: the Republicans have gone fucking mental.

How I wish things could be the way they were! Sure the cynical, calculating evil of Cheney and Bush wasn't great, and the unabashed ignorance of the Palin-era incarnation of the GOP was pretty horrible too but this.... Jesus Christ.

Beck's '9/12 Project' in many ways typifies the kind of ideology these people espouse. His list of nine principles and 12 values, including steadfast belief in the nuclear family and God (presumably the Christian God). He makes a point of stressing that criticising the government is not un-American, although this kind of rights-conscious approach to political critique wasn't really in evidence when the Republicans and Fox were whining about people being mean to Bush as he was leaving office, or accusing people who said Palin was an idiot of misogyny. You only have to watch this promo video for it to see how ridiculous it is, Lord of the Rings music and all.

The popularity of the Project shows that a worryingly large proportion of the American people think he's got the right idea. And they just lap up his bullshit - from the whole ludicrous "birther" movement all the way through to the idea that recreating the Boston Tea Party is somehow relevant in 21st Century America. Worst of all is the belief - so overt in these protests - that America is under attack, that their rights are being trampled on, that the President is sitting in some ivory tower of anti-white racism and liberal superiority ignoring the will of the masses.

Well you know what Republicans? He isn't ignoring you. You just happen to be the most obnoxious and loudest people in politics right now. You lost the election. What that means for you is this: suck it up. By all means criticise and debate his policies but what happened to co-operation eh? Shouting him down in Congress, unscrupulously encouraging the spread of unfounded rumours about his birth and blocking him at every turn is not appropriate political engagement. All you're doing is alternately pulling faces and blowing raspberries, and throwing all your toys out of your pram in a series of ever-escalating hissy fits. Oh sure there are conservatives out there willing to act like grown-ups but these days they seem curiously quiet.

They're quite happy for their party to come across this way but I suspect had the roles been reversed and the Republicans were in power things would have been different. The Governor of California probably wouldn't have gotten away with threatening to secede from the fucking Union, and there's no chance in hell that a Democratic senator heckling the President in Congress would have been received with the same kind of calm rationality as Joe Wilson. There would have been calls for impeachments, resignations and a foot-stomping Hulk-out from Fox News. To be fair, it's not something particularly desirable. I like the way Obama has conducted himself with dignity in the face of tbe Republican's fuming ignorance and impotent rage, but it does give the nutters room to spread out and multiply. The '9/12 Project' is a clear manifestation of this growing lunacy in the American political system. It's as much a circle-jerk over the ol' days of living in fear and America The Conquerer dishing out righteous jugdement as it is any kind of protest agains the new president. To quote blogger Pareene on Gawker:

On 9/12, people in New York (and DC) did not feel as ‘great' as Glenn Beck, they just felt like shit. They felt scared and confused and depressed. Many of them were drunk. And only an idiot or an actual terrorist would want to always feel like it was 9/12/01... Eight years later, normal people, with brains and souls, have decided that some emotional distance from that disaster is healthier and wiser than trying to recapture the dread.

It does worry me though, that the people protesting against Obama this week are now the mainstream of their party; the opposition party of the most powerful nation on Earth. These racist, thick as pigshit, monstrously ignorant nutters represent a serious challenge for the presidency in 2012. They're undoubtedly stupid or at least, that's what I hope. When I see a picture like this, I have to believe that she's stupid, because the alternative is accepting that she thinks that advocating selling her black president as a slave is a funny concept.

The thing is, these protesters and Beckites have this idea that just because it's their opinion, it's valid. It's the same kind of thinking that goes with devout religious belief, but this time coupled with an amazing ability to absorb criticism in one ear and funnel it out the other, without it ever touching grey matter. It doesn't matter how many times you slap down their representatives on TV or point out where they're just empirically, factually wrong, they will go on thinking that Obama isn't naturalised, or that the NHS has death panels. They genuinely fear that they're going to be enslaved, that socialism is going to destroy the USA and that Obama is a Muslim.

Sometimes I do feel sorry for them, much as I feel sorry for the readership of the Daily Mail. It must be hard being pumped so full of hatred, paranoia and terror all the time. If they really do believe the kind of thing that O'Reilly, Beck et al are screaming about 24/7 then they must genuinely feel under siege. Fucking hell, if it's got to the point that children are harking back to the good ol' days of McCarthyism then how can you feel anything other than pity? To quote a wiser man than I:

You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.

Save your rage instead for Glenn Beck and his friends over in the Fox News Fortress of Evil. They are unapologetically fanning the flames of these hysterical idiots with misleading interpretations, backwards views on morality and and flat-out lies. I happen to believe that Beck at least - if not the entire Fox News crew - do wholeheartedly buy into the bullshit they spout, but there has to be someone somewhere making the decision to whip up the lunatics on the borders of American politics into such a frenzy. It stands to reason that you couldn't run a company with the kind of mindset that makes you filter out the truth and replace it with your own little fantasy world (at least, I hope that's the case). Somehow having the whole show run by cynical, money-minded hypocrites abusing the stupidity of their audience is more reassuring than the idea that Fox and the conservative media are basically passengers on a runaway train destined to hurtle over the cliff into anarchy and madness - and taking us with them.

But what can they do now they've put the lunatic, teflon-coated ultra-conservatives in the centre of the American political stage? You can't put them back in their box! Glenn Beck et al created this rabid, raving mob of ignorant prats, crazed with fear and loaded up on guns. I don't even live in the USA but I'm still terrified. I am really really scared - in the pit of my stomach - that someone is going to shoot Obama, that one of these things is going to spill over into violence, that democracy and politics in America is going to be irreparably damaged by people who can't grasp the concept of a birth certificate, or that if you lose an election that's not the same as tyranny. It's fucking scary. They're all psychopaths and there's nothing we can do over this side of the pond but watch the whole self-destructive scene play out. We can only hope it's a passing phase and that the mature, intelligent Republicans are just waiting for the mob to thrash itself to exhaustion so they can sweep it back into the dirty corners of American politics where it belongs. Then maybe there'll be a serious debate about healthcare reform and financial relief.

Do you know what nemesis means?

Oh dear, I think I've got a nemesis. I didn't mean to. It just happened.

There I was, reading the following jaw-droppingly offensive Daily Mail article, happy as Larry (or at least as happy as Larry can be when reading the Mail), when I saw the name of the author of the final, horrendous bit from the 'male' perspective.

David Thomas. David Dickface Thomas. The author of the sterling piece of douchebaggery that inspired me to write this last month. Well, he's done it again. I think we were probably separated from birth or something, because he seems to set me off like no one else. Clearly an evil twin situation.

In a nutshell, the article is arguing that women don't have sex because they want to but in fact because they need some shelves putting up, or they want their partner to take out the bins. They can't do these things themselves: that's man-work! As with all 'science' journalism, this is based on a book, based on a scientific study, called Why Women Have Sex. I haven't seen the science behind this book, and I'm willing to bet Liz Jones hasn't either. I don't know what controls they put on the questionnaires to ensure that the respondents were being truthful, or the exact contents of this list of why women have sex. Perhaps the phrasing "high up the list" implies that there is more to the results than the Mail chooses to pass on. Hey you never know, having sex because it's enjoyable might be up there too!

It's classic. Women aren't sexual! They don't want orgasms and good sex, they just want a loving partner. They'll prostitute themselves to have somebody care about them, that's just how needy they are! Those women who actually like sex, and don't seem interested in submitting to providing sex to their partner on demand so that he shows them basic courtesy and affection are the product of broken homes and lack good father figures. Liz, what planet do you live on?

She also peppers the piece with misandric tripe about the male sex drive being "blunt" and stunted. While you get the sense that her misogyny is fairly accidental - she sounds essentially like "I'm not a feminist but..." - her misandry is an unthinking reflex. She has absolutely no qualms about dismissing the male sex drive out of hand, characterising men as being scared of discussing feelings and - perhaps worst of all - implies strongly that men only care about sex. This 'revelation' that women only have sex with men because they want us to do some DIY around the house is to be met with indifference rather than dismay and horror. Most people I know would be appalled to find out their partner didn't have sex with them because they actually wanted to. You know why? Because men care about more than sex in relationships. Christ alive.

But don't just take her word for it! She bases all this on the findings of the book, despite no mention being made of whether any men were interviewed. So does the book discuss male sexuality in depth, probing the whys and hows behind male sexual behaviour? Probably not. It is, after all, a book about the relationship between women and sex. I would love to know how many of these bald statements about male attitudes to sex are actually based on the book and how many have just sprung fully-formed without independent thought from the brain of Liz Jones.

I wasn't exactly expecting David Thomas to leap to the defence of male sexuality, despite the fact that he's an odious anti-feminist. It would be very out of character, given that the myth that men are mindless slaves to their sexual urges suits him right down to the ground. It's a stereotype that he believes is beneficial and one he's quite happy to propagate with the following:

"A young man's relationship with his sex drive is like a dog-walker's with an ill-disciplined dog: he's led from pillar to post without hope of discipline or control."

I've already highlighted Thomas' cavalier attitude to sexual asault and rape elsewhere, but if this is what he actually believes I'm not very surprised. Worst of all he then chooses to define himself as a progressive man who loves women! They're not the "pointless, silly creatures" that all men assumed them to be in their youth (and who wouldn't, what with their hormones and shoe shopping?) but in fact real human beings. Right, look. I'm 22 years old. I am, by any definition, a young man. I know plenty of people my age and younger who see women in the way David Thomas describes and they are - to a man - disgusting examples of human beings. The idea that treating women with respect, as equals is something that it's acceptable to learn with age is unforgiveable. I understand the use of this stereotype in justifying unethical sexual behaviour, and treating women like shit, but that's no reason to uphold it.

His toe-curlingly awful attempts to appear to be more than a cave-dwelling troll succintly sum up all the reasons I hate him. Just look at this:

Women don't have to do anything to hold men in their power. Just existing is enough. Why else would men have written countless poems and love songs; why else would they have painted them, sculpted them, gone to war for them?

The key message here? Women: you don't have to be smart, or intelligent, or interesting. We wouldn't care if you were blow-up dolls. Just as long as you can provide sex and look pretty on our arms! And if you're lucky - and I mean really lucky - we'll even engage in all sorts of activities which you won't be involved in and for which you'll get no credit. Gosh aren't we romantic! It's the illusion of power that Thomas is trying to sell. The warm fuzzy feeling he imagines women will feel when they read this. "Gosh, we hold men in our power just by existing". In truth, however, this is just naked, ugly misogyny.

Wrapping it up with a saccharine-sweet "aww but ladies you know you love us" attempt at justifying his argument, David sits back and smiles at the great opus before him. Sensible readers vomit all over their keyboards and stagger out into the street to rage at God and such a cruel twisted world that could have David Thomas in it. It makes my skin crawl, and his attempts at charm aren't even aimed at me.

So what's the worst thing about this article? The fact that David Thomas appears to believe whole-heartedly that women have no desire for sex beyond needing the odd shelf putting up, or that he claims to speak for both genders with his all-encompassing comments on human sexuality? Enough has been written about how ridiculous Liz Jones is to fill several volumes, but I am worried about the increasing presence of David Thomas on these issues. What special skills or qualities does he have that give him the appropriate comprehension and sympathy to write so often on feminism and women's issues? All I've seen of him has confirmed beyond doubt that he is a massive, wrong-headed cock who has some serious problems relating to women.

A slow few weeks

I've not been updating much lately, as my time has been taken up almost entirely with producing the latest issue of Secular Future, which is the quarterly magazine of the AHS

It's quite a large undertaking, and one I've got to balance with my day-job of making scientists happy and angry in equal measure (oh the joys of science publishing). I'll be glad to get this one out of the way and back to blogging!

It should be done and dusted in the next couple of weeks or so, at which point I've got an article about heresy ready to go. If you're interested, you can read the back-issues of Sec-Fu at: http://www.ahsstudents.org.uk/secular-future