XKCD gets it right again
This blog has turned into an other-people’s-stuff reposting service. When I get home from Vilnius I’ll do something about that. For now, though, enjoy XKCD’s latest (click for embiggenment).
Arrested for not photographing a grate… or something
Via BoingBoing: Stephen Clarke was arrested for allegedly photographing a sewer grate in Manchester. Then, when police found no photos of said grate on his phone they re-arrested him on suspicion of "being concerned with the commission of a terrorist act," held him for two days and searched his house and laptop. They subsequently released [...]
National waste-of-time day
From www.thefaithofbritain.com: It is a proven scientific fact that thinking about something often causes it to happen. Some call this quantum physics. Others simply call it "faith." We ask that you open your mind to joining in with a unique psychic force that will change our lives through the power of thought. Playing fast and [...]
A quick note
Back from Lexington; tired, grumpy, ready to eat brains (though I might have to have diet brains because, as always seems to be when I go away for work – and especially to Americky – I’ve put weight on again). More on that another time, perhaps. But I just wanted to say that the Bishop [...]
So I’m in there with Satanists now am I?
Well, it doesn’t entirely surprise me that someone lumps us atheists into that category, but still. Birmingham City Council has put in place software that blocks people from looking at atheist websites whilst allowing some other belief systems through (link, via Pharyngula: The authority’s Bluecoat Software computer system allows staff to look at websites relating [...]
Cricketing quackery
From Thaindian News (via Willow and Leather), comes this piece of stupidity: A small fabric bracelet is England cricketers' latest secret weapon that has boosted their performance levels. The Trion-Z 'magic' bands are being tried by the team after cricketers James Anderson and Stuart Broad said they were huge fans of the bracelet. Using incredibly [...]
More Murphy O’Connor
So, it turns out that the story that I blogged about the other day has even more to it than I thought. Rather than try and summarise the matter here – for I don’t fully understand it at the moment; it’s late, I’m tired and I’m busy watching the fantastic An Inconvenient Truth. Instead, I’ll [...]
Whoops
A big sorry to the LiveJournal users who just got spammed by a double-post from the photo feed. The hack that I wrote to pull the Flickr feed into the blog post stream isn't smart enough to cope with the idea that an image might change (though in this case I don't think it could [...]
What could possibly go wrong?
So, the Met have created some new anti-terrorism posters, one of which is this gem (via BoingBoing): Because nothing could possibly go wrong with that in London could it? What with all the tourists and all… The problem here is twofold: The police are trying to make people think cynically about an activity that is [...]
Say what now?
My pal Matt Revell has posted the following glorious titbit: BBC Watchdog – the consumer programme – said tonight during a piece on con artists using a psychic front: “…because of course there are genuine psychics out there.” What?! Come on. Surely, even if you’re being kind, this is debatable. I thought Watchdog’s purpose was [...]
Where’s Santa when you need him?
Christmas, as people have often remarked, changes a lot as you get older. For one thing you get less presents (mainly because you're more fussy, I think). For another you feel less excited about the whole thing (maybe because of the lack of presents that you're getting). All of which could lead you to thinking [...]
To be filed under WTF, part the second
So, as a follow-up to yesterday's post, this just in from the BBC (link): Crowds of people have marched in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to call for UK teacher Gillian Gibbons to be shot. … According to some agencies, some of the protesters chanted: "Shame, shame on the UK", "No tolerance – execution" and "Kill [...]
To be filed under WTF
From BBC news (link): A British teacher has been found guilty in Sudan of insulting religion after she allowed her primary school class to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, has been sentenced to 15 days in prison and will then be deported. Which is bad enough. I mean it's a [...]
After the dinner
(Posting this in the morning from the conference; my hotel wifi went away last night and I'm damned if I'm going to pay another 10 Euros just to post this…) Dinner's over and, for a conference dinner, it was fantastic. I should have taken photos of the food itself; the omnivore main course – which [...]
The quotable Doctorow
Cory Doctorow on the Beeb's new iPlayer and DRM in general in Guardian Unlimited today (link): The DRM business model is the urinary tract infection of media experiences: all of the uses that used to come in an easy gush now come in a mingy, painful dribble – a few pennies out of your pocket [...]
The thought police are out to play again
You'll all remember, no doubt, the fuss that kicked up when Livejournal owners SixApart started censoring and disabling journals based on some fairly specious grounds (and which, eventually, led to them back-pedalling at great speed). Well. dear reader, it looks like it's happening again. From CNet: The most recent saga over user-generated Harry Potter artwork [...]
Institutionalisation
Oh do fuck off, the Rt. Hon. Liam Byrne. ID cards 'to be UK institution' The identity card scheme will become a "great British institution" on a par with the railways in the 19th Century, Home Office minister Liam Byrne says.
More LiveJournal
SixApart CEO Barak Berkowitz has apologised for the LiveJournal account suspension screw-up that I posted about yesterday. Also in the news post linked to above are details of why the screw-up happened and what they're doing to resolve the problem. Interestingly, the section of the post that details LiveJournal's rationale for account suspension has parts [...]
The whole LJ thing
Readers will probably by now have heard about the whole shitstorm that's happening regarding Warriors For Innocence and SixApart/LiveJournal at the moment. If you haven't, this BoingBoing post summarises pretty much the whole thing, along with giving responses from Warren Ellis which I'll get to in a second. Whilst I don't have any children and [...]
Ah, of course
The word "pathetic" springs to mind. This, on the other hand, seemed like the perfect response: Click either image to embiggen.
Now with go-faster stripes
Thanks all to those people (two, count them) who let me know about the odd site slowdown. My bad; turns out there was a huge-assed query running on every pageload that really didn't need to be there. Excising that and doing a bit of judicious caching has sped things up considerably. And now, back to [...]
Have… no… words…
Illinois baby obtains gun permit (BBC) Bubba Ludwig may only be 10 months old, but he has already successfully obtained a gun licence in the US state of Illinois. Bubba’s father, Howard Ludwig, applied on his behalf after his grandfather gave him a shotgun as an heirloom. Bubba? Come on.
All together now: *sigh*
For every prat like this there's an equal and opposite prat like this: The government faces a legal challenge for sending every secondary school in England a copy of Al Gore's climate change film An Inconvenient Truth. … A father from Kent, Stuart Dimmock, has lodged papers at London's High Court seeking judicial review. He [...]
