"Torn" embedded

Secret Policeman's Ball

Amnesty's Secret Policeman's Ball was on recently. One of the acts was David Armand, doing the Torn mime act that you've no doubt seen on the net. Well worth having a look at this version though: link

Any other acts you know of that were particularly good?

[Fixed the name; the one I got from youtube was wrong. He's actually English.]

John Gray - a Fitz thinker?

Read this book of essays the other week. I'd always been suspicious of John Gray, since his philosophy is largely based around attacking liberalism and the enlightenment. It's actually one of the most provocative (in a good way) things I've read for ages. It genuinely troubled me, and one has to acknowledge that his essays from the late 90s have, so far, proved to be far far better predictors of the 21st century than any of the new economy/end of history guff that was so fashionable at the time.

As promised...

A website designed so that you never have to click your mouse: www.dontclick.it.

(Iraq and climate change not mentioned.)

Biofuels

This lot reckon that the CO2 emitted as a result of planting palms and sugar cane to produce bio fuels will exceed that saved by Kyoto.

I promise only to post frivolous and light-hearted stuff from now on!

The Least Accountable Regime in the Middle East

I might just have mentioned this before, but Iraq - what a bloody disaster! Just read this piece by Ed Harriman in the LRB - The Least Accountable Regime in the Middle East (login required for full article) - and the sheer incompetence, waste and idiocy of the enterprise is staggering. It's about the cash spent on reconstruction projects and the like. Billions and billions have been spent to achieve the merest fraction of what they were supposed to. Nobody knows where most of it has gone, other than to corrupt Iraqi politicians, western security firms and consultants of various shades. Electricity levels are only just now getting back to Saddam era crapness, and water and sewage not even that. All the cash for hospitals, schools, roads and other infrastructure is gone and they haven't finished anything. Why have the people responsible not been toppled from office and put in jail?

Watchful Eyes

How long has that strapline been there then? I've only just noticed it. And was the original poster genuine or a spoof?

UK 'tops energy wasters league'

UK 'tops energy wasters league'. Great, isn't it? We're also the fattest, worst binge drinkers, have the most anti-social behaviour, most congested roads with longest commuting times, the least job security etc etc. In fact, it's quite interesting to put 'uk worst in europe' and 'uk best in europe' into google and compare the results. We have the best roadworks, apparently!

Breeding for God

This'll cheer you up Tom (!) - an article in Prospect predicting the decline of secularism in Europe and a shift towards a more US-style religious democracy - based partly on the fact that the more devout elements of the population have more kids. Except monks, obviously. Have only skimmed it, so not yet convinced that the theory stands up.

Darwin Online

One for Tom: The complete work of Charles Darwin Online, as reported on BBC.

Imagine Earth without people

Quite interesting piece in New Scientist. Think the world would be better off if global warming and the rest get rid of humans altogether!

The numbers do add up

Quite good, informed stuff on the Guardian comment is free site on the methodology and implications of the 655,000 dead study in the Lancet. Whatever the margin of error of the 'point estimate' figure quoted, the study definitely shows that things have gotten a hell of a lot worse since the war. The sample is much bigger than those Mori polls of political support in Britain, and politicians are quite happy to gross those up to represent an entire country - so why dismiss the figures for Iraq?

655,000 dead

Death toll could be 10 times the official estimate. If true, that's 1 in 40 of the country's population. F***ing disaster.

Russia's WTO talks stall over allofmp3.com

Russia might be denied membership of WTO unless it does something about allofmp3.com, according to The Times and others. But allofmp3 say they conform to local copyright laws, but users should check their local laws!

Paxo Redux

Don't know if you saw Newsnight tonight, but Paxman demolished some dithering mediocrity of a junior govt minister, with responsibility for climate change. Following a 'package' claiming that we need to spend 1% of global gdp to avert catastrophic climate change, Paxo quizzed our man.
Him: We're spending £500m on renewables.
Pax: Over what period?
Him: er, 5 or 6 years
Pax: So how much have you spent on Iraq?
Him: Well I don't have the exact figures to hand, Jeremy
Pax: Well let me refresh your memory - £4.5bn and counting. Do you think that's proportionate?

John Reid!?

Surely not.

POW Rolex

This is really cool. Nice watch too...

Branson Pickle

Further to our earlier discussion, the new scientist blog's got something about Branson's largesse.

War on Bathtubs

Just read this in an old paper from last week - quite a good John Allen Paulos-esque piece by Gavyn Davies on over-reacting to terrorism.

At last, a genuinely useful keyboard

Posh Wikipedia

Citizendium

The Economist comes out in favour of action on global warming.

This is a change of direction for them - they used to take a "let the free market sort it out when it happens" line.

The heat is on

Bush 'prepares emissions U-turn'

So says the indescribably boring anyway.

Happiness

Just finished this excellent book by Richard Layard, a Professor at LSE and expert on the economics of happiness. Interesting findings about how British/US society has got so much richer in the last fifty years but no happier. A lot of this is to do with rising expectations and status anxiety. His social and personal remedies include: less television, better clinical drugs, more taxation, less inequality, less geographic mobility, more membership organisations, restrictions on advertising, meditation...

Environmental Freakout Part NN

SIBERIAN PERMAFROST!!! AAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!

Life Hacking

The Lifehacker website aims to help us become more productive. Just what I need, so I had a look, and ended up installing a Greasemonkey script on Firefox that blocks access to Fitzrovian, personal webmail etc. during office hours (of course, I did all of this during office hours, too). Trouble is, you can turn off greasemonkey with one click (e.g. at lunchtime, as I write this), but it discourages me from idle surfing. Can anyone tell me how to rewrite the script so that it blocks access all morning, then lets me in over lunch, then blocks again in the afternoon?

Of course, all of this might just be a new form of procrastination. Apparently O'Reilly or someone commissioned them to do a book on life hacking, but then cancelled it because they kept missing their deadlines...

What were the causes of 9/11?

This article in Prospect gives the 'top 10 most plausible explanations' for 9/11. It does largely let America off the hook, and the author works for the mainly centre/right New America Foundation think tank, but makes some interesting points all the same.

A Quick (and Hopefully Painless) Ride Through Ruby (with Cartoon Foxes)

Staggeringly fantastic.

Good budget RTS that will play on my antiquated home PC

Age of Mythology! What do you think Seumas?

I wasn't that impressed with Empire Earth, I thought it was a bit amateurish (particularly the artwork).

Harsh Times

Another xfm competition, another film preview. This time it was at the Soho Screening Rooms. We walked in and some guy asked "you here for Harsh Times?", a question that should be answered carefully when travelling around Soho but we assumed he meant the film. No names were taken and it did occur to me that we might just have popped in to ask directions and ended up with a couple of free beers and a film. When we wandered through to the screening room there weren't enough seats for everyone, so perhaps some people had done just that.

So, what's Harsh Times about? It's about a war veteran (Christian Bale), and his friends, trying to find gainful employment and his gradual self-destruction.

Well, that wasn't much of a review, now was it? The trouble is that there isn't really a great deal to say about the film itself, without drawing comparisons with films like (inevitably) Taxi Driver. The filming was Ok, the music was Ok, the plot was as described above, the acting was good, with some liberal dashings of rather dark humour, giving the feel of a British film at times. And, well, that's about it.

Harsh Times does keep your attention throughout but at the end I was left with the feeling that it hadn't really delivered anything new: almost a sense I'd seen it before. I don't want to give the impression that it was a bad film, and I certainly don't regret watching it, but then I didn't pay anything and had free beer, so YMMV.

It's out in cinemas on Friday 18th (tomorrow). Worth watching if you're a bit bored and have nothing else on, or if you're a Bale fan. Otherwise, wait till it's on FilmFour I guess.

The retro police state

Someone has sent me a couple of public security posters - one from from Baltimore, another from London. Odd that both have got such a distinctive mid 20th century style to them, immediately suggestive of totalitarianism and Orwell's (as opposed to Channel 4's) Big Brother.

Couple of interesting articles from yesterday's Telegraph

Med 'may get too hot for holidays'

With average temperatures expected to rise by up to six degrees [by 2080], we could be spending our summers in Ireland, northern France, the Baltics and southern Scandinavia, and avoiding Mediterranean beaches except in spring and autumn...

Another approach to Fitzrovian Tuesday's favorite subject - significant global warming is expected, no question, and hey! we might need to change our holiday plans in 74 years.

Over-reacting to terror is no way to defeat it

Excellent op-ed by Sam Leith on last week's shenanigans.

Global warming

That's hot

'It's serious (and interesting) but don't panic'

I reckon Fitzrovian Tuesdays falls into the alarmism and (occaisonally) the comic nihilism camps...

Googling the Google

Just been reading about Google Base and Google Checkout, now launching in US, coming here soon, to take on eBay and Paypal. They really are becoming all-encompassing.

As quoted in Wired:

"A recent post on Slashdot.org puts it neatly: 'In a few years, you'll be driving your Google to the Google to buy some Google for your Google.' "

Lego Robots

Lego robots! Cool. Tom, John - get one for your kids, pretend its for them...

Technology will save us

Those exponents of the Californian Ideology at Wired magazine on the Next Green Revolution, and how technology will save the day. Hope they're right.

Why we must give up flying

Interesting article by Nicholas Crane in today's Torygraph. It should be a no brainer but at the same time I can't think of anyone I know personally who has made a decision not to fly on environmental/moral grounds. We're probably going down to Cornwall later this year and google maps puts the drive time from Edinburgh at around 12 and a half hours - got a feeling we'll be Easyjetting to Bristol or Exeter...

Btw is there a good word to use that means "environmental/moral" in the context of the above para? Can't think of one at the moment (maybe not had enough coffee yet).

UK 108th in new ‘Happy Planet Index’

A new global measure of progress, the ‘Happy Planet Index’, reveals for the first time that happiness doesn’t have to cost the Earth. It shows that people can live long, happy lives without using more than their fair share of the Earth’s resources. The new international ranking of the environmental impact and well-being reveals a very different picture of the wealth, and poverty, of nations, says the New Economics Foundation.

[Btw, I can no longer post to this blog using the 'blog this' button on Google toolbar, and when I try to add comments they generally don't work either. Any ideas why? I'm using Firefox, but did recently allow a bunch of MS security updates, which might be responsible.]

Farewell to Pure and the Venue

Photoset on Flickr.

Runaway tipping points of no return

Great discussion of the term "tipping point" from RealClimate.

All you need is love

Interesting article.

With no power comes no responsibility

Clerks 2 - hurrah!

Online turn based (ie not real-time) chess

At www.itsyourturn.com. Anyone fancy a game?

LRB World Cup Blog

John Lanchester's World Cup blog for the London Review of Books. Not quite the Ally McCoist/Ian Wright level of punditry. It's obviously a lot better than that, but I think there is a danger in trying to get too intellectual about football...

New Scientist Technology Blog

A few interesting stories on the New Scientist Technology Blog this week. Including: schoolkids who are using high frequency mobile ringtones, because old teachers can't hear them; Google's plans to get your computer to listen to what you're watching on TV (starting to get a bit intrusive, I feel); and online gaming doing a deal with US cable TV so that you can watch people playing Halo on the telly, as a spectator.

Age of Genius

Just watched this - Andrew Marr does the Scottish Enlightenment on BBC4. Totally great. Knew it was on, should have linked to it on here *before* it was actually broadcast (doh) - anyone else catch it?

La magia del futbol

Breakin' the law

Allofmp3.com is illegal and being prosecuted. Might be worth using up your credit...

Google Notebook

Google Notebook. They're full of good ideas, aren't they?

Hedgestock

Hedgestock 2006: A Festival of Networking, a festival for the Hedge Fund industry. With music from The Who. I don't know what to say.

Another idiosyncratic piece of British life falls victim to the corporate machine

Oxford's Castle Mill boatyard is evicted. Bah - something authentic and interesting gets traded in for some more jerry built "luxury" flats. A plague on British Waterways (In this instance anyway - they've made a pretty good job of the Forth and Clyde canal).

London Underground Song

Aware I might be well behind the times with this. Not at all safe for work due to highly amusing profanity.

End of an era

The Coach and Horses is closing. I can't remember if I knew about the Pulp connection before reading the Torygraph piece, it's so bang on the money it's confused me.

If Microsoft redesigned sudoku

Nintendo DS launch date 23rd June

Apparently. It will be interesting to see if it does get a 23rd June release. Am quite excited about this (mainly because of the browser software I posted about earlier). (And also because some of the games are quite good).

Eurovision

That most wonderous of music events is once again upon us (this weekend in fact). Eurovision! Dodgy outfits, crazy music and sarky quips from Wogan. What more could you want from a weekend?

The UK has chosen to present a middle-aged singer prancing about with schoolgirls: a song that would be quite disturbing, was it not so crap you don't bother listening to the whole thing. Judge for yourself.

Ireland has decided it never wants to host the competition again and aims to achieve this by entering songs so cringingly naff that no-one in their right mind could possibly vote for it. Free pint if you manage to listen to the whole thing.

And, of course, there's always Finland. Huh? Well, quite simply, they have produced the best Eurovision entry ever. Seriously. Arockalypse now.

Grid Challenge

DTI competition to come up with a grid computing project.
Strangely wide website (on my browser).

Opera browser for the Nintendo DS

Geeky I know but here are some screenshots of the Opera browser for the Nintendo DS. Am quite taken with this software - turns the DS into an instant, wifi equipped, ultraportable browser device (with dual screen). Some background on it in this slightly aged press release.

Pizzly Bear

This is interesting and depressing at the same time.

Evolutionary computing

This might interest you guys.

I'd rather do this than the marathon

Great Gorilla Run

Not in my manor

Don't know if anyone saw this in the Observer sport monthly yesterday, but Will Self's views on the Olympics are quite entertaining.

Down the Line

This is quite funny - it's a spot-on pastiche radio phone-in talk show, but broadcast on Radio 4 as though it was genuine. All the reactionary old duffers were up in arms, believing it to be real. They're supposed to be talking about freedom of speech, but it keeps gravitating towards race and parking. You can listen again.

Universe 'child of previous one'

Hey this is good. Much better than the "universe keeps expanding forever gradually growing colder and darker" idea.

We the undersigned kindly ask Carol Vorderman to please stop doing adverts for secured loans.

Sign the petition.

Britain's Happiness in Decline

Not in the least surprised by this

Colbert Lampoons Bush at White House Correspondents Dinner-- President Does Not Seem Amused

This is awesome stuff. Not been out to get the paper yet, wonder if it has made it into the UK Sundays. Metafilter discussion with more links (including to the video) here.

Worldprocessor

Quite impressive. Takes a while to load.

Cameron's secret shoe chauffeur

In case there was any doubt that Cameron's a cynical charlatan who's using green issues as a cheap publicity exercise, see this.

Six (scientifically proven) ways to woo your lover

Next time I go on a date, I'm going to take her to a rickety bridge, where I'll do a 'gestural dance' while talking through a straw, feeding her chocolate, jogging on the spot, listening to Bonnie Tyler and having a staring contest.

That's kind of what this New Scientist article suggests.

Screen that's also a camera

Apple's all-seeing screen.

MIDDLE AGE

...comes with quite a good album cover

Scholars Discover 23 Blank Pages That May As Well Be Lost Samuel Beckett Play

This week's Onion posting. Wish I worked there.

Monkeys

http://www.ernestcline.com/dmd/ Good or a bit trite? I quite liked it. The music that comes in is "Music for a Found Harmonium" by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra btw.

Multiple security holes found in Firefox

Know anything about this, John, Seamus? Multiple security holes found in Firefox. I had an older version, but 'check for updates' from Help menu didn't suggest I download the newer one.

Posting this just to move on from James Hawes

Beaver Overthinking Dam from the Onion. I like the bit about reaching out to the local otter, fish, and waterfowl communities, and incorporating their input into his design. Not great, but thought we needed something new on here...

An Inconvenient Truth

Quicktime trailer. This is probably the kind of thing that is needed to get the message across to globalised joe public.

Dead Long Enough - James Hawes

Just finished Dead Long Enough by James Hawes. Bit less of a caper than Rancid Aluminium and White Merc with Fins but still very funny with lots of good stuff about being in your thirties / approaching 40. Definitely one for your reading list, Tom...

Raving Atheist

Pleased that our google ad words are getting more interesting. Check out this one Btw, have we earned enough yet to fund a booze up?

Antisocial networking

Snubster

40,000 ecstasy pills later…

Here you go John, this might remind you of less middle-aged times...

middle age strikes (yet again)

The single off the new Mark Knopfler / Emmylou Harris album is really good.

I need one of these...

It's an alarm clock that runs away and hides after you hit snooze, so that you have to get up and find it next time it goes off. (Of course, Tom and John have something similar - children.) They've also come up with a duvet that starts glowing in the morning to wake you up.

Write up of Tom's event

Another blogger has written up Tom's event last week (as posted below), with some good links. Also some stuff on www.ntk.net.

Little Sparta

The poet Ian Hamilton Finlay has died. His garden "takes its place in the great tradition of poet-philosophers' gardens stretching from Epicurus to William Shenstone."

Technology 2.0

I invited Seumas to this event I was helping to run last night in collaboration with NTK. And I'm very glad he came. Not only was it good to see him, but it was Seumas who fixed things during the obligatory technology failures when speakers changed laptops.

I was very pleased with the event itself. Six speakers talking about their latest ideas/products in the technology/audio-visual field. These included: Promise TV, a new TV hard-drive that surpasses Sky Plus+ and will hopefully bring the end of adverts; a well-argued lament around the lack of innovation in the evolution of video games controls; an anthropologist's observations of information flows on the isles of Scilly and how he is turning this into Trampoline, a new knowledge sharing software system; a conceptual art project that attempts to visualize information connections (I didn't really get this one); and an open source approach to geographic mapping, based around Flickr.

Contact request

Seumas do you have Carlos's email address? If so can you email it to me - I just tried the old lgu.ac.uk but it bounced back.

Fukuyama - I Was Wrong

Interview: Neocon admits he was talking arrant drivel.

Quite a lot of us could have told him that years ago if he'd asked.

Wiki advice

Can anyone tell me how to go about setting up a wiki - preferably a method for non-technically competent people? Is there something like Blogger for doing wikis, for example? Thanks.

Belfast City Airport to be renamed in honour of George Best

Don't quite know what to make of this, seems a bit odd - I think I like straightforward geographical names for my airports. Belfast City Airport is nice btw - views across to the great Samson and Goliath cranes at Harland and Wolff...

Ubuntu

OK. Seumas. I've got Ubuntu installed on my old (and currently only) laptop. All seems good but wasn't able to log in as root. I've just read somewhere that root log-in on Ubuntu is disabled from the get-go and users therefore use sudo instead. This is where I reveal my lack of linux knowledge (haven't touched it for 12 months or so): what is sudo?? It now occurs to me that I don't think I was asked for a root password during the install process, so this kind of makes sense but I'd appreciate a bit of clarification on this.

As mentioned the distro seems pretty good, nice user interface, runs OK on my aged 800Mhz, 128MB laptop (well Firefox does, not really tried doing much else with it). Good that it all comes on one CD too.

Oh No, They Killed Scientology!

Quite enjoying this spat between South Park and Scientology. The episode in question involves one of the kids being mistaken for the new L Ron Hubbard, and revealling all the details of their supposedly secret belief system. It's all about aliens inhabiting human bodies thousands of years ago, and is completely nuts. The episode involves Tom Cruise going off in the huff and hiding in the cupboard, as an excuse for endless jokes about him not coming out of the closet, and R Kelly singing songs about it. You can watch the episode here (scroll down to Nov 16 05).

Did you know that Beck is a Scientologist?

Happy Birthday To ME!!!

Self-promotion is, of course, the new orange, so have a great St Paddy's day and drink lots of ethanoholicy type drinks in order to proclaim my celebrieviation. Cheers!

Fun with Nanotech

I don't know if nano technology will save the world or not, but it does look like being quite fun

del.icio.us

Have you seen this del.icio.us site? It seems to be a sort of online bookmarks list which you can store links to all the articles you read and share them with your friends - sort of like a blog without the witty and informative commentary. Then there's a bit of peer-to-peer knowledge exchange on top. Charles Meaden's got a page here (he came to Fitzrovian once). (Thought a bit of internet techno news would counteract the doom and gloom, but I now see that his pages are full of Iraq and climate change stories.)

How to Talk to a Global Warming Sceptic

Useful link. Not that the sceptics are likely to be terribly concerned with factual refutation of their arguments.

question for seumas

What's a good linux distro for an 800Mhz 512MB laptop. Just want to websurf and wordprocess - can you provide a URL to the ISO files?

Top 10 Dictators

The World's 10 Worst Dictators.

It's a Channel 4, Sunday night list show hosted by Jimmy Carr waiting to happen. I like no. 8 best - I think he's the one who's renamed the days of the week after members of his family.

Seriously, though, it has always amazed me how these people manage to get into those positions in the first place, and that countries are structured in such a way to make it possible.

Environmental Freakout (slight return)

Just been looking at James Lovelock's The Revenge of Gaia on Amazon and getting freaked out. This review in RealClimate seems a bit less doom laden but still not exactly comforting...