pootling

• Kids! Want to know which are the most violent and disgusting games?
  Then ABC have conveniently put together a list of the best ones you can get for your money, ostensibly under the banner of warning your parents. They’ve also added a list of weedy games to avoid.
  (tags: games warning children abc news us)
• The making of a LEGO Brick
  From Business Week, a great little slideshow of pictures showing a Lego brick’s creation from granulated plastic to the wonder we know and love. Article. (via MAKE)
  (tags: make lego factory businessweek creation brick)

You can never have too many songs about wolves. That’s what experience has taught me.

This song is just perfect. It comes in at a rather chunky 4:39, but it feels like a 2 minute pop song. Punky but not sneering, and with vocals that would sound out of place almost anywhere and yet sound so perfect at the same time, there really isn’t anything I’d consider changing.

The whole of this year’s, Return to Cookie Monster is great. They’re an amazing band with a style and content all of their own and this song shows them on their best form.

• Bruce of VignetteBricks has a new site with Microscale Lego creations
  This page has some great ships, but it’s worth checking out some of the other creations on the site. (via tbb)
  (tags: brothersbrick microbricks microscale lego ships mocs blog)
• This Knight’s Castle Lego set was one of the first I remember being bought for me
  Looking through my Lego now, I would think that I probably still have every part of this set somewhere. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world when I got it about 20 years ago.
  (tags: lego classiccastle forum knightscastle me)

• Are green potatoes poisonous?
  This sounds like your typical urban legend, but as it turns out there’s a certain truth to it: they “can cause vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, and even paralysis of the central nervous system.” in large enough quantities.
  (tags: potatoes food green poison illness snopes urbanlegend)

• Radio 4’s Nick Clarke dies at 58
  It’s not been a good week for keeping the good people alive. I’m going to miss Nick Clarke’s comforting voice on the World at One.
  (tags: nickclarke bbc radio radio4 news worldatone)

• Give addicts heroin, says officer
  After some bad news stories about a few US police officers, it’s nice to see the deputy chief constable of Nottinghamshire making an extraordinarily sensible solution to the problems of drug addiction. About time.
  (tags: nottinghamshire uk news bbc heroin drugs police)

• RIP Robert Altman
  I thought Gosford Park was a wonderful film, and he was a novel and interesting director. He’ll be missed.
  (tags: robertaltman films director death us bbc news)
• “Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history”
  Besides the fact that I disagree with a lot of what Dinesh D’Souza has to say here, I think what annoys me the most is the way it’s so badly argued. Notice “His new book, “The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11,”"…
  (tags: history religion war politics atheism richarddawlins dineshdsouza stalin hitler mao)

• Following last week’s tasering of a mouthy student, the US police are now tasering epileptic people
  “when experiencing a seizure, [the man] apparently was unjustifiably tasered, clubbed, arrested, jailed and committed to a psychiatric facility for violent offenders — all based on non-threatening behaviors caused by a seizure”
  (tags: police arrest brutality epilepsy taser violence us)

• Logos and the logic behind them
  Interesting collection of logos (unfortunately, some have stopped loading due to bandwidth) and subtle clues included within them.
  (tags: article blog toxic logo graphics branding business)

Delilah is like a few people I know. She’s “a sucker for the ones that use [her]“. The sort of person that seems to go for, and stick with, the poorest examples of humanity.

This song is one of the saddest written by the Dresden Dolls, which makes it a very sad song indeed. It sounds intensely personal. There’s a moment where Delilah smacks her hand down and says “Amanda, I’m in love”, which makes it seem all the more like it’s written from personal experience (Amanda being the lead singer).

I think the thing I love most about this song is the way that Amanda’s voice tells the story. At the beginning when she sings “you thought you could change the world / by opening your legs / but it isn’t very hard” she sounds like the voice of Delilah herself, but when she continues the line “try kicking them instead” it sounds like Amanda’s half of the conversation. This use of dynamics is also used perfectly when Delilah calls saying “I’m at Denny’s on route one / and you won’t guess what he’s done” and Amanda returns “is that a Fact Delilah?” with a great pounding drum beat on “fact”.

Despite the story, this song actually turns out to be rather uplifting, with the lines:

“so don’t cry delilah
you’re still alive delilah
you need a ride delilah?
let’s see how fast this thing can go…..”

I’ve been listening to it repeatedly for a couple of weeks now, so it more than deserves its Song Of The Week status. It’s a great track from a fascinating band, who are, incidentally, also one of the best live bands around at the moment.

• Iranian-American UCLA student tortured by the police for not showing his ID
  Welcome to the new world of security our glorious leaders are providing.
  (tags: iran us torture ucla police brutality politics war)
• New section on King Saul added to The Brick Testament
  Not, perhaps, one of the best sections, but a great addition to the site nonetheless. The Brick Testament, if you’ve been living in a cave, is a Lego recreation of the Bible.
  (tags: lego thebricktestament bible religion christianity saul)
• Video of a drummer, requiring more video-editing skills than drumming ones
  This is great, and pretty funny in a weird sort of a way. (via b3ta)
  (tags: editing video youtube drumming music piano)

• Jesus appears to the righteous
  On a dog’s…. well, I’ll let you look yourself. The Lord certainly moves in mysterious ways.
  (tags: animal christianity christ jesus religion dog humour)
• The Iraq war PR machine goes from strength to strength
  “A US Army soldier has pleaded guilty to raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and helping murder her and her family.” I wonder why we’re not being welcomed with open arms.
  (tags: bbc news iraq war us army rape murder)
• Beautiful drawings of the pre-flight safety dance
  (via drawn)
  (tags: drawing art illustration flying aeroplance safety drawn)

So, Channel 4 are offering 99p downloads of a large number of shows. Great! If you miss a show, you can buy it for a reasonable fee, and watch it as much as you want.

Well, no. Not as much as you want, “each programme will “disappear” from users’ computers 48 hours after they start to watch it”. And hereby the whole offer collapses into a heap of steaming turd. Why would I pay 99p for a programme I could watch, and record, for free? I mean, even if I were to go out and buy the full DVD, at least I get to keep the bloody things, and can pretty easily put them onto my iPod, if I feel so inclined.

So why would Channel 4 put in such a stupid deal-breaker. Well clearly they want you to buy the DVDs too. Essentially, their best-of-all-worlds situations would be for you to watch it on TV (keep up the ratings), download it because you can’t bear to wait for the DVD, preferably a few times (at 99p a go, don’t forget), and then eventually go out and buy it on DVD. And you want to watch it on your iPod? Well you’ll just have to wait until they sort out a deal with Apple - and then you can pay for it again.

Content-producers would rather that no-one other than them ever owned any of the content they produce. What they would like is for us all to have this content licensed to us. It means they feel that they can retain control, but these endeavours are failing to make a profit right left and centre because people want to feel that they’re actually buying something. Something they can keep, and own, and use whenever, and however they want. Most people would be shocked to find out what they are and are not allowed to do with the content that they “own”.

Take CDs - as it stands in the UK at the moment, copyright law does not allow you to make any copies of the music you buy. Fair enough you may think, but this also includes the making of a CD for a friend, allowing a friend to borrow your favourite album, or even putting any of your music that you didn’t buy from iTunes onto your iPod.

Anyway, I digress. My recommendation would be to avoid this sort of deal like the plague - it’s awful. You are being charged to watch programmes that you can watch for free, or buy elsewhere and keep - and you’re being ripped off.

• Birdwatchers watch rare bird, just as it gets eaten by a less-rare bird
  “Sparrowhawks do feed on small birds, and this one was probably not a great student of what is rare and what is not.” Said an RSPB spokesman.
  (tags: bbc news bird rare birdwatching)

It’s been a tough week to choose a song from this week, hence the fact that SOTW is so late. Then suddenly, this song came hurtling up on the inside and took the crown. Luckily, it even comes with it’s own discovery back-story, since I listened to it after reading this blog post.

Suffice it to say that it’s a beautiful, mournful song that sounds like getting up on a Monday morning after a difficult, alcohol-fuelled weekend, and I absolutely love it. Thanks Dave!