June 2008
54 posts
Lit 101 Class in Three Lines or Less. →
1984 WINSTON: Don’t tell the Party, but sex is way better than totalitarianism. EVERYONE: Surprise! We’re the Party. WINSTON: Oh, rats.
Amazon reviews of Denon's $500 ethernet cable →
“The first time I downloaded a picture to the printer over this cable, the bits moved so fast the printer collapsed into a naked singularity, right there in my office. Since then, I can’t find the…
Started reading The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.
Finished Shakespeare by Bill Bryson.
Finished The Porcupine by Julian Barnes.
Started reading Shakespeare by Bill Bryson.
Zoe Williams complaining that the left don't... →
And when it comes to advertising, she’s absolutely correct. She’s rightfully outraged at the pseudo-outrage about the innocuous New York Deli Heinz ad. But as a writer for the Guardian she must be…
“I believe that the gods themselves are frightened of the world which they have fashioned.” Peter Ackroyd
Interview with Alan Moore on Forbidden Planet →
“If people want to argue with me about the importance of Northampton, then theyâre not only arguing with me, theyâre arguing with God, and theyâre arguing with Hitler. And that, I think me,…
Stephen Fry on the BBC and the future of... →
Whenever people whinge about the BBC and the lack of a ‘level playing field’ I think that I love our beautifully undulating broadcast services as they are, and I wouldn’t flatten the beautiful…
“Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.” George Carlin
Johnson aide quits over race row →
A few weeks in, Johnson has managed to miss a major festival in Trafalgar Square, changed the Rise festival so it no longer has anything to do with racism, and now accepted the resignation of an…
Amy Winehouse 'has emphysema' →
My grandmother had emphysema. At 80. Through a lifetime (almost) of smoking 20+ a day. To get it at 24 shows a level of commitment to self destruction rarely seen.
Ariane Sherine: Why should we put up with... →
Part of me feels that the adverts are so inane that it’s probably best these fools are wasting their money on that rather than burning non-believers or leafleting the parishes of gay vicars, but I…
Warren Ellis writes a letter about Alan Moore →
When Mr Ellis wasn’t famous at all, and Mr Moore wasn’t all that famous unless you knew about such things. What an intriguing piece of history.
“Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.” Albert Einstein, The World As I See It
My del.icio.us tags in Wordle →
Which does a great job of making a tag cloud look pretty.
The Porcupine →
Blink (Penguin Celebrations) →
Blink (Penguin Celebrations) →
Hammer of the Gods →
Blink (Penguin Celebrations) →
“When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.” Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac
“There’s a good reason why nobody studies history, it just teaches you too much.” Noam Chomsky
“The Bush Administration do have moral values. Their moral values are very...”
– Noam Chomsky, Interview by Steve Scher
Metallica are idiots →
Of course, you know that already. But asking bloggers to a party to hear the new album and then telling them to take down positive reviews they’ve written online is just insanely stupid. Like another…
Joe Moran: The myth of Top Gear →
Speeding, Moran claims, is no victimless crime, and those that witter on about their ‘freedoms’ in relation to it are wrong. And clearly, he’s absolutely right.
“Width of life is more important than length of life.” Avicenna
J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement →
I love Harry Potter, even if I found the recent pointless court case rather, well, pointless. This, though, is a pretty faultless speech.
She Went Of Her Own Accord →
Based on the ‘My wife went to the Carribbean’ ‘Jamaica?’ ‘No, she went of her own accord’ joke, Roo and Nick have made a user-created location-based pun site. Well, someone had to.
Yahoo! mails out kegs of foul skunk beer to... →
“Heineken, a brew with all the flavor, bouquet and piquant aroma of a drunk Steve Ballmer holding you down and pissing into your mouth.”
How to be a Responsible Parent in Public →
A nigh-on perfectly balanced article that all parents should read. Bringing up kids is not full of things that are difficult to do, just hard work to implement.
Q and A: Celebrity guests at Hay ask each other a... →
George Monbiot asks John Bolton “You were instrumental in manufacturing the case for war with Iraq, using false intelligence. Why should you not be put on trial as a war criminal?” Go George!
A Twiddiots Guide to the Bible →
Following on from some intriguing discussions in last week’s Macbreak Weekly, here’s some interesting factoids about the bible from ‘TJ’. Fascinating, and some great responses to commenters are being…
“Hidden talent counts for nothing.” Emperor Nero
“This book, this page, this harebell laid to rest
Between these sheets, these...”
– In Our Tenth Year by Simon Armitage
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-6-8) →
Ann Peebles
Neutral Milk Hotel
The National
Martha Reeves & The Vandellas
Art Brut
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr
WatchBig Ideas by Radiohead played on inappropriate old electrical equipment. Oddly beautiful.
Stewart Lee on Political Correctness: http://tinyurl.com/3zvqnv
“It really worries me that 84% of this audience agrees with that statement,...”
– Stewart Lee, on political correctness, Heresy, BBC Radio 4, 16th May 2007
goosh.org - the unofficial google shell. →
This is one of the nicest ways to search Google I think I’ve seen.
Marcus du Sautoy: Without the big maths stories... →
I’m no mathematician, which is why I find it particularly disturbing that my scant knowledge of maths beyond a bit of mental arithmatic often makes me the best or second best mathematician in any…
Barney Ronay on Oxford's all-male Bullingdon Club →
An interesting, if remarkably disturbing, insight into the Bullingdon club whose former members include Boris Johnson, George Osborne and David Cameron.
Gun T-shirt 'was a security risk' →
Phew. I wouldn’t want to think that a man with a cartoon gun printed on his t-shirt would make it onto a plane. What if he used magic to make it a real gun eh? Then we’d be sorry.