PooterGeek

Assimilation

Further to my most recent extended comment on That Bigoted Woman, I note The Mirror reports that Gillian Duffy, who wondered during the UK General Election where all those Eastern Europeans are flocking from, has come out in support of David Miliband for the position leader of the Labour Party. David Miliband is the offspring […]

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Moral Philosophers Of Our Time

Charles Alexander: The former partner of killer gunman Raoul Moat was yesterday blamed for the death of an innocent man and the maiming of a police officer. The deranged bodybuilder’s uncle Charles Alexander claims Samantha Stobbart also has the blood of her ex-lover on her hands. The 72-year-old former soldier launched a astonishing tirade of […]

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Imelda Got A Boom Boom

I’ve no strong objections to the sub-genre, but I’m certainly not a rockabilly fan; this afternoon, though, Imelda May, having been flown in specially with her band by private jet to play, impressed me on Dermot O’Leary’s BBC Radio 2 show1. Check out this video of her performing Johnny Got A Boom Boom on Later… with Jools Holland […]

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“Darth Vader Robs Bank”

That’s how everyone is reporting this. But it’s clearly Chad Vader in the photos. I can only conclude that all the people with sufficient discrimination to know this are at Comic-Con 2010—where, incidentally, the latest trailer for the Tron Legacy, featuring a digitally thirtysomethingified Jeff Bridges has been shown.

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Tough Characters

In Web time, this is an ancient (1991) essay, so I don’t feel guilty that I can’t remember who drew my attention to it today: “Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard“. Someone once said that learning Chinese is “a five-year lesson in humility”. I used to think this meant that at the end of five […]

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Lost Appeal

The BBC reports: A relationship counsellor who refused to offer sex therapy to gay couples has lost his unfair dismissal appeal. Gary MacFarlane, 47, from Bristol, was sacked by marriage guidance service Relate after he said he could not do anything to promote gay sex. He alleged Relate had refused to accommodate his Christian beliefs. […]

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Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You

Sarah Palin is a phenomenon: Sarah Palin is a singular national industry. She didn’t invent her new role out of whole cloth. Other politicians have cashed out, used the revolving door, doing well in business after doing good in public service. Entertainment figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura, and even Ronald Reagan have worked the […]

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Flocking Hell

“Bigotgate” [Deliver us from the media’s standard scandal suffix!] has come to this: There’s a report on the BBC News Website that actually devotes a paragraph and two full-colour charts to a 30-minute dip in Twitter sentiment towards Gordon Brown in response to his tetchy grumbling to an aide in the back of his official […]

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Oops, Odone Again

Most literate adults in the UK know that The Daily Telegraph wants the Conservative Party to win the upcoming General Election. Those who have been following the recent public unravelling of that newspaper’s opinionist Christina Odone—she is to the Telegraph what Madeleine Bunting is The Guardian—know that she particularly wants the LibDems to do badly […]

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“There is an appropriate use for paper”

The Paperless Office, like The Flying Car, is one of those technological icons of the future whose ascendancy, no matter how much time passes, seems stuck in the future; but I reckon offices without paper are going to become more common more quickly than cars that fly. Indeed, we do seem to be printing fewer […]

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“Aimless Hostility”

A few days ago, John Gray reviewed A C Grayling’s latest book Ideas that Matter: The Concepts that Shape the 21st Century. To my surprise, someone I know linked to the review approvingly. I was surprised because the review is tosh: hysterical, pompous, and so self-fiskingly stupid that it’s not even necessary to read the […]

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Identity Crisis

This week, a friend of mine who still reads The Guardian [online—does anyone not looking for a public sector job still pay for the print edition?] drew my attention to a piece there about how success by the Liberal Democrats at the upcoming General Election could “push out black and Asian MPs”. That is, because the […]

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Two excellent blog posts

The first is at Freemania: The really important thing about Iraq: us Today Gordon Brown gives evidence to the Chilcot inquiry. This weekend, amid violent attacks on polling stations, Iraq holds an election. I wonder which will get the most coverage? The rest of the world exists primarily as a mirror for us. The second […]

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Sounds of silence

Via Slashdot, here’s an abstract of a study of graffiti found on the walls of the Joseph Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, performed by a member of its IT staff. You can also browse the full dataset, including photographs of the inscriptions made available under a Creative Commons licence. The take-home messages (as […]

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Waking Up by OneRepublic

Ryan Tedder wrote Bleeding Love for Leona Lewis and his band OneRepublic consists of friends from his church in Denver making music for people who think Coldplay are a bit too experimental. They are about as uncool as it’s possible to be without actually being David Hasselhoff. I love their new album, Waking Up. It’s […]

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Unfortunate headlines of the day

The BBC News Website has changed its original headline: SARAH PALIN LASHES OBAMA AT FIRST TEA PARTY CONVENTION —bring your houseboy, and let’s party like it’s 1779!—to this one: SARAH PALIN CONDEMNS OBAMA AT FIRST TEA PARTY CONVENTION but, Liz Jones’s latest wibble—search for it if you like; I’m not going to link to it—retains […]

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Bigger Than The Beatles

Lord Macca of Loch Kodak on his appearance on The X-Factor: [Sir Paul McCartney] said he got some great reaction from people about his performance on the X Factor. “We got great feedback on the streets the next day. It’s my claim to fame now.”

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Bloggertarians, Tin Foil Hat Wearers, Loons

Foes of President Barack Obama and his policies can vent their frustrations by engaging in fictional warfare, thanks to a new online strategy game with a heavy political component. The satirical game 2011: Obama’s Coup Fails, launched last month by a group of Ron Paul supporters that call themselves The Founders, throws players into combat […]

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Modern Masters

Further to my rant about clueless DJs replacing proper producers, here are a couple of funny little animations about the horrors of being a mastering engineer to today’s “talent”: Mastering: The Movie Part One and Part Two. And, from an interview this month’s Sound on Sound magazine, here’s Bruce Swedien, studio engineer for Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall and Thriller albums, […]

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National Stereotypes

I have just searched Google News for “Afghanistan”. The top three stories are, in order: 500 more British soldiers will go to Afghanistan—[report] Italians bribed the Taleban all over Afghanistan—[report] France will not send any more troops to Afghanistan—[report]

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v v good fun

This [HD YouTube video] is a bonkers slab of wonderfully British-sounding soul-pop from V VBrown. Shame about the over-compressed production/mixing/mastering that turns every peak into white noise. This [HD YouTube video—censored version] is an equally bonkers slab of ironic hair metal from the self-proclaimed “modern Spinal Tap“, Steel Panther. I know it’s meant to be a […]

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Statistics Is Fun

Have a look at this elegant illustration of the relative safety of one cervical cancer vaccine. Read this intriguing blogpost about how the appointment of bean-counters at Premiership clubs might well have made league games even more exciting to watch (as well as costing bookies money). [Thanks to Jim P.]

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Single Transferable Mope

I picked up this Prospect blogpost, via the magazine’s twitter feed, where it carried a headline that falls into the Kamm/Rentoul category of “Great Historical Questions To Which The Answer Is ‘No’.“: “Is Afghanistan Obama’s Vietnam?” The article itself doesn’t bother with the question mark, but is a classic of the “another Vietnam” genre, once […]

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Evans, Dear Boy, Evans

Via Paulie’s “Shared Items” feed at Never Trust a Hippy, I read on the Democratic Society Blog one of the best “Did Magna Carta die in vain?” comments ever [see foot of the post I link to] and, on Tory Troll, an account of yet another FAIL by frontline interviewers. Here’s a tip for the […]

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Aussie Supporters As Gracious As Ever

One cool thing about twitter is the ability to search for a particular subject and see what people around the World are saying about it right now. This morning, as England’s tail-enders were putting on some cheeky runs, I searched for “Ashes”—which, as you’d expect, has recently become one of the most common words appearing […]

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Tough Audience

On being shown Michael Jackson moonwalking to Billie Jean, a friend’s seven-year-old son shrugged his shoulders and commented, unimpressed: “Ahh… He’s got wheels in his shoes.” [Anecdote and title stolen wholesale from JL.]

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