There’s a letter in today’s Economist about the murder of the US Ambassador to Libya by fundamentalist extremists that encapsulates the rich blend of bigotry, ignorance, non sequitur, crude generalization, snobbery, and sheer, gobsmacking stupidity in which the thought processes of fashionable over-educated opinion stew. It also gives me an opportunity to try out my new […]
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20Sep12 — 0
Astronomy Photographer Of The Year 2012
Here’s a superb narrated BBC slideshow of winning images from the Astronomy Photographer Of The Year competition. The slideshow is by Paul Kerley, with narration by Chris Lintott and Olivia Johnson.
Read More20Sep12 — 0
Those Nick Clegg apology YouTube remixes in full
In a fit of shameless Google-baiting, I collect here some of the YouTube remixes of Nick Clegg’s Party Political Broadcast apology for his and his party’s breaking of their tuition fees “pledge”. The Original The Poke's AutoTune version The Simon Bates “Our Tune” dub The “honest subtitles” overlay If you know […]
Read More18Sep12 — 2
Parliamentary Microphone Geekery
Yesterday evening, I went a-googling for details about the microphones they use at the despatch boxes in the House of Commons because they fascinate me. They’re AKG D222s, which I used to covet in the 90s. They’re odd dynamic mics: Unlike most others, they don’t make your voice sound bassier as you move your mouth […]
Read More03Sep12 — 3
A Quick Plug
If you’re in the area this weekend, “Partly Covered”, the cut-down version of Sussex soul and pop band Covered will be playing at The Red Lion in the pretty West Sussex town of Arundel. And I’ll be the lead singer.
Read More30Aug12 — 0
Mittigation
Mitt Romney is a US Republican Presidential candidate who has chosen a Right-wing running mate. All right-thinking people here know therefore that he wants to rape female college students and force them to have their babies so they can be child labour in one of his corporations’ asset-stripped factories. Or, if UK observers fancy themselves […]
Read More26Aug12 — 0
Carly Death Rae Jepsen
I have spoken of my love for Sound On Sound before. It’s a popular music magazine that’s about music. It cares for more about excellence than coolness. If you enjoy the mocking of naked emperors, its demo review pages are especially fun. Sadly, I had to save money a few months back when my subscription came […]
Read More27May11 — 1
Lessons For Us All
I recommend you read all of this Martin In The Margins post: Taliban tactics in Tower Hamlets: I’m not sure why I’ve been so affected by the story of Gary Smith, the east London RE teacher who was assaulted by four Islamic extremists because they disapproved of him teaching religion to Muslim girls. Perhaps it […]
Read More26May11 — 4
Three Four B Movies Worth Checking Out
A good B movie is great fun. The format is officially dead, but the label lives; and now people use it to refer to a genre film (usually horror or science fiction/fantasy) with a small promotional spend as much as they use it to describe one with a low budget. If a non-blockbuster non-cult non-art-house non-sequel […]
Read More12Apr11 — 0
Making Money By Telling Women The Correct Way To Have Sex
Further to my post about rescuing fallen women, the Heresiarch examines how evidence-abusing ideologues compete to cash in on prostitution.
Read More02Apr11 — 6
Animals Or Savages?
Some commentators who have opinionated about the recent murders in Afghanistan, murders supposedly committed “in response to” a US pastor’s burning a copy of the Koran, have resorted to what I ironically call “good racism”. Bad racism is what unemployed people living on council housing estates display when they blame their being unemployed on immigrants. […]
Read More30Mar11 — 3
Chuka Umunna on slavery
Chuka Umunna in The Voice on the question of a UK government apology for slave trade: African slavery and colonialism are not simply remnants of the past – they helped lay the foundations for the successful modern Britain of today. The effects of slavery are still felt in our communities – many cite the matriarchal […]
Read More05Mar11 — 2
On Rescuing Fallen Women
I spent my first two terms at university up to my naked wrists in a woman’s corpse. This was A Good Thing For Humankind. This week, one of the top BBC News stories has been the outrage at a woman demonstrating a sex toy in front of a university psychology class. This was An Act […]
Read More25Feb11 — 7
The Alternative Vote System: So Simple That An Attempt To Write A Simple Description Of It Leads To A Complicated Debate
Tom Freeman questions one of the criticisms aimed against the Alternative Vote system (AV), which, in a referendum in May, citizens will be voting to adopt or reject in, er, preference to First Past The Post (FPTP) in UK elections. The criticism in question is that AV is too complicated and/or voters don’t/won’t understand how […]
Read More12Feb11 — 5
Bush Was Right
This would be a good day to quote and laugh at some of the many racist articles written over the past few years that warned us not to “inflame the Arab Street”, that rhetorical mass of undifferentiated savages that “we” created by interfering in the Noble Civilizations of the region with our Imperialist Adventures, and […]
Read More20Nov10 — 2
A Face-Saving Exercise
The BBC reports: A former soldier who was jailed for refusing to fight in Afghanistan has handed back a medal in protest at Britain’s involvement in the war. “There’s a real up-swell of awareness now among military families and among the military, and among the people in this country, that this conflict is, has kind […]
Read More03Nov10 — 0
Cross In Box
Continuing the theme of suffrage, if you were unfortunate (and nerdy) enough to listen to Today In Parliament yesterday evening, you will have been treated to our law-makers displaying the sort of ignorance of the basics of the law and of European institutions that makes you embarrassed to be a British citizen as they debated […]
Read More01Nov10 — 2
The Not Vote
The always-interesting marketing guru Seth Godin wisely alerts citizens of democracies who fail to exercise their franchise because they claim to hate politicians to an important fact they have probably overlooked: many politicians want them not to vote: Political TV advertising is designed to do only one thing: suppress the turnout of the opponent’s supporters. […]
Read More01Nov10 — 0
Fighting The Good Fight
Spam—email spam, link spam, splogs, social media spam—is evil. I waste too much of my time dealing with it. It was inevitable that this Wired article about a new search engine would intrigue me: [T]here’s a new search engine in town that’s got a fresh approach to weed out the ever-proliferating junk and spam sites […]
Read More31Oct10 — 0
Bhangra Nights
Right now, I am banging my head like Flat Eric to this. The intro rambles on a bit then it all kicks off in a diversity-tastic way: Bhangra Nights – Husan 2010 (Tom Pritchard Remix) by Tom Pritchard
Read More31Oct10 — 0
Who’s Mad?
Martin In The Margins makes an important criticism of an otherwise mostly admirable and well-intentioned enterprise: As for that plea for a focus on ‘tolerance’, it would have helped if the rally organisers hadn’t included a performer who has expressed the most outrageously intolerant opinions. Appearing onstage in the National Mall was Yusuf Islam, the […]
Read More08Oct10 — 8
“It’s not his fault, miss; he’s Anger Management.”
People will focus on what Katharine Birbalsingh said about the failure of this country’s educational establishment to serve poor black boys, but the bigger disaster, in simple numbers, is its failure to serve working-class whites. Pseudoscience, whether it’s Marxism or eugenics or anti-vaccine hysteria or educationalist psychobabble, is often characterized by rich people making money […]
Read More18Aug10 — 5
If You To Want See A Briton Fight, Threaten To Bring Down The Price Of Her House
Rory Sutherland’s wiki man column in The Spectator is one of the few things remaining inside that magazine that might yet tempt me to buy another print copy. In his latest he sticks a finger through one of the biggest holes in the Tories’ buckshot “Big Society” balloon of bullshit: In one sense, it seems, […]
Read More18Aug10 — 0
Bieber-eautiful
16-year-old Justin Bieber is the pop new sensation with pre-teens. [High Court Judge] I have yet to have the pleasure of hearing one of his musical performances [/High Court Judge], but I have heard this: J. BIEBZ – U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis which is one of his recordings slowed down 800% and pitch-shifted […]
Read More11Aug10 — 2
The Great Typo Hunt
Incensed by a “no tresspassing” sign, Jeff Deck launched a cross-country trip to right grammatical wrongs. He enlisted a friend, Benjamin D. Herson, and together they got to work erasing errant quotation marks, rectifying misspellings and cutting unnecessary possessive apostrophes. The Great Typo Hunt is the story of their crusade.
Read More10Aug10 — 5
Support World-Class UK Research Universities
Which of this month’s begging letters from my almae matres more rapidly and effectively earned its place in my bin? Was it the one from Oxford University that began: Dear Mr Counsell Today the defining struggle in the world is between relentless growth and the potential for collaboration. which, if it means anything at all, […]
Read More02Aug10 — 9
“…the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights”
I am against bans on the wearing of the burqa or niqab in public1 therefore I am going to recommend that you read the best article I have read in favour of such bans: The argument that the garment is not a religious obligation under Islam is well-founded but irrelevant; millions of Muslims the world […]
Read More02Aug10 — 0
What Hamas Gets Up To When No One (Here) Is Looking
Over at Ricochet, Judith Levy illustrates her commentary on the state of the “ceasefire” with a picture of the effects of another rocket attack from Gaza on a rehabilitation centre for special needs kids in Israel two days ago. For “prison camp” guards, the Israelis are surprisingly easygoing. …the attack on Sderot took place twenty-four […]
Read More02Aug10 — 1
Self-Replacing Elites
The BBC’s Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield is broadly happy with his children’s French education, but he does have one complaint: French schools have absolutely no extra-curricular activities. There are no debating societies, no orchestras, no film clubs, no sports teams, no painting classes, no school newspapers, and no drama, at least none worthy of the […]
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