Blogspot Lefties Mars Hill, Muscular Liberals, and software whizz Tim Almond join the Geekroll. And, somehow, newly-hitched Tim Newman’s White Sun of the Desert slipped off. It’s back now.
Read More10Sep06 — 1
PooterGeek
09Sep06 — 1
Fishmaster!
Those of you who didn’t know it already will not be surprised to learn that there is a Finnish symphonic rock outfit called Nightwish. They have recently sacked their soprano lead, so, if that’s your bag, now’s your chance to put on your horned helmet and boob-armour and record a demo for them. This YouTube […]
Read More09Sep06 — 2
Ask A Silly Question
There’s no longer any need for you to give a dumb answer to post here because—as Jo, I, and others have noticed—SpamQuiz doesn’t do what it says on the tin. I have deactivated it. For Jo and anyone else’s information the plug-in that displays the latest comments and trackbacks over on the right hand side […]
Read More08Sep06 — 2
Ad-vice For Entrepreneurs
From The Daily Telegraph: A solicitor who enjoyed a flamboyant lifestyle by living off the earnings of prostitution has been jailed for 12 months. Davy Tang, 42, a father of two, was able to buy a large country house, a Porsche, a Mercedes and a BMW, as well as jewellery worth £9,000 with his cut […]
Read More08Sep06 — 4
Indispensable
Wikipedia will eventually triumph over all other existing encyclopedias. Does any edition of Britannica or Encarta have a “List of films ordered by the use of the word ‘fuck’“? Yesterday’s featured article was about philosopher and socialist Hilary Putnam, who is the Putnam in the “Quine-Putnam indispensability thesis” and definitely my kind of thinker. (By […]
Read More08Sep06 — 2
And Still One More
Because I linked to Skuds fairly early on in his blogging career I forgot that I hadn’t put him on the blogroll. He’s there now. I’ve met Skuds. I wouldn’t say he’s hard, but he looks like a young Brian Dennehy with a buzz cut, his 14-year-old daughter has been photographed by two newspapers dressed […]
Read More07Sep06 — 12
Captcha!
Commenters here might have noticed that, this week, PooterGeek acquired a new CAPTCHA, that is a test to check that you are, er, “human” before your comment is accepted by the system. It’s to discourage spammers from clogging up this blog with links to their poker, porn, and Viagra sites. The PooterGeek CAPTCHA is basic: […]
Read More07Sep06 — 4
And Another
The Wedding Photography Blog is back—sort of. Link to it and, as soon as you let me know, I guarantee I’ll link to you in return—unless your Website flogs snuff videos or something.
Read More07Sep06 — 0
Missed One
Welsh non-dragon Suw Charman doesn’t write very often, but she’s interesting when she does and she fought my corner against ruthless streetcorner pushers Antoine and Jackie in the 2006 drug wars. Now she’s joined the other newcomers on my blogroll.
Read More07Sep06 — 0
Inverse Convergence
As digital processing drives photographs to become less and less like the things they record, so digital illustration drives images to become more and more like the things they don’t. [The blog I link to has a strange layout. You’ll have scroll down the right-hand-side strip of content to see thumbnails of the dazzling pictures […]
Read More06Sep06 — 6
Guest Post: The Truth About Empire
PooterGeek brings you more linkiness with this report from John Pilger, writing for The Sports Offensive, ed. Jim Campbell. John Pilger travels to a Galaxy Far Far Away and discovers the reality behind the media distortions I am in Coruscant, capital of the “evil” and “corrupt” Galactic Empire. According to the propagandists of the Rebel […]
Read More05Sep06 — 4
Better Late Than Never
I’ve not been writing much here lately so this is a good time to make those long overdue new additions to my blogroll. First of all I want to recommend Paul Evans’s Never Trust a Hippy. He’s got strong and interesting views on politics, football, and music, and his stuff is also thoughtful and witty. […]
Read More05Sep06 — 1
Boll et al.
While I’m on the subject of academics writing rot and being called on it, I discovered this weekend that Uwe Boll, widely criticized as one of the worst directors of all time, has a doctorate in literature. An IMDb contributor reviews a work from his oeuvre, the videogame-“inspired” Alone In The Dark, like this: “[T]he […]
Read More05Sep06 — 1
The Satisfying Sound Of Leather Hitting Trouser
As you’d expect from an embittered wannabe academic like me, I enjoy immensely reading reviews in which genuine scholars demolish the latest fashionable nonsense published by trend-chasing academic presses. Here Ben Goldacre casually and rightly puts the boot into an absurd attack on evidence-based medicine—it’s “fascist” apparently. Here Shalom Lappin does a grand and rigorous […]
Read More04Sep06 — 1
Admirable; Futile
Like a man trying to teach calculus to a hamster, Anthony “Black Triangle” Cox attempts to apply logic to the content of a front page of The Independent. For some reason I am reminded of Norm’s continuing struggles with The Guardian.
Read More04Sep06 — 4
Two Answers To Questions You Didn’t Ask
My darling readership has solved two PooterGeek mysteries. Remember the “hair guitar” version of Pachelbel’s Canon? This New York Times article [PDF] tells the tale behind it. A couple of weeks back, on the way back from the site of a wedding reception, I managed to get myself stuck in one of the few actual […]
Read More04Sep06 — 5
Kid Beyond
A couple of times in the past I’ve linked to snippets of multi-part vocal harmony [MP3, 770kB] here. Thanks to digital audio workstations like the marvellous Sonar and audio interfaces like this, I can record myself singing the various parts of the arrangement, overlay the harmonies, set them in an artificial space, and create my […]
Read More31Aug06 — 1
The Future Of Darfur And The Future Of The Left
Because of a couple of gremlins over at the Euston Manifesto site we’ve accidentally been turning people away from applying for tickets to our meeting next Tuesday evening in London. It’s free and there will be three speakers on the subject: “Darfur: An Urgent Case for Humanitarian Intervention”. Follow the link to email us for […]
Read More31Aug06 — 2
The Channel Is Narrow But Deep
On my way to have my teeth checked yesterday morning I was listening to BBC Radio 4. Woman’s Hour was recounting the forgotten history of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The best bit was when one of the experts recited the original French words to the tune of the nursery rhyme and reminded us of how […]
Read More30Aug06 — 2
Leather-Clad Spines In Tight Bindings
Via too many links to remember: hardcore library porn [safe for work].
Read More30Aug06 — 6
How Free Markets For Talent Work, An Explanation For Talentless Market Freeloaders
Over the past couple of weeks there’s been a crop of stories in the media in which employers bleat about the “shortage” of trained scientists and the “shortage” of literate and numerate employees. As with most of these perennial news items—I’m sure most outlets now have ready-made Word templates so their journalists can bang them […]
Read More26Aug06 — 7
Every Cloud
I was sitting in a waiting room yesterday. As always, I couldn’t resist reading one of the women’s reality rags—almost as appealing as discarded copies of the Daily Mail on a Tube train. Real magazine rewarded me for my defying public mockery with this lovely headline, neatly balancing the ghoulishness, shrill optimism, and bathos that […]
Read More25Aug06 — 1
Stop The War(monger Bush And His Poodle Blair)
As you know I’ve been busy, so I’ve only just noticed via Jo Salmon that someone has found an honest STWC/CND flyer.
Read More24Aug06 — 1
Who Says Bioinformaticians Don’t Have A Sense Of Humour?
I haven’t had time for a proper post for the past few days and I still don’t, but Leasey recommends that you explore the platypus genome by hovering your mouse pointer over the little image of a platypus on this page and reading the pop-up that appears. Genomics: an unrecognized mine of comedy gold.
Read More20Aug06 — 2
Arsenal Relieved To Save Point At Home To Villa
I enjoyed typing that. Martin’s magic makes Thierry look ordin-erry.
Read More20Aug06 — 4
Columnists Continue To Pollute
I guarantee that the myth of the decline in 4×4 sales will be all over the media within a month. Tim Almond’s simple debunking of it won’t. [When you view Tim’s article, is it accompanied by Google advertisements for cardiology journals? It is when I do, but I read it while I was running Microsoft […]
Read More17Aug06 — 10
Turning World
I’m smart enough to appreciate just how much smarter than me my friends are. As I always say, talent recognizes genius. Talent should also recognize its own limits. I’ve reached that stage in my life when I’ve had to accept that I won’t be able to do the things I dreamt of doing when I […]
Read More15Aug06 — 3
My Kind Of Loser
Al Gore seemed to have been engineered by a mad scientist to become President of the United States of America: born in Washington DC to a former senator, elite education, lots of practice being Vice-President to one of the more distracted actual Presidents, George W. Bush for his opponent, tall, good hair. How could it […]
Read More14Aug06 — 2
Reformation
There are excellent posts by Harry, DavidT, and Marcus on the front page of Harry’s Place. Following all the stand-ins and argy-bargy over there it’s like the Beatles coming back on after having The Electric Light Orchestra play support. [Note that, like wardytron, I rather like ELO.]
Read More
Recent Comments