Lance Armstrong has lost one testicle and parts of his brain to cancer. Despite this he seems likely to win his seventh consecutive Tour de France, a competition widely considered to be the greatest test of endurance in modern sport. Meanwhile his girlfriend has been in the studio complaining to Chrissie Hynde about how difficult […]
Read MoreOne of the witnesses to the police shooting of the suspected bomber on Friday saw wires sticking out of the man’s coat. Everyone saw “New York” on an alleged bomber’s sweatshirt.
Read MoreMy Auntie Clarina in Sierra Leone is worried that, living in Cambridge and visiting London as I do from time to time, I might be in danger.
Read MoreIf, like me, you have found that reading Harry Potter leaves you unmoved, but you feel the need to keep up with the plots so you can discuss the phenomenon with the Pottd People around you, you’ll be pleased to know that Leasey has been reading the latest volume on behalf of PooterGeekers. Apparently, the […]
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Read MoreOver at Norm’s place Alan Johnson asks why the Labour Party has not been opposing terrorism more overtly. I can’t believe Alan hasn’t had the Bateman-esque experience of, say, commenting favourably on George Bush’s foreign policy in the company of Labour activists. If he hasn’t, thoughtful James Hamilton has some answers.
Read MoreOliver Kamm has been back for a while and has been on fine form since his return. PooterGeek’s Paris correspondent should check out his latest about the Socialist Workers’ Party and the PKK. Immediately after the recent atrocity in Turkey Claire memorably asked in an email, “What do you promise [a Marxist-Leninist suicide bomber]? 72 […]
Read MoreI’ve been immersed in a (popular) science book—not dipping in and out for research or reference, but swimming from one end to the other. It is an edited interrogation of the original Jensenist, Arthur R. Jensen, by Frank Miele, former senior editor of the American Skeptic magazine (not to be confused with the British The […]
Read MorePlease, sir, first Mick said all that mass murderering in the olden days was Karl’s fault, then everyone just piled in.
Read MoreI noticed this story a little while back and it made me smile. It’s like John Major sacking one of his cabinet members for screwing around (or the Independent having a go at the Guardian for printing the views of an extremist): Oasis fire Pete Doherty for lack of work ethic. Those “working class” Gallagher […]
Read MoreAlso this week, I expressed my admiration for a Bond spoof at Ace Of Spades HQ. I said it was the sort of thing I wish I’d written. Yesterday I remembered that I nearly had. Bastard.
Read MoreOn Tuesday evening I was pleasantly surprised (as were a couple of commenters) by RESPECT candidate Salma Yaqoob’s responses in a BBC Radio 4 interview about the London bombers. Given enough rope by “Mad Dog” Milne of The Guardian‘s opinion pages, however, she happily climbed the scaffold: “This cycle of violence has to be broken. […]
Read More“I will follow you to the ends of the earth,” replied Susan passionately. “It will not be necessary,” said George. “I am only going down to the coal-cellar. I shall spend the next half-hour or so there.” P.G. Wodehouse, quoted by R.W. Burchfield
Read MoreThe RESPECT candidate Salma Yaqoob has just been interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight about the revelation that the London Transport “bombers” were British-born Muslims. She didn’t talk complete cobblers. I am going to lie down now.
Read MorePooterGeekers of a grammatical disposition—Pashmina, Norm, Judith, my dad—should look away now. I cannot be blamed for any trauma you suffer by reading further. The Rock is a Cambridge sports pub. Still bolted over the main entrance to the venue is a rigid, commercially produced, full-colour banner. The banner promotes The Rock’s comprehensive Sky Sports […]
Read MoreDont you just hate the way when you are googling for someone and you type in, say, “Laurence.Rittenour”, Google thinks for a microsecond, comes back with no hits, and asks “Did you mean: ‘Laurence.Ritenour‘? And you think, “Yeah, I probably did”, and you click on the corrected link that Google so helpfully provides. Then Google […]
Read MoreJames Hamilton and the pugnacious parrots join the ‘Blogroll. Also, via Bloggers4Labour, I came across this guy, who describes his ‘Blog in the least promising way possible, and supports Villa’s former rivals in Premiership mid-table mediocrity and poor colour-coordination, but he writes one or two interesting things.
Read MoreYesterday afternoon a man walked past me in my own street wearing a surgical mask. He wasn’t a med student collecting in the street for rag week. He wasn’t on his way to respray a car. I don’t live next to a hospital. He was a smartly dressed academic-looking type with his mouth covered. Also […]
Read MoreThis, however, is not only not one of my spoofs; it isn’t a spoof at all. It’s a direct quote from a New York Times article about the Captain of the next Space Shuttle mission: Capt. Wendy B. Lawrence of the Navy looks at her first space shuttle flight in 1995 almost as a vacation. […]
Read MoreThis is a bit long, but, much as it pains me to say it, it’s my sort of spoof and I wish I’d written it. Bastard. [via Tim]
Read MoreYes, I’m “back”. I had planned a quiet month of twice-a-week posting before announcing a possible return to daily Geeking, but Norm and Tim and the terrorists saw to it that I couldn’t slip into the room quietly like a student late for a lecture. The traffic here has been ridiculously high over the past […]
Read MoreI made a flip suggestion to some of my bloodthirsty friends yesterday. Hak polished it up into a work of art.
Read MoreIndependently of Stephen Pollard’s comment, a friend of mine emailed me yesterday to draw my attention to the murder by another Al-Qaeda offshoot of the head of the Egyptian diplomatic mission in Iraq. The email implied that there was some connection between the branch of the global Al-Qaeda franchise killing over there and those busy […]
Read MoreTerrible things are happening in London right now. Having had one overseas phone call and one email already today, I find myself in the strange position of posting this to let people know that I am alive and well. Some other people in this country aren’t. Updates are here.
Read MoreThis is a stunning image. Was it Photoshopped to get like that? Does it matter if it was? If the image was shot onto an electronic sensor rather than film is it really a photograph anyway? And how many “genuinely” photographic images are created with filters and artificial light and darkroom dodging-and-burning? Whatever its provenance, […]
Read MoreMMR vaccine chancer Andrew Wakefield, Arpad “poisonous GM potatoes are poisonous” Pusztai*, and Gilbert “100 000 dead in Iraq war” Burnham go hunting together for rabbits. After only a few minutes walking, all three of them simultaneously catch sight of the same bunny in the distance. Wakefield shoots a tranquilizer dart from his rifle, but it […]
Read MoreThe breadth and depth of Noam Chomsky’s wrongness must be marvelled at. Within and without his professed area of expertise he is so skilled a sponsor of untruth that, in some future world, whole virtual shelves will be devoted to studies of how it happened that so many of his peers were willing to stir […]
Read MoreI’m not going to go into the political or ethical implications of Live8 here and now (though the sozzled socialist Psittacidae are worth reading on the subject). I am going to talk about the artistic ones, because the event illustrated beautifully the central problem with the UK music industry. I don’t like Pink Floyd very […]
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You will not see a better made film this year than Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. There’s been more than one occasion when I’ve felt that Spielberg has squandered his gifts so casually that I’ve left the cinema jumpy with irritation at him. I didn’t yesterday evening. At a certain point craftsmanship becomes so […]
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