[High Court Judge voice] I’ve just heard an excitable young lady deliver the 7:30 news on Radio 1, the BBC’s popular music channel.[/High Court Judge voice]. Yesterday’s assassination of Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi was about the fifth item: “The leader of a militant Palestinian group has been shot and killed by the Israelis. It was part […]
Read MoreA lot of us are currently trying (again) to point out the people on the Left that Iraq is not Vietnam. It’s also important to point out to people on the Right that Al-Qaeda is not the KGB. You know those forms you fill in as you fly into JFK, where you tell US Immigration […]
Read More“‘Labour Party’? Dictatorship Party more like!” I am standing in the street with a couple of other local party members and the local Labour MEP. We are armed with highly explosive balloons. The person ranting at me is about 22, has a whispy blond goatee, multiple piercings and a grating, sneering, estuarine voice. He is […]
Read MoreHere’s a collection of links that have been deserted in my virtual in-tray for a while, uncommented upon and unshared: Hugh linked me to this bizarre event at a US university—not an April Fool, there are pearls of wit amongst the pellets of gravel at the Four Word Film Review site—I liked the reviews of […]
Read MoreI was in Sainsbury’s and it beckoned to me with its front-page headline “Bush rips up the roadmap”, and its science pull-out Life, and its article about bioinformatics. Reader, I bought a copy of The Guardian. Anyway, inside was a report on an interesting new band BlöödHag. They describe themselves as “edu-core”. This genre involves […]
Read MoreThere are only a couple of months to go now before the crucial election for the hotly contested Cambridge Market seat, and scarcely a day goes by without I and my fellow Labour candidates—running mates, if you will—addressing the media. Perhaps we should have stuck to our original plan to keep a low profile. In […]
Read MoreI recommend this piece by Mark Steyn from a couple of days ago, firstly, because he manages to agree with both a recent poster to PooterGeek and with me [see this post and this comment box], and, secondly, because it’s an example of how astonishingly good an opinion piece can be when composed by a […]
Read MoreI paraphrase the title of the latest email I’ve received from our Israel correspondent. With holy days circled on the calendar and Spring in the air, the thoughts of many a young religious fanatic turn to killing Jews, a practice which conveniently marks out the majority of the fundamentally evil systems of “thought” and political […]
Read MoreSorry about the technical problems with the site yesterday—my 12Apr04 entry is now visible; see below. As well as PooterGeek being back up, I’m generally in a more positive mood after an Easter break of callisthenics and music-making, so I’m going to rave (at more length than usual) about two things—one musical and one literary—and […]
Read MoreFirst, if you are a musician with a few hundred dollars in your pocket and a desire to make music on your computer, buy Sonar. There is a good reason why it’s the US’s most popular PC-based music sequencing/recording package. Although it runs under Windows, with all the horrible tinkering that implies, once set up, […]
Read MoreThe other thing I want to rave about is the work and philosophy of Stephen King. I am not the first person to compare him to Dickens, but they do have a lot in common. Not least among these things is that King is both hugely popular with ordinary people and underrated by contemporary critics. […]
Read MoreI’m in a particularly hawkish mood today so I invite you to listen to another proud cry from Victor David Hanson‘s eyrie. No, the term isn’t exclusive to eagles, and the Chambers says so. [The former linked page suffers from that curse of the contemporary Web, tiny font sizes, specifically designed, I suspect, to force […]
Read MorePopquiz! Which of the following is a real reality TV show? “Sing Out, Sisters“: A group of twenty white, middle-class American women from a Bach choir are taught to sing Gospel by members of a black Baptist group in Philadelphia. We watch four of the Bach-lovers being transformed over the run up to their appearance […]
Read MoreThere’s a thoughtful, topical and free article over at The Economist at the moment, all about the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. (Following on from my rant about The Passion, you should note that it contains this paragraph: “One American Catholic and former priest has gone much further than his Church. In his bestselling book […]
Read MoreOver at Liquid Generation—home of the now dated, but still strangely fascinating, “Mystery of Britney Spears’ Breasts“—you can play “TrumpZilla“. Even the Japanese themselves would have trouble beating it for surreality. Your aim is to intercept biplanes, sushi bombs and flying Pikachus by launching toupees at them. The action takes place over Tokyo, London and […]
Read MoreIt’s time to put on the perspective-correction spectacles again. Christopher Hitchens argues that recent unpleasant events are a warning of what will happen if the liberation of Iraq fails. Oliver Kamm is re-examining his reasons for supporting military action, saying no outcome would cause him to question his original justification. Glenn Reynolds monitors people who […]
Read MoreIt’s no good telling teenagers that sleeping around will damn them to Hell when they don’t believe in God. It’s no good telling them the sleeping around will lead to infertility when having kids is decades away for them. It’s no good telling them the sleeping around will lead to a nasty discharge or pregnancy […]
Read MoreIf the Tories start talking sense like this and this about the big issues I may be hauled up before the Labour Party for voting for them.
Read MoreThanks to Bill and Judy for brightening up what would otherwise have been a miserable train journey back from London. You asked me what good I thought would come from UK universities being able to charge fees. This short article [Adobe Acrobat PDF file], The Coming Invasion of Britain by Andrew Oswald, an economist at […]
Read MoreJew there. Explanation here. UPDATE: This article seems to have become subscription only, so you might be interested in a (free) ‘Blog entry at JewSchool. You might need to scroll down a bit from the target of the link or do a “Find in Page” for “Google Bomb”. In short, if you search for “Jew” […]
Read MoreEven some of my most hawkish friends have been expressing deep worries about the recent attacks in Falluja, which they consider part of the wider problem of poor post-war planning and are concerned might undermine US commitment to Iraq. I really want to write a long post about this, but things are hectic at the […]
Read MoreGoogle gives us formal proof that Britney fans can’t spell.
Read MoreSome kind spammer has invited us on the EMBOSS team to check out this page lamenting the terrible state of the World. In summary: why can’t they see that Jesus was black? homosexuals are perverts, George Bush is a terrorist [yawn], and white people are unhealthily obsessed with the Jacksons.
Read MoreI went to a delightful wedding do at The Scotsman hotel in Edinburgh on Saturday. Ros [far left-hand side] and Andy had already had a ceremony in Thailand where half of Ros’s family comes from. I couldn’t afford to take up my invitation to that party. They officially tied the knot in Scotland because, if […]
Read MoreJust back from interrogation by the Labour Party Thought Police—sorry: being interviewed as candidate for the (I was reassured) unwinnable council seat of “Cambridge Market” [big gif]. “Have you ever been convicted of a criminal offence?” “No.” “Are you in arrears with your Council Tax?” “No.” “Have there ever been or are there any County […]
Read MoreBrosnan is looking shaky for the next next Bond movie, so speculation about the replacement has started. Hugh Jackman I could just about believe, but Orlando Bloom? Puh-lease! BOND: You’ll never get away with it, you madman. Dr EVIL: [THWACK] BOND: Ow, that hurt! ‘S’not fair! ‘S’not fair! Dr EVIL: Now take off that tuxedo […]
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