Mel Gibson is fast becoming a regular at PooterGeek. Forbes magazine estimates that he could walk away with around 40% of $650m collected at the box office for his Passion. That doesn’t include the merchandising income from such tie-in delights as replicas of the nails used in the crucifixion. Apparently we shouldn’t consider this tasteless […]
Read MorePamela Wade of the New Zealand Herald compares Peter Jackson’s winning 11 Oscars to her buying the perfect teapot. Perhaps there are special kinds of irony in New Zealand, rhetorical variants that could only have emerged and developed in such extreme isolation from major landmasses of culture—linguistic marsupials, if you will. Or perhaps she’s crap.
Read MoreThrough some strange synchronicity, both Adam and Claire sent me links to reviews of Mel Gibson’s Passion. Both reviews mention the movie’s anti-Semitism of course, but they also warn of the mind-boggling level of gore. Here’s the one from Claire. I can’t find a URL for the source of the text Adam sent, but it […]
Read MoreThe argument that technology is driven by pornography is not a new one, but this old post from geek ‘Blog Slashdot makes it well.
Read MoreThanks to the readers who emailed words of comfort (and gentle mockery). I am a bit better now. Because I spent hours and hours wrapped up in bed I was able to get in early to work and stay until late today. Just goes to show: if you really want to be a macho workaholic, […]
Read MoreThis is interesting. I feel sorry for boys who have to deal with the current system of school exams in Britain. I certainly would have performed poorly under it. Counting coursework in exam scores is a cheats’ charter. Plodding and “sharing answers” are rewarded. Originality and competitiveness are penalized.
Read MoreI have a cold coming on so this link is a prediction as well as a survey result. By the way: send me some real email, tight-lipped ones. I haven’t had a proper message since Friday. Don’t you people love me any more? I can’t find all this time-wasting content on my own, you know.
Read MoreThe San Jose Mercury News reports from Ohio the shocking truth: “Poll: Democrats want someone who can beat Bush”
Read MoreGooglefight! Regular PooterGeek readers might want to try “Claire.Berlinski” vs “Damian.Counsell”—just as an experiment of course.
Read MoreJudith will like this one for two reasons: it’s about Lyle Lovett, in typical New Yorker style the article uses the word “début” and retains the e-acute. The New Yorker is probably the last popular magazine in the English-speaking world where the editors insist on the diaeresis (not umlaut) in “cöoperate”. The Lovett article comes […]
Read MoreThis essential book brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “comedy romance”.
Read MoreI was chatting with Leasey over lunch about house prices yesterday (as the English do, just after they’ve finished discussing the weather). They are in the news again. What does this mean “on the ground”? Well, I found this bargain for a start. A quarter of million quid for a converted garage in Peckham? I’ll […]
Read MoreHad a quick browse round The Word Spy today. My current two favourite neologisms there are “mucus trooper” and “resistentialism“.
Read MoreThe demise of the delightful Ann Winterton will warm the cockles of my father’s heart.
Read MoreAt work today, Wiqqi and I had a chat today about the ongoing Goodhart debate. (Is there a reasonable Left liberal case for arguing that multi-ethnic societies are inherently divided?) Then we pondered the question of exactly how mad Muammar Gaddafi, the Michael Jackson of World heads of state, is. (Does this mean Kim Chong-il […]
Read MoreClaire‘ll have a thing or two to say about this one. Katharine Gun, formerly of UK snooping centre GCHQ (direct descendant of Bletchley Park), has been acquitted of charges under the Official Secrets Act, having told the World that the US had asked the British to tap the phones of representatives of anti-Iraq war countries. […]
Read MoreYou have probably found it difficult to avoid some knowledge of the Paris Hilton affair, even if all you’ve heard about it is from spam offering you the “full, uncut version”. You only need a superficial idea of what she got up to with her boyfriend and a video camera to find this one of […]
Read MoreMurph comments on the “Conspicuous Compassion” question over at Oliver Kamm’s place. I think he’s Australian. He’s probably not English because he is so in touch with his feelings. According to Murph, Diana Spencer was “a selfish simpleton and a tart”—and as for anti-war protestors: “[M]orons. Never have I seen such a sorrier pack of […]
Read MoreThank you for your cards and gifts!
Read MoreIt’s a certain person’s birthday today, but in the fortnight leading up to it everyone I know has been giving birth. Congratulations to Matthew and Jenny for Douglas, Nicholas and Hind on Adam and Patrick and Catherine for Joshua—the last two within 48 hours of each other this weekend. I have a feeling there will […]
Read MoreAnother Motley Fool member dissects some typical BBC bias.
Read MoreThe Sunday Express has been claiming that Osama bin Laden and his sidekick, Mini-Me, are trapped in an area of 100 square miles by UK and US special forces. No one else seems to have picked up the story, except to hold it at arm’s length.
Read MoreJoey Comeau and Emily Horne run an eerie photo-based ‘Blog. Some of their entries in it are well worth checking out.
Read MoreOh the irony.
Read MoreI went to an excellent farewell do yesterday evening to say goodbye to J-FK before she flies off to run Australia. Our foursome took a corner of the huge table of guests at a Korean restaurant on the Holloway Road, just a stagger from Highbury and Islington Station. Airport has a lot of friends who […]
Read MoreThings are so bad with British popular music that even my dad has noticed. He watched The Brits and actually took the time on the phone to point it out to me. This article in The Times [sorry, you foreigners will need a subscription] points it out too, ironically by harking back to the days […]
Read MoreUltimately, the goal of the work I contributed to in my Master’s thesis (1996) was to find a new computational technique for examining 3-D images. With it, psychiatrists would be able to detect variations in in the structure of human brains (in something called their “torsion”) and identify schizophrenics without having to dissect their heads […]
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