17Jul05 — 21

Normal Service Resumed

On 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. By confining analysis to simple religious terms, however, politicians are asking the impossible of our security services as well as Muslim leaders. No number of sniffer dogs or sermons denouncing the use of violence against innocents can detect and remove the pain and anger that drives extremists to their terrible acts. The truth is that shoddy theology does not exist without a dodgy foreign policy.”

Perhaps she means the dodgy foreign policy of arming fundamentalist guerillas in a proxy war against the Soviet Union.

12Jul05 — 9

Worldview Shaken

The 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.

12Jul05 — 15

Sky TV’s Advertising Agency Hires World’s Worst Copywriter

PooterGeekers 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 coverage and has obviously been distributed nationally to pubs paying Murdoch’s extortionate satellite subscription rates. In capital letters, running along the centre of this banner, is the following slogan:

WERE PAYING—THERE PLAYING—YOUR WATCHING

…and weeping.

11Jul05 — 14

“I’m Sorry, Damian: I’m Afraid I Can’t Do That.”

Dont 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 comes back with “Never heard of him either”.

What it’s really saying is:

“Muah-ha ha ha! I am the greatest intelligence that has ever existed. I know more than any entity since the Dawn of Time. I know everything there is to know about Laurence Ritenour. I have in my database photographs of all his family members. I could give you his FAX number. I could show you a satellite picture of his current location where he is presently drinking his favourite brand of soda.

“However, like a Parisian who knows the way to the Louvre, but disapproves of the way you pronounce ‘aller‘, I am not going to tell you. Bow before me, human, as I mock your ant-like scrabbling!”

10Jul05 — 9

Terrorism Solutions

Yesterday 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 yesterday, when I visited Squander’s place, a Google ad popped up that linked to these people. They claim to offer “terrorism solutions“, not in the sense that Tariq Ali and George Galloway and other fascist appeasers offer solutions, or in the sense that these loons intend, but in the sense that the Co-op supermarket chain now offers chilled ready-meals under the branding “Meal Solutions”: “Darling, I’m currently networking with my like-gendered peers. Your meal solution is in the food-warming chamber.”

Anyway, do you think UKSurvive’s front page has always been illustrated by a double-decker London bus? Because, if it has, these grim coincidences are proliferating.

10Jul05 — 2

Whoops

I forgot to say thank you for all the kind “welcome back” messages. Thank you. You’re all complete dahlings.

10Jul05 — 3

The First Valley Girl In Space

This, 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.

“I’m like, wow, what a great deal I had,” she said in an interview in April. “Sixteen days in space.”

On the flight, the space shuttle, Endeavour, carried an observatory with three telescopes that looked at the ultraviolet light from hot stars and distant galaxies.

“My job was to type the next maneuver into the computer and make sure it kicked off and make sure we got to where it was and then sit there and just kind of monitor what was going on,” Captain Lawrence said.

“So I’m on the flight deck, and I had nothing else to do in between maneuvers but basically look out the window and monitor how things were going while the other two people on the team did the astronomical observations,” she added. “I think, God, that was a really relaxing timeline.“

What if something goes wrong?

“Houston? No biggie, but we rilly rilly have, like, a problem here?“

09Jul05 — 3

Interim Statement

Yes, 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 few days, but, as I said in an email to the aforementioned Brit-‘Blogging superstars, I’d rather no one had been reading me and nobody had died.

I am still going to be made redundant and I still have a few things to do at work, but, as a result of some thinking I have been doing during my ‘Blogging break, the workload isn’t going to be as heavy as I thought. When (if) my redundancy package appears in my bank account I’ll announce here exactly what I intend to do next. If I receive what I’ve been told I am going to receive then I think I’m going to take the opportunity to do something different with the second half of my life. I hope that a few of you might be interested in becoming involved in my plans.

PooterGeek plc looks forward to a year of increasing diversification and the leveraging of existing synergies to extend the brand into new global niches. All shareholders are now invited to enjoy the complimentary drinks and nibbles.

08Jul05 — 5

McSlaughter

Independently 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 killing over here at around the same time.

Thankfully, the BBC clears up any confusion. The agents of Al-Qaeda who murder innocents in Iraq are different from the ones who murder innocents in the UK because the ones in Iraq are “militants“, whereas the ones in Britain are “terrorists“. If you are planning on blowing yourself up in the midst of a crowd of civilians and want your actions to be viewed more favourably in the eyes of the World, I’d recommend taking a trip to Israel, where, even if you are a British-Islamist “terrorist“, as soon as you arrive you become a member of a “militant” group.

[UPDATE: At Harry’s Place Gene notes that the BBC Thought Police have moved silently to normalize the situation. There are no terrorists. There were no terrorists. There is no terror. Phew.]

07Jul05 — 4

A Black Day

Terrible 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.

06Jul05 — 4

A Polished Gem From Flickr

This 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, the artefact is still beautiful.

I don’t Photoshop (or Gimp) the scans of any photos I take these days, except to crop them or turn colour images to black-and-white ones, but you’re probably not aware how often and how radically so many of the “photographs” you see around you have been changed by such image manipulation programs. Scroll down this page to see the model before-and-after, take a look at this before-and-after pair, then go back to the first one and wonder. Girls, don’t you wish your exfoliator was this good?

06Jul05 — 1

Three Celebrity Scientists Go Hunting

MMR 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 disappears into a bush one yard to the left of the target. Despite this, he brags to his companions, “It’s only a matter of time before the rabbit succumbs to the effects of that injection!”

Pusztai raises his high-powered spud gun to his eye and a pellet of lectin-loaded potato disappears into a bush one yard to the right of the target. Unfazed, he declares, “The deadly effects of my genetically modified potato will kill the rabbit in seconds.”

Burnham watches the other two send their shots hopelessly wide, one to each side. He squints into the distance where Flopsy is still twitching her nose innocently, and scratches his chin, before putting his rifle down and saying, “Okay, guys, I give up. Statistically speaking you’ve already killed the little bastard.”

[*I do think Pusztai was badly treated by the scientific establishment, but I also read his original work that led to his woes and I think it was lousy science.]

05Jul05 — 18

The Chomsky Test

The 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 clouds of his intellectual poison into so many streams of scholarship.

Today I was reading Computing Reviews in the Campus library and came upon a short piece about a new book from MIT Press containing academic reflections on the Turing Test (TT). Turing had a great mind and used it to assist one of the most noble struggles in history: the fight against Nazism. His eponymous test is (apart from anything else) a piercing thought experiment, so it is unsurprising that in The Turing Test: verbal behaviour as a hallmark of intelligence, the philosopher and fan of thought experiments Daniel Dennett defends the TT against contemporary critics. He argues in his contribution to the book that it “would be hard to find a better intelligence test than the TT”.

That’s true, but that doesn’t mean the test is a good one. I have always had reservations about the TT as a measure of the ability of an artificial being truly to think, but cannot deny its power as a measure of our ability to think about the nature of intelligence. Reading on further, I felt certain that I would have to discard my reservations, however. In the same volume “Chomsky states that passing the TT is irrelevant for the problem of thinking”. Chomsky is as sure a touchstone of opinion for me as the Daily Mail. Perhaps Turing was perfectly correct all along.

05Jul05 — 0

Emperor Waves His ‘Nads Before World; World Unimpressed

I’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 much, but they are undeniably a great rock band. They’ve had more interesting things to say than most popular beat combos, said them in well-constructed songs, and performed the songs superbly, putting on live shows that are rather more entertaining than watching a bunch of drugged-up, faux-poor students in anoraks play derivative music ineptly on expensive, fashion-accessory guitars over weak vocals.

Overcoming a two-decade feud between their central talents, Pink Floyd re-formed for Live8. Like those of most bands on the London bill, their sales increased significantly after their appearance. According to HMV, purchases of their album went up 1300 percent. For most other participants the relative increase was smaller. Annie Lennox increased her sales 500 percent. Coldplay had a modest boost relative to their already high numbers. One outfit, however, experienced a fall in sales. Face-slappingly over-rated media darling Pete Doherty, former songwriter and “leader” of the Libertines, was given a thoroughly unearned guest vocal spot during fellow party animal and some-time drug casualty Elton John’s turn on stage before the peoples of the world. Despite Mr John and the sound engineers’ best efforts, he sounded like shit. The People agreed. Compared with the previous week’s sales of their albums somewhat fewer units of The Libertines’ works were shifted after this “performance” than before. To echo Stephen’s comment below: Music Of Quality And Distinction: 1 — Hyped-Up Indie Cack: 0.

Thank you and good night, England. You’ve been a great audience.

04Jul05 — 12

Short People

still from Spielberg's War Of The Worlds

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 fine that it produces magic. If this movie had been made by a European director with a history of fashionable independent releases behind him, it would have been praised ecstatically for setting a believable family tale in the eye of an equally believable global horror. Instead even the American critics do Martian tentacle squirms to avoid sounding too admiring. They grudge. They gripe. They quibble. They sniff. Spielberg is too successful, his work too popular, his talent too great. I smiled today when, after some googling, I found out that one (I thought serious) objection that I had to one of the performances in the film turned out to be completely unfounded. Everyone wants to pick at the master’s vision. The New York Times review exemplifies the clever flying needed to peck the eyes of a giant:

“reasonably entertaining”

“Millions of deaths and incalculable property damage seem like pretty expensive family therapy, but it’s heartening to know that even an alien invasion can provide an opportunity for learning and growth.”

“Mr. Cruise has lately proven himself to be much more interesting and unpredictable as a talk show guest than as an actor”

“fairly spectacular”

To take these poses in order: I was transfixed from start to finish (and I’m easily distracted); what’s especially satisfying about this film family is that Californian psychobabble and the therapy culture seem to have passed it by completely; I can’t stand Tom Cruise but his performance in this is magnificent: generous, authentic, and free of vanity; but it’s that “fairly spectacular” that says the least about the film and the most about the person writing about it. To strain so hard at nonchalance in the face of some of the most awe-inspiring and convincing images of destruction ever committed to film takes a special kind of stupid: the kind of stupid that only an over-educated broadsheet journalist, working in the company of his peers over several years, can attain.

As for the specially clever Mr Spielberg, he’s tackled the Holocaust, the future of criminal justice, and (more than once) what would happen if mankind encountered extraterrestrial life. What unfilmable story could he take on next?

[If you don’t mind plot spoilers you’ll learn a lot about the greatness of H G Wells from this Wikipedia article too.]

03Jun05 — 2

Popping Up Briefly

Just to say thank you to all the people who’ve added nice things to the comments here since I last thanked everyone for doing the same (bonus points for David Duff’s contribution). Thanks also to everyone who’s been complimentary on other ‘Blogs and linked here mourning PooterGeek’s passing, especially George, Norm, and Marcus who have thereby caused a comical spike in the traffic here.

Chris Baldwin wrote:

“Good luck boyo, you were sometimes wrong but usually entertaining.”

Now, that’s not a bad epitaph.

“If you come back, don’t forget to get rid of that weird McDonalds cup banner!”

Love me, love my coffee cup.

Keith in Mountain View wrote:

“Bummer dude, I enjoyed the laughs – and you were more often right than wrong!”

That’s an even better way to be remembered than the quote from Chris.

I’m not here again today. I wish I’d go away.

26May05 — 31

A Man’s Gotta Do

It is with great sadness…blah…blah…

In exactly two month’s time the Medical Research Council will be shutting down the place where I work. This is inconvenient because I’ve still got a lot of work to do. Over the next few weeks something’s got to go and it’s going to be PooterGeek.

I’ll keep the comments open for a fortnight or so. Otherwise, feel free to use the email link across there -> to send your plaudits, promises of sexual favours, messages of sympathy, cash pledges, and job offers.

You lot have often been wonderful Net friends and I have appreciated (the majority of) your contributions. I might be back, but not as Governor of California.

23May05 — 3

Beardy-Weirdies

Reading that thing on The Guardian site about Roman soldiers wearing socks and open-toed sandals, I was reminded that this week is the Cambridge Beer Festival. To enjoy the whole event cheaply, two of my happily hetero female friends in town used to pretend to be a couple (for discount Campaign for Real Ale membership) and tend bar in one of the tents (for cash). One is a now newish mother and the other is pregnant so there won’t be any of those shenanigans this year for them. The pot-belly brigade will probably have some kind of ceremony this year to mourn the passing of their lipstick lesbian barmaids.

And it’s Vegetarianism Week. And then there’s the Cambridge Folk Festival. Here they come, blocking up the ring road with their camper-vans.

23May05 — 5

Oh, The Stupidity!

No analysis and no satire, I know, but I just want to say to as many people as possible right now that this policy is so wrong on so many levels that I can scarcely believe that it’s being proposed:

More than 100,000 people could get onto the property ladder in the next five years thanks to a part-ownership plan, Chancellor Gordon Brown has said.

Buyers would have to raise as little as half the cost of homes sold on the open market, he said.

The remaining equity in the house would be shared by the government and the bank or building society.

It’s Labour’s Black Wednesday in the making. To hear a Chancellor use the dread Ponzi scheme phrase “property ladder” chills me through. God help us all.

22May05 — 0

Pan-(a)sexual

Via Beth at Mindfull Chatter [sic] I came upon this amazing piece of computer animation. The best version of the 30-second film is the DivX format file [about 8 meg], so Windows users who don’t have it already should download the DivX codec if they want to enjoy the video it at its highest quality. A Master’s student in Australia did his thesis in computer animation on techniques to simulate realistic movement. He put the fruits of his efforts, along with his thesis, online. The animation itself—a muscular statue of Pan getting down to some classic disco late at night in a museum—is both stunningly convincing and (despite the absence of genitals) very gay indeed.

20May05 — 0

My Shame

Forgive me, reader, for I have sinned in my thoughts and in my words. My shocking Yazzmonster-style confession is that a tiny part of me had hoped there would be a lower turnout at the UK General Election. I wanted to do a PooterGeek post featuring an Iraqi TV reporter interviewing British people talking about how the struggle to the polling station past inconsiderately positioned wheelie bins and other roadside IODs (Improvised Obstructive Devices) had thwarted their efforts to participate. The punchline would have been a Baghdad studio discussion of whether or not Europeans were ready for democracy yet.

20May05 — 1

Scroungers!

BLAIR HAS HOSPITAL TREATMENT AFTER PUTTING BACK INTO NO 10 WORKOUT

Michael White, political editor
Friday May 20, 2005
The Guardian

Tony Blair was taken to hospital last night to receive treatment for a slipped disc suffered while working out in the gym in his Downing Street flat.

That’s very convenient for a typical bloody northern “socialist”: Blair goes on incapacity benefit and Brown takes over. Blair carries on living in subsidised social housing and all them bairns that him and his wife have been having live off state handouts. Our taxes’ll probably pay for him to have a special reclining chair and Sky so he can watch Newcastle play on TV—on the days when they haven’t got room for his wheelchair in the disabled area at the ground itself.

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