22Jun04 — 1

WordPress Review [Warning: Geeky Stuff]

As requested by Timbeaux, here's my report on the new software running this site: WordPress (WP). Like a zombie twin, my original Movable Type installation is still shuffling along in the same directory of the same server, delivering old pages to the local people. Despite this, PooterGeek coped fine with the Geras-lanche of outsiders yesterday.

PooterGeek is probably going to stay like this for a while at least. So far, WP seems like an excellent way to build a 'Blog. It's cleaner and faster than Movable Type (MT). The joy of not having to wait for the server to grind out a new main page between revisions and of seeing a preview of your post while you edit it almost outweighs some of the pain I've experienced configuring the whole set-up. Perhaps there will be fewer typos here in future.

WP is far more modular. I've had to install various so-called “hacks” to get all the features I expect from MT. Unfortunately, the system for adding extra code has just been improved and some of the hacks are still behind the times. That points up the main overall problem I have found: WordPress feels less mature. It's also been a grind trying to make the new front page look like the old front page. Readers, if you have perfectionist tendencies and you try WP, you will tinker with it until you go mad.

In the long run, this won't matter. WP will inevitably overtake MT because it is completely open source and you cannot stop open source software from getting better faster than even slightly closed source software. Deal with it, Six Apart, or die.

Now, how far have I got with importing my gazillion past 'Blog posts?

21Jun04 — 0

A Few Bad Men

This isn't looking good for Rumsfeld. I certainly hope so anyway. [New York Times link—requires registration and small buccal sample; honestly, it won't hurt at all.]

21Jun04 — 0

Wits Out For The Lads

It was appropriate, given my last post, that I should watch England's alternately dazzling and comical game against Croatia perched next to a pair of extremely knowledgeable American lesbians. They admired “Cole's overlap play” like the girls on the other side of me admired James's torso when he took his shirt off at the end. If this is the result, I am thoroughly in favour of women taking an interest in sport: insight to the right of me and lust to the left.

Oh, yes. Almost forgot. Eng-er-land!

21Jun04 — 0

Slip Of The Tongue

Many column inches have been devoted to the latent homosexuality of football, from communal baths to post-goalscoring kissing. I am skeptical. In England, the game is, like me, boringly straight. I am listening to Radio Five Live—or “Radio Bloke” as it is often mocked. One of the presenters of the England-Croatia match, Alan Green, has just outed a soccer superstar. He complains that Michael Owen is not been as good at “pulling off defenders” as he was, especially when they are “up his backside”. Now I'm off down the pub to stand too close to some other England supporters. So all you normblog refugees who have descended this afternoon can come round and burgle my flat. Annoyingly, your sort would probably steal my books. Well, you would once you'd found your way past the jammed stairwell door. (If you figure it out, can you leave me a Post-It explaining the knack? Thanks.)

20Jun04 — 6

Oi, Dave, No!

Last week, Backword Dave sneered at Eve Garrard's cool, analytical dismantling of Amnesty's recent pronouncements about the Iraq “war”:

“I gather Ms Garrard is not a regular blogger, so she may be excused understanding of the ground rules, but if you want to say that something is 'no part of Amnesty's remit,' a link is expected.”

Perhaps Garrard doesn't provide a link because it only takes five minutes of googling to find plenty of support for her statement:

“Amnesty International has a very specific and limited mandate. Our active mandate (on which we do research and mobilize our international membership to act) is to work for the release of prisoners of conscience (those imprisoned because of their race, gender, religion, political views, and other non-violent expression), for fair and prompt trials for all political prisoners, and against the use of torture and execution in all cases. We also work in a more general sense to promote international human rights instruments, and the values enshrined in them. This promotional work is much more limited, and we do not conduct research or actively campaign on it.

In keeping with this mandate, Amnesty International does not and never has taken a position on war or economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool. This is not to minimize the importance of the devastating consequences that can arise, but simply a matter of us sticking to what we do. There are many human rights beyond those on which Amnesty actively campaigns.”

That was courtesy of those enthusiastically pro-war friends of mine over at CASI, quoting Beth Ann Toupin, Amnesty's US Iraq Country Specialist, in 2000.

Words to this effect used to be written in Amnesty's statutes, prominently displayed on their Webpages. I know this because after their lying Iraq poster came out I looked them up myself. They used to say that their policy was “never to comment on whether the use of military force is justified or appropriate,” on a separate page, but now you have to search around for it. Try here and here and here.

This is from Amnesty's Secretary-General, Pierre Sane quoted in 2000:

“Amnesty International has long refused to take a position on whether or not armed forces should be deployed in human rights crises.”

Or how about Amnesty International USA's Executive Director, William Schulz, starting to get a bit fuzzier about his own organization's own rules in 2003:

“Amnesty International doesn't take a position on military intervention per se“

Schulz's fuzziness might offer some comfort for the buried remains of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans, however:

“In the long run it may not be wise of Amnesty International to have a policy that it takes no position on military intervention. Certainly I have argued within Amnesty that in the face of genocide, such as in Rwanda, the organization is utterly remiss not to take a position in favor of military intervention.”

So here, just for the record, is Eve Garrard again, making her unsupported assertion:

“It's one thing to protest against abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere; it's a different matter, and no part of Amnesty's remit, to encourage any particular position on the Iraq war.”

I am happy to concede that Amnesty policy might have changed recently, but, as hard as I tried, I couldn't find any record of such a change. If anyone out there can, please let me know; it'll be interesting to find out why Amnesty has abruptly flipped.

Now, to borrow your phrasing, Dave: you are a regular (and often entertaining) 'Blogger so you may not be excused for failing to use Google before hurriedly scribbling your words.

20Jun04 — 0

“English” ethnicities

I should explain my last 'Blog entry for American readers. In the UK, “Asian” is generally taken to mean South Asian, coming from the Indian subcontinent—for example Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi—so I had to use “Oriental” to refer to my being mistaken for Singaporean or Chinese, say. “Far Eastern” tends to be used to describe the relevant countries, rather than their peoples.

I also had to resort to “half African” because my questioner was definitely speaking English as a second language and I doubt “half Sierra Leonean” would have meant much to her, not that country of origin means much ethnically speaking in West Africa. To someone who thinks I look Eastern European, distinguishing the various sub-types of black Africans was going to be a challenge.

19Jun04 — 4

“You Don't Look British”

Sorry for the thin 'Blogging; I'm still moving the furniture around in here, though I did take a break earlier this evening to visit our local cheap-and-cheerful Chinese restaurant.

I have just paid in advance at the counter. The girl behind it looks at me quizzically. I smile.
“Are you British?” she asks.
“Yes, I am.”
“I mean are you English?”—she's more insistent now.
“Yes.”
“You don't look British.”
I smile again.
“I'm half African.”
“Oh. You don't look African. You look Eastern European.”

Over the years, I've been accused of looking Spanish, Indian, Italian, and even Oriental, but “Eastern European” is a completely new one on me.

19Jun04 — 1

Yawn

It's 3am and I've finally got PooterGeek looking presentable under new software. I say a bleary “hello” to WordPress and begin a long, slow goodbye to Movable Type. And you lot probably won't notice a thing, except when it all goes wrong again.

16Jun04 — 0

Jailbait

Our Man in Washington sends this story [may require registration with the Washington Post's database of child sex offenders, can help in weight reduction only as part of a calorie controlled diet]. PooterGeek is most famous for its “Naked Harry Potter” page, where posters purporting to be minors demand sexually explicit images of the juvenile leads of a series of Hollywood movies. It would therefore be unwise of me to comment.

15Jun04 — 6

The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores

Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet, Boy George of Culture Club, Kim Wilde of, er, Kim Wilde; the list is far longer than it should be, but the the top of the roll of annoying 80s has-beens competing for a timeshare on another fifteen minutes is the neck-snappingly overrated Morrissey [helpful of them to name his official Website “MorrisseyMusic“], the one who used to wail directionlessly over the striking and original guitar playing of Johnny Marr in an atypically competent indie band called The Smiths.

Morrissey's achievement was to be a hit with the posh boys slumming it as music journalists in that period. Duran Duran flaunted their wealth and were denounced as capitalist pigs. The Smiths' fake poverty set a model for thousands of trustafarians and dim-but-loaded students. It made them heroes—even as Morrissey and Marr did their best to cheat their fellow band members of the spoils of their success.

Morrissey is now “back” in the sense that he has managed to offend some Americans by reportedly wishing death upon their head of state during an interview. The people of the USA must already have been bleeding from the stilletto wound punched by this lyric from his latest album:

“America your head's too big, Because America, Your belly's too big
And I love you, I just wish you'd stay where you is

In America, The land of the free, they said, And of opportunity, In a just and a truthful way
But where the president, Is never black, female or gay, And until that day
You've got nothing to say to me, To help me believe

In America, It brought you the hamburger, Well America you know where, You can shove your hamburger
And don't you wonder, Why in Estonia they say, Hey you, Big fat pig
You fat pig, You fat pig”

Devastating. A nation that has vanquished tyrants (and propped up rather more) quails before the words of a single Englishman. Sadly, I am unable to render here the melody to which this poetry is set. Rest assured that the great man's ear for a harmonically inspired, musically inventive and memorable tune remains as sensitive today as it ever was.

Examining this sample of his works, it's easy to understand why so many have compared Morrissey to Oscar Wilde. It's because they aren't very bright and don't read books.

14Jun04 — 1

Wixon-mania

Yesterday evening my officemate Jo and her fiancé kindly shared their home, food and television with me for the England cock-up. I have mentioned my officemate Jo's brother Paul before. He is a bit of a “character” as we English say, though he himself is married to a foreigner (Japanese) with whom he has produced one of those unfortunate mixed race children 😉 . Despite this, his Website is well worth a visit.

Firstly, you can check out more of his bizarre products swaps. If you've not been there before, go to the explanation first before pages two and three. There are some fun pics of his mate Alias's slightly “alternative” wedding. I also like his “Random Stuff“.

[Jo also corrects my ASDA/Ribena donkey story. Apparently it's not an offer but a competition and the first prize is a real donkey, or rather VIP sponsorship of one.]

13Jun04 — 0

Serial Liars See Light?

How I'm going to miss them. The “Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq” and their completely misleading Cambridge University crest are to morph into “Cambridge Solidarity with Iraq”. It's about fifteen years too late for most of the dead, guys. You're in good company: that was Rumsfeld's problem too. Never mind, nice to have you along for the ride—even if you were once into mass grave denial (“Whoops: wrong decade. My bad.”) and claiming that the Saddam Hussein we dug out of that hole was an unconvincing body double. I'm sure those expressing solidarity with the Iraqis will retrospectively swell over these years following their liberation, just as the ranks of la Résistance grew after that of the French.

[UPDATE: Please see my clarification.]

13Jun04 — 0

I Am Spartacus

In the age of Google it is so important to name your children wisely. I am grateful that my parents christened me as they did. Imagine you are Michael Henson, Professor of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, respected for your work on bioreactors. A fellow academic goes looking for you and stumbles up on Michael Henson of Cambridge, England.

12Jun04 — 1

Grated To Death

A US correspondent writes to ask just how badly Labour did in the council elections on Thursday. For tactical reasons (ha ha ha) I have been forbidden until now to share with PooterGeekers just how terribly the election campaign has been going. Now that I can, the thesaurus on my desk is not helping. I'll just share with you the record that it's probably going to be the first time a governing party has finished third in UK local elections.

I was one of our three candidates in “Cambridge Market”. Labour expected this seat to be unwinnable. I didn't let the party down, reducing our share of the vote there from 11.9 percent to 10.3 percent [you have to scroll down about halfway]. We were beaten by Liberal Democrats, Tories, Greens and Independents—the last probably promoting manifestos promising tax-funded compulsory limb amputation for all. I was amused to note that my former rowing coach was also standing in this Lib Dem stronghold. He's a Tory who drives around town in a classic Jag. Despite the surname “Ionides”, when he speaks he sounds Greek in the same way that Philip Mountbatten sounds Greek. He also got about 18 percent of the vote.

It's the European election results next. I can't wait.

12Jun04 — 0

So Mad It's Good

You will never believe who owns the “jihad.net” domain. A bunch of obviously talented and intelligent people—refugees from the newsgroup “alt.dinosaur.barney.die.die.die”—have constructed a vast fantasy universe around the idea that Barney the Dinosaur is not a boring but harmless children's television character; he is, in truth, “the demon B'harne”, a threat to all mankind who must be destroyed. Their “jihad” is the struggle to overcome him and his “sponge minions”.

They have created a dense mythology, a roleplaying game (think Dungeons and Dragons for the Tivo generation) and Web pages and books so richly illustrated and conceived that they put the promotional output of many small corporations to shame.

What I like most are the alternately incredulous and offended reviews of their works by visitors to the byzantine nexus of their polymorphously ironic cult:

“I have never seen a group of people who so desperately need to 'get a life' as you folks. Perhaps the recent events in the U.S. will give you an excuse to stop acting like such idiots.AB”
— 'Abu Nidal'

“You must have so much time and money to do such a sad thing so why not spend this time and money wisely, you people are aged from 18 and above and you are doing such a sad thing why not use this brain and talent in a useful way… ..what are you sado's thinking of doing next, a terrorist attack on the teletubies hill!!!”
— 'bernadetto spera' foolishly gives the jihadists ideas

“you should change your url. both in regard to the 9/11 attacks, and regardless of the attacks, your title is pathetic. it not only offends me, it probably is also offensive to members of the Islmaic faith.”
— 'CP'

While I am waxing pretentious, this phenomenon is a wonderful example of geeky silliness triumphing over po-faced fundamentalism and the fools who accord unearned respect to the delusions of the religious. The ideas behind their spoof are easily comparable to the fabricated absurdities of Scientology, but what criteria could you possibly use to judge them as any more ridiculous than the beliefs of the adherents to the major religions?

I believe Barney the Dinosaur is a malignant alien intelligence; you believe in the virgin birth. I hang out with my weirdo friends, roll dice and invent silly character names; you chop chunks of sexually responsive tissue from your offsprings' genitals because you think it's God's will. Who's crazy?—the slackers playing daft games or the respectable adults throwing parties to celebrate the ritual mutilation of their infants? To quote from the jihadists' “Jihad Universe for Dummies” page:

“Let's get this one out of the way. The Jihad to Destroy Barney the Dinosaur is a FICTIONAL organization. Fictional as in “not real.” None of the stuff below, or in the story archives, or on the message board, actually happened. The Jihad to Destroy Barney the Dinosaur is not affiliated in any way shape or form with al-Quaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah or any other terrorist organization that uses Islamic symbology.

We do in fact understand that using the word “jihad,” to say nothing of owning the jihad.net domain name, is something of a hot-button issue. God above knows that we've been wading in it for the last three years as it is. Nevertheless, we continue to hold onto the word and the domain. Consider it a public service: while a group of geeky Western gamers keep hanging onto jihad.net, people with less pleasant intentions are unable to use it.”

Marvellous.

10Jun04 — 2

Sympathy For The Devil

Imagine you are Satan, Father of Lies, the Tempter, the Old Gentleman, the Archfiend. You are planning your biggest head-to-head with your former employer, the Almighty, since that discussion on the clifftop with ol' JC. You aim to bring the whole breadth of humanity to the edge of Armageddon. To marshall your demonic hordes in the battle between Darkness and Light you need an anti-Christ. You want your representative on Earth to be subtle, charismatic, seductive and, of course, devilishly clever. You want George W Bush. [Thanks to Hugh.]

10Jun04 — 0

Losing Hearts And Minds

Richard Cohen in The Washington Post, makes some important points about the US Justice Department's torture memos, bits of paper which are, in a way, more shocking than photos of piles of naked Iraqi prisoners. It's not a bad piece until Cohen resorts to the cliché “winning hearts and minds”, then your toes will clench so hard you won't pay much attention to the concluding paragraphs.

10Jun04 — 0

Grr

I couldn't access PooterGeek, counsell.com etc. last night or this morning, and neither could a bunch of other people, I suspect—no email access either. There are about half-a-dozen things I want to post, but I'll be busy the rest of today, hence this lunchtime message. Come back later.

09Jun04 — 0

Help PooterGeek Remould The Fabric Of Reality

While asking after my baby pics yesterday evening, my token Palestinian friend* Hind commented in her unique style, “We all think you love children, really. Why don't you have some?” I mumbled something about how ordering a baby from the Internet in the absence of at least adding a wife to my Amazon wishlist might be putting the cart before the horse somewhat. She answered, “Oh, yeah. Well, may God bless you with a horse.” In Hind's very mild Arabic accent, magnified by her recent three months in Jordan, this sounded like a desert proverb of ancient lineage.

So PooterGeek's grand experiment for this month is to retrospectively make that proverb as historically authentic as English folk music. Readers, please join in—and recruit your friends too!

Do you know someone who loves driving, but hasn't yet booked to take a test? Look him in the eye sympathetically and say: “May God bless you with a horse.”

Dreaming of winning the lottery, but no intention of buying a ticket? May God bless you with a horse.

Want to be a popstar, but don't want to learn to sing or play an instrument? May God bless you with a horse!

Geddit? Good. Now spread the word.

[*I am joking, Hind; if I was cultivating you for rhetorical purposes the college porter who gave me the (puzzling) impression you were Indian would have brought our friendship to a swift end before it began. I mean, what's controversial about India? (And I'd make a better job of staying in touch than wrapping my head in bandages and checking into a North London teaching hospital 😉 ]

08Jun04 — 0

Go Girl!

Anti-war academic hair-splitters desperately using the separated fibres to lash together a defence for Amnesty International, mess with Eve Garrard at your peril.

(I'm just amazed she has the patience to pick apart such flimsy constructions. She may be a respected scholar, but she'd probably also do a good job helping the elderly and confused in weaving classes, too.)

08Jun04 — 0

The Female Started It

In the days before 'Bloggers, the traditional sad, no-lifes were birdwatchers. Here, one man (I'm just betting it's a man, but you're not going to bet against me, are you?) combines “twitching” and the Web to tell us about the Sparrows kleptoparasitising the Starlings.

08Jun04 — 1

Rave and Rant

Judith tried to post a comment nominating Victor Davis Hanson as a rival to Mark Steyn for the Best Columnist Working In The English Language award, but the currently flaky PooterGeek site rejected her submission, so I'm posting it here. She recommended this piece by VDH.

Funnily enough, “Backword Dave“, who links to me occasionally (and in his 'Blogroll), did the opposite this week, and put the boot into the man.

Dave scored two-and-a-half hits. Using “less” for “fewer” is indeed a grammatical error, but Dave is the man who put the extra 'h' into “emphahsis”. People are indeed dying at the hands of terrorists “elsewhere”, but that's the job of the President of the United States: to stop people dying on his watch, on his patch—and in this, so far, Bush has succeeded. I agree with Dave that the US economy is “screwed”, but I think the problems Bush has caused will take time to emerge, and, right now, there's precious little empirical evidence for our diagnosis, so it's not just our Victor who's making the “baseless assertions”. The sideswipes at Hanson's criticism of the media have some weight and I agree with The Backword One that a strong Democrat in the White House would be an excellent progression from a making-it-up-as-he-goes-along Republican. Calling Hanson “ignorant”, though, is just wrong.

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