You will not be surprised to read that I was into Dungeons and Dragons when I was at school. This Macromedia Flash film begins with a joke about D&D being the gateway to Satanism and then turns into such an accurate recreation of a typical game that I recommend you simply pass it by—unless you want to relive the boring, stupid, bitchy, nerdy horror of one of the 80s’ most embarrassing crazes.
I wonder if anyone on Campus plays?…
People who kill deliberately innocent people to frighten other innocent people are terrorists. And even the French are beginning to understand.
I am not a fan of Ronald Reagan, the man who accidentally saved the World from communism, while contributing to the deaths of thousands in Nicaragua and to a hugely unpleasant recession in the United States. The unpleasantness of the latter was magnified by our having to listen to British rock critics wank on about the wonder of Bruce Springsteen whining on about the consequences of “down-sizing” on record.
In today’s Observer magazine there is a graceful piece by son, Ron Reagan, that describes a swimming race with his father. Unfortunately I can’t link to it. A shame, because it’s much better than the usual celebrity confessional crap that fills the Sunday papers.
Check out the paintings at The Yah-Tah-Hey Gallery.
Again, thanks to Maoi. Have a smile at Engrish.com.
Courtesy of Maoi, another man who dresses up for a living gives the United States advice on how to conduct itself in the World and earns more column inches than most full-time scholars of international relations, just like this guy whose drivellings Judith drew my attention to last week. (This latter article is offset nicely by the frankly racist headline that tops the right-hand column of the same page: “Mideast-looking men steal airport computers”. I mean, please.)
I have seen to celebrity inanities before here and here and I’m too busy for bug-crushing today. Just consider Depp and Ford squished.
Someone called Demir Baser kindly emailed a bioinformatics mailing list at work over the weekend to let us poor scientists know that Darwin was wrong because Harun Yahya says so.
Thanks, Harun. I can’t wait to read your other “works on Zionism and Freemasonry and their negative effects on world history and politics”. We misguided fools can put away our microscopes now because “each of [Yahya]’s books on science-related topics stresses the might, sublimity, and majesty of Allah in minute detail based on well-structured research and evidence, along with extensive contemplation”.
If only I had contemplated as extensively as Harun I wouldn’t have wasted my life with all of that evolution nonsense. I was going to have a flick through the latest from Ernst Mayr next weekend, but, you know, I think I might see what old JPII has to say on the matter. Why do experiments when you can just ask God?
Er, thanks for this, Maoi.
This week, a friend of my office mate Jo was involved in an expensive and unpleasant four-car, low-speed pileup. This happened when the driver of the frontmost car braked suddenly to avoid running over a squirrel.
(The reason there is no photo link attached to the name of this new character in the PooterGeek soap opera is that Jo is smart enough to know the minimum focusing distance of my camera and stays within that radius of me whenever I am trying to photograph people around Campus.)
Remember: “Always go for the head shot“.
Scroll down this page to see the new, sexy flat-panel speakers, available for your home cinema this month.
This year more Americans wanted to watch tall black people bounce a ball than wanted to watch short blonde people snog.
The Telegraph had the best Alastair Campbell “obituary” article I’ve read so far.
I normally avoid linking to links from the ‘Blog Instapundit because you’ve already seen them, right? But this is an outstanding piece by anti-war writer Geoffrey Wheatcroft.
At the fancy-dress party, Damian, fancying himself somewhat in his sharply pressed, collarless Dr. Evil suit, asks one of the other guests if she’d be interested in, er, maybe, going for a drink some time. Her response isn’t entirely positive, but he can tell she is just playing hard-to-get from her body language.
Update: for you Golden Lasso of Truth fetishists, there’s a bigger sheet of digital wallpaper here.
Update: I should point out that this is a “joke” entry meant as a slightly less boring way of drawing your attention to free superhero desk decoration than just pointing at the Website. If it was a true story I’d have used the first person. Besides, don’t you know that women find me completely irresistible 🙂 ?—the mysterious PixieGirl, for example, wrote to tell me I’m “feckful”.
Look it up.
I often have days like this.
After a rant about the FBI’s comedy-cop indictment of a teenage cracker, this page includes an intriguing item about the Dalai Lama. Apparently someone tried to use his Holiness’s image to sell software and “his people” objected. The Dalai Lama has “people“?
“Yeah, John Paul II’s people and the Dalai’s people got together and it looks like the Infallible tour is on. They’ve all signed: John Paul, er, George, and Gyatso. Let’s rock!”
Last time I was interviewing candidates for a job I had my “girl compensator” turned up quite high. In The Telegraph today Anne Robinson explains what I mean. [Free registration required, value of shares can go down as well as up, please pay attention to the pre-flight safety demonstration, your home is at risk if you do not keep up payments on a loan secured on it, and so on and so forth…]
Okay, all the worthy world affairs stuff is getting boring now, I know. Here’s some unworthy stuff about Iraq. Bonkers Iraqi parents name son after George Bush. British Spin has those missing Hutton Inquiry emails in full.
Check this surreal phenomenon out before the Powers That Be fix it! If you search the BBC’s News site for “Arafat“, the first link you pull up takes you to a potted biography of Lemony Sicket, mysterious children’s author. It’s another Giant Lizard conspiracy, I tell you.
The rest of this entry is second-hand ‘Blogging so I give it lower billing.
After my post touching on the subject, it seems that, even with Cherie kicking Tony under the sheets every evening over the hopelessness of the Palestinians, the British government finally thinks it might be worth treating Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Good luck to them in persuading the appeasers in Europe. (Incidentally, funding the mischievous indolence of Yasser’s hangers-on is at least one area where we can see our contributions to the EU are being spent with effect.)
It’s a busy ‘Blogging morning.
First: here’s a scholarly (or at least reasonably well-informed) argument for me to remove my usual distancing quotation marks from “Islamofascist”, “balanced” by more criticism for the U.S. administration over Iraq and terrorism (specifically Al-Qaeda and friends) in a ‘Blog interview with Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden. (The interview is by Joshua Micha Marshall.)
Second: here’s a fascinating attack on psychiatry—a profession which somehow manages to be even less scientific than the rest of medicine—in New Scientist magazine.
Third: here’s an amusingly po-faced, stupid BBC caption.
Fourth: one of the World’s biggest manufacturers of guitar strings gives up on Microsoft software and saves tens of thousands of dollars.
Even though Martin has recently stopped reading PooterGeek because it’s become “too self-referential”* lately, I am going to post his recommended link to Arts and Letters Daily. It looks like a superb regular stop-off point for literature lovers and culture vultures of every kind. There’s one for technophiles too.
(Image of Martin courtesy of Adam)
[*It’s a ‘Blog, man! How can it be “too self-referential”?!]
This is an example of that rare thing, excellent tabloid journalism.
(In case you think this is Right-wing, gung-ho, salute-the-flag nonsense you should, as Wiqqi would say, read it in the context of Salam Pax.)
Update: Adam says the Salam Pax link is dead. That’s because “Where’s Raed?” is currently dead. Probably killed by the CIA. Or the giant lizards.
I have pointed out here before that I am the World’s worst football fan. Appropriately, I “support” the “worst” team in the Premiership. They aren’t simply bad in a finishing-close-to-the-bottom-of-the-table-heavily-in-debt way. They are bad in a chronically-underperforming-and-dull-to-watch-yet-embarrassingly-in-credit way.
I only mention this to point out that the day before yesterday (my terrible supporting consists of half-heartedly checking the result of their last game some time during the week it took place) Villa held the once-mighty Liverpool to a draw at Villa’s own home ground. This means that, not only are AVFC still reassuringly awful, but Liverpool are now officially in decline too. At least the game was interesting. Apparently.
The real news is terrible right now, so here is a random science story from September 2001.
Sexual selection is a fascinating little cupboard of biology. My previous boss started out as a biologist working on sperm competition. As a full professor he amusingly listed one of his interests as “spermatogenesis”. He worked on mice, but birds provide the most famous manifestation of extreme sexual selection: the absurdly ornate plumage of peacocks.
Often when I’m walking through a park with friends and a duck conversation starts I mention another example: the unfeasible length of male ducks’ penises. They usually think I am spinning them a yarn. I’m not.
Today I have read two depressing Economist editorials about the “Road Map“. The first was in my subscription copy, written after the suicide bombing in Jerusalem, but before the assassination of Ismail Abu Shanab. It stated drily that things were worse than they looked. The second is online now. I don’t think a subscription is needed for the latter. And now things look almost as bad as they are. My friends on one “side” (Amber, Hind, Wiqqi…) might be shocked to find they agree with more of the contents of these articles than they usually would expect. My friends on the other (Claire, Judith, Adam…) might find they agree too. There’s no common ground in the “Holy” Land. Is there any here?
Update: Maoi says that second link doesn’t work for non-subscribers. Bugger.
Update: By the power of “fair use”, I bring you these extracts…
From the first editorial:
In Iraq, the case for optimism is that most Iraqis are liable to withhold their support from the jihadis because most of them are still willing to believe that the Americans mean it when they say they intend eventually to leave. In Palestine, for all the fine words of George Bush and the “road map” about the imminence of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, almost no Palestinians expect Israel voluntarily to give up the West Bank and Gaza to make this possible.Whose fault is that?
The blame game in Palestine has revolved in circles both vicious and tedious for more than a century. In this present round, neither side emerges with credit. Israel complains that although the road map calls plainly on the Palestinian Authority to disarm and dismantle the terrorist groups, it has failed to make any serious effort to do so. The Palestinians retort that this would plunge them into a civil war at a time when Israel gives no serious sign of being willing to freeze, let alone dismantle, the Jewish settlements that have spread through the occupied territories since 1967 and obstruct the emergence of a free Palestine.
This, alas, is not just a matter of Israel failing to get its message across. Many members of Ariel Sharon’s ruling coalition oppose the idea of an independent Palestine and say frankly that they will do whatever they can to thwart it. America needs to make it plain that these Israelis will not get their way. It is right to denounce outrages like the one this week in Jerusalem. But if America is to build a new Middle East it must give the Palestinians the same hope as the Iraqis that foreign military occupation really will soon come to an end.
From the second:
Though moderates in Mr Sharons cabinet had hoped that the bus bombing might finally prompt Mr Abbas to take on the militants, and that a return to violence might be averted, Mr Sharon was under great pressure from hardliners for an immediate Israeli counter-strike. Avigdor Lieberman, the minister of transport and head of the right-wing National Union Party, went on the radio to demand the bombing of Mr Arafats headquarters in Ramallah, with everyone in it. He charged that Mr Arafat radiates encouragement, instructions and winks to the terrorists to perpetrate their crimes and that it was pointless expecting the more moderate Mr Abbas to take the kind of action that was needed. Mr Sharon himself was quoted as saying to Mr Mofaz They are just animals, when he was told of the bus bombing. Strong words, perhaps, but Israeli anger will hardly have been soothed by hearing that hundreds of Palestinians in a refugee camp near the Lebanese city of Tripoli poured on to the streets, firing guns in the air and handing out sweets to celebrate the explosion.
The road map is intended to bring an end to the Palestinian intifada and lead to an independent Palestinian state by 2005. Now, its chances of success are beginning to look decidedly thin. The ceasefire was a shaky affair right from the start. It seemed clear that, unless all sides made the most of the lull in violence, and pushed forward with the peace plan, they risked a return to the cycle of attacks and counter-attacks, in which it would be all but impossible to make any progress. Alas, that is exactly what has happened. And, once again, it is not at all clear how the road map can be saved.
Auriol Miller and family garden party pics up over at LoveAndBentSpoons.
It seems Nelson Mandela is (temporarily) off the U.S.A.’s list of terrorists. How long before these “militants” are on the BBC’s?
Amber* sent a link to a New York Times article [free registration required yakety yakety] about how the United States’ postwar slackness has fostered terrorism in Iraq. She also writes to tell me that, like everyone else (but me), she has received 400 email messages from various worms. Ah, Microsoft. (According to Geoff, our head of Systems, the HGMP-RC bounced over 5000 “SoBig” messages yesterday alone.) Here’s one approach to the problem.
*And every time I link to her academic homepage, a horde of evil bots are directed there from pootergeek.com, ready to suck up her email address for further spamminess.
I am trying to wrap my head around the fact that John Pilger and Christopher Hitchens both write for The Mirror.
(The title is the theme from The Twilight Zone—just repeat it over and over in a sing-song voice and you’ll see what I mean. Or perhaps you’ll just sound very silly.)
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