I just had to take this one:
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Take the Dante's Inferno Test
Funny thing though - I lived in Diss before I came to Cambridge. It was similar to hell, I think. Or a standing ditch of water. I can never remember.
(via IdleType)
In time-honoured blogging tradition, I present my top 5 most common search terms via which people find Burnt Toast (this is so entirely not accurate, by the way, as it consists only of those search terms I've noticed).
5. I get loads of Google image hits of people looking for a photo of this pretty little Z4.
4. I also get a lot of people looking for the lyrics to Mundian to Bach Ke (which I don't have).
3. For some reason, tons of people search for "toast" and, not surprisingly, end up here.
2. Not a few disgruntled internet shoppers have turned up here looking for the mysterious Sara Freder only to find she's the 'net's biggest charlatan.
1. But by far the biggest search term on my blog is for "girls in bikinis". Does it surprise you to learn than a significant portion of those come from military domains? ;-)
...which reduces him slightly in my estimation (or perhaps raises Bush slightly... nah), nevertheless, IIM al-Sahhaf is alive and wanting to surrender.
I find it some sort of comic irony that the soldiers refuse to arrest him, however.
Researchers have decided that fish do feel pain after all.
It seems difficult to make the case for them not feeling pain, to be honest. After all, the first thing a bunch of cells do when they come together is to find some method of communicating - and that's often going to be to communicate damage. The central nervous system is the first to develop and was the first to evolve - why in the world would they not feel pain? Even Hydras detect sensory input and respond accordingly.
Of course, whether the sensation they feel is anything like what we do is another question and perhaps one that needs better definition. Of course, I'm not too sure that what I feel when I walk into a door is the same thing you feel either...
Oxford University researchers have noticed that rodents arrange objects in their path to help them remember routes. Or so they think. They believe that these are mini "roadsigns" that allow the animals to recall where they've been.
Rabbits aren't rodents, but they seem to go about things in slightly the opposite way, disliking it when objects are moved and always ensuring that certain paths are cleared. They'll systematically move objects away from the wall - including large and heavy items if they don't belong. They also seem to enjoy picking things up and flinging them...
A German-led team of archaeologists have found what they believe to be the tomb of King Gilgamesh, the ruler of Uruk who was immortalised in his famous Epic more than 4500 years ago.
I'm not sure how they managed to do this, as Uruk, of course, is the ancient city from which Iraq gets its name and the remains of the tomb have been found in the middle of what used to be the Euphrates. Nevertheless, a fantastic find and another demonstration of Iraq's rich history and incredible archaeological value.
Time to trade your Aunty Beeb and nice cuppa for Fox News, Starbucks and HungryMan dinners.
Debate over the Communications Bill begins in the Lords today, opening the way for deregulation and foreign ownership of British broadcasting companies. Wrongly believing that a free market will produce better content, proponents want to allow Murdoch and other unscrupulous broadcasters to beam more of their lowest common denominator rubbish at the British public.
This on top of news (via the War in Context) that Iraq's Agriculture post has gone to an American businessman who is suspected of wanting to dump cheap US grain on the country rather than rebuild their once successful agricultural sector.
The article states that President Bush is on record as saying he wants American farmers to feed the world. I can't imagine a worse fate than to make the entire world a clone of the US, eating fattening, genetically modified, mass-produced crap.
I need to take this opportunity to say that I love my American friends and family and have a soft spot for what my erstwhile country used to stand for, but I don't recognise it anymore and don't want to live there or anywhere where the values of the country are not my (quite lefty) values. I'm lucky to be able to be living where I want, but I chose to live here. I don't want to live in the "new" American society and resent efforts to force it upon me. I feel like my only resort is to boycott American products* and continue to write letters to my MP.
I do apologise. Truly I do.
(*ok, not all of them. But McDonalds, Nike, Disney, the Gap, Borders and Starbucks are definitely on the list with Nestle'. Apple isn't on that list, for example, as I can't really find any naughtiness about them. Thankfully.)
The Register says that William Gibson is giving up blogging. I'm not too bothered as I didn't really "get it" half the time. I like William Gibson's novels very much, but the blog sometimes came across as a little pretentious to me. But then, I often think that about blogs I can't understand. ;-)
Apparently, however, Esther Dyson is now blogging. (Funny how people often seem to pick that particular Blogger template first.) Of course, I'm not very interested in Esther or what she does, so I won't be putting her in Mr. Gibson's slot.
Now, if only her dad was blogging...
I keep seeing people talk about wiki, I've googled wiki, found a page called "what is wiki" and I still can't figure out what the hell it is.
It looks like text on a page, but that's it! Is it a database? A set of standards? Something having to do with wireless? What does "wi" stand for? What does "ki" stand for? What's the point? What is it used for? What do you get out of it?
More answers on another postcard, please...
No cheating now - no fair looking it up.
What springs to mind when you see this: Congo Maisy.
Answers on a postcard, please (or a comment box, if you must).
The Beeb has pointed me towards Lorenzo Climbs Everest, an audio blog of Lorenzo Gariano who is determined to climb the highest peaks on each continent.
Anyway, not dissimilar to the North Pole Challenge I blogged recently.
I must say, however, that I'm not a big fan of audio blogs. I can never be arsed to listen to some guy talking. It simply takes too long and you can't "skim" to the interesting bits. I can read much faster than someone can talk. Am I the only one that feels that way?
From the BBC programme, Leonardo, comes a little quiz to find out what kind of thinker you are.
"You are a Naturalist Thinker: -Like to understand the natural world, and the living beings that inhabit it -Have an aptitude for communicating with animals -You try to understand patterns of life and natural forces Like other Naturalist thinkers, Leonardo longed to spend time in the countryside. He spent hours watching birds to understand how they flew. Other Naturalist thinkers include Charles Darwin, Jane Goodall, Johnny Morris, David AttenboroughCareers which suit Naturalist thinkers include Biologist, Meteorologist, Forester, Farmer, Astronomer, Alternative therapist
There's also a link to the Beeb's Language quizzes. I did alright - 13 out of 20 - although I thought I did better than that. I missed a couple of subtle ones like saying "questa sera" instead of "stasera".
Still, considering it's been at least 7 years since I last spoke Italian...
If you're ever curious about the etymology of English sayings or phrases, you might find them at this Origin of Phrases site. It's an American site, but a lot of the phrases are common in the UK as well. In fact, many, if not most of them originated in the UK.
I tried this with my "Daily Ephemera" lark a few months ago, but I got too bored to complete a whole day (I was at work, after all). Nevertheless, the May Day Project - Your Day in Photos is on Saturday the 10th of May and hopefully I'll be doing something more interesting than working (fat chance).
Jes like my old gran used to make. She was from Knoxville, Tennessee and while some of her cooking was atrocious (stewed tomatoes? eew), some of it was fantastic. I've never found a good recipe for the Hot Milk Cake she used to make, but this collard greens recipe looks about right. I'll use spring greens instead and believe it or not, ham hocks are quite easy to find at the local Tesco. Same with yams and sweet potatoes for some reason. How exotic.
For I am Entertainer Sim.
What Sim Persona are You? Silly thing doesn't let you copy and paste the text though. Missing a trick there, they are...
According to the Independant, cheap coffee is threatening wildlife as poverty-striken farmers attempt to increase production of cheaper varieties of coffee at the expense of the environment. Coffee prices are at an all-time low and farmers are infringing on forest reserves to increase production. Research has shown that deforestation rates relate directly to the price of coffee paid to farmers.
Says the article, "The free-market, free-for-all seen in the past decade is not the model to follow. We need new trade agreements to stabilise prices and we all need to be prepared to pay a little more for coffee."
So, Fair Trade still sounds like the best way to go and on the one hand it seems that drinking FT coffee is a compassionate move, helping to support poor farmers by ensuring good prices and on-going income, however, on the other, I drink too much coffee and would be healthier if I switched to Fair Trade tea.
So I will. (Ha! Let's see how long that lasts)
(Update: Thanks to Michael, I just visited Orangutan.com who believes that the Sumatran Orangutan could be extinct in as little as 5 to 10 years. You only have to look at the intelligent faces of these creatures to know that we really can not let that happen.)
Since I'm setting myself up in business, I've got to work out the most important bit - the name. I've not been having a lot of luck so far, but DJ Dan, the Dustbin Man has found a DJ Name Generator that might help me out. Especially relevant since the default is DJ Burnt Toast.
How's about Funky Smokin' Digital Puppy? Boo-yaa, no diggety!
Shall we decree today DNA day?
Twenty-five years ago today, Crick and Watson sent their famous letter to Nature, outlining their structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid.
Fantastic. Not bad men, but Iraq Most Wanted Artifact Cards. I'd rather see the real deals in their rightful place, of course.
(via IdleType)
I really like the PhotoFriday site. I know there have been others of these -
(Theme Thursday springs to mind) but for some reason I never clicked with them (heh - clicked). Anyway, I made my debut last week in the Water challenge with Robin , which happily made it into "noteworthy". It was a lucky photo but I'm very pleased as there are some fabulous photographers who participate (and lots of them!)
The challenge this week is "Shadows" and if you're here in the UK, you'll know today wasn't brilliant shadow weather. I was wandering around the house looking for something to set up when my daughter pointed to the photos over the mantle piece. Ah-ha!
"But, mum" she said, "shouldn't you enter a photo you took yourself?" Bless 'er.
I did take these at South Coast Plaza in Orange County back in 1991. A friend was taking portraits of some other friends for their business and I was wandering about with my own camera, killing time. I propped my Nikon up on a post and snapped three images. They've always been favourites as you can rearrange the order and make up stories about what could be going on.
Londonmark tells us that today is St. Mark's Day and so I'd like to wish a very happy St Mark's Day to my Mark, NicelyCraftedMark, Markus, LondonMark, Mr. Bennett, SparkyMark, and any other Mark I missed.
Mark, mark, mark, yøobetcha!
Been thinking about depression recently - not because I'm depressed (I may have been once in my 20s, but it's hard to know), but because friends and others have recently mentioned experiences with the way that modern psychiatry deals with it.
So, this New Scientist Interview of Joe Griffin is timely and interesting. In it, Griffin talks about a connection between dreaming and depression and how excessive ruminations (dwelling on things) spills over into people's REM sleep, making them "over-dream" and virtually ensures that they wake up tired, unable to focus and unable to get motivated.
Griffin's brand of therapy involves getting people to stop thinking about their problems and in fact, says that therapies that encourage people to introspect about their past usually deepens depression. This seems absolutely commonsense to me. The natural reaction to a traumatic event is to surpress it and this seems like the best and most logical way to deal with it to me. But this is not the accepted view. Says Griffin:
The common explanation that their doctors give them is that there is a chemical imbalance in their brain. But that's a half-truth: the other half is that their low serotonin level is an index that their life isn't working - their needs are not being met - not that they've got something "wrong" with their brain chemistry. Brain chemistry is not a cause, it is an effect.
Griffin's techniques for dealing with a variety of mental illnesses seem to echo Tantric Buddhism's methods of metaphor, disassociation and guided imagery as well as meditation (which he refers to as a "trance state").
(via Limbic Nutrition)
Oh, it's all go around here. I spent the arvo with a very nice chap at the Cambridge Enterprise Agency discussing whether I should work as a sole trader or form a limited company. I've decided to give it a go on my own since I've now been approached to do a couple of fairly substantial projects. I'm going to go sole trader for the moment as it's cheaper and easier to get started by the sounds of it. I won't really have much in the way of liability in the short term either. So, a bit exciting, I suppose, although I reckon I have a bit of work to do now...
Tsk, and I guess I'll have to be all organised and stuff.
...or five. PGTips knows that tea is high in flavinoids, but a new report from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School suggests that five cups of tea a day will "sharpen the body's defenses against disease".
Ooh, I could just murder four cups of tea right now...
(gosh, I'm prodigious today)
Those PETA people really don't make themselves look very bright, nor are they very adept at making friends as they urge Hamburg, New York to change its name to Veggieburg.
I kinda object to these people being considered the voice of animal lovers. Buncha-loons. At least they aren't trying to get the Hamburg to change its name...
(ta to Mark)
Update: good essay by a guy who wonders if PETA's incredible PR ineptitude implies counter-terrorist funding by the cattle industry!
Adam, Geoff and David made it to the North Pole. A big congrats to all of them and a special congratulations to David for being the youngest person to complete the journey. A fantastic achievement for a good cause.
Well done lads!
...then how about we celebrate Aragon Day, Canada Book Day, Children's Day, Children's Festival Day, Lazarouvane, National Sovereignty Day, Secretaries Day or Castilla y León Day today?
All found at the rather fabulous Earth Calendar.
Speaking of drinking, happy St. George's Day to you. If the site's guestbook was working, you could sign a petition to make St. George's Day a public holiday. Still, you can have a read about England's patron saint.
Now, if we could only get a brewery to sponsor the holiday...
For anyone interested in the UK's nightlife, experience chucking out time[1] for your very own self with b3ta's swearing keyboard.[2]
[1] when the bars shut at 11 and the streets swarm with pissed-up lager louts[3]
[2] via Arseblog's forums
[3] drunken hoodlums who swill lager all night and then beat each 'uver' over the 'ead with beer bottles.
According to the BBC, US signals action against France, and Colin Powell says that France will suffer consequences for having opposed the US over the war with Iraq.
Suffer? Action? I really find it hard to believe this. It is, without a doubt, the most childish, immmature attitude I've ever come across. These are grown-ups? Running entire countries? I really am wondering if I can ever hold my head up and admit to being American again.
And with the White House refusing to answer reporters' questions, and holding "private briefings with 141 evangelical Christian leaders to discuss the Iraq war and other subjects", I'm thinking the whole country is sliding into wrack and ruin.
(Washington Post link via IdleType)
Those intrepid polar explorer lads are nearly at the pole and have seen their first polar bear! Their daily reports are fascinating and I hope there are plenty of photos (and maybe some nice audio recordings) coming as soon as they get back. Apparently the cold makes certain things almost impossible - like getting digital cameras to start up and charging laptop batteries.
Let that be a lesson to you when you next go polar trekking.
Poor Andre the Seal was getting into trouble for poaching salmon in Loch Lomond. Divers were unable to catch the slippery scoundrel to relocate him and the rescue co-ordinator said the seal had out-witted them.
Clever boy. He's only gone and got himself a fishing permit.
Aw, shame. The BlogShares spider has finally caught up with me and my blog value has crashed big style. By the looks of the blogs in the top 100, it appears that they've compensated for the bug/feature that valued my blog so highly originally (spidering whilst I was linked from Moveable Type).
That said, if that has been changed, it makes Moveable Type's value irrelevant I would think. So maybe they haven't and the "market" has somehow righted itself.
Who knows. I can't figure this stuff out.
Saeed al-Sahaf, that is. welovetheiraqiinformationminister is still trying to track him down, but in the meantime, you could play with this MSS Soundboard. Unfortunately, it's not quite as well done as the Bush one, which is a shame, as it could be hilarious (it's quite hard to make complete sentences with it).
I'd love it if it had, "I speak better English than this villain Bush" or "Who is this dog Franks in Qatar?" or maybe, "Even those who live on another planet, if there are such people, would have condemned this action before it started".
(via IdleType)
The portfolio from hell is finished. Well, sort of. Mostly.
In the end I re-designed and, not surprisingly, I'm sick of the new design already. I'm not touching it though. Well, not yet.
I was working on this montage image theme but in the end had to discard quite a few versions - mostly on account of them being too distracting (or too girlie) to be used as backdrops. Still, amusing to do and posted here for whomever / whatever purpose. Wallpaper, maybe? The links are 800 x 600 images (except for one, which isn't). I would have made them bigger but Photoshop is giving me gyp. Links open in new window...
According to an Independent news article, there is growing evidence that Cannabis compounds may protect the brain against the damaging effects of ageing.
My bloody computer is not a happy bunny and consequently neither am I (well, I am, but you know what I mean).
I tried cleaning it up - uninstalling some of the crap that I've installed recently. I seem to have uninstalled Eudora somehow so all my mail and email addresses are gone. I can only assume that Eudora is not called Eudora (or Qualcomm) in the add/remove programs thingy. How nice.
Of course the weather is fab again and I really don't want to sit inside and arse about with bloody 'puters...
(mini update: looks like QuickTime was my biggest problem so far - completely uninstalled it and all its components and so far things are running more quickly. An M$ conspiracy, perhaps?)
If I was a conspiracy theorist (which I fear I'm turning into), I'd wonder if this wasn't some sort of a concerted effort to manipulate Islamic history.
Now, the article speculates that the destruction was deliberate in order to "eradicate the evidence of Saddam Hussein's repressive rule" but the only one that would benefit from that would be Saddam and his cronies if brought to trial. I would think that someone wishing to cover up their atrocities would not allow records to be kept in the first place - and certainly wouldn't keep them in the National Archives.
That, to me, says someone else is responsible. The article also says that items were taken from undamaged vaults, indicating that they were opened with a key. This certainly implicates staf at the museums who would know the value of certain antiquities and might easily find buyers, but it does not explain why coalition troops did not attempt to protect the museums.
The excuse given is that they didn't have enough troops available, which is most likely a result of incompetence on Rumsfeld's part and probably not evidence of collusion. The cool conspiracy theory bit comes in when you take the Bush administration's close ties with Israel and their own evangelical Christian backgrounds and mix that all up with tales of the apocalypse. Very exciting.
I think I feel another game story coming on...
Central Asia is a magical place - home to some incredible scenery, an amazing culture, ancient history and a lot of highly endangered animals, including the Chiru which is a target for poachers who kill the animal for its wool.
The snow leopard is killed for it's pelt, the musk deer for it's scent glands, the bharal for its fur. They are all highly endangered.
When I was working on a game set in southern China, Bhutan and Tibet, we started to research the wide range of animals indigenous to the region. Rather than let it go to waste, I've put it online. Please note that this was internal research not actually meant for external consumption, so most of the images are lifted from around the internet. Copyright holders are welcome to waggle their finger at me sternly.
So, independent games developers are pretty much in the shit and the future looks bleak. But maybe not - maybe there is some other way to go about it. One of my Clabs friends said he's been far more productive since he's been made redundant and has designed three new games. How fab - he would have been stuck doing level deisgn had he still been employed.
Of course, that's no way to buy baby new shoes if you can't sell the games to anyone.
Unless you can do something like these GarageGames guys. They have a rather nice engine that they license for a reasonable price and some interesting revenue and distribution models as well.
As for me, I've not been at all productive and am still finishing up the protfolio from hell before looking for work in earnest. I'd be working on that right now if the weather wasn't so amazing.
I have priorities, allright?
According to the New Scientist, Europe's population is shrinking as a result of a "demographic momentum" in which women are not having the required two children each to replace the population. The article seems worried that only immigration will reverse the downward spiral and that governments should therefore encourage people to have children earlier (since it appears that this is the reason for the reduced numbers of children per woman).
Now, I realise that economic growth depends on population growth, but isn't it fairly obvious that the amount of space we have to live on is limited? To me, this says we have to come up with an economic and social model that doesn't depend on population growth.
Surely, proposing to build thousands of houses on pristine and historic greenbelt areas can't be the right way forward.
The Blogshares thing is quite a laugh. For some reason, I'm still doing rather well, with Burnt Toast now at the number 10 spot in the top 100 stocks list. Since I have rather a lot of shares in it, I've been listed as a top player in at number 39 with a portfolio worth $42469.04. What's even weirder is that my Tea and Toast blog was listed as a hot stock the other day and has doubled its share price over the last three days. Clearly no one looked at the blog before they bought stock, since there's virtually no content and no links in or out except to Amazon and to and from my own blogs.
So, it looks like that glitch that placed me so high at the beginning is not going to be adjusted - I suppose that's cool. I would imagine that real stocks are sometimes valued at silly prices. I'm still waiting for the big crash though.
Unfortunately, I still have no clue how it works or what any of this stuff means. LBO? Stock Split? Issue Shares? Should I do that? What does it mean? Bloody good thing it's not real money...
In the best tradition of blatant swearing and great URLS comes fuck the shop, the brainchild of some friends and former colleagues of mine (should I say what else you guys do?). It's an online shop with an amazingly huge selection of sex toys and all sorts of hilariously silly stuff for every sexual persuasion. My favourite is the Mucky Ducky, which, they say, "will grace any bath, pool or jacuzzi and innocently wait to smooth away your stresses and strains and help to put a smile on your face!"
Over 18 only, obviously. Obviously.
SelectSmart is another one of those dopey quiz sites with tons of the bloody things and a load of pop-ups. When they have so many quizzes you have to wonder how much thought actually goes into them. Is there some simple algorithm for analysing quiz results or something?
Anyway, I found this Ethical Philosophy Selector quiz while referral browsing last night and sadly forgot to note the site I found the link on (I hate it when I do that).
I enjoyed taking it, even if the questions were quite hard. It may be that they weren't worded well or possibly I'm just not that good with philosophical terminology. The results are an ordered list of philosophers or philosophies that are most compatible with your answers. My results are in "more" below.
1. Jean-Paul Sartre (100%)
2. Kant (99%)
3. Prescriptivism (98%)
4. John Stuart Mill (82%)
5. Spinoza (70%)
6. Jeremy Bentham (69%)
7. Stoics (68%)
8. Epicureans (64%)
9. Nietzsche (63%)
10. David Hume (59%)
11. Ayn Rand (48%)
12. Aquinas (47%)
13. Thomas Hobbes (47%)
14. Nel Noddings (46%)
15. Plato (45%)
16. St. Augustine (43%)
17. Ockham (41%)
18. Cynics (35%)
19. Aristotle (25%)
I read Humanities at University so I really should know something about these guys, but I really remember very little of it. I do recall not "getting" Kant or Sartre at the time, even though I did well in the course. I can't say I know much about Ayn Rand or Nel Noddings (Nel Noddings? Who the hell is that?). Jeremy Bentham doesn't ring any bells either, to be honest.
As for the rest - well, I remember that studying them was somewhat painful and my head hurts thinking about it. I think I'll go watch the telly.
No Fear's artist in residence, Udaiyan, has produced a rather cool piece called The Cambridge Walk of War, a mad drug-induced romp around Parkside. Number 7 - the Regal - is fab.
(I nicked the title from the comments as well - 'tis rather a good one)
I was wondering if this was going to be the cause again - a New Scientist article from last week says SARS is probably "a new hybrid that mutated in the intensively farmed livestock of China's Guangdong province," specifically chickens, ducks and pigeons.
I'm inclined to believe that's what's responsible for SARS rather than it being a man-made disease, as some have suggested. I'm not sure how it works with viruses - the method by which they mutate - however, I would imagine that when there are larger populations of hosts, there are probably more chances of harmful viral mutations emerging and taking hold. The close conditions then allow the diseases to spread more rapidly. Intensive farming is a bad, bad thing and proves itself as such all the time. If it turns out to be responsible in this case, then the world really needs to take a hard look at the long-term viability of the practise.
Kevin Sites has been there and back today, having been captured by some remaining Feyadeen at a checkpoint near Tikrit. It appears that, if not he, then his friends, have managed to get some news out to the blogosphere despite CNN's best efforts.
(Update: the story's been taken down. I can only assume CNN came down on him again...)
I think that allowing looters to steal or destroy 170,000 antiquities from what is generally considered to be the cradle of western civilisation is a crime against humanity. An absolute and utter tragedy - 5,000 years of history obliterated.
I have been studiously ignoring this "news" because I can think of nothing I'm less interested in at the moment, but I had to laugh at the Guardian's front page story about Zeta-Jones' victory over Hello! magazine's "violation" of her lavish NY wedding.
Says the Guardian, "Despite their status as A-listers who attract more publicity than they are able to track, Mr. Justice Lindsay said he was persuaded by Zeta-Jone's courtroom tears that the celebrity magazine had caused 'real distress'"
Um, hello (Hello!), she's an actress you twonk.
Bloody arses are suggesting that there's a secret plan to move Palestinians into southern Iraq. I hate the site that this story is on - they really are the worst kind of wankers, however, I have to wonder if it wouldn't it make more sense to resettle the Israelis, perhaps?
If you want to talk about who is causing instability in the region, I think that you might find that it's Israel's presence there. I hope that doesn't make anyone think I'm anti-semitic (I am, in fact, descended from Sephardic Jews in Portugal who switched to Catholicism during the Inquisition - not that it means much), however, I think the whole idea of a "home land" imposed by outsiders and inflicted on the current residents is wrong, and the idea of a "chosen people" is pure mythology that has no place in the modern world.
But then, I'm like that.
Oh, and that was via The Dustbin Man.
I suppose most people know that the London Underground map is an abstraction of the actual geography and that Harry Beck's 1933 map is a design classic, but this Real Underground flashy dooberry is very cool. Watch the map change from Beck's 1933 design to our oh-so-familiar modern version and then morph again into the real deal.
(via MouseChild)
I'm minding a birthday sleepover and the flock of ten-year-olds don't seem at all tired. I am. Pleeease, sleeeep...
Anita Borg, the visionary computer scientist and vocal advocate for
women in technology passed away on Wednesday. She founded the Institute For Women and Technology and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing and, says the Institute: "touched and changed the lives of countless women in the computing fields and beyond."
With all the hooha over Private Jessica in the states, the Guardian asks What about Private Lori?
Lori Piestewa was a Hopi Indian woman who died serving in Iraq and represents the large numbers of native Americans in the US military. As an aside, the article wonders that native Americans would normally be opposed to US involvment, as evidenced by a letter sent during the last gulf war:
"Dear President Bush," it read. "Please send your assistance in freeing our small nation from occupation. This foreign force occupied our lands to steal our rich resources ... As in your own words, 'The occupation and overthrow of one small nation is one too many.' Yours sincerely, An American Indian."
Unfortunately, as native Americans are the poorest of all ethnic and racial groups in America, the military is one of the few viable job opportunities open to them. Unlike the Adelitas who fought during the Mexican Revolution, these poor women are more likely to be fighting to save themselves rather than for the cause of freedom. (Which isn't to denegrate their contribution in the least, by the way.) It just seems like the poor are doing all the hard and dirty work. Come to think of it, it always is that way, I guess...
(via Grayblog)
(via Not You the Other One)
Update: ah, I find the original source is, not surprisingly, the fab b3ta)
We Love the Iraqi Information Minister. Dot com no less!
There are a bunch of quotes, but they don't have my favourite, which was when he told a news conference that reports of the American troops being on the outskirts of Baghdad were just "silly".
Bless. (via Funjunkie)
The BBC's newest Top 100 programme, The Big Read is gaining some speed around and about.
I just went and registered my vote for my all-time favourite fiction. It was a difficult one. I've read a lot of books, but it must be said that few of them are fiction. Obviously I adore Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, though I couldn't pick one favourite out of their collective works. Asimov's Foundation series has always been right up there for me as well.
I've also been enamoured of Jane Austin's writing and loved Emma, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Not surprisingly, George Eliot's MiddleMarch is another favourite.
Recently I read and loved My Journey to Lhasa by Alexandra David-Neel, the intrepid Frenchwoman who, disguised as an old Tibetan woman, traveled to the then forbidden capital of Tibet in the early part of the 20th Century. I also found Rosa E. King's account of life during the Mexican Revolution a fascinating story and the 1935 first edition is one of my most precious possessions, but neither are fiction and so must be discarded.
When it came down to it, one book (in three famous parts), no matter how trite and clichéd it's now becoming, has got to take the top place and that's The Lord of the Rings.
When I was a teenager, I read that trilogy every year for so many years I can't recall. I could lose myself in every setting, know every detail of every character's appearance and every time it would set my heart pounding just turning over a page. I'm not sure what it is. There have been criticisms of Tolkein's writing, but maybe there's something magical about the order the words or in, or perhaps it touches something deep in the psyche, but it was always a very special book to me and I couldn't think of one I have loved more.
Via Nick Barlow comes an interesting little quiz called Battleground God that tries to decide whether your beliefs about God hold up to rational consistency. Now, I've never been very good with logic, but so far as it goes, I guess I must have done well (or something):
Battleground Analysis Congratulations! You have been awarded the TPM medal of honour! This is our highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.
The fact that you progressed through this activity neither being hit nor biting a bullet suggests that your beliefs about God are internally consistent and very well thought out.
A direct hit would have occurred had you answered in a way that implied a logical contradiction. You would have bitten bullets had you responded in ways that required that you held views that most people would have found strange, incredible or unpalatable. However, you avoided both these fates - and in doing so qualify for our highest award. A fine achievement!
Now, I could review the criteria by which hits and bullets are judged, but my head hurts...
So it looks like the celebrations and flower-throwing has begun in Baghdad. Not surprisingly, the pro-war people are already being smug and asking if anti-war protestors aren't feeling pretty stupid right now.
And the answer is "of course not!" I'm very happy for the Iraqi people and hope that their lives get better from here on in. I also think that the US and UK have an opportunity to do the right thing and show the world that they aren't the greedy imperialist bastards the world thinks they are and I sincerely hope they take it.
But I'd not be able to live with myself if my belief in non-violence was so easily swayed by scenes of jubilation. There are still countless Iraqis suffering as a result of this war and I believe it could have been avoided.
From Paul Reynolds, wondering what will be the defining moment that says the war is over:
"The non-appearance of the great Iraqi spin doctor Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf. If he doesn't do his routine, you know it is over. Even if he does, it still probably is."
Funny old al-Sahhaf. I'll miss him. I hope the Americans will be nice to him.
oh. my. god.
I figured I'd try and get my credit card payment protection thingy to kick off whilst I'm unemployed but what I've found out is that I'd be hundreds and hundreds of pounds better off if I'd cancelled that insurance years ago.
Do you know that nearly half my monthly payment goes towards payment protection? For one card, that's more than £20! Jaysus, what a rip-off. What's more, they get the Job Centre to do all the work for them as you need to get them to fill in the forms so you can claim and you can't use the card whilst the claim is being looked at or when in force.
Needless to say, I cancelled the insurance posthaste and halved my credit card payment which will do me far more good.
I'm still having weird problems, this time with IE on the Mac not seeing things the same way that every-bloody-other browser does. Oh well, trial and error, error, error.
However, I just replied to someone with a different cross-browser issue that I learned and thought I'd pass on here.
When using layers, ignore any examples that suggest that you set backmost elements with a z-index of -1. Netscape and Mozilla don't like negative z-index numbers (well, maybe they do, but have decided that the furthest back position is invisible). Always use zero and above.
Now, I'm not going to make any judgements about Fidel Castro and whether he's a nice man or not, but when American politicians are threatening to charge journalists and peace protestors with treason (which carries the death penalty in the states), getting angry about dissendents being jailed in Cuba seems a bit rich to me.
OK, so what the bloody hell is going on here then? I'm trying to fudge an image rollover in css and I've got this bit of code:
.rollover a {background-color: transparent; border: 1px solid #370015}
.rollover a:hover { background-color: transparent; border: 1px solid #009999}
Why (oh why) would aligning an image left make that code not work? Complete madness.
(Update: gave up and am now using a javascript solution instead. Pain in the arse.)
Author Jean Kilbourne talks about how Americans are bamboozled by ads,
"I’m sure that most Americans would say they want to be talked to as thinking people, but the evidence is clear that in fact we tend to be very susceptible to being sold stuff. And one of the things that’s alarmed me the most as I’ve studied advertising over all these years, is the extent to which our political system has really been hijacked by the advertisers."
This article appeared on the same site as an open letter to America from Margaret Atwood which warns America that it is in danger of "fouling its own nest". She wonders how a country can be sustained when it no longer produces its own goods but instead grabs "stuff other people produce, at gunboat-diplomacy prices".
There are so many problems right now that I just can't see the US coming out of this intact. Recently I've wondered if the US isn't actually 3 or 4 different countries. I see plenty of Americans who are unhappy with the current state of affairs, with the situation in the middle east and the woeful state of the American economy, but for the most part they tend to be living on the edges of the states, on the west coast or the northeast. I don't know. Maybe I'm putting my personal Californian spin on things. I've really only experienced life on the coasts - the south and the midwest always seemed so foreign to me. Maybe Hollywood is to blame.
Or maybe it's simply that they're all part of the new hereditary rich in the US: the Chips, Skips and Trips of Harvard and Yale. Sons of industry - guys that don't seem to understand that countries (and armies) can't be run like companies. There is an intense arrogance that seems common among these frat house types. You see it in the mannerisms of GW and Rumsfeld and you hear it in their speech. These are the guys who were the most obnoxious jocks in school - the ones who knew that daddy could bribe the chief of police to get him out of trouble - and now these idiots are running the country. It sounds like a bad National Lampoon movie, but sadly it's all too true. Even the American troops in Iraq are behaving like bullies.
I personally don't think democracy can be sustained in a country so large as the states. It's too easy to become corrupt and too easy to hide it. It's too easy to forget that there are actual people that must be considered rather than just demographics and target audiences. How long before the American people are considered "collateral" and therefore expendable? Or does the state of the US prison system already assume as much?
Maybe it's not working for the same reason that large scale socialism doesn't seem to work. Maybe it's not the system that's to blame, but the size of the society it tries to govern. Perhaps smaller societies are more able to reach consensus. I like the idea of a Europe where one is free to choose the political system one feels most comfortable in - liberal Holland, quasi-anarchic Italy, conservative Switzerland and whatever-it-is-that-Britain-is-becoming (to be honest, they change so rapidly you'd probably be moving around quite a bit). But ideally you'd embrace the culture as well - my cousin noted that being in the UK was like being in the states these days. There weren't local goods, nothing that you could only get in Britain. In fact, most of the high street looked for all the world like any American city to her. That's a real shame.
(all via Pensieri di un minore lunatic and the War in Context)
We spent the afternoon in London today, visiting my cousin who was here from the states. We ended up taking a taxi from Hyde Park Corner to High Holburn after I got a bit confused and went to the wrong hotel. The congestion charge must be working as it was almost completely clear of significant traffic.
Back at King's Cross for the trip back home and I was rather annoyed to find the police with sniffer dogs. I say annoyed because the dogs appeared to be quite successful, pulling up two people as we walked by. This said to me that these were drug sniffers (as opposed to explosives) as I'm pretty sure that dogs only do one or the other. I would have hoped that the police would have better things to do right now.
And speaking of a sense of perspective, I would very much like the media to get a grip and not keep going on about Saddam's palace(s). Oooh, gold taps. Like you don't get those in almost every bleeding house in Essex.
I'm surprised I'm not getting misguided google hits for this stuff, but here are a couple of amusing bunnycam piccies.
Ever wanted to jump a jeep off a cliff and onto an aircraft carrier? Wondered what would happen if you strapped a big ol' explosive to the bottom of a tank? He Said Wood - Stunt Video is another one of those mad Battlefield 1942 movies with some amazing stunts. (You probably don't want to bother unless you've got broadband - the files are rather large.)
It certainly seems that the rowers are. Gosh, have a look at the Cambridge University team. Three guys are over six foot, three are six foot five inches, and two of them are six foot seven inches tall. Crikey - wouldn't want to meet the lot of them in a dark alley. Although they are Cambridge boys, so they'd probably just philosophise at you.
Football - the world's great peace-maker (well, maybe not, but you know what I mean). I find this story about a football match between Umm Khayyal's professional squad and British squaddies vaguely heartening. I had read before that the Iraqis were keen footballers and big Arsenal and Man U fans (there's obviously no accounting for everyone's taste - even in the middle east).
It seems to be yet another example of how the well the British military does on the public relations front. I've been hugely impressed by their compassion, understanding and mature approach to the war and to the Iraqi people.
I reckon sending Beckham over to sign autographs would get more of them to switch sides...
Very cool Horizon programme about caves. Reminded me that I ran across this excellent QTVR panorama of the Slovenian Nova Krizna Jama whilst following a link from somewhere I can't recall. Go look. The whole site is very cool.
Also, more about the Lechuguilla Cave at Deep Secrets (ooh er).
Back on our CLabs leaving night, I met a couple of gentlemen who were about to embark on a journey to the North Pole - on foot. A bit mad, but it's all in the name of charidee. Adam, David and Geoff set out on their North Pole Challenge in aid of Children Nationwide on Sunday.
You can follow along with the expedition and view live video streams (as soon as that bit is working). And, of course, you can donate to the cause...
In what Vassili Papastavrou, an Ifaw whale biologist, calls "commercial whaling in a threadbare disguise," Iceland bids to resume whaling.
This breaks my heart. And so does this.
(via The War in Context)
Yes, it seems to be an ntl/3Com CMX modem problem. Connection is very, very sporadic at the moment, so no browsing and no bunnycam today.
[Update: ntl really is getting so much better at customer service. No wait at all to speak to someone either time I called. Both guys seemed knowledgeable and were very nice. They said a technician would come check the line between 1:00 and 5:00 (and I only called them at 11). He was 20 minutes early. I wasn't really ready for him and had to scramble to clean the desk off so he could actually find the cable modem, but its better than showing up at ten to five!
The bad news is that the problem is with some changes they made at their end. The software upload to the modem didn't "take" but it seems to be a problem with some CMX modems. They said they were very close to a fix and asked if I could wait it out.
It's annoying, but easier to take since they were being so efficient otherwise. They said they'd compensate for the down time, so as long as the fix isn't too long coming, I'm happy with that.
Go figure.]
If I was a fatalist, I'd be thinking the bloody world is about to end. In addition to a mindless war in the gulf which I believe may destabilise the region for decades, we have SARS looming on the horizon. Anyway, I've been worried about our friend Francis who has, obviously, been mindful of the situation himself and has posted a link to a self-styled "SARS Czar". "Bene Diction provides a reasoned and factual overview of the situation from Canada.
Anyone else having trouble with NTL cable modems resetting constantly? Or something...
The connection cuts off 20 or 30 times a day - I know the process well: connection times out; look at the modem; lights are on steady; status light goes off, blinks orange, blinks orange and green, blinks green, steady green. It seems to take about 3 minutes to go through the cycle. Over and over and over. It's getting on my nerves.
What a bunch of wankers (I'd say what I really feel, but my daughter keeps showing my blog (tm) to her friends). So, Google (tm) is now the latest member of the evil empire as they get heavy on my friend Arseblogger, requesting that he, "disable or substantially modify [his] page as soon as possible and confirm in writing that you will not use our registered trademark without our express written consent."
Disclaimer: there's a small possibility this is an Arseblogger April Fools joke but we'll have to wait and see ;-)
Update: yep - April Fools. I really expected no less from the master. Nice one, Mr. ArseBlogger(tm)!