This entry was posted on
Monday, February 16th, 2004 at
10:45 am and is filed
under Uncategorized.
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Date
20040216
Activism
Time
10:45
I was quite depressed to discover during my recent trip to Devon that street spam (primary source: Herbalife) had reached all the way into Combe Martin Bay, but it reminded me of my mini-adventure back in November, trying to get a message or two onto the streets. The signs I put up lasted less than a week. Nearby street spam was left untouched.
I was going to get clever with a semi-disguised effort along the lines of ‘Dump Blair now, ask me how’, but other stuff got in the way. Then, on the trip back from my little break, I spied more than a few roadside memorials and I considered doing some memorials for a few of the casualties of the War on Terror and the illegal side excursion into Iraq. Things like truth, integrity, civil liberties, safety, and so on.
It didn’t take me too long to reject this idea as being:
1. A little bit off
2. Art-wank
3. Not terribly effective
So now we’re back to square one; the straightforward delivery of clue-by-fours.
Let me share a few bits and bobs I read over the weekend that caught my eye, so you know where my head is at…
Boredom – the last line of defence for a government on the rack (requires subscription): One Cabinet minister I spoke to last week calculated that something like 2 per cent of the vote could drift from Labour to the Liberal Democrats at the next election, because of Iraq. If that happens, perversely, the main beneficiaries will be the Conservatives, who hold second place in most marginal seats.
And, if you remember, did not raise a squeak in the lead-up to the illegal war, despite there being plenty to squeak about. This was left up to Lib-Dem and Labour MPs. Speaking of which, a letter from Glenda Jackson appeared in the same paper, giving Tony a right old bollocking over this sorry state of affairs:
Butler inquiry will not judge Blair’s role in Iraq war
And, this morning, I happened across this, some thoughts from Madeleine Bunting that I heartily agree with:
Let Blair pay the price: The time has come for New Labour to lance the Iraq boil – before the left is irrevocably split.
And, my-oh-my, isn’t this interesting..
No 10 unease at Brown’s contacts with John Kerry: John Kerry, the frontrunner to challenge George Bush for the US presidency this autumn, has held a series of private meetings with Gordon Brown. The Senator set to win the Democratic nomination has links with the Chancellor stretching back over a decade.
New messages hit the street starting tonight.
If you want to help, drop me a line.
(Updates to follow.)
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Date
20040216
Photoshopping
Time
10:49
I was impressed enough that Snopes already had a file on the Kerry/Fonda crowd pic from last week but, as Steve notes, they also have a file for a new faked image, showing Kerry and Fonda on the same podium.
Scott was kind enough to cough up this NewsDay article on the subject.
My photo of Dubya doing battle with jet-eating sharks has yet to hit the headlines…
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Date
20040216
Riding High on Blogdex
Time
11:07
It’s all love and trousers!
Love: Did you send an anti-Valentine? I didn’t. But someone did try to send a link to this MP3 to Tony Blair over the weekend. Oh, and marriage is about love. Hey, who knew?
Trousers: The Torygraph beefs up their Kerry coverage with quotes from ‘friends’ of Alex Polier. One of the quotes appear to be lifted directly from this Scum article. Speaking of The Scum, their latest nuggets on the matter are also charting well. They claim that Alex Polier taped an interview with ‘a US TV network’ in December, and that this network is ‘sitting on the tape until it has enough evidence to back her story’. Hmmm, some good inside info there. I wonder which US TV network they’re talking about…
UPDATE – The Evening Standard looks set to go to print with suggestions that it’s the ABC network, but ABC have refused to comment.
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Date
20040216
The War on Terror
Time
11:25
London News Review: The meaningfulness of the term ‘terrorist’ is the latest victim of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Doggedly, Israel sticks to its guns in describing the Palestinian fighters as “terrorists,” while they (the ones with the tanks and helicopters) are “the army”.
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Date
20040216
The Impeachment of George W Bush
Time
11:27
A lovely quote this, what a shame it comes from Al Sharpton: “Clearly, Bush lied. Now if he is an unconscious liar, and doesn’t realize when he’s lying, then we’re really in trouble.”
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Date
20040216
Flash Thingies
Time
11:32
Just keep adding stuff and pretend that you know what you’re doing.. You’ll get along fine, trust me.
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Date
20040216
The Political Weblog Movement
Time
11:37
Meet Paul Cumming, Conservative councillor for Malvern Hills and Andrew Brown, Labour councillor for Blackheath.
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Date
20040216
Church & State
Time
11:41
Did you enjoy purity day?
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Date
20040216
Bush: AWOL
Time
11:49
DailyKos – Was Bush kicked out of Guard?
Calpundit – Were Bush’s National Guard files purged of potentially embarrassing material back in 1997?
Bottle of Blog comments on the latest eyewitness accounts to come to light.
That should be enough to keep you busy for a while….
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Date
20040216
Tim Yeo
Time
12:00
How do the Tories plan on cutting expenditure, but protecting health and education? Easy. They plan on putting the Shadow Minster For Everything in charge of the lot. He’ll take the classes, do the surgery, wipe the floors and wash the bottles. A bit of a handful, even for a demigod, so perhaps its a good thing that he may be forced to cast aside a few of his other commitments well ahead of time.
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Date
20040216
I Believe In The BBC
Time
14:25
The Scotsman – Ministers urged to rule out BBC’s national break-up: The government was under pressure yesterday to rule out plans to end the BBC’s 80-year-old existence as the UK-wide institution. Leaked Whitehall documents revealed the government has considered breaking up the corporation into “separate entities for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland”. The internal memoranda, published in the Sunday Times, also showed that the government is considering a wider role for the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom, bringing the BBC under its jurisdiction. The move would end the practice whereby the BBC governors ensure the corporation’s impartiality and accuracy.
Oh, if you’ve submitted a BBC statement in the last few days; apologies… I’ll get them up soon.
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Date
20040216
Spam
Time
15:18
Martyn has an interesting heads-up for us…
The Times reports that a legal loophole is protecting a spammer/scammer… before going on to list a bunch of identifying details, just in case a reader may wish to track him down.
I had his father’s address and phone number in about 60 seconds. If I were in any doubt, I could use the photo they provide or this helpful description of his house before hurling a brick through his window: “… he lives in a brown-brick three-bedroom terraced cottage, built in 1885, with a stained-glass unicorn on the front door, in Bedford Street, St Neots.”
Now, I hate spammers as much as the next guy and have even urged people to reach out and touch a spammer myself, but this is a very naughty thing for a newspaper to do. According to the ‘rules’ what govern newsypapers, The Times are due for a gumming, and you can bet this long-time conman is sharp enough to know how to play the victim.
UPDATE – Some background on the lovely Peter Francis-Macrae is available from ninet.co.uk and you can see an old version of his Dot Com Avenue site in the web archive. There’s no archive for registereu.com, but you can see a copy in Google’s cache here if you’re quick.
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Date
20040216
Flash Thingies
Time
16:07
It’s Dishonest Dubya, the action figure that lies like a bastard! Comes complete with four fetching outfits and a nifty pretzel-retching feature. (Link via Toby ‘How late was my train?‘ Bryans.)
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Date
20040216
Google – The Adsense Trial
Time
16:57
Over the weekend, 2,642 ad impressions were served. This resulted in a total of 11 clicks (0.4% click-through rate) and earned me just over two Yankee dollars. Total earnings to date: $6.55
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Date
20040216
The Dress-Up President
Time
17:28
Bush did the ‘Gennlmen start yur engines!’ bit at NASCAR on the weekend. To let the crowd know just how important it is to stay alert to the threat of terror, his plane did a fly-pass over the speedway and his motorcade did a lap before he addressed the crowd. Dressed in a racing jacket, natch.
He also said this to a sports interviewer who asked if he’d like to drive a stock car. “I’d like to, but I’m afraid the agents wouldn’t let me. I flew fighters when I was in the Guard and I like speed.”
What a f**king liar. It’s nothing to do with what the agents will let him do. He doesn’t drive stock cars because he’s afraid… of the ever-present threat of shark attack.
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Date
20040216
Church & State
Time
17:48
Newsweek – Something About Mary: As director of vice presidential operations for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, Mary Cheney makes an inviting target. In 2000 the Cheney family insisted that Mary was a private citizen and off-limits to the press. Even so, her presence seemed to bolster the “compassionate conservative” image the Bush-Cheney ticket hoped to portray. After her father became veep, Mary joined the gay-friendly Republican Unity Coalition and gave speeches encouraging the GOP to reach out to women, minorities and gays. “We can make sexual orientation a nonissue for the Republican Party, and we can help achieve equality for all gay and lesbian Americans,” she said in an April 2002 statement. But when she joined the ’04 campaign last year, Mary quit the coalition and seemed to fade into her own undisclosed location. Now that Mary, 34, is a senior campaign official, the Web site hopes to shame her back into the spotlight.
The site is here. Speak now, or…
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Date
20040216
Photoshopping
Time
19:14
Had to be done.
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Date
20040217
The End of Democracy
Time
10:03
The Guardian – Hi-tech voting machines ‘threaten’ US polls: The criticisms centre on three issues: the machines offer no record of how a vote was cast – so no prospect of a repeat of the “hanging chad” fiasco of the 2000 election; the accuracy with which they record votes has been called into question; and they could be vulnerable to computer hackers.
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Date
20040217
RWCs
Time
10:04
New York Times – Subject of Campaign Rumor Denies She and Kerry Had an Affair : The woman at the center of unsubstantiated rumors that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts had an extramarital affair released a statement on Monday in which she denied any romantic involvement with him.
You may want to have a quick peak at what the Torygraph and The Scum printed yesterday, then note how selectively they use the quote from Alexandra Polier: “I have never had a relationship with Senator Kerry, and the rumors in the press are completely false. Whoever is spreading these rumors and allegations does not know me, but should know the pain they have caused me and my family.”
The Torygraph today: “I have never had a relationship with Senator Kerry, and the rumours in the press are completely false. Whoever is spreading these rumours and allegations does not know me.”
The Scum today: “I have never had a relationship with Senator Kerry. Whoever is spreading that does not know me.”
So much for the pain, then. Water under the bridge. Bygones. Fish wrappings. And so on. C**ts.
UPDATE – You can read her full statement and an accompanying statement from her parents here.
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Date
20040217
Riding High on Blogdex
Time
10:18
Kuro5hin – quick, superficial look at the style and content of the leaked Windows 2000 source. (Focuses on developer comments which contain some telling confessions and many sweary passages such as; ‘If you change the tabs to spaces you will be killed! Doing so f**ks the build process!’)
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Date
20040217
Seems Fair…
Time
10:24
CNN – New scholarship created for whites only.
The application requires an essay on “why you are proud of your white heritage” and a recent picture to “confirm whiteness.” Further, it warns that “evidence of bleaching will disqualify applicants.”
You’d almost think they were going out of their way to make a statement…
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Date
20040217
Inneresting
Time
10:32
Explore some ghost towns. (Link via Ultimate Insult.)
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Date
20040217
Tony Blair’s Email
Time
10:39
—– Original Message —–
From: arapmoifamil AT caramail.com
To: tony-blair AT prime-minister.co.uk
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2004 5:00 PM
Subject: BUSINESS PARTNER
–> Dear Sir,
–>
–> I am Gideon Arap Moi, the son of The former president of Kenya
–> Mr Daniel Arap Moi. I came to know you in the course of my
–> search for a reliable And GOD fearing partner, and I decided to
–> contact you,Because I believe you are a reputable person and I
–> feel You can help me and my mother over this confidential matter.
[snip]
Heh. Reputable, huh? Do you think maybe I should tell him?
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Date
20040217
Established Media
Time
10:43
No tabloid format fro The Guardian. Oh well. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for a broadsheet with boobs in it.
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Date
20040217
The Interwebnet
Time
10:45
Matt Jones brings us this quote from Marc Smith, a sociologist who works for Microsoft: “If you’re 1 in a million, then there are 768 of you on the Internet…”
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Date
20040217
In The Courts
Time
10:50
Waiter awarded $15,000 after boys kicks him in the groin. The kick came after the little dear threatened eatery staff with a knife. The waiter was left with acute epididymitis and erectile dysfunction.
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Date
20040217
Coming Up
Time
10:56
Simpsons movie due in 2006.
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Date
20040217
Does What It Says On The Tin
Time
10:58
Well, almost. Theft-proof car stolen.
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Date
20040217
I Believe In The BBC
Time
11:00
This Fark thread relating to reports that the government plans to break up the BBC makes for interesting reading.
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Date
20040217
Photoshopping
Time
11:04
I woke up with this in my head at about 4am. You can seem the embiggened version in all its glory here at B3ta.
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Date
20040217
The Political Weblog Movement
Time
11:10
Marina Hyde has an obvious beef with Private Eye. So how is it that Tom has ended up as the meat in the sandwich? I’m confused…
As for the suggestion that a self-effacing man like Tom mentions the most significant misinterpretation of the Teens page because he’s being boastful…. well, I think perhaps Marina is having a bit of a shouty day. (Erm, but that’s off the record, m’kay?)
I’ve heard Tom tell this story before, and so have many of you. You know the context in which he uses it. Private Eye getting it wrong and admitting it helps to establish that the Teens page is a joke. And when he tells the story, he always has this unmistakeable tone of amazement in his voice that he would get such an apology.
All of this makes me wonder if Marina actually listened to the radio show to hear this ‘boast’ first-hand.
UPDATE – Oh, and The Guardian never, ever gets things wrong. And they’ve replied to every single email that I’ve sent them about errors or omissions they have made regarding myself or this website. Obviously.
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Date
20040218
It’s War! And Things Is Getting Ridiculous!
Time
11:02
These are not happy times for the truth.
In too many cases to cite here (especially on the radio, which is very hard to link to) several reporters have been talking about this faked photo as if it’s the only photo, thereby suggesting that this, the photo that enjoyed much wider circulation mostly thanks to that jerk Rush Limbaugh isn’t real. Sure, the genuine photo is equally meaningless (Kerry is three rows back from Fonda and this happened two years before the Hanoi episode) but it irks me to see lazy one-week-behind journalism in action. The Guardian – to their credit – mention the original photo, but it’s a passing mention at best.
This would, I would think, leave one vulnerable to claims of liberal bias. Or laziness. Given the effect this release has had, one could even speculate that the second (faked) photo came from liberal quarters in an effort to discredit the first.
The Kerry/intern rumour, sparked at Drudge with very little substance, was referred to regularly on Murdoch’s Fox News within hours of it being posted and then given magic legs by one of his British rags and widely distributed via the Interwbenet. They’re still banging on about it today, suggesting that denials were only made because pressure was brought to bear.
(Ooh, lookie. An transcript of a relevant interview with Larry Flynt. And here was me just saying that radio was difficult to link to…)
For the record; I don’t want to be on either team if this is the game they want to play.
Meanwhile, both Bush and Blair appear to have successfully taken recent findings and admissions regarding their illegal war off the air.
If you were reading bloggerheads last week, you actually watched this happen. (You may also note how fast The Scum drop their online content back into the subscription-only archive.)
The Sun – Wed, February 04, 2004: “What will the anti-war brigade do if the latest inquiry doesn’t go their way? March on Westminster? Strike at the BBC? Join the Lib Dems? It’s time we stopped looking backwards, and gave up trying to rewrite history. A poll shows 69 per cent of the public think it was right to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Enough said. The WMD non-issue is a major distraction for Tony Blair when he should be concentrating on real problems that affect real people … Like the NHS, education, transport, immigration and £50billion of squandered taxes. When is someone going to get excited about that little lot?”
The Times – Thu, February 05, 2004: Mr Blair’s spokesman said: “This does appear to be a bit of an attempt to rewrite history and to inject another element of controversy into this.”
The Scotsman – Mon, February 09, 2004: Prime Minister Tony Blair today began a series of initiatives he hopes will switch the political focus back on to the domestic agenda after weeks of speculation and fall-out from the Hutton Inquiry.
This isn’t the first time Murdoch’s newspapers have helpfully staged a convenient arena while pretending to confront Tony Blair. Those of us with long memories remember very clearly how The Scum ‘demanded’ Blair focus on asylum seekers. This just happened to be during the time when evidence was being given to The Hutton Inquiry, and hey – what do you know – Tony listened… and it was The Scum wot won it.
Of course, there are a few alternatives to the Murdoch/Blair machine, but, as The Guardian notes, the largest of these – the BBC – is being effectively gagged on the subject.
The question of Bush’s war service, the gaps that remain unexplained despite the recent release of ‘all’ documentation, and the very strong indications that these may have been ‘scrubbed clean’ in 1997, centre on a very important issue in that Bush playing solider has been an important propaganda tool before, during and after the illegal invasion of Iraq.
But it’s the illegal war itself that should be the main issue.
If you commit your country to war, the very least you can do is make damn sure that you’ve crossed the i’s and dotted the t’s… but Blair & Hoon’s best defence had them unaware that the public and parliament were being mislead over a small and insignificant line of distinction between weapons that would be a threat if we invaded and weapons that were a sufficient threat to warrant invasion.
Be they outright liars or dangerous incompetents (who diddle the facts ‘subconsciously’), this makes their position as a ruling government largely untenable – even if it only comes down to the matter of public trust (a currency that they will have trouble operating without).
I’m far from bored. I’m as mad as hell. And I don’t think we can trust the government on domestic or foreign policy until this matter has been cleared up.
Fuck the rumours. I want the truth. And I want it to be given a bloody good airing.
(PS – Tony Blair picks his nose. Pass it on.)
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Date
20040218
2004 – The Year of Zero Modesty
Time
11:08
New Statesman has a ‘highlight’ feature to enhance the growing list of nominees for their 2004 New Media Awards. January’s featured site was the Can Do Exchange.
It’s not too late to add your thoughts on this site or any other.
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Date
20040218
Riding High on Blogdex
Time
11:16
I don’t care what you’ve seen on the teevee or heard on the raydio, you shouldn’t shake your Polaroid pictures. (How nice to see that this is newsworthy.)
Also, we have what appears to be the first exploit based on the leak of Windows source code and a sad farewell to Webmonkey.
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Date
20040218
Bygones
Time
11:27
The Guardian – Iraq oil cash funded MPs’ campaigns: These files do not implicate Mr Galloway in personal corruption. Nor do they suggest that Mr Dalyell and Mr Reynolds, who always paid their own way, had any knowledge of what was going on.
But you can bet that’s not how many of these people will be playing it.
1. Indications are that these documents are authentic; but if they’re not they won’t be the first of the fakes.
2. Speaking of past relationships…
3. Don’t you love it how RWCs dismiss pretty much everything that comes from The Independent or The Guardian as ‘liberal bias’… until something that suits their agenda comes along and they immediately tout it about with their very own layer of bias?
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Date
20040218
Mildly Amusing
Time
11:43
The Rumsfeld fighting technique vs. Bush Yoga. Which be the better fitness regime? Choose now!
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Date
20040218
In The News
Time
11:52
London News Review – Dead Kid On The Block: About 40 police officers were injured by rioters protesting about the death of 17-year-old Thomas Hickey, who died after a police chase. Or who didn’t die after a police chase. Depending upon who you believe. And were the rioters actually protesting about the death of a young boy from their community, or were they just bored and drunk? Again, it depends who you believe.
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Date
20040218
Music
Time
11:55
A special link for those of you with hangovers: the world’s best drum solos. Also, check out Shakespeare in Hell, a death-metal band that bases its music on the works of Shakespeare, right down to ‘taking the lyrics verbatim from the original Elizabethan text…’
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Date
20040218
Google – The Adsense Trial
Time
12:03
[edit – stats removed]
It’s just been pointed out to me that the Google Adsense T&Cs expressly prohibit the disclosure of any/all ‘click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to You by Google’…
So no more stats for you to chew on, sorry. I’ll just have crunch them privately for a few weeks and then let you know whether I think the program sucks or not. I’m sure you trust me, and I’m sure Google will benefit greatly from such a black and white ruling.
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Date
20040218
Google
Time
12:15
I wanted to send a ‘calm blue ocean’ gift to the lovely Marinda Hynde, so I searched on Google for unpinchable knickers.
1. I was amazed to discover that nobody sells such a thing (or even sees fit to discuss it).
2. Check out the alternative search that Google offers.
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Date
20040218
Vote!
Time
12:54
Gay Penguin for President!
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Date
20040218
Photoshopping
Time
14:10
Bush has some difficulty with zombies. You’ll want to see this cracker, too.
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Date
20040218
Inneresting
Time
14:39
Atrios on Bush, Flynt & Drudge. Who aren’t sleeping together by the way.
UPDATE – Tony Blair really does pick his nose, you know…
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Date
20040218
Rupert ‘The Evil One’ Murdoch
Time
14:51
The latest Sun Reader Survey is out. Here’s an interesting snippet from last week’s survey: “Looking back on the last set of stories you reviewed, 63% of you thought the Hutton report was a whitewash, while 60% of you said you were looking forward to reading the revelations in Jordan’s upcoming autobiography.”
No. of times Jordan appeared on the front page last week: 3
No. of times the Hutton Report appeared on the front page last week: 0
Remember the fuss they made when 1% of their readership called in to agree that Muslim cleric Abu Hamza should be booted out of the country? It was front-page news for two days running!
63% of their readers thinking that the Hutton report was a whitewash barely gets a mention… apart from an editorial that assures them that they’re all bored with it and it’s time to move on.
Oh well. It’s not as we expected them to do otherwise… and even if they end up losing readers as a result, I’m sure a few CD/DVD giveaways will keep circulation ticking over (see partial screengrab of the latest reader survey to your right or a wider grab here).
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Date
20040218
Google
Time
18:22
Credit to Shak, who knew how soon this was coming:
Slashdot – Yahoo switches search engines: Yahoo! in the last hours dumped Google and rolled out a brand new search engine mainly based on Inktomi search technology and Overture sponsored results. On Monday Yahoo! also launched its own crawler, called “Yahoo! Slurp”, which replaced former “Inktomi Slurp”.
UPDATE – Most of my core/client search results hold up equally well in the All New Yahoo, and I also noticed the following similarity to the database it left behind.
UPDATE – Yahoo Press Release. The XML/RSS site syndication looks dead interesting. Do I dare climb down from my dinosaur and make use of it?
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Date
20040219
Established Media
Time
10:30
The timing may not be the best, but I have a serious bone to pick with Private Eye.
You’ll note on their website that they helpfully publish ‘a small selection from the joke pages’ which, quite simply, just isn’t good enough.
To their credit, Eye got online pretty sharpish, and had an all-singing all-dancing site in 1997 or thereabouts, but it was pretty top-heavy and didn’t do them a lot of good. After that, the web presence was – and is – pretty perfunctory.
What the Eye needs, and what their readership deserves, is an online version complete with archive. That way, if I wanted to find out what they said about Tim Yeo in nineteen-ninety-dot, I could simply enter my username and password (obtained from paying for an enhanced subscription or a special online-only subscription) and search through the database to see any relevant entries.
Even if you wanted to approach it on a modest scale, this facility could also be used to serve the general public. Take, say, 500 or so worthy names that have had a suitable level of coverage and present a flat version of ‘result’s pages that can be picked up by indexing robots.
This would present a solid result in Google for searches relating to any given person/company/organisation and/or their past activities/alliances. The results would, of course, be presented in extract form. To see the whole entry, you could pay a one-off fee or take out a subscription.
This enhanced subscription model would make it easier for readers to find and share important information. It would also give them something new and exciting to cancel the next time they get their knickers in a twist.
A well-conceived system, properly marketed, could pay for the data entry and start producing gravy in a very short period of time.
Unless of course Private Eye relies on the fish-wrapping principle as much as any tabloid….
*cough*
So, here’s a snippet that I can’t link to and am forced to scan. The Eye also reports that ‘Lord Inge, chosen by Tony Blair as one of the five members of the Butler Inquiry into intelligence on Iraq, has resigned from a firm that employs former intelligence staff following questioning by Private Eye.’
I’d like to find/improve/build an indexable reference page that focuses on those chosen to judge where intelligence went wrong and Tony didn’t, but I’m incredibly busy today. Any links to confirm or clarify these claims to help matters along would be appreciated.
Also, if you’d like to make your views known on the matter of an Eye archive, you can get in touch and make your feelings known by using this ‘contacts’ page.
Be nice. That nice Mr Hislop fellow was obviously putting this to bed when Marina had her little flap the other day, so I’m sure he can do without an invasion of shouty people.
Cheers all.
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Date
20040219
Riding High on Blogdex
Time
10:32
Topping the chart; how to cheat on the latest sugary-drink promotion in the US and news that Dean has called it quits (there’s a related post at his weblog).
There are also quite a few links to Yahoo’s minimalist and Googlesque search interface, but this has been around for a while. The database is new, though, and it’s turning up all sorts of wonderful results.
Take for example the Universal Church of the Interactive Network. It’s been a long, hard climb in Google, but currently the UCIN is 62nd in that database for the single generic search term ‘religion’. In the new Yahoo database it debuts at 50.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040219
The Bush Administration
Time
10:47
Wired – Scientists Claim: Bush Distorts Science: The Bush administration has distorted scientific fact leading to policy decisions on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry, a group of about 60 scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, said in a statement on Wednesday.
PS – The Grand Canyon is only a few thousand years old.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040219
Animal Kingdom
Time
10:55
Animals on the London Underground; both real and imagined.
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Date
20040219
Consume!
Time
10:57
Subscribe!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040219
Only Interesting to Hardcore Geeks
Time
10:57
Women is spacesuits! (Helmets… so many helmets…)
Link via Ultimate Insult.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040219
Education
Time
10:59
Proportion project goes astray when teacher asks students to compare their Mum’s head, waist and bust measurements to that of a Barbie doll.
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Date
20040219
Retro
Time
11:01
Crack open some cereal boxes of yore.
Link via Everlasting Blort.
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Date
20040219
Breaking News
Time
11:06
Independent – Government to give go ahead for GM maize. Whether we like it or not.
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Date
20040219
Corporate Wisdom
Time
11:08
Disney: How much for those Muppets in the window?
Speaking of puppets, this is a good for a giggle (requires Quicktime).
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Date
20040219
Rupert ‘The Evil One’ Murdoch
Time
11:13
Take a look at the ‘news’ page of The Scum today and see how many articles are appeals for ammunition from the readers themselves. Did we miss a round of layoffs or something?
Also, there’s another shameless plug for There’s Something About Miriam. A photo-special this time. But all in good fun. Or in the name of social science. Or something.
The editorial is a blast, as usual. After giving ‘immigrants who drive death trap cars’ what for, they go on to say the following about our dear leader and his adventures in Europe: We don’t doubt Tony Blair means what HE says about the need to adapt to a rapidly-changing global economy. But it isn’t possible to take Old Europe’s deadly duo, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, seriously.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040219
Tony Blair’s Email
Time
11:26
–> —– Original Message —–
–> From: kerrie m*****
–> To: tony-blair AT prime-minister.co.uk
–> Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2004 11:04 AM
–> Subject: kerrie m**** -email
–>
–>
–> Dear Tony Blair
–> I am sending this email to advise you about our
–> countryside.
–> the comunity at w******* have done out best to keep our surroundings alive
–> and wll. you have repaid us by not cutting down our forests and woods, now i
–> would like to ask if you could try and stop trees being cut down around
–> public places or near nature.
–>
–> i sent you a letter similer to this two years ago when you sent some
–> information to our school.
–>
–> yours sincerely,
–> kerrie m*****, age 10
Dear Kerry,
Your email ended up at the wrong address, but did not go to waste. I’ve shared your important message regarding trees and nature with my readers (minus any identifying information, of course).
If you’d like to send a copy of this email to Tony Blair, you’ll need to do so via this website:
http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page821.asp
I hope school is going well for you, and I wish you luck with your trees.
Regards,
Tim Ireland
www.bloggerheads.com
PS – Tony Blair picks his nose. Pass it on.
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Date
20040219
Consume!
Time
12:04
Lottery winner Michael Carroll is in the news again. This widely-circulated AP story on his recent legal complications has a lot of people searching for background information and arriving at the Michael Carroll needs more money! page.
The Mirror reports that Michael is receiving counselling courtesy of Camelot, just as others have when a mind-boggling amount of money fell on their heads.
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Date
20040219
Virus Alerts
Time
12:32
The Register – Netsky B is very pesky: A new, more dangerous version of the Netsky worm is making the rounds on the Internet. The bug, which goes by the name Netsky-b or Moodown-b, is a modified version of NetSky-a that surfaced earlier this week. Initial ratings from the likes of Symantec, Network Associates and F-Secure suggest that the malware is a medium- to high-grade threat; and early reports say that the worm is spreading quickly.
I suspected as much. I got two very strange bounces from two different mail servers with ‘local problems’ yesterday, which is usually a sign that something new is on the loose and clogging up the works.
Symantec have some info and a removal tool here.
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Date
20040219
The Political Weblog Movement
Time
13:30
CNN – Iran’s bloggers fear clampdown. That’ll learn ’em to interfere with the natural order of things.
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Date
20040219
Would You Believe…
Time
13:39
Heh. I’m glad I didn’t see this earlier this morning:
Officials in Botswana urge people wishing to commit suicide to “use trees” and not trains.
I’m sorry, but when I go, I want to take as many trains as possible with me.
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Date
20040219
Photoshopping
Time
14:29
I have no idea how I managed to miss this. Cheers to James for the heads-up….
Help liven up the build-up to the US elections by entering The Guardian’s photograph-doctoring competition.
In this context, why yes, I do wish to play…
Open Outlook
Create New Email
Attach
Attach
Attach
Attach
etc….
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Date
20040219
Flash Games
Time
16:03
Sod the waiting game; let’s play Hungry Hungry Hippos!
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Date
20040220
Bunch of Stuff
Time
09:53
Yesterday’s Guardian was a bloody good read:
Catherine Bennett goes soft on Tony Blair’s Big Abortion. You’ll have to scroll down past the bit about Zoo and Nuts (whose core marketing messages are, respectively, “Women! Your men are dumb! Buy this and keep them happy!” and “F**k off, bitch, I’m reading”) to get to it. Here’s the meat:
Even now, the site often bears little relation to what passes for current affairs. There is no mention of Hutton, for example. Nothing on the BBC. Iraq. Iran. Civil liberties. And yet, on planet Big Conversation, something has changed since those first, sunny days of undeviating congratulation. Slowly, disappointments have surfaced; a cloud of dissatisfaction has settled over this once bright exercise in positive thinking. The Big Conversation is becoming the Extended Sulk, sunk in gloom over tuition fees and council tax, inadequate benefits, speed limits, poor pensions, the existence of other people.
1. As she notes herself, there’s very little substance getting through
2. The issues that are filtering through are strangely in keeping with Tony’s new domestic agenda
3. We have public belligerence to thank for what has made it to the surface; not the concept or design of the ‘conversation’
Careful with that planet, Mr President: (The Bush administration) has used science selectively… has a narrow view of America’s global duties, and its views on global warming are influenced by the fossil fuel lobby.
Selective use of input in order to serve an agenda? Gosh, that sounds awfully familiar. Can we look forward to an inquiry into the failure of our scientists to act on global warming sometime soon?
Tories shun BBC chairman panel: The Tories made it clear last night they would not support the appointment of a party grandee as chairman of the BBC and spurned an invitation to help scrutinise the process.
Doubts were expressed about the government’s advertisement for the position, which stated that the new chairman would need to act as “an effective link between the BBC, government and parliament”. The word ‘link’ has since been changed to ‘bridge’, and we’ve been told to stop arguing about semantics.
Watch ’em….
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Date
20040220
SEO
Time
09:56
Yahoo! Birth of a New Machine
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Date
20040220
Consumer Power
Time
09:58
Grey Tuesday: Tuesday, February 24 will be a day of coordinated civil disobedience: websites will post Danger Mouse’s Grey Album on their site for 24 hours in protest of EMI’s attempts to censor this work.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040220
RWCs
Time
10:38
Toronto Star – `Heads should roll’ over Iraq: Richard Perle, a chief proponent of last year’s U.S. invasion of Iraq, yesterday called for the chiefs of the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency to step down because of their faulty conclusions that Saddam Hussein possessed mass-killing weapons. Perle, a close adviser to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, said top officials made no attempt to skew the intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. Instead, he implied, top policymakers relied in good faith on the conclusions of the intelligence agencies.
!
I say again:
!
Ah, but we’re just getting started…
Fair and balanced Fox reveals Democratic candidates touting ‘populist notions’ live in mansions!
So privileged. So distant….
Well, they’ve lost my vote. What America needs is man like Bush, who does everything he can to stay in touch with the people.
Always reliable National Review reveals Bush tried to volunteer for Vietnam: Of the four pilots I spoke to who flew with Bush in the Texas days, Fred Bradley knew him best. They had met before going off to the year-long ordeal of pilot school, and entered the 111th at about the same time. Both were junior lieutenants without a lot of flying experience. But the inexperience didn’t prevent Bush — along with Bradley — from going to their squadron leaders to see if they could get into a program called “Palace Alert.” “There were four of us lieutenants at the time, and we were all fairly close. Two of them had more flight time than the president and me, said Bradley.” All four volunteered for Vietnam (Bradley doesn’t remember whether he and Bush actually signed paperwork, but he specifically remembers both Bush and himself trying to get into the Palace Alert Vietnam program.) Bush and Bradley were turned away, and the two more senior pilots went to Vietnam.
*ahem*
From a transcript of Bush’s recent Meet The Press interview:
Tim Russert: But you didn’t volunteer or enlist to go.
President Bush: No, I didn’t.
Besides, concludes the writer Jed Babbin (deputy undersecretary of defence in the first Bush Administration), we don’t need a solider in the White House, we need a leader!
Yes, but what we have now is a man who isn’t really the leader and likes to dress up as a soldier.
You can read a flaming Fark thread here if you like. Keep your head down and your bullshit meter on full. Nuggets include why Rush Limbaugh didn’t get to do battle with Charlie and this late observation from Dr Strangelove: I just hope that Dubya remembers to remove the MADE IN THE USA stickers off of the WMD’s that will inevitably be found buried in the desert…say Octoberish…
Finally, check out what Calpundit has cooking on Bush’s file. The truth will out.
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Date
20040220
Guantanamo Bay
Time
11:01
The Independent – After 772 days, five Britons face freedom from Guantanamo Bay.
The Independent – ‘We want answers: why have they been held so long without charge?’
Tough call for the government….
1. Setting them free calls into the question the judgement of the US government, who held them for over two year without trial or evidence. And for what…? (FFS, they have to be questioned by police upon arrival before it’s decided what to do with them. Probably their first taste of a legal process since they were locked up.)
2. Arresting them and holding them indefinitely (and/or for indefinite questioning) under the Patriot Act of Airstrip One pretty much gives us our own branch of Gitmo.
3. Arresting them and subjecting them to a trial sets a precedent that will make it difficult for the US to keep the remaining prisoners locked up without such rights.
UPDATE – Sun tries and convicts men who have been held without trial.
Ah, there’s a nice clue. We don’t arrest them for terrorism, we instead arrest them for treason. That gives the US an impenetrable ‘chalk & cheese’ defence:
“The traitors we gave back to their country for them to deal with. The terrorists and illegal non-conforming-combattle-ants, we’re continuing to hold.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040220
Activism
Time
11:19
A noble cause and all (praise be to the semi-colon), but the idea of sending flowers and buying t-shirts? Seems a bit icky to me…
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040220
Inneresting
Time
11:27
Does mixing drinks get you drunker? I know it makes you sicker…
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040220
In The News
Time
11:29
Man arrested for watching porn while driving. Before you ask; he had both hands on the wheel. The charge related to the visibility of the screen from outside the vehicle.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040220
Art
Time
11:34
Blimey! Age Maps kick arse!
Two photographs of the same person, from their child & adult years, spliced together to make… exactly what I don’t know, but it’s bloody wonderful!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040220
Spam
Time
11:40
Prankster plays with the Viagra pushers.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040220
Photoshopping
Time
12:40
A little project I have in mind. Chew it over. Send feedback if you like.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040220
Consume!
Time
14:05
Cup of tea, anyone?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040223
What a Bunch of Bankers
Time
10:17
We went into our local branch of Lloyds TSB this Saturday. We had a pretty hefty check to bank, and – being overdrawn to the limit – wanted to withdraw a small amount of money against it. To pay for repairs to our boiler, that packed it in last Wednesday.
We were given the usual ‘talk to the hand’ treatment about clearance, but the bank has been able to show some level of discretion about this in the past, and it was a bit of crisis, so I was sure we’d be OK.
Wrong…
We got stonewalled by the teller and the ‘help’ staff (after queuing for both), so I asked to see the manager.
The Branch Manager wasn’t in, so we got a Personal Account Manager instead. She told us that the computers had said ‘no’, a 4-day-clearance stood and only such-and-such a department could help us, but it was closed on a Saturday.
1. This was a cheque from another bank!
2. Need money. Fix boiler. It cold. Savvy?
3. Why isn’t the manager here?
4. Closed on Saturday? That’s a big bloody help.
Answers:
1. I’m sorry, sir, but our clearance policy…
2. I’m sorry, sir, but there’s nothing I can do about that…
3 & 4. You know, sir, we don’t *have* to open on a Saturday at all….
We later found out that such-and-such department was open on a Saturday morning after all, which makes her a lying so-and-so. Or an incompetent.
Without personal service and discretion, just what are we paying these people for? We may as well do business directly with the database that tells them what they can and can’t do… so this week the missus and I will be looking at a switch to online banking.
Smile.co.uk currently has a big marketing push about ease-of-transfer, which is obviously a big issue, but I’ve also heard some good things about egg.com
Personal recommendations and any tips would be welcome.
UPDATE – Yes, this does count in smile.co.uk’s favour. A lot.
Oh, and look forward real soon to a special web page explaining why we (and a bunch of other people) switched from Lloyds TSB. People who search for these worthless tossers need to know what level of ‘service’ they provide.
A highlight would be the time they sent our new (unsigned) cards and PIN numbers to the wrong address. Twice. In the end, the manager had to deliver the cards to our door to ensure that we got them. We advised him that we planned to make a complaint to the ombudsman, but he asked us to wait until they could provide us with a full report. They never came through. Perhaps they thought it would just go away.
Well, they were close….
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040223
Consume!
Time
10:19
Motley Fool – Why The ‘EuroMillions’ Lottery Is Rubbish (link via Wibbler).
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040223
Riding High on Blogdex
Time
10:22
Ralph is running.
See Ralph run.
Don’t run, Ralph, don’t run!
Something has to be done about the poor choice provided by the two-party system, but this isn’t the election for it.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040223
Civil Liberties
Time
10:59
Thomas Keneally on the inhuman immigration policy of Australia. Ends with a nifty quote; “When the only way you can make a policy work is to lie, then it’s a policy best not embarked upon.”
On that note…
The Independent – Guantanamo Bay – Sooner or later they will have to admit there is no evidence.
Especially when they’re latest line of defence over the Iraq lies is that there may have been a failure in intelligence. This evidence, that so far no even the prisoners have been allowed to see, would that have come from the same intelligence services?
On that note…
Belmarsh Prison; easy to get to, not so easy to get out of. And yes, you should bloody well care. It may only be filthy ragheads (who are ‘bad men‘ to a man) today, but tomorrow…
The Guardian – An authoritarian state is in the process of construction: Shouldn’t this government’s strident moves towards corporatist, directorial government give us pause? The time has surely come to formally delimit the powers of the different actors – government, parliament and judiciary – in the constitution. The home secretary relies on the fact that most of us are not affected by his illiberal experiments to govern by way of the exception. We remain docile in the face of his extraordinary measures against those we are encouraged to consider as outcasts. But if he is allowed to continue imposing measures unsuited to our liberal conception of the state, how long will it be before we too become “the other”?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040223
Consume!
Time
11:00
Finally, a urinal worthy of expensive rock-candy!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040223
The Bush Administration
Time
11:01
New York Times – Taking Spin Out of Report That Made Bad Into Good Health: The Bush administration says it improperly altered a report documenting large racial and ethnic disparities in health care, but it will soon publish the full, unexpurgated document. “There was a mistake made,” Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, told Congress last week. “It’s going to be rectified.”
I was greatly saddened not to see brazen use of the word ‘subconcious‘, but there you go.
*ahem*
Moving right along to the next report…
Observer – Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us: A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
Why wait for climate change? If Bush wins the next election, riots will follow as sure as night follows day.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040223
Election Antics
Time
11:17
Why is everybody shooting their bolt so soon? Surely we shouldn’t be capturing Osama until October? Oh well. Either Bush is worried that it’s alll about to come unravelled or someone is warming up a nice, comfortable rat-hole.
Here’s some background from The Washington Post.
Back to Iraq has some useful links, and will no doubt follow the story with interest.
For the record, the story was sparked by “a US intelligence source.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040223
Only Interesting to Bloggers
Time
11:26
A blogger reports on his meeting with George W. Bush.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040223
The Political Weblog Movement
Time
11:29
Welcome to the fold, Phil Bateman, Labour Councillor for Wolverhampton City. Your housewarming gift is some free advice:
The frames must go.
In fact, I’m not listing you here until you get rid of them. Tough love, sorry.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date
20040223
We’re Not At Home To Mr Cockup
Time
11:35
Remember all the headlines generated by the notion of ‘fat tax’ last week?
Government slims down figures in ‘war on fatties’: … when the Department of Health declared that 900,000 people on incapacity benefit were clinically obese, at a cost of billions to the taxpayer, several newspapers gorged on the figures. But yesterday the Government admitted that, due to “an administrative error”, it had overestimated its numbers by 1,000 times. Slimming its figures faster than a WeightWatchers programme, the health department revealed that the number of obese claimants was not 900,000, but actually 900. And the weekly cost was not £70m, but £70,000.
Oh well. Water under the bridge. At least you didn’t subconciously overstate the risk posed by another country in order to justify a pre-emptive strike.
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Date
20040223
The Happy Poster Project
Time
11:41
A lot of politics today, so here’s the happy bits right at the top (for distractions, you may have to hunt elsewhere).
As you’ll note from the orginal fielding of the idea for zero-politics maximum-happy posters/flyers at B3ta, Rich from FunJunkie was first out of the gate with some late-Friday-afternoon antics using the draft poster.
With a minor change to the draft image (I think I made it scarier, not happier), I went out myself on Saturday to spread a little joy in Guildford.
1. Yes, you do feel a bit of a dick asking to put a ‘happy’ poster in someone’s shop window, but it soon passes.
2. Many who said ‘no’ to the front window offered to put it up in the staff room.
3. For this to spread properly, there does need to be a central URL printed on the poster so peeps know where to get their own. Bloggerheads may not be the best place for this.
So, after some workworkwork I gotta do today, I’ll be making plans for a suitable home and fishing around for the happiest ‘shops on offer.
Cheers all.
UPDATE – I thought it might be a nice idea, but not a central one, to cover some street spam with this stuff. I know of one Herbalife poster that’s been in place in a Guildford bus shelter for over 2 years now….
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Date
20040223
Ah-nold
Time
12:01
SFGate.com – Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to band same-sex marriages to halt ‘civil unrest’. Hmm, the same logic could have halted the illegal invasion of Iraq. Too bad he’s not the…
No, don’t say it. Don’t even think it…
Boston.com – Schwarzenegger says foreign-born citizens should be able to run for president
UPDATE – Do read the former link in full. Arnie’s comments sound like they were penned by Rush Limbaugh: “We cannot have mayors all of a sudden go hand out licenses for various things. In the next city, it’ll be handing out licenses for assault weapons. In the next, it’ll be someone handing them out to sell drugs.”
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Date
20040223
Told You So
Time
17:15
The Scum is having a big DVD giveaway of great British sitcoms. They begin today with Fawlty Towers. As an extra kick in the guts, this and just about every other show on the giveaway list was brought to us by the BBC and/or features in their current Best British Sitcom series.
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Date
20040223
Scam Alert
Time
18:12
Here’s a nifty new scam. I just got this in my Inbox.
Looks to me like they’re after greedy/stupid sods who think they can redirect the refund to their own credit or debit card.
If you’re in any doubt, go directly to usaeasypay.net or firstusabill.com (both of these domain names were registered 3-5 days ago, BTW) and you’ll see the same refund notification for the same individual item. On the front page.
—– Original Message —–
From: order@usaeasypay.net
To: Undisclosed Recipients
Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 8:40 PM
Subject: We have problems with your order!
–> Hello, Dear client.
–> ———————-
–> Your order ID: 2488917620
–> ———————-
–> 02/12/2004 You have ordered the notebook (New P3 Direct 17″ Wide TFT
–> Notebook-with Pentium 4 3.06GHz Power)
–> with free-of-charge delivery.
–>
–> We are very sorry, but we can’t deliver it to you in promised terms, because
–> we have problems with our delivering company.
–> Your order can not be delivered earlier than in 28 days.
–> Sorry for inconveniences.
–>
–> You have been billed and if time of delivery do not arrange you,
–> you can cancel your order and refund money here:
–> ———————-
–> http://www.firstusabill.com/clients/cn.php?refund=qergl4wthwt3746grbwjf
–> ———————-
–> Your money will be returned to you without any fee.
–> If you have any questions you can e-mail here: help@firstusabill.com
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Date
20040223
Photoshopping
Time
21:11
The Happy Poster Project is go. I’ll be busy tomorrow; do what you can to entertain yourselves.
UPDATE – Heh. This will make your day. Do go for the full midi+ effect; it’s well worth it.
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Date
20040225
South West Trains
Time
10:24
Yesterday afternoon I headed off to London to address a room full of Labour MPs and/or their staff on the value and potential of weblogs.
I left with plenty of time in the pot, but I didn’t count on both ticket machines at the far side of Guildford station being ‘exact change only’ and for the ticket window to be closed. Cheers, SWT.
A staff member finally picked up his ticket machine, but his hipster module couldn’t issue Travelcards, so I had to trek all the way to the far side of the station to buy one. I missed two trains as a result. The next train arrived on time…. and then got stuck less than a mile from Waterloo station behind another train that suffered a points failure. It took SWT a full half-hour just to decide to take us backwards to Vauxhall and let us off.
I was delayed by over an hour and – as a result – arrived at Westminster with only 10 minutes of the arranged time remaining.
Thankfully, Tom was on hand to run through the bulk of my presentation. I took over and did what I could to make the right points as fast as possible, but I’d regard the meeting be a washout.
No ticket refund can make up for that. No apology from South West Trains can give that vital hour back.
SWT owes me for this and countless other delays that have had a direct or knock-on effect on my work or personal life, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
In the next few days, I’ll be starting a campaign page to show passengers how easy it is to set up a blog and document delays on their line and what it costs them on each occasion in terms of time, money and distress. These blogs, like Geoff’s and Toby’s, will come to dominate searches for the individual train companies over time and raise a lot of awareness as a result, but that’s just the start. With a number of carefully documented journals running over a period of 6-12 months, we have the beginnings of one hell of a class action lawsuit.
SWT and their ilk simply aren’t up to the job, and they’re costing this country billions of pounds in lost man-hours. It’s about time we brought this to light and hit them where it hurts; with a solid kick to the profit margin.
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Date
20040225
Riding High on Blogdex
Time
11:16
White House – President Calls for Constitutional Amendment Protecting Marriage
CNN – Bush calls for ban on same-sex marriages
NYT – Bush Backs Ban in Constitution on Gay Marriage
It’s official; he’s the most dangerous fundamentalist on the planet.
Ho-hum.
I missed Grey Tuesday, but you can still enjoy some handy tips for writers and the story of the woman who said ‘I don’t!’ to a very public marriage proposal.
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Date
20040225
I Believe In The BBC
Time
11:17
Tory-commissioned report calls for the dismantling of the BBC.
Here’s some good background on the report and the people behind it. From the BBC website, which the Tories also have plans for.
You can see a breakdown of the report here.
And see the Tories disowning the cat they set on the pigeons here…
Torygraph – Time to be nicer to the BBC, say Tories: The Conservatives moved to reposition themselves as friends of the BBC in its battle with Labour last night by backing away from plans to scrap the licence fee and break up the corporation.
Murdoch’s Scum newspaper today carries a report on the report by the guy who wrote the report. Nice to see some objectivity creeping into view. I especially like the way the tail states that ‘David Elstein is the former head of Channel 5,’ but completely fails to mention that he’s also the former head of Sky programming.
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Date
20040225
Corporate Wisdom
Time
11:19
The Guardian – The corporate stooges who nobble serious science: It looks like a conflict of interest and his failure to disclose it was wrong. But the crime for which he is being punished is everywhere. The scientific establishment is rotten from top to bottom, riddled with conflicts far graver than Dr Wakefield’s.
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Date
20040225
Normal People
Time
11:29
Meet Bill Miller. He wants to start a family. And he has a plan.
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Date
20040225
Civil Liberties
Time
11:31
Reuters – Blunkett says terror attack inevitable.
So are explosions on the sun, David.
The Guardian – MPs urged to reject no-trial detentions: Parliament’s joint committee on human rights yesterday made a last minute call for MPs to vote down today the bid by home secretary David Blunkett to renew his powers to detain suspected foreign terrrorists without trial.
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Date
20040225
Page 3 – Words of Wisdom
Time
11:35
Page 3 editorials went missing for a bit there with all the Valentines Day specials and lingerie features and what not. When they did return late last week, they mostly babbled on about non-issues such as who did what on TV and where Posh & Becks may or may not choose to live… but today, Page 3 returns with the hard-hitting opinions we’ve grown to love.
Today, Katie (19, from Liverpool) is ‘horrified’ at the thought if EU health tourists clogging our NHS and says: “The government should do something to protect the health service from these freeloaders.”
UPDATE – The Scum continued their shameless promotion of Sky One’s reality TV show There’s Something About Miriam yesterday, with Miriam on the cover and a lovely topless image inside as part of a special ‘Would you be fooled?’ feature. A sidebar even seeks stories from readers, asking ‘Have you pulled a trannie?’ – so we can look forward to more, I’m sure. We can also look forward to Miriam being chewed up, spat out and then ground into dust as soon as her usefulness has come to an end.
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Date
20040225
It’s War! And Somebody’s Telling Porkies!
Time
11:54
Back to Iraq – Chalabi to U.S.: “Thanks, suckers!”: “As far as we’re concerned we’ve been entirely successful,” Chalabi is quoted as saying. “That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before (about WMD) is not important.”
LA Weekly – Interview with Karen Kwiatkowski: Though a lifelong conservative, Kwiatkowski found herself appalled as the radical wing of the Bush administration, including her superiors in the Pentagon planning department, bulldozed internal dissent, overlooked its own intelligence and relentlessly pushed for confrontation with Iraq.
Boy, that subconcious influence can be a right bastard, can’t it?
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Date
20040225
NSFW
Time
12:00
Oooh, look: bunnies!
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Date
20040225
Photoshopping
Time
12:01
We now have a full and suitably jolly set of images hosted at The Happy Poster Project.
The one you see now comes to us courtesy of Robin. I’ve also sent an email to the owner of this website to see if we can use one of her lovely images of a happy fox & badger.
Put a poster up today. You’ll feel so much better…
UPDATE – The page is already the top search result in Google for ‘happy poster’.
SIDEBAR – B3ta tells us: British comedian/campaigner Mark Thomas is putting on an exhibition in London of lost images from the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Coke were closely involved with the Nazi government, even developing Fanta for the German market. Unable to track down photographs of Coke’s sponsorship of Hitler’s Aryan sports-fest, he’s had to turn to the likes of us for material.
Not wanting to disappoint, I sent them a large version of this little number.
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Date
20040225
SEO
Time
12:15
I’m going to be putting the new search engine Freesearch through its paces over the next few days.
Freesearch comes to us courtesy of Shakil Khan. We’ve yet to share a beer, but we’ve communicated lot by email and in UKNM, and he certainly knows his beans.
The Register has kindly reported on his recent findings regarding the use of sweary words, as has The Daily Record.
UPDATE – My first beef is that the database for the image search is a bit out of date. The only image it’s snapped up from this site is the old logo. Mind you, Google only just updated their image database a few weeks ago, after close to 12 months of the same, increasingly unreliable data.
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Date
20040225
OK, So I’m a Lego Geek
Time
12:31
Bloody hell! Star Wars diorama overload! (Link via Sarcasmo’s Corner.)
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Date
20040225
Video
Time
13:00
A couple of Quicktime videos for you; a top-notch Budweiser ad and a copy of the Nutrigrain ‘Feel Great’ TVC that came and went so quickly last week on Blogdex when the host site fell over. (Both links via Off on a Tangent.)
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Date
20040225
Christianity Watch
Time
13:11
When can we expect the next book, then?
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Date
20040225
Pretty Pictures
Time
13:52
Phwoarrr! Check out the wheels on her!
Oh, and check out this excellent animation. More can be found here and other wonders by the same maker can be found here.
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Date
20040225
Art
Time
14:35
Bestest. Toilet. Ever. If you flipped the mirrors the other way around, this would be great for cottaging exhibitionists.
Speaking of which… Richard Littlejohn has been bitch-slapped for using sweary words on sillyvision. (Latter link via Joe.)
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Date
20040225
Photoshopping
Time
14:43
Blimey, this is a bit of an average crop. I don’t mean to be snarky, but sheesh!
(I do like that John & Yoko one, though….)
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Date
20040226
It’s War! And Somebody’s Telling Porkies!
Time
10:17
Whistleblower: Cleared
Government: Accused of cover-up
Case for war: An official secret
The formal decision not to continue the prosecution of the former GCHQ officer came within five hours of her legal team seeking disclosure of the legal advice given by the Attorney General, over the Iraq war. James Welch, the solicitor for the civil rights watchdog, Liberty, acting for Ms Gun, said: “Our case was that any advice the Government received on the legality of war was relevant to the case and we were prepared to go before a judge and argue for it to be disclosed.
“What Katharine would have said, had this case gone to trial, was that she honestly believed that the Government would not have gone to war if they thought going to war without a second resolution was unlawful. So, if that is the case, we wanted to know what the assessment was in government as to whether it would have been lawful or not.”
Spy case casts fresh doubt on war legality
… the Guardian has learned that a key plank of the defence presented to the prosecutors shortly before they decided to abandon the case was new evidence that the legality of the war had been questioned by the Foreign Office.
It is contained in a document seen by the Guardian. Sensitive passages are blacked out, but one passage says: “The defence believes that the advice given by the Foreign Office Legal Adviser expressed serious doubts about the legality (in international law) of committing British troops in the absence of a second [UN] resolution.”
It is understood that the FO legal team was particularly concerned about the lack of a second UN resolution authorising the use of force and pre-emptive military action.
Now, us misguided peaceniks knew this before the war, and said so.
Take a look at this Guardian piece from March 15, 2003: We must not let ourselves be deceived by Downing Street’s false argument that UN resolution 1441 justifies an Anglo-American attack on Iraq without the need for a further resolution. Last October, Washington originally put forward a resolution specifying that failure by Saddam Hussein to fulfil UN demands for his disarmament should be dealt with “by all possible means” – code for automatic use of armed force. This was totally rejected by France, Russia and China. In November, after six weeks of haggling, the present resolution 1441 was passed, stating that a material breach by Iraq would entail “serious consequences” – not code for automatic war. Moreover, France, Russia and China, in accepting resolution 1441, formally stated that they did so only on the clear understanding that it did not carry with it any automatic recourse to war without a further security council decision.
That’s why Bush & Blair had to push for a second resolution, and that’s why the bugging was in place.
Will there be a repeat of the 45 minute fiasco? Will the government actually dare to claim that they didn’t know the war was illegal at the time… or that they didn’t consider it to be an issue because nobody was talking about it?
UPDATE – It’s bears noting that the front page of The Scum today is dominated by the important issue developing around Posh, Jordan, extensions, highlights and implants.
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Date
20040226
Guantanamo Bay
Time
10:21
The US has filed the first charges against Guantanamo Bay detainees. But only two of them, and only after two years of unlawful detention. They have been charged with ‘conspiracy to commit war crimes’ and will face a military tribunal.
Now the good news… even if they’re cleared by the military tribunal they may still be kept in detention if they are considered a ‘security risk’.
Please excuse me for channelling Jenny Tonge, but I’d like to think that – were I detained without rights or recourse for two years – then I might very well consider becoming a security risk for this reason alone.
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Date
20040226
Christianity Watch
Time
10:57
It’s not shaping up to be a great day for God.
For a start, the IMDB has withdrawn his author credit for The Passion of Christ.
You can still see the references that triggered the original authorship listing, as well as a mighty fine record of publicity, but somehow it’s just not the same.
We also discover today that only 31% of Brits believe that he is the only true God.
Many will want to blame those heathens at the BBC. Me, I blame his sales team.
There are close to 38 million Christians in the UK, and the antics of the Roman Catholic Church leave a lot to be desired. Ditto for the Church of England (also know as ‘Catholicism Lite’). Set up at the convenience of one monarch, and now headed by a monarch with funny ideas about the law and a brood that have considerable trouble controlling their genitals, I can see why a faith so poorly defended might suffer.
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Date
20040226
Inneresting
Time
11:07
An online museum of early electrical appliances from the UK. (Link via Ultimate Insult.)
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Date
20040226
Updates
Time
11:09
After going largely unnoticed for well over two years, the misspelled link to Romenesko’s has finally been corrected site-wide.
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Date
20040226
Consume!
Time
11:15
FunJunkie are conducting a study of the number of Revels contained in each pack and the frequency of the six individual flavours.
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Date
20040226
Flash Games
Time
11:25
Follow the box.
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Date
20040226
Page 3 – Words of Wisdom
Time
11:26
Today Melanie (23, from Watford) is ‘full of pride’ for the war heroes who received medals from the Queen yesterday. She goes on to say: “Their exploits were an inspiration. They deserve all the praise they get after going beyond the call of duty ro topple Saddam.”
Warms the heart, doesn’t it? Deeper into the paper, in the main editorial section, we have open praise for Trooper Christopher Finney, the 19-year-old soldier who won the George Cross, which closes with: “The Armed Forces are full of men and women like him, who put duty and true comradeship before self. Contrast Finney and the other Gulf heroes at the Palace with the armies of pathetic yobs who roam the streets causing mayhem.”
Ah, me. I thought they’d forgotten about the yobs. Oh, and it’s probably worth mentioning that what Chris Finney did to deserve the award was to stop his comrade from getting shot by U.S. warplanes.
SIDELINE – The same editorial also laments the watering down of Blunkett’s terror laws, blaming ‘the whingeing liberal Left and the human rights lawyers’ who are forcing him to act agsint his better instincts: He can rest assured that the British people are on his side. They are not interested in nit-picking debates about suspects’ human rights being broken.
The Scum. Blair’s lies. Purest form. Every Time. Until Rupert changes sides….
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Date
20040226
We’re Not At Home To Mr Cockup
Time
11:46
The U.S. is sinking $62m into a TV-based propaganda project which centres on a new TV station for the Arabs world.
Funded by the U.S. government, it’s produced in Virginia and meant to compete with Qatar-based Al Jazeera and Dubai-based Al Arabiyya.
And, in keeping with the Bush administration’s love for suitable euphemisms, it’s known as Al Hurra, which means ‘the free one’…. unless of course you add one small dot to the Arabic letters that make up the logo, which changes this meaning significantly.
(Heads-up via Scaryduck.)
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Date
20040226
Photoshopping
Time
11:58
The Happy Poster Project continues apace. This heartwarming image comes to us courtesy of Will. I also managed to get permission to use the fox & badger picture blogged yesterday.
I’ve talked with my sons. We’re going on a joy-spreading mission this weekend. Both of them are thrilled.
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Date
20040226
Google
Time
12:04
Nifty site that lets you compare Google & Yahoo results side-by-side.
I’ve had a good play with Freesearch, too. The most interesting search result so far is for ‘religion’. Take a look at No. 4…
Today, I’m going to try to rely on Freesearch rather than my Google Toolbar. I’ll let you know how I get on.
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Date
20040226
Updates
Time
12:21
My outgoing mail is playing silly buggers. If you’re waiting for an answer from me today; don’t.
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Date
20040226
Flash Games
Time
12:48
This is a wonderful (if gory) take on the Yeti/Penguin game. (Link via Ramblings and Revelations.)
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Date
20040226
Virus Alerts
Time
13:01
My outgoing mail problem is almost definitely connected to the spread of the new variant to bring joy to our lives, Netsky.C…
UPDATE – It’s not. I did receive 5 copies of it this morning, but I’m well-protected and it’s not what’s screwing up outgoing email. Co-inky-dink is all it is. Someone made some major changes to the network/mail settings yesterday and I have some rather individual needs that were overlooked. Still, I took the time to do a full scan on my ‘puter and empty the virus vault. Just look at how many of the little suckers have come my way in the last month or so!
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Date
20040226
Riding High on Blogdex
Time
15:31
Blogdex was broken this morning, so here now is a belated post of chart-toppers:
A Chicago Sun Times reviewer has awarded Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ four stars… and also described it as “the most violent film I have ever seen.”
There’s a web-publishing format doing the rounds and somebody has found and explanation for that loud ‘whoosing’ sound last month.
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Date
20040226
The Happy Poster Project
Time
16:40
Ladies and gentlemen, the first major blow has been struck!
The shopping centre in Bath is now a guestimated 2.9% happier. Too bad about the stuck-up ratbags at the town-end of Walcot Street.
Huzzah for Andrea, Joe and all the happy shopkeepers.
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Date
20040227
Rupert ‘The Evil One’ Murdoch
Time
09:50
I was reminded last night of what I’d said about the fate of glamour models such as Rebekah Parmar Teasdale, who got by just fine showing some pink and getting down with some steamy girl-on-girl action in other publications until such photos became widely publicised. Then she became an un-person.
What the equivalent of pink is for a lass like Miriam remains untested, but I’m pretty sure most Scum readers would find the full lunchbox distasteful enough to spark moral outrage. And a fair amount of morbid or guilt-strewn curiosity.
Of course, publicity and awareness is the key, but we also have those lovable search engine spammers and porn merchants to deal with. Only one naked image makes the rather unique name ‘Miriam’ hot property, and I’ve been advised that more than a few of these naked images exist. In fact, they appear to be pretty common. So common that a picture of Miriam ended up in the B3ta Female of Shemale? quiz (Miriam appears 3rd down on the left).
All issues of gender realignassignment and sexual orientation aside, just the fact that she would dare to bare more than the acceptable, harmless and inarguably empowering amount of flesh allowed on Page 3 is enough to trigger a simple shut-out, but I’m willing to bet that – once the show finishes on Murdoch’s Sky One – it’s going to be open season.
What you have to remember is the curiosity factor. If Rebekah Wade thinks she can sell more papers by including blurred images of Miriam’s weenie under the banner of outrage, she will do so. With relish.
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Date
20040227
It’s War! And Somebody’s Telling Porkies!
Time
10:21
What should we make of Clare Short’s claim that that Britain eavesdropped on the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan?
As an ex-minister, is it her duty to keep quiet about security matters she was privy to during her time of service? Yes.
As a public servant, is it her duty to disclose relevant information if the intelligence services were acting improperly or being used improperly by the government (subconsciously or otherwise)? You bet.
Check out The Independent and The Guardian by all means, but to get to the heart of this matter you need only turn to The Scum. There you will find exactly what the government wants you to take on board, and it’s quite telling:
The Sun – main editorial – Friday 27th Feb 2004:
Clare Short has committed the ultimate act of treachery. She has betrayed the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, the Labour Party and the country. And according to the Prime Minister, she has put lives at risk. By revealing matters of national security which she gleaned while in Government, she has probably broken the Official Secrets Act, too. Tony Blair says her behaviour is “deeply irresponsible”. That’s putting it mildly. What the Leftie loudmouth has done is bloody disgraceful. Despite his brave face, Blair is highly embarrassed by the claim that Britain bugged the phone of the head of the United Nations. The fact is that all major countries spend a lot of time, money and energy spying on others. It’s not necessarily sinister but is more a common sense precaution, particularly when a war is imminent. For a former Cabinet Minister to blab like this is unpardonable. Short knew exactly what she was doing on Radio Four — she has been itching to put the boot in ever since Blair sacked her. The PM should follow the example of Tory leader Michael Howard, who immediately kicked out MP Ann Winterton for making a sick racist joke. Blair must give Short the boot from his party, too.
Translation: How dare she make such a claim! But, just in case she can prove it, here’s a little groundwork to help along the case for justification.
Not that they’ll get very far with that…
Australia’s ABC reports that the British or US intelligence services monitored former United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix’s mobile phone whenever he was in Iraq. In this interview with Richard Butler who also claims to have been bugged, the former chief weapons inspector had this to say: “If they’d bugged the Secretary General and Clare Short has made pretty clear that they did because she read the transcript, it was not true to say that that was legal. There is an agreement with the United Nations, the Headquarters Agreement, that says that those places, those premises, those persons, will be inviolable. It is not true to say that this activity, if it occurred, was within the law.”
UPDATE – A classic piece via LNR: My God, Tony must hate Clare Short. Every time he tries to slip off and quietly break a bit of international law, there she is – shouting and pointing and hissing through her teeth.
UPDATE 2 – A good point from The UK Today: Whether he likes it or not, Tony Blair must accept more responsibility for this state of affairs than George Bush. After all, it was Blair who repeatedly tried to justify the war in terms acceptable to the Labour Party.
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Date
20040227
Riding High on Blogdex
Time
10:24
Dominating the Top 5 with three separate links this morning is a mind-blowing 8-bit-esque retro-saga in Flash format by Alex Leon:
Mario Bros: Part I (read comments)
Mario Bros Part II (read comments)
For some reason, Part III appears at a new location, here at Flashplayer.com
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Date
20040227
Christianity Watch
Time
10:39
Woman dies of heart failure during crucifixion scene of The Passion Of The Christ.
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Date
20040227
Free Speech
Time
10:42
Jeff Jarvis on the censorship of Howard Stern: I have been far, far more offended by things I have heard Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson say on our public airwaves but I have not called for them to be banned, even though they are more disgusting and hateful than Stern has ever been.
Oh, and I can’t find a mention of this anywhere in the newspapers, but I can certainly relate, so in it goes…
Activist cleared of all charges relating to ‘F*ck Bush’ protest banner. The arresting officers claimed that the banner, featuring an upside-down US flag and a swastika, could incite racial hatred. A very long Fark thread on this subject brings the usual flame madness, and this quote from Hermann Goering that’s really worth chewing on.
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Date
20040227
I Believe In The BBC
Time
11:05
Have your say on the BBC charter review!
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Date
20040227
Google – The Adsense Trial
Time
11:08
The Ultimate Insult has been asked to remove their Adwords by Google because because they “may not be placed on sites that include pornographic, adult, profane, or mature content.”
Scott is pretty careful about NSFW material. So am I. But, as Blatant Optimism notes: On the internet you are only ever seven clicks away from pornography. The trick is knowing which seven clicks.
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Date
20040227
The War on Terror
Time
11:18
The US Education Secretary has labelled the largest teachers’ union in that country a “terrorist organization” (Washington Post, CNN) because they dared to lobby – in a spirited campaign, no doubt – against the ‘historic’ education reforms involved in Bush’s No Child Left Behind act.
(Oooh, what a naughty link to include. And here’s me without my towel!)
The statement has since been dismissed as “an inappropriate choice of words” made in jest. (Links via Toby.)
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Date
20040227
South West Trains
Time
11:30
Joe is right. This does explain a lot. (Scroll down and click on “Inconvenient Places to change into a Unicorn #1″…)
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Date
20040227
We’re Not At Home To Mr Cockup
Time
11:31
www.butlerreview.org.uk vs. www.butlerreview.org
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Date
20040227
11/9 (please note correct formatting of date)
Time
12:24
CNN – House Speaker Dennis Hastert to block 9/11 commission extension. He’s afraid that an extension, resulting in the release of conclusions close to the upcoming election, would allow the issue to be manipulated for political gain. *cough*
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Date
20040227
Photoshopping
Time
12:33
That’s a curious illustration the PakTribune has chosen for their article. I know recent photos of Osama bin Laden are kind of thin on the ground, but sheesh!
(Do drop me a line if they do anything sensible like change the image. Or include a kitten.)
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Date
20040227
In The News
Time
13:45
Library in Holland, Michigan bans wooden shoes.
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Date
20040227
Photoshopping
Time
16:54
Lethal Passion. Because it had to be done.
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Date
20040227
The Bush Administration
Time
17:31
Miami Herald – Trudeau to Pay $10K for Proof Bush Served: “Doonesbury” creator Garry Trudeau this week stepped into the fray over President Bush’s service in the Alabama Air National Guard, offering $10,000 for proof the commander-in-chief served between May and November of 1972.
Also, Bush’s budget contains 27 glossy photos of Bush. Never mind the quality; feel the worship!
