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[Nov. 18th, 2009|01:47 pm] |
The best article I've seen on Afghanistan recently. Really sums it up. And yes, I like it because it says all the things I said in 2002 about both Iraq and Afghanistan being hopeless.
Ah, Boris Johnson - "we have to stay or we will betray the soldiers who have died so far". How often do we have to hear that one? Does anyone mind that it can apply to any war, and need never stop applying? How about not betraying all your other soldiers by wasting their deaths in an unwinnable, unnecessary war? |
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[Nov. 18th, 2009|01:34 pm] |
From ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) thessalian on twitter: a comic called Jesus Hates Zombies, this week co-starring Lincoln Hates Werewolves.
They appear to be sitting on the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard. This may be the greatest comic ever.
Edit: And I *still* haven't seen Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 16th, 2009|12:37 pm] |
New music vid from the guys who previously brought you the awesome Carl Sagan remix:
Symphony of Science - 'We Are All Connected' (ft. Sagan, Feynman, deGrasse Tyson & Bill Nye)
"The Cosmos is also within us, we are made of stars... We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself." - Sagan (remixed), echoing several magical traditions and brands of ancient thought :)
(Mind you, he also said "As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and sky" which sounds kinda familiar too.)
Great quotes in this song.
"I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos
That makes me want to grab people in the street and say "have you heard this?!" - Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Here's the website of the musician behind the vids:
"The Symphony of Science is a musical project by John Boswell designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form. Here you can watch music videos, download songs, read lyrics and find links relating to the messages conveyed by the music."
It's working so far, because I feel the need to watch all of Sagan's Cosmos tv series now - 13 hours of dvd currently £18 on Amazon... |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 14th, 2009|04:24 pm] |
Went to see Jonathan Coulton in concert last night, and it was great. Union Chapel is a pretty amazing venue with great accoustics. The audience participation was a little English and restrained during "Re: Your Brains", but Paul and Storm provided awesome harmonies and banter.
Typical exchange: "This one is a ballad, so it's the kind of thing you can wave lighters to in the chorus. Except since this is Jonathan's audience, just use the lighter app on your iphones." "Wait, is that guy holding up an actual laptop?!" "Okay, wispa bar to the one of several of you with laptops who *writes* an app during this song." "I can see the headlines now - Wispa melee ensues at Coulton concert." "'Wispa Melee' is the name of our Clash tribute band..."
In the end, lit ipod/iphone screens outnumbered actual lighters by a very large margin.
Skullcrusher Mountain was excellent, but the song I loved the most though was one I'd heard ages back and totally forgotten about.
Beltane was an Irish festival marking the first of May, and the beginning of Summer. The story goes that couples (including those who weren't official couples) would head off to the woods and... 'celebrate spring'. Er... in a 'fertility religion'. Going "a-maying" for the "joys of May". You get the idea. Since I (and loads of my friends) do seriously celebrate it as a seasonal festival (where that level of dedication isn't required, although I hear it's popular), Coulton putting the old custom quite as plainly as he does was just hilarious.
WARNING: THIS MUSIC VID IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK. IT HAS NAUGHTY WORDS! BUT IT'S FUNNY.
So yes, I got to fulfil a minor ambition and be a zombie at a JoCo concert. Happy :) |
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[Nov. 12th, 2009|02:26 am] |
"Fleggaard" are a Danish company who sell household appliances. A while ago, they made an advert for Germany which was clearly aimed at people who like (sadly silicone) boobies. NSFW! Apparently it got banned and stuff. It was certainly sexist rubbish.
(Not that it didn't work - typical comment: "They sell appliances in Germany. Why can't we sell appliances in the US this way? I would be a toaster-buying MF if one of these girls was selling it.")
So to balance things up a bit, they then made one for everyone who likes men. And I have to admit, while I'm not the target audience, for a 2 min television advert this is absolute genius. In fact, I just watched it again and I'm cracking up laughing. I think it's the all-singing key change that does it. Really, you'll love it.
This one is safe for work - advert starts at 0.40 after an explanation from the company. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 11th, 2009|05:46 pm] |
New t-shirt from Diesel Sweeties.
Saw the lovely halcyon_shift, doccy and mitchy this morning, for the first time in... mumble too many years and there was even ice-cream.
In other news from today, Waltham Cross is still a shithole. Just in case you were wondering.
And while I'm on: Dragon Age: Origins is NOT the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate 2, or Neverwinter Nights, or any of the other great rpg games. It's Mass Effect again, with all the same flaws but in a fantasy setting. Too few npcs, too linear a plot, no way to go solo or form an entirely evil party. It's nice, but it's not BG2.
Games developers: make a new BG2 that isn't as unrelentingly shit as NWN 2. You will make a truckload of money. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 10th, 2009|01:18 pm] |
In the UK we have a newspaper called "The Daily Mail". Most of us are pretty sure it's a long-running joke, and that someday soon the owner will stand up and go "HA! I WAS KIDDING! FOOLED YOU!" and we can all have a good laugh while beating him around the head with the nearest available heavy objects.
Recently it has crossed into territory more suited for The Onion spoof newspaper. One particularly bigoted piece caused over 22,000 complaints.
But today, oh. So special.
Basically, women should learn to be sweetly pretty, and get back in the kitchen.
We're used to stories from the Mail saying "gays are icky", "it's all immigrants' fault" and "everything gives you cancer". But this is quality stuff today from Quentin Letts. It starts with "why can't everyone stop being so common and be posh instead?"
I've linked the page above, but just to deny them some clicks, here's a summary:
- "(Women) have lost the centuries-old idea of being demure in public. The sort of slender-lipped, self-questioning, hesitant lover played by Celia Johnson in David Lean's 1945 film Brief Encounter is now found only in recently arrived immigrant families."
Given the Daily Mail's attitude to Muslims, perhaps he shouldn't be championing "centuries-old ideas of women being demure in public"? Citing a woman who would rather go through one of the most famous tragedies on film rather than speak out loud to the man she loves is presumably not meant as irony here.
- "a grottiness not seen on this crowded island since the early 1800s before Sir Robert Peel formed his police force to tame the grottier purlieux of London."
That's right, the police were formed to tidy up the common folk.
- "One consequence of (Germaine Greer's) convention-shattering ways was a destruction of modesty and decency."
If "modesty and decency" were broken by feminism, you may want to double-check that women wanted them in the first place.
- "The very notion of being a gent became redundant if men and women were the same."
Only if your idea of women is that they are delicate passive flowers who need to be especially looked after because they mustn't do anything for themselves. Otherwise human beings should be treated well regardless, unless you're an arse. Edit: In fact, this quote directly says he'd like women to not be treated equally to men in society. Nice.
- "And so the institution of marriage, which has done more than anything over the centuries to glue society together, is weakened."
Utter bullshit. It's not weakened, and society hasn't relied on it. It didn't even exist in the present form if you go back a few "centuries".
- "This suits the equality freaks. They hate marriage. All that 'love, honour and obey' stuff shivers their timbers."
Yes, why is 'obey' in there on only one side? You arguing FOR it?
- "Yet married couples stay together longer, produce stabler children and generally have a kinder, happier time than their cohabiting counterparts."
Not true. How do you measure a 'kinder, happier time'? And "married people stay together" is hardly surprising, that doesn't mean they SHOULD. Parents staying trapped in a marriage 'for the kids' have children who do worse in school and life than single mothers or anyone else.
- "How different things might have been if Germaine Greer had become a happily married mother."
Yes, he actually typed this.
Then Quentin finishes off having a go at people with short haircuts, because shaved heads on men suggest "oikishness" and no "sophistication".
This wasn't written 40 years ago (or 60). It's a (depressingly) well-read tabloid, and it's allowed to produce the kind of bile that used to be in comedy shows:
Fuck you, Quentin Letts. The Daily Mail's prejudice against the poor, immigrants and liberals is well-known, now they apparently hate women too. Well, any who do anything beyond blushing prettily and talking about kittens. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 4th, 2009|10:55 pm] |
Playing Lord of the Rings Online.
Just got to Rivendell, and the graphics/music are absolutely gorgeous.
Reassured that my geek quotient is still high, when I twittered this and initially typed "Imladris" instead of Rivendell, without thinking.
Am currently helping to reforge Narsil.
Geek joy! \o/ |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 31st, 2009|01:41 pm] |
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Happy Samhain / Hallowe'en to all! |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 27th, 2009|03:54 pm] |
Drawn to my attention by burkesworks:
As well as family details, the next UK census will want to know the name of any visitors sleeping in your house on the night it's issued. Which will often be your non-live-in sleeping partner(s), in other words. So don't be having an illicit affair that night, or snuggle up with anyone you don't want the Government to know about.
Or Lockheed Martin (the US arms manufacturer) to know about. They're in charge of collecting the data, and while UK-based contractors will do it there are little legal things which mean it's possible that Lockheed get to see it and shortly after (thanks to the Patriot Act) so do the US intelligence agencies.
The Treasury Minister assured us in 2008 that this wouldn't happen though. Well, not assured. She hoped it wouldn't.
"Ms Eagle said ... she was "pretty confident" there would be robust safeguards on the security of data."
Anyway, that's not my point. I want to start a new Internet Meme:
"Which fake name should we use for overnight visitors in the overly-intrusive 2011 UK census?"
Yes, which alias should we all put in the 'overnight visitors' column to show that
a) there's someone there (which I believe we legally have to indicate or get fined), but
b) we're not going to tell you their actual names you unbelievable crapbuckets?
I like the early suggestion of "Keyser Söze" (the mystery man in "The Usual Suspects") mostly because of nalsa's reasoning that
"I want to hear a Lockheed Martin employee throw a stack of completed forms against a desk and shout "who is Keyser Söze?!"
Who should be the lucky Casanova who gets his/her name quoted by half of Britain on the same night? Answers in the comments, please!*
*I know "Gordon Brown" would be funny. But it's kinda a horrible image. Ditto Harriet Harman. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 27th, 2009|12:25 pm] |
This is... interesting.
"Assassin's Creed: Lineage" is a series of 15-minute live action episodes based on the next game in the series. A couple of surprises - it's set in Italy, and the Assassin is Italian. Not entirely sure how that works, but apparently while the first game was centred around the historical Holy Land and even Alamut, the organisation is somehow also international and inter-racial. (As opposed to Nizari Shia muslims, for example.)
Still, Italy is a nice backdrop and all the moves and iconic images of the game are faithfully recreated in robe-swirling slo-mo. The first ep is online, and worth a look (see first link in this post). Here's the trailer:
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 26th, 2009|09:36 pm] |
As one commenter noted, Dream On would still do very well if it was aired today. I had no idea it ran for six seasons. (The three people who wrote/produced it went on to do Friends while this was still running.)
Here's the insanely catchy Dream On theme-music:
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 22nd, 2009|11:02 pm] |
My previous post on the poppy charities become a lengthy discussion in the comments about the role of the army. I'll admit, I'm deliberately taking quite a crazy-pacifist position (edit to clarify that it's not actually fully pacifist). That doesn't mean I don't appreciate that brave people risk their lives for their country, and by extension, me. I'm suggesting they are then misused and failed by their Government.
One motivation for imagining what it would be like not to always be at war is the good that we could do with the defence budget money (the UK subsidises weapons manufacturers with taxpayer cash, by the way.)
Here's a diagram which was doing the rounds recently with figures for the US on it. Everything is shown in the units "Billions of Dollars".
( A diagram to show the US defense budget, spending on Iraq, fallout from the Banks etc versus the costs of feeding and educating every child on earth for five years and other ideas. )
Update: Looks like the areas aren't to scale, although some match. Might be that they only compare to similar topics, or aren't meant to be compared between colours. Anyway, the numbers are interesting on their own. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 22nd, 2009|10:39 am] |
My parents (having paid to reconnect a disused BT line) were so annoyed at the aggressive and rude person on the other end of the phone that they said "You know what? Forget it."
Now it appears that 1700's writer James Boswell is having similar trouble with BT, as he tells us on twitter:
@RealBoswell: Ah, my old nemesis BRITISH TELECKOM are up to their JESTS againe!
@RealBoswell: After installing the LiNE a month LATE, they have billed me TRIPLY - then with no warning, DIS-CONNECKTED it! Hahahahahaha! #BTfail
@RealBoswell: other possible HASHTAGGES: #BTihateyou #BTyouShitehawks #BTyouMonstrousTurde #IwishtochallengeallofBTtoaduel
@RealBoswell: If BT respond to my Direct MESSAGE by cuttinge and pastinge 'oh dear that's not good' I shall see them all HANG.
And yet BT are still not as bad as the German telecom, who only turn up 9-5 mon-fri and decided to just ...not, several times in a row, so that kleine__hexe can't have internet. Boo. |
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| Getting the shouty poppy arguments started early |
[Oct. 21st, 2009|05:51 pm] |
Crap. I'm going to give in and do something I said I never would: buy both a red and a white poppy for Remembrance Day.
Every year I take shit for being in favour of White poppies for peace. People complain that they take money away from ex-soldiers who need it, that they are a charity but we don't know precisely where the money will go, and the usual bollocks about not supporting the troops etc.
The aspect of red poppies which drives most people to find out about white as an alternative is the idea that they are used by the government to glorify and justify war. To lend it respect, and honour, and credibility. No-one can argue that those who fought in WWII were unjustified: we had an enemy that would have invaded us, wiped out our culture and replaced it with one which we find totally immoral and evil. Not only did the war have to be fought, but by freeing other countries from the Nazis our soldiers defended the helpless and safeguarded the future.
Since then...
Can we really say that the wars since then have been necessary? Economically and politically expedient maybe, but for suvival or genuine defense?
So I'll make the statement: "I don't support the troops".
Veterans from 50 years ago or more certainly, but not the current army. I know that it's the government which sends them to far-off lands based on lies in order to claim resources and not the troops themselves... but the soldiers sign up for it. They say "I will kill anyone you tell me to in future, without knowing who or why. I will be placed in mortal danger for this government."
They are not defending me. The UK has not been invaded. It is not honourable to unquestioningly kill whoever your leaders decide is an enemy this month. In 2002 I made statements about why the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could not be won, by definition. Every single part of that has come true - and I was no expert. Being part of the structure that enables conflicts with such massive civilian casualty rates is not moral or honourable. I do not care that the Army is often the only place that the poor or less educated can find work: a wage for a British soldier is not more important than the lives of multiple civilians. It does not matter which country those civilians are from.
Honour is not the same as duty, and duty is frequently not moral or justified. By following these orders, they are enabling the cynical oil grabs and weapons trades with tyrants to continue.
Edit: I'm not an absolute pacifist. I just don't believe that the UK army should be deployed outside UK borders for anything other than observation or to lend defense to weaker nations. And I'm not sure they're the right force to be doing the latter.
Despite this, and despite all that I have said above, "I do support the troops".
I want them to be returned alive and unharmed at the end of their tours. I want the risks they take to be fully justified, necessary and unavoidable. I want the government to have such a hard time selling a case for war that it will only happen when public sees a clear need for it. And I want the government to pay so highly for every army casualty that they do their utmost to prevent deaths. Soldiers need all our support, because they're not getting it from the government (example: a year ago an SAS chief quit over repeatedly not getting adequate equipment.)
There are good reasons to buy the Red poppies if you are anti-war. They only exist because those who have fought are not looked after adequately by the state, and extra charity was needed. They are essentially a slap in the face of the Government, a shout of "Why do we have to look after these people who gave everything for you?"
But we cannot escape the fact that red poppies are also propaganda for the current government. Tony Blair was allowed to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph, as opposed to being arrested or leapt upon by the crowd and punched repeatedly. The Cenotaph itself says "The Glorious Dead". They are not glorious, and neither is war. It is not glorious to die in battle. They are dead, and we should not forget the horrific events which made them so. Leaders use Remembrance Sunday to agree that violence is a terrible thing, but that it justifies never giving up in future. The gravitas and sorrow over past sacrifices mean we owe it to them not to stop now.
No, we owe it to them not to waste more lives.
How many of the wars since 1945 have met the criteria for a Just War? How many have even come close? How do we justify spending as much as we do on defence, when the huge amounts of money could be spent on social problems? France or Scandinavia are not going to invade the UK. We do not need a standing army. If it is judged that a situation (such as the genocide in Darfur) requires outside intervention on humanitarian grounds, then lets have an international force ready to do that. It could be argued that the UN in recent times hasn't had remotely enough power to take that role.
I want to buy a white poppy because the money goes to education initiatives to bring about Peace as a first intent, and we badly need that.
And I will grudgingly have to buy a red poppy, because there are still soldiers who need the money. But I will not wear it while Gordon Brown does, or Margaret Thatcher, or (if he dares show his face) Tony Blair. The statement I would be making has become too muddied, and the modern use of the army too misguided.
War is never the right answer. The white poppies contribute to spreading that message and it is the most important one for me. The red poppies should be seen to say it too, but the money from them does at least go to people who need it. Giving money to the Legion does not directly empower the government. So this year, I will buy both but only wear white. |
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