Black Dog Blog

Archive for the ‘pedantry’ Category

About blinking time…

GRRRR

'Ill' worker fired over Facebook

The death of 100% (mostly-stupid article about something that truly annoys me)

Appeal for chocolate volunteers gets – surprise! – 1,500 replies

Berlin rejects backtracking!

If I have this right, the choice was between compulsory school ethics lessons (the current policy) and the option not to attend ethics lessons and to take religious lessons (already exist as voluntary, occur out of school hours, poorly attended) instead. I find the idea of opting out of normal life and taking a closed scripture study group instead slightly disturbing.

So, Berlin, even though it was actually rejected by default because none of you turned up to vote, have a sanity cookie on me.

Rare albino buffalo seen in Kenya

h4x! A /b/ user explains (and claims credit for) their flooding of the Time Magazine 100 poll.

Oh for a personal army of these guys. In before not.

Twitter your prayer says Cardinal

Post your tweet ideas in the comments. 140 characters or less, must begin @our-father (or @anubis, @suitov, @narasimha or other deity of your choice. Can't speak for the others, but I don't monitor my Twitter account).

Currently enjoying this Easter-themed radio interview [MP3] from Landover Baptist Church. PTL!

edit: Saw this advert on TV and liked it (what, an arrangement of This Little Light of Mine that I didn't hate?!), and the Vimeo page adds something special to it.

You may have heard the origins of "geek" as a circus sideshow performer and wondered "what's dentally decapitating live chickens have in common with sitting in darkened bedrooms?"

"Geek" in the carnival sense is supposedly derived from "geck", an object of derision or a dupe. That makes things a bit clearer when we fast forward to "geek" in the '90s sense of someone socially unskilled and unpopular.

Anyway, what's made me happy today is the discovery that Shakespeare used my species' name. Here it is, in Cymbeline 5:4, in which the ghost of the hero's father has a good old complain to Jupiter about how the lying Iachimo stirred up trouble between the hero and his wife:

Why did you [Jupiter] suffer [permit] Iachimo,
Slight thing of Italy,
To taint his nobler heart and brain
With needless jealosy;
And to become the geck and scorn
O' th' other's villany?

Jupiter is not one to take constant cadaverous carping lying down, and appears in high aquiline dudgeon to scold the complaining ghosts and send them packing. Gotta love Shakespeare.

So, geeks, the "geck and scorn" of villainous others. Rather good, I feel. It doesn't excuse the chickens, though. There's no excuse for that, not even if you're Ozzy.

If you're a Wikipedia editor (or a member of other Wikimedia projects) and have a preference on GFDL vs Creative Commons as applied to Wikimedia content, please go and vote on their proposed licensing change. (Note that you'll need to accept cookies, and it may take a little while to redirect you to the secure vote.)

Personally I'm strongly in favour, both being very keen on Creative Commons and instinctively disliking and distrusting the use of the GFDL for anything other than its original intended application (software documentation). I have never understood how to use a GFDL-licensed photo, for example, and many such exist on Wikimedia Commons. (I take the only honourable course, which is not to use them.)

Note that the Creative Commons licence in question is CC-BY-SA, so still a copyleft ('viral') licence. They have good pages explaining everything, which I recommend you read before voting.

I have conflicting feelings on copyleft licences. For example, I've been cautious and banned the use of anything virally licensed at Pro, other than usage that unequivocally comes under fair dealing law in the UK, because we can't and won't comply with the requirement that we release all our stuff under the same licence. Our copyright, simplistically worded as it is (which is actually for legal protection, because I'm not a lawyer and you can get into all sorts of not-so-hilarious scrapes if you try to write like one), isn't compatible with copyleft.

But aside from the occasional headache copyleft stuff causes me, I'm keen on the principle of anyone licensing their things as freely as they feel is appropriate and I don't consider the licence restrictions unfair. People don't have to let you use their stuff at all and if they let you do so with provisos, that's generous. You don't like, don't use!

Class. The Google doodle of the day celebrates St George's Day and Shakespeare's birthday in one.

More about Saint George, with fun details about the dragon on page 3 (disclosure: that page was compiled by me).

Having no idea it was St G's day today, on the way to work I saw a typical-looking red builderish van flying a George Cross and I have to admit my first thought was "Well, he's not necessarily racist…" Sad.

Why can't Happened To Get Born In England Pride be like Happened To Get Born Gay Pride? Gay pride marches don't necessarily imply that everyone born anything else is rubbish, so why in the case of nationality do we have to have twerps like the BNP fouling everything up? *sigh*

I and others are amused by the whole idea of this Turkish tribune who never visited England and whose spurious claim to fame took place in Libya. You've got racist twerps waving his flag with abandon while, in the words of a colleague, "if they met the real guy in a pub, they'd have bottled him and had him deported!"

If anyone cared a whit for us punsters, George would have been called John, because "St. John" as an English forename is pronounced "singeon". Ssssmokin'.

Given what I superficially know about it, I find Sapir-Whorf convincing, and not just because it sounds like Worf (the idea of linguistic relativity, for me, now being inextricably linked with having a head like a Cornish pasty and occasionally a bit of a Fu Manchu 'tache).

I think that's a large part of why I don't think political correctness is a bad thing. And why I like the idea gender-neutral pronouns and terminology a lot. For example, my mental image of "nurse" is still female-biased, and that sucks. And if I have to call someone "she", I'll start thinking of them as a female. I can't help it. I'm a human and hard-wired for English and we just don't have standard GNPs any more, and that sucks too!

Besides, the way I understand PC is basically as an attempt to be polite to people and make the human dimension of the world a bit nicer. That's why I tend to consider anyone who seriously argues against being nice to people mentally lazy at best and a closet (or not-so-closet) bigot at worst.

No matter how many whinges you find in the Daily Wail about someone's local primary school OMG BANNING CHRISTMAS, I'll never be sorry that it's no longer acceptable to call someone "boy" and "nigger" and stop him using the same drinking fountain as everyone else. Because WTF, people, can we get a side order of proportionality over here!

Mind, I'll defend to the inconvenience your right to say the word nigger, but when you don't get invited to many parties as a result of shouting it at strangers, I'll be very glad. I find good manners and social disapproval far more healthy means of control than legislation.

"Good manners gone mad" isn't quite as catchy for your red-masthead headline, is it? Quick, let's find Cllr Strawman and see if we can get a snap of him taking down fairy lights so's not to offend Muslims…

(edit, tomorrow: I note with little surprise that the "in popular culture" section of the S-W article is one big list of things I either have really enjoyed or mean to read someday (well, ok, the Rand is neither and Inheritance isn't all that special). I guess I'm not the only writerly person with whom the idea resonates.)

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given. (If you've done it before, feel free to add a link so I can avoid duplication.)

Altivo gave me the following five:

Doggerel [heh heh, make of it what you will]
The dictionary definition of doggerel is comic verse of irregular measure. I am not quite sure what this means, and my working definition of doggerel is "rhyming poetry written in little time, not (necessarily) any good".

The reason I wouldn't ever mind my poems being described as such is quite simple: it has the word "dog" in it.

I do enjoy poetry, reading and writing it, but it has to rhyme and scan impeccably and not be what I consider 'up itself' or 'pretentious'. It helps also if something happens in it and it's funny. Poetry written for children tends to be good for these qualities.

I've been criticised, within a small writing feedback group I've frequented, for my overadherence to rhyme scheme and meter. I don't particularly want to move away from it, though. Those are what I like about the stuff in the first place.
Otherwise it
tends to feel
like prose
with
unnecessary
line breaks.

Doggerel! Doggerel is when people rhyme fire with desire (or, worse, higher), love with above (or, well, love with anything that rhymes with love; it's all over-done) or alone with [on my] own. When I hear these, I want to smite things. A good one I heard once, from Shania Twain I believe, was optimistic rhymed with pessimistic.

A doggerel might also be a cross between a dog and a cockerel. It could comb its own fur, but it might give you some rather sharp pecks on the cheek.

English
I am, I suppose, what one might call very English. I am not talking about being born in Chester, but more about such things as dry and ironic humour, honesty, fair play, dislike of making a fuss, excess of reserve and not doing sex. Oh, and liking dogs. A lot. However, I never drink tea, don't think all that much of the Royal Family or the Church of England, loathe cricket and football and am chronically disinterested in the weather.

I like the English language, though am aware that it's a pig for non-native speakers to learn. (Something about a Great Vowel Shift, which always sounds vaguely scatological to me.) I have no ear for accents and sometimes have trouble telling what people with thick accents (of any sort) are saying. Perhaps for this reason, Received Pronunciation accents — posh English, also called BBC or Queen's English — are the most pleasant on my ears. My own accent might be described as modern RP or BBC English with the edges knocked off, or… well, perhaps I'll record it someday and let others judge. I've lived in the North all my life, but don't have much of a local accent, if any at all.

I find the Heroes character Mohinder Suresh's Indian-tinged (or… less) accent extremely attractive, and was most peeved to find it was fake. Still good, though! The actor talks about it here.

I'm extremely weak to wordplay, too. Puns aren't the lowest form of wit. They are de rigeur, even obligatory, at least when one is handed the perfect set-up.

I'm also a pedant when it comes to those parts of English grammar that I fully grasp, which aren't necessarily all of it. I do have the reputation as go-to guy within the office for matters of spelling, punctuation or usage. What surprises me is that people are so nervous and unsure of some really very basic conventions. What might surprise people is that I didn't study English beyond the mandatory level (GCSE; 14–15 years of age) at school. And I learned nothing from those lessons beyond parroting someone else's interpretation of a poem. (This is what I think of the analysis of poetry by classes of 14–15-year-olds.) My secret? Genetics and upbringing, sad to say. I came into the world hard-wired to read; the usual autistic difficulties with language passed me by quite. I learned to read when I was about two years old (apparently it wasn't a question of being taught by a pushy parent; Small Me decreed that I jolly well would be taught) and didn't stop for many years.

There, I used the phrase "jolly well" as an intensifier. What more proof of Englishness do you need?

Sang-froid
The dictionary definition of sangfroid is "coolness of mind; calmness; composure". A quality I much wish I had. On the other claw, a less neutral and more negative definition — 'cold-bloodedness' in the sense of not caring about people — might easily be applied to me. I wish mankind no specific ill. Let's leave it there.

I also write a character known for both sides, coolness and coldness. (He means well. The problem may stem from the fact that he means well in an entirely theoretical and abstract sense.) However, in my writerly universe, your Captain Kirks and your headstrong princesses tend to get themselves killed out of clear incompetence and what we might call excessively glandularly-oriented decision-making, to the benefit of chaps like him; in other words, I deeply distrust people who claim to be led by their 'hearts' or 'gut feelings', which generally means "prejudices and guesses I don't want to bother to substantiate", and so I do not do things like setting up such rather reptilian sorts of fellows as cheap fall guys to 'prove' emotional humans are superior to thinking ones. Calculating people tend to succeed. At least ones who know how to play the socio-political game.

I actually have a character called Sangfroid, too; she is the great-grandmother of the character I've been talking about. She was a military general. It's said her legendary composure only cracked once, when her infant twins were in danger of death. (I bet whoever said that wasn't present at the birth. "More morphine, darling?" "Only half a glass, thank you; I'm driving.")

Twine [not string]
There was once a little installation of UseModWiki, hacked a little bit to include a 'boilerplate' text functionality, which was rather an achievement considering its owner didn't actually know any Perl. Its name was Twine Encyclopaedia and it was and is is the main publically-accessible repository of information regarding the HellMutt's writing characters, not to mention those of des co-writers at Profusion.

The little UseMod that could is named Twine because Twine is a word associated with Profusion's shared universe — though in exactly what manner remains to be seen. That's the nature of shared universes. The idea advanced so far is that it is the name of an interplanetary organisation that sets itself up as some breed of self-declared police force, tasking itself with applying and upholding interplanetary treaties and laws.

According to current plans, The Twine Encyclopaedia shall eventually apotheose and become some manner of wiki add-on in an installation of Drupal, which shall be database-driven and PHPish and Chaotic Good. Its owner does not currently know any PHP, except phpinfo(). You may be sensing a pattern here.

Kitties
As aforementioned, I like dogs. In actual fact I grew up with two exceptionally good-natured and well-trained Golden Retrievers. The stupider one knew upwards of 100 words in three languages plus sign language. This is why I don't believe in stupid dogs, only unambitious (one might even say inhibiting) owners.

I do not, however, currently enjoy the necessary honour of living with a dog, instead being drooled and occasionally sat upon by a fat, eleven-year-old, somewhat toothless cat.

They say write what you know, and so far I have a character, and to a lesser extent an entire species, based on or influenced by my inept observations of the feline nature. According to my fair and unbiased assessment of catkind, the character is murderous, spiteful, graceful, hateful, extremely fast, distractible, equal parts cynical and naïf, excessively interested in moving objects, rather dim, insecure, almost impossible to keep hold of if he wants to escape, utterly convinced of his own species' superiority to all other forms of life, and obsessed with balls of yarn. (In addition, he loves high places, can't bear to have his tummy touched and really hates getting wet.)

The character fiercely denies being kittyish in the least. He does not have fur, pointy ears or a tail and never wears bells around his neck, so we will have to believe him.

…would we be arguing about the word "caecilian" and whether it's worth breaking spelling rules for.

J: "Sicilian? Well, that's a country name, it's diff—"
H: "No, caecilian, c-a-e-c-ilian."
S: "What the hell is that?"
H: "A legless amphibian!"
S: "Dot dot dot?"
J: "Well, that's obviously Latin, probably from 'Caesar'…"
H: "Nah, probably from the caecum isn't it?"
J: "By the time they know about caecilians they'll be beyond needing remedial reading help. Anyway…"

(Incidentally, looks like I'm right and 'caecum' is closer. All related to blindness.)

Language is fun.

Changed my mind about a fundamental thing concerning the thing I'm working on, which is not a great idea as it's already two days late. I hope it works. I completed part of the bottom bit this morning. Various family members have needed the family computer over the last few evenings, which, yeah, not great. At least it's Friday now, so I have the weekend.

Indeed, the weekend looks like being completely taken up with art things. I'd like to get the thing done for CoworkerD (which will probably only be a head sketch, or series of three, but I have NEVER DONE A HEAD SKETCH BEFORE IN MY LIFE so that's no guarantee of anything). And will finish the fuzzbok picture really roughly because (apart from the fact that I told the recipient I would finish it), as I've said before, at some point I'm evilly going to take out the central figure and put in one of my own, thus making it a me-niverse picture with minimal effort. So it's worth shading the hairy people's fur.

Hopefully will have time for gaming with unbrother too.

I've been dreaming really random everyday things, like my mother letting the Professor (neighbouring cat) into the house, or noticing my brother's bed empty in the morning. They aren't details that would worry me or stick in my mind, which is the weird thing; it's more along the lines of "Didn't I see you petting him in the kitchen yesterday? Weird, must've dreamed it…" I know my dreams are always fundamentally unscary, but they aren't usually dirt boring. It's just so domestic, my dear, it's positively Canis lupus familiaris.

Well, why deny my roots, right?

I'm going through a few-months-long phase of mentally roaring "I'm going to rip your throat out!" at old memories that pop up and bother me. Assertive, see? It sort of partly works ok… except when I find myself muttering same under my breath. This is a point at which I should probably change tactics. And increase my meds.

Unrelatedly, I seem to be getting fanfiction somehow. (I don't mean the evil mindscrewy fluffy stuff I write when I'm bored, either.)

Also unrelated, lulz at the MTV Awards. The best bit is how the linked article… well, you'll see.

I have today added "unboxing" to my vocabulary. It's the geek equivalent of stripteases, in which people film themselves opening the boxes of their new gadgets and show the contents. Here's a new Samsung phone, for example.

I love Lemmings.

Take care all. Peace out.

P.S. "UP" IS NOT A VERB.

"HOT" IS NOT A VERB.
"HOT" IS NOT A VERB.
"HOT" IS NOT A VERB.

*weeps*

Bye bye to the RSI that I haven't developed yet and don't want to! Sometime this week I'll probably be converting my preciousssss Model M to Dvorak and learning to type on it. This was my plan for a while and a discussion on GeekUp reminded me of it. Wish me uncharacteristically steady hands for the duration, folks, thanks.

This is at home, for work has quieter, flimsier Dell keybs and Clicky is not welcome there. I still type on QWERTY at work, of course, so will be developing that brain-partition thing. Also, the internet computer at home is the shared family one, so I may need some kind of hardware switch while I'm learning to touch-type (though hopefully XP Home can cope with 'hot-plugging' PS/2 keybs; I seem to remember it does. Come to think of it, isn't the stupid flimsy keyb on Bluewing USB anyway?).

I've found two sites: Dvorak Flash-based lessons and Dvorak text-based lessons. (Not tried either yet.) The latter at least should work offline so I could use it on my Win98 laptop if needed.

In unrelated news, my coworker's ex-battery hens have arrived. They look quite healthy, all told; I was half-expecting scruffy POWs with filed beaks. It looks like they've been out of the cage for a little while. An article in the RSPCA magazine I get sent for giving them money says that unhealthily enlarged combs are normal in ex-battery hens, and shrink after a while.

More about rescue hens: Battery Hen Welfare Trust

So, big story of the day (for me) is of course Google Chrome, Google's new internet broswer.

With comic by Scott McCloud¹ to tell you what it's all about.

¹ Scott McCloud is the "how to profit from webcomics with micropayments"/"infinite canvas" guy.

<span tone="sarcastic">I can't wait for the FOSS people to start bitching about it debuting on Windows. Maybe they'll finally shut up about the download iPlayer.</span> At least they specify "with Mac and Linux versions to come", though, proving that both Google and the BBC journalist haven't forgotten them. (Even though the FOSS purists will only bitch about them saying Linux instead of GNU/Linux. I myself don't stress over that particular issue.)

When all you have is a samurai sword, everything starts looking like heads. What is it about swords that turns people into (even more) insane buttheads?

British people are the least likely in Europe to be "have-a-go heroes" and get involved if they witness a crime, research from a think tank claims.

The public policy group Reform says that Britons have become "passive bystanders" in the fight against crime.

Britons 'passive against crime'

You STUPID rennet-faced MORONS, of course we are. Every other week the government or a scientist funded by J Random Pharmaceutical Corporation announces something else we shouldn't let our children do, whether collecting conkers or playing leapfrog or looking at things or breathing. And we're supposed to teach them what, to rush in and stop someone being happy-slapped to death by six or seven hoodies while six or seven more film it on their mobiles? Mixed messages much? We can get sued for trying to stop people breaking into our own homes. Law-abiding citizens don't own firearms, while criminals can get them for a tenner. What do you sodding well expect?

(And that's without being a gender-confused, short, developmentally disabled personage who's also moderately scared of being on the receiving end of hate crime if I intervene.)

Well, really – THEY started the hyperbole! Damn think tanks couldn't think in joined-up writing if they tried.

Anyway, luckily we now have this to help us spot gangs!

Nice Ramadan pics

Fruit under the microscope (audio slideshow, WELL worth watching despite annoying fading-in-and-out music)

Man dies after church tower fall. Every time I see a story like this in Suffolk I cock a wryly amused ear…

Piper undecided about Doctor Who return and, well, does the series even need more of Rose? Though I like Piper and think she did a fine job, I can't see a way to justify it plot-wise. Her story was wrapped up pretty thoroughly. I'm hoping Moffatt will take it in a more low-key, thoughtful and creative direction, not rely on old tropes (or even new old tropes, like "Rose is the key to everything").

Human jailed for killing puppy. Six measly months and a ten-year ban. Should be executed in the same way as the puppy died, THEN justice'd be "seen to be done".

When to use 'fewer' rather than 'less'? Answer: fewer is for numbers of countable things, less is for quantities of stuff. Less wool, fewer sheep, fewer sacks of wool. Less mutton, fewer legs of lamb; less bleating, fewer bleats. Less sheep dip. Fewer fences, fewer planks, less carpentry, less wood.

Oh, this is rich. After causing a High Court fuss over her stupid bangle (yes, stupid bangle, I said it), the Sikh pupil who won (GAAH) the right to go back to her school has gone to another school after all.

Hooked shark bites angler's arm. Mutt applauds. Angler does not learn… or, rather, learns to asphyxiate sharks by holding "the blunt end" rather than not at all.

edit, ten minutes later: Oops, forgot these from yesterday/Friday. Just so I can close the tabs:

Living in Jerusalem's Old City

How flies avoid being swatted

Memphis Belle (WW2 bomber) footage on show

Putin shoots Felicita!!!!… with a tranq dart.

Action over 'indecent' Jesus art Mrs Mapfuwa, of Brentwood, said Baltic would not have dared depict Mohammed in such a way. And that's the problem, not the fact that they did it to Jeezus.

Ooooh! Vocabulary meme from Altivo and Anke.

Where did you grow up: Cheshire and Greater Manchester counties

WHAT DO YOU CALL:

1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks.
Stream, canal (if man-made), tributary, the Bollin

2. The thing you push around the grocery retailer to carry your intended purchases.
Trolley

Read the rest of this entry »

IAWTC, and +10 for spelling "discreet" correctly.

("Discrete" is a word too, but its meaning is different. When people confuse the two I get sad. And by sad I mean voluble.)

Autism stereotypes 'are damaging'. Zomg, aren't we all secretly mathematical geniuses? HOLLYWOOD LIED — LIED TO ME?!?

Of course we aren't all maths or computer geniuses. We're generally disposed to be logic-minded, and sometimes things think more like us than people do, but there's still a huge continuum.

Ming the clam is 'oldest animal'

[audio] Medical romance novels are unrealistic. Apologies to all you Columbine Romance readers, naming no names, kitten.

Hollywood and trash fiction lied to us? Whom can we trust?!?!?

Compiled a lot of this on Monday, but it was a hideous day with copious amounts of busy, plenty of things going wrong and me being the only chump in the office, so lunch hour blogging was sadly a luxury too far. So here is news from the weekend, Monday and today. (I haven't pruned any; be discerning on your own behalves.)

(Behalfs? Behalves? Taking etymology into account, I'm going with behalves.)

Oscar Wilde 'UK's greatest wit', followed by Spike Milligan and Steven Fry. ♥ (*does not mention Clarkson, WTF*)

Interesting iPlayer news.

And wi-fi…

Note Highfield's comments about Mac'n'Linux in the second story. I'm not sure I understand this; are they really saying iPlayer is going to be streaming-only on non-Windows platforms?

Sasha is home! What a relief!

Drive advance fuels terabyte era

John Dugard on Israel and the Palestinians and I have to say the notion of collective punishment seems pretty blatantly obvious to me.

Then again, the coverage in this country is through what is apparently a horrendously biased anti-Zionist propaganda machine (namely, a particular public broadcaster with huge self-imposed impartiality constrictions and a reputation for a liberal slant), so what do I know…

Hey China, why don't you try a delicious slice of STFU.

Adults 'too afraid' of youth work. I would be.

UK supermarkets 'must go greener'

Sweden top for welcoming migrants.

The UK is ninth, though when I tried looking for more details on the Migrant Integration Policy Index site, I got database errors all over the show and gave up.

Chairman predicts a smaller BBC – yeah, no jolly well kidding…

End to unfair privileges for selected couples! Tax benefits for all families, including single-person units, or none at all! And Brown, you utter creep, quit with the cultie-appeasing talk.

I fort I saw a parapet a-keepin' back the sea.

Some gasbag who likes airships.

Cash boost plan for Roman villa

Why garlic is good for the heart – heads up, vampire writers.

Next-generation video games. Squee.

Video too, with the not-at-all-tautologous phrase "visual eye candy". Accurate, though. I'd hit that with a cast-iron Wiimote, and I'm utter crap at action games.

Vatican archive yields Templar secrets

[video] Hollywood belatedly joins in the party on US foreign policy.

There now follows a whole load of animal, weird and 'lighter' stories, cut for length. Highlights include nuisance violinists, chocolate bitchfights and a reprehensible, despicable and generally BAD baby tiger. Also, breasts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Vietnamese reptiles and sundry.

If I see the phrase "the eyes have it" used on a picture of some animal with big eyes ONE MORE TIME I'm going to have to firebomb a biznatch. It's one of those phrases that're abused so often for 'hilarious' puns that I'm not sure anybody knows what it really means.

To punish these hypothetical people, assuming also that they read here, have some rather wonderful old blather.

The Parliament.

I had almost forgotten to tell you that I have already been to the Parliament House; and yet this is of most importance. For, had I seen nothing else in England but this, I should have thought my journey thither amply rewarded.

[...]

It often happens that the jett, or principal point in the debate is lost in these personal contests and bickerings between each other. When they last so long as to become quite tedious and tiresome, and likely to do harm rather than good, the House takes upon itself to express its disapprobation; and then there arises a general cry of, "The question! the question!" This must sometimes be frequently repeated, as the contending members are both anxious to have the last word. At length, however, the question is put, and the votes taken, when the Speaker says, "Those who are for the question are to say aye, and those who are against it no." You then hear a confused cry of "aye" and "no" but at length the Speaker says, "I think there are more ayes than noes, or more noes than ayes. The ayes have it; or the noes have it," as the case may be. But all the spectators must then retire from the gallery; for then, and not till then, the voting really commences. And now the members call aloud to the gallery, "Withdraw! withdraw!" On this the strangers withdraw, and are shut up in a small room at the foot of the stairs till the voting is over, when they are again permitted to take their places in the gallery. Here I could not help wondering at the impatience even of polished Englishmen. It is astonishing with what violence, and even rudeness, they push and jostle one another as soon as the room door is again opened, eager to gain the first and best seats in the gallery.

Karl Moritz, Travels in England in 1782 (London, 1886)

Chuckle Brothers. Utter rubbish; but then, this pup grew up on Smallfilms and Cosgrove Hall stop-motion and never much liked slapstick anyway.

US forces 'lure Iraqis with bait'

Brilliant, Mary-Jane! I bet these super-best clever traps were baited with live ammunition, too, for extra cleverness.

I guess nobody in Iraq would see guns left lying around on the street and pick them up with the purpose of, ooh, I don't know, handing them in to security or stopping their children getting their hands on them or anything.

Those pesky human ricommunity relations.

Oh really now. It's an ugly cat. (My opinion, not that of my employer.)

Deep-voiced men 'have more kids'

I knew I was doomed to childlessness, but at least so are many of my favourite metal vocalists. Balls are made of steeeeeeel.

Grow up, Italy!

US cultie guilty of having a 14-year-old married against her will to her cousin. Always underage girls being pimped to lecherous older men. Funny, that.

Boooo.

The sitch in Burma's getting interesting.

Pictures from yesterday.

The internet saves the world once more.

Burma's also top of a new list of places not to move to. The top ten of the good-guys end of the list contains few surprises and no UK. Though to be fair to my birth nation, we're joint 12th. (Yes, on the good list; I checked because the story wasn't specific.)

Vatican warning over pope 'relic'

Oops, sorry, I misinterpreted that headline, hahahahaha.

Grow up, China!

…OK, not sure I can blame you for this one.

And, erm, I suppose this wouldn't go down well over there.

Next time: curried placenta!

This recent increase in allergies is quite fascinating.

Quite worrying how little the medics in this country know, though. For example, avoiding things can in fact increase your risk of becoming allergic to them (you don't build up a tolerance), and it's possible to chip away at an allergy by progressively exposing yourself to tiny amounts of the irritant (under controlled conditions! IANAD!).

And I want people to stop gratuitous capitalisation of nouns¹, but life's full of disappointments.
¹unless they speak German and are thus excused by dint of general awesomeness

Oates' sleeping bag case for sale

"I'm not racist, I just hate gyppos" says man

More details about the 'child porn' exhibition photo.

And note the following. The CPS says no case can be made against the photo under the Protection of Children Act, which means the entire argument suddenly boils down to this: "controversial photographs of naked children, taken by [Nan] Goldin, were indecent and would appeal to paedophiles."

Except that we must strike out the word "indecent" because they are not so, otherwise they would contravene the Protection of Children Act. Sections 1:1:a-b, right there.

So then we're left with the fact that they're decent controversial (obviously that) photos of naked children and the speculation that they "would appeal to paedophiles".

Now then. *flexes fingers* A naked photo of my dog might give a zoophile a thrill. A photograph of the contents of my fridge might excite someone with a burning attraction to the chance combination of half a cauliflower, rye bread, Greek yoghurt, not-very-nice Cheddar, a bunch of apples from our garden, Slen's Crunch Corner yoghurts and some leeks. Some people would find the stone tortoise on my desk unbearably sexy (especially with his foot on a post-it note, the TEASE). I hope you can see where I'm going with this.

Sickos of any kind will get their thrills where they will. It is wrong for us to prevent them doing so lawfully.

I don't much like pictures of naked kids, but by the gods. Grow up, UK!

*remembers hasn't got a dog; is sad*

Apple: "Unlocking iPhones will make them not work, but that's nothing to do with us and we're not deliberately crippling people who defeat our crippleware or anything." Pffft.

(P.S. "continuously delight" = "you are our beta testers" + "oops, we forgot to add any features")

Oh, and Halo 3 or something. ;)

Yay, my old uni.

Could you recognise symptoms of a stroke?

Microsoft 'mulls Facebook stake'

Meh, I like my self-hosted WordPress. I'm only on LJ because of you lot, and once OpenID is a bit more [pdf] secure and widely used, even that won't be necessary.

Child porn probe over art exhibit

There's a video, but it's the usual "we don't know anything and here are some of the things we don't know", which I find mildly offensive. Drive or fly a correspondent there to stand outside the building and waffle.

UK troops 'scare Kenyan wildlife'

Legacy of the Little Rock Nine. Good story.

Don't let TFTD's endorsement by Tom Butler put you off. The '$100 laptop' sounds like a great toy. Woot for 'view source' key!

Grey areas in China's one-child policy

"A new book for travellers to China plans to make no mention of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Should travel guides tell the whole history of a place, or bow to local sensitivities?"

This story mentions Nürnberg for the reasons you'd imagine.

[video] Skin 'lightening' cream aimed at Asians. I've never understood this. Anyone know why dark is 'bad'? Is it our (the pasty West's) fault, or does it date to before we muscled in?

O noes freedom of socks!!1!

Hang the Pope! What harm can it do?

More old piccies…

Plea to help save red squirrels

Squee!

Dentist in Islamic headscarf row

(I'm sniggering because… well, it's a long story, but I believe I may already know of this man. Definitely a doctor. Really.)

Iran president in NY campus row

Rudeness on both sides. It might also be seen as unkind to bait the mentally ill.

Squeeeeeple*melts into big puddle*

Awesome, ladies.

And ooh, new Ressie film! I certainly can't wait to see what Miss Mary Sue Alice gets up to next in what is certain to be a monsterpiece of modern film…y…things! *grumblegrumbleJillValentinegrumble*

Motown techniques used to develop audio encoding in order to combat quality loss over small headphones.

You can listen to two examples. There is something different between them, though my ears can't work out what it is. Anyway, fun!

"I'm just one of those pandas…" Great shot with the kids in the background.

Armed biker takes church donation

"UP" IS NOT A VERB. Nor is "off". Nor is "big". And "lay" does not mean what you think it means, if you're one of these who like to abuse it in a recumbent sense.

What religious ceremony, oh usefully-specific news reporter? I thought Chaturthi at first, but we've got that down as last Saturday.

My views, not my employer's. Also, being a coward, I didn't tick "yes" to request a reply.

BBC official complaints form
BBC 2
James May's 20th Century
17/07/2007
(Body Fantastic episode, broadcast 20:30)

My complaint is about the G-force and diving sections of the programme. I didn't stay to watch the rest.

The science was poor and the presentation patronising. The presenter said "this is called G-force" in the tone of voice that suggested this was some fancy-schmantzy new science jargon, and as the programme went on I got the distinct impression he didn't really understand what G-force meant. (Roughly speaking, it is a measure of acceleration, measured in multiples of the Earth's gravitational force, so one G is the same force as the Earth's gravity. This wasn't made clear. Pretty sure gravity was never mentioned.)

Then he came out with some rubbish about evolutionary theory that floored me. Read the rest of this entry »