http://www.brandinfection.com/wp-content/Spoof/evian_naive2.jpg
Evian = Naive?
Reply
Category Archives: Updated 2022
GallifreyOne
http://www.gallifreyone.com/news.php
Update 2022: glad to see the site is still here even though the Doctor Who franchise has lost some of its lustre.
Banned Cartoons
Banned cartoons: also racially sensitive ‘toons are reviewed
“If you squint your eyes long and hard enough, any fictional character on any animated cartoon begins to develop its own offensive, socially improper qualities. Even the dynamics inherent to seemingly innocent cartoon settings and situations can appear sinister when scrutinized by qualified armchair cynics.”
http://www.rotten.com/library/culture/banned-cartoons/
https://web.archive.org/web/20170707022523/http://www.rotten.com/library/culture/banned-cartoons/
Update2022: site dropped offline in 2017
In the 1930’s when the Nazi film maker Leni Riefenstahl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leni_Riefenstahl visited the USA all of the film studios refused to have anything to do with the awful bitch except for Disney.
In an effort to redeem Disney’s reputation, Der Fuehrer’s Face (1942),and other anti-Nazi cartoons were made.
Shenyang – mixture of old and new
A mixture of old and new
沈阳 辽宁省
Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China
China Predictions #1
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040701faessay83405-p0/george-j-gilboy/the-myth-behind-china-s-miracle.html
Update: Now behind a paywall
From the page:
“Washington need not worry about China’s economic boom, much less respond with protectionism. Although China controls more of the world’s exports than ever before, its high-return high-tech industries are dominated by foreign companies. And Chinese firms will not displace them any time soon: Beijing’s one-party politics have bred a timid business culture that prevents domestic firms from developing key technologies and keeps them dependent on the West.”
Update 2022: This prediction didn’t turn out so well now did it?
China Predictions #2
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050901faessay84504/wang-jisi/china-s-search-for-stability-with-america.html
(Now only accessible behind a paywall.)
From the page:
“No country can affect China’s fortunes more directly than the United States. Many potential flashpoints — such as Taiwan, Japan, and North Korea — remain, and true friendship between Washington and Beijing is unlikely. But their interests have grown so intertwined that cooperation is the best way to serve both countries.”
Mammoth garlic
http://www.metalandmagic.com/modules.php?set_albumName=weirdfruit&id=mammothgarlic&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php
Elephant garlic is a real thing BTW
‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ – Answer
‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’
Answer: King Henry II of England (March 5, 1133 – July 6, 1189)
The Priest in question was Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Thomas Becket clashed with King Henry II because Thomas sustained that the Pope and English Bishops could not accept the jurisdiction of the King over them. This refusal to submit to the crown provoked Henry to the full force of his Plantagenet anger.
Four of Henry’s knights murdered Becket in order to court favour with him and in doing so turned Becket into a saint. Henry lost popularity and had to become a penitent. He was publicly whipped by monks and made himself wear a horsehair shirt.
Ouch.
South Park artwork
South Park Artwork – South Park Movies
Who gets into Heaven…?
Who gets into Heaven…?
Speaker: Hello, newcomers, and welcome to Hell.
Can everybody hear me? [taps the mic a few times] Hello? Can everybuh-? Okay. [the crowd quiets down]
Uh, I’m the hell director. Uh, it looks like we have about 8,615 of you newbies today, and for those of you who are a little confused, uh, you are dead, and this is hell, so, abandon all hope and uh yada yada yada.
Uh, we are now going to start the orientation process, which will last about-
Man 4: Hey, wait a minute, I shouldn’t be here. I was a totally strict and devout Protestant! I thought we went to heaven!
Hell Director: Yes, well I’m afraid you were wrong.
Soldier: I was a practicing Jehovah’s Witness.
Hell director: Uh, you picked the wrong religion as well.
Man 5: Well, who was right? Who gets into heaven?
Hell Director: I’m afraid it was the Mormons.
Yes, the Mormons were the correct answer.
Crowd: [disappointed] Awww.
Yes, wouldn’t it be a bugger if after praying devoutly to the God of your choice for a whole lifetime it turns out that you picked the wrong religion…
In Memoriam Dave Marsden
http://argoslabs.com/~malefico/gallery/imagenes/pirineos-original-magritte.jpg
In memoriam Dave Marsden, poet, philosopher, magickian and friend.
You said “there’s a lot of love in Geburah.’
Just for you here’s ‘The Temple of the Gnosis’
and ‘The City of Bridges’
The veil has been lifted.
So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.
The Archies, sugar sugar
Update 2022: added the youtube video. I blogged this as I remember it being on Top of The Pops on BBCTV in the Autumn of 1969.
Are you Addicted to the Internet?
Are you Addicted to the Internet?
75%
Hardcore Junkie (61% – 80%)
While you do get a bit of sleep every night and sometimes leave the house, you spend as much time as you can online. You usually have a browser, chat clients, server consoles, and your email on auto check open at all times. Phone? What’s that? You plan your social events by contacting your friends online. Just be careful you don’t get a repetitive wrist injury…
The Are you Addicted to the Internet? Quiz at Quiz Me!
Thanks to http://the-one-u-want.stumbleupon.com/ for this
This week I is mostly listening to…
http://pussycat.kloetstra.com/
This week I is mostly listening to…
Paris webcams
http://www.abcparislive.com/
A selection of Paris webcams:
Update 2022:
https://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/france/ile-de-france/paris.html
Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4141948.stm
I’m feeling cryptic so who said this:
‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’
Clues:
i) It wasn’t John Prescott, the British deputy Prime Minister http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Prescott
ii) It wasn’t http://edwthelongshanks.stumbleupon.com/
Answers when I get back, on the other hand you could just ‘google’ it: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%20%22who%20will%20rid%20me%20of%20this%20turbulent%20priest%22&imgsz=xxlarge&svnum=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&sa=N&tab=iw
In the port of Amsterdam
In the port of Amsterdam There's a sailor who sings Of the dreams that he brings From the wide open sea In the port of Amsterdam There's a sailor who sleeps While the river bank weeps To the old willow tree In the port of Amsterdam There's a sailor who dies Full of beer, full of cries In a drunken town fight In the port of Amsterdam There's a sailor who's born On a hot muggy morn By the dawn's early light In the port of Amsterdam Where the sailors all meet There's a sailor who eats Only fish heads and tails And he'll show you his teeth That have rotted too soon That can haul up the sails That can swallow the moon And he yells to the cook With his arms open wide "Hey, bring me more fish Throw it down by my side" And he wants so to belch But he's too full to try So he stands up and laughs And he zips up his fly In the port of Amsterdam You can see sailors dance Paunches bursting their pants Grinding women to porch They've forgotten the tune That their whiskey voice croaked Splitting the night With the roar of their jokes And they turn and they dance And they laugh and they lust Till the rancid sound of the accordion bursts And then out of the night With their pride in their pants And the sluts that they tow Underneath the street lamps In the port of Amsterdam There's a sailor who drinks And he drinks and he drinks And he drinks once again He'll drink to the health Of the whores of Amsterdam Who've given their bodies To a thousand other men Yeah, they've bargained their virtue Their goodness all gone For a few dirty coins Well he just can't go on Throws his nose to the sky And he aims it up above And he pisses like I cry On the unfaithful love In the port of Amsterdam Written by Jacques Brel
The Economist Video Games
The Economist report on Video Games – factual not sensationalist
From the print edition:
“Critics of video games say they encourage addiction and violence, but research does not support the claim…
Thumbs up to the Economist for this excellent balanced and insightful comment on the recent ‘outrage’ about video games.
The Unofficial Peter OToole Pages!
http://www.realitymouse.com/otoole/
The Unofficial Peter OToole Pages seems to have dropped off the web sometime in 2007, possibly later as the site may have moved. The latest version I could access can be found here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070228232718/http://www.realitymouse.com/otoole/main.html
The actor Peter O’Toole 73 years old this week, born in Co. Galway, Eire, raised in ‘Hunsbeck’, Leeds.
Screwed over by imageshack
http://img346.imageshack.us/img346/3838/265749ej.jpg
Updated 2022:
Screwed over by imageshack changing their use policy. Before I had my own space I used to use image shack to host blog pictures – but in 2015 they changed their policy and these pictures are now lost – some can be salvaged – others not. These ones can’t.
This is going to happen a lot…
New characters for a new century.
First Steps in Second Life
http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/975/2ndlifeb3np.jpg
Ive been taking my first steps in Second Life…
Update 2022:
These pictures look so dated because at the time my computer was a snail and Second Life has developed a lot – but to be honest it never really lived up to its potential. The Achilles heel of Second Life is that it is not scalable and the handover between one virtual square of 256 x 256 meters is not smooth.
On a positive note glad to see that Meta and Alphabet (Facepage and Goggle) tried meta verses and failed. Google had the good grace to try early and quit early.
Second Life is still free to play – although they no longer pay you to be there – I got in early enough to have that grandfathered into my account .
Download it here:
Cory Doctorow in second life
http://www.dragonscoveherald.com/
Cory Doctorow, co-editor of the popular Weblog Boing Boing and craphound.com visited ‘Second Life’ a 3D digital world imagined, created and owned by its 32,000 residents earlier this month.
Here he is in both first and second life.
More about Cory in Second Life can be found at New World Notes
Gemini
Uncle Nolli’s Feng-shui Astral Horoscopes
http://yahooligans.yahoo.com/content/ecards/address?g=27&c=187
Gemini: 22 May-21 June:
As Pluto, wearing only a towelling bathrobe and a wry smile, walks in on
Mercury, who is just out of the shower, you can expect a week of minor but
somehow long-lasting embarassments.
Oops!
Lucky salted snack: Cheesy Wotsits.
Hogarth’s The Enraged Musician
http://www.oboeclassics.com/Hogarth.htm
Hogarth’s The Enraged Musician – This picture repays careful study. Have you found the cats yet?
Chinese Space Program
http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/csp.html
https://chineseposters.net/search/search?keys=space
Whilst NASA may be grounding it’s ageing fleet of shuttles China gets ready….
http://www.spacedaily.com/upi/2005/WWN-UPI-20050520-17111700-bc-china-space-analysis.html
Updated 2022:
Some useful China space inf/news links:
Space.com:
https://www.space.com/topics/china-space-program
China’s official space portal:
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/
Old Bailey Online – The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 – Central Criminal Court
A fully searchable online edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of ordinary people ever published, containing accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court from 1674 to 183
Searchable by: Keyword
Sample:
William Hale. Theft: shoplifting.
8th July 1719
William Hale of St. Clements Danes was indicted for feloniously stealing 15 pair of Worsted Hose, value 40 s. out of the Shop of Thomas Rock the 23d of May last.
The Prosecutor deposed he lost a Board of Hose out of his Shop Window; and his Neighbour who lives right against him deposed, that he saw the Prisoner get up and look three times through the Grate, and when he saw the Shop clear, he reach’d over the Grate and took the Goods, whereupon he secur’d him. The Prisoner pleaded that he was Drunk, and lay down there; that he did not take the Goods; but that the Evidence took him and carry’d him into the Shop with the Goods. But that poor Defence did not avail him the Evidence being positive, the Jury found him Guilty .
Sentence: Death .
Death sentence for shoplifting… a tad harsh methinks.
BBC – Comedy – Extras
Hate crimes rise after UK bombs
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/4723339.stm
In memoriam
Kamall Butt another innocent victim of the London bombings.
From the page: “Three days after the 7 July bombings, Kamal Butt, 48, from Pakistan was murdered outside a corner shop in Nottingham.
Eight juveniles and a man have been arrested.”
Escherization
http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/projects/escherization/
https://web.archive.org/web/20060322021346/http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/projects/escherization/
Over his life, the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher created over a hundred ingenious tesselations in the plane. Some were simple and geometric, used as prototypes for more complex endeavors. But in most the tiles were recognizable animal forms such as birds, fish and reptiles.
Escher was able to discover such tilings through a combination of natural ability and sheer determination.
The author of this site has developed a complex algorithm that can produce reasonable solutions to the Escherization problem.
There some very good examples which I can’t show you because they are all either exceed the maximum file size or image size for stumbleupon apart from this one which is probably the poorest example on the site:
The man responsible for all this is:
Craig S. Kaplan
Assistant Professor,
Computer Graphics Lab,
School of Computer Science,
University of Waterloo,
Ontario,
Canada.
http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/
He even looks clever doesn’t he?
And just to prove how clever he is he even lets you play at making your own compositions using a java applet here: http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/software/penrose/
and it’s it was a lot of fun, enjoy!
iCab – Internet Taxi for the Mac
Update 2022 – I used this browser for a while but to be honest it hasn’t kept up with the main Mac browsers like safari and Chrome.
Also as shareware it doesn’t make sense to pay for something that you can get free elsewhere.
The additional features such as kiosk mode, malware alerts, download manager, source code viewer etc. are also available elsewhere at no cost.
The Chap – MAGAZINE
http://www.thechap.net
From the site:
What, dear friends, has become of our culture?
Was not this once a country where jazz beatniks rubbed shoulders with aged philosophers in smoky cafeterias?
Did not dapper men in horn-rimmed spectacles once explain the mysteries of the world to us via our crackling wireless sets?
Were not public libraries the places where all human knowledge was to be found, at the fingertips of avuncular librarians swaddled in tweed? Where has all this gone?
Replaced, we are told, by the “information superhighway”.
“Information?”
What sort of “information” is conveyed by religious zealots, unclothed harlots and medical charlatans?
Many thanks to
http://hat.stumbleupon.com/
for finding this excellent stumble!
Update 2022:
There is an equivalent Youtube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/Gentlemansgazette
Le Monde : Actualité
C’est un journal francais
The Great Wall
http://www.cocaart.com/e-gallery/online/20021222/20021207a.html
Updated 2022: you can find some of my own photos taken at the Shanghai Pass here
“Bloody Vikings!”
Prime Minister’s Questions July 13th 2005 reaction to 7/7
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm050713/debtext/50713-03.htm
Prime Ministers Questions July 13th 2005
Michael Howard: “I am sure that I speak for the whole House when I join the Prime Minister in expressing our sympathy to those who have suffered such terrible losses, and in the congratulations that he has offered to the police and the security services on the outstanding work that they have carried out following last week’s tragic events.
What we now know is appalling to contemplate. It will take us a long time to come to terms with the fact that these atrocities appear to have been committed by those who were born and brought up in our midst. Does the Prime Minister agree that those responsible for last week’s carnage were not acting in the name of Islam but were perverting its teachings? Will he join me and the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) in condemning the attacks that have taken place on mosques?
Is it not the case that anyone who reaches for a stone to throw at the window of a mosque and anyone who nurtures resentment against our Muslim community is the enemy of us all, because they would be acting in the way the terrorists want us to act, thus helping them to achieve their objective of dividing us one from another? “
Killer in the classroom
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1442457/posts
Mohammad Sidique Khan the ‘Killer in the classroom’
`it gets a little closer every day.
Suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, working as a teaching mentor in a classroom at a school in the Beeston area of Leeds.
The last couple of weeks have been mindnumbing.
The hope of Live8, the sucess of London 2012, the horror of the London Bombings and then the unsettling relevations that there were Al Qaeda operatives amongst us.
We aren’t talking 6 degrees of separation, and by that I mean I was in the same room as Mohammad Sidique Khan a year or so ago. At the time I didn’t converse with him just said ‘Hello’.
Some of my friends and colleagues actually worked with them. I have great difficulty in coming to terms with the fact that this man was working in a caring profession – working with Special Needs Children.
This man:
Magdy el-Nashar is a suspect and is currently in gaol in Cairo until just before the bombings he was resident in Leeds. I know he is a very devout muslim and tried to convert most people he met. He certainly knew at least one of the bombers and holding a doctorate in biochemistry had the knowledge and skills to make the explosive triacetone triperoxide that was used. Large amounts of bomb making equipment was found in a flat he rented, and he left the UK three days before the attacks took place.
Is he one of them?
He worked with people very close to me.
He will be investigated and I trust the West Yorkshire Police to be fair.
Any of these bastards that are given a fair trial and found guilty will to my mind suffer a fate worse than death. They will languish in one of Her Majesties prisons for a very long time locked up with hundreds of violent British criminals who will spend many long hours devising ingenious ways to torment them when the ‘screws’ aren’t looking.
I’m not usually given to such dark thoughts as these but I’m glad that despite recent events I do not want to see the return of capital punishment and judicial murder.