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02:05 pm
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East meets West; virtual bimbos
BBC News Online's Magazine has a nice little feature on the cultures of East and West during the Cold War. It quotes Jane Pavitt, curator of the Cold War Modern exhibition opening next month at the Victoria and Albert Museum, as saying, "Consumer society was used as a bulwark against communism in Europe in the 1950s. That's why fashion and kitchen goods can be seen as part of this." Lovely.
Meanwhile... read this absolute horror on ABC News about a site that let kids as young as 8 give their virtual dolls breast implants and diet pills. Grody to the max!
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07:32 pm
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Lions and tigers and housecats, oh my!
Love the photos from this story in the Daily Mail about an abandoned lion cub and a ginger housecat who have become the best of friends (hilarious Daily Mail headline: The Purrfect Couple).
These vie for unbearable cuteness with the Mail on Sunday's photos of these equally abandoned white tiger cubs at a German zoo (equally hilarious Mail on Sunday headline: All white now). Listen to those squeals (Reuters video)! Most un-tigerish.
Of course none of them are as cute as our new adoptee, Isaac Hayes, who is now about 7 months old and already as big as Lucifer. He has "kitty crazy hour" pretty much all the time when he is not eating, sleeping or having a giant poo. Lucifer is not terrifically happy about all of this; at 13 years old and weighing a stone he has always ruled the roost. Never mind, having someone around to attack has made him behave like a kitten again. Jemimah just growls at him and glares.
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02:26 pm
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When clicking "Enlarge" doesn't do what it says on the tin...
The poor Argentinian-born actor whose "manhood" was airbrushed out for a Royal Opera House poster – the poster has now been "withdrawn".
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12:07 am
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Democrats' next campaign slogan?
"Racial superiority is a mere pigment of the imagination" – author unknown.
Also applaud Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who argued thus in favour of 42-day detention: "We are not legislating now on the basis that we are bringing it in now for something that might happen in the future. We are putting in a provision for it if it becomes unhypothetical" – as The Sunday Times so nicely put it, thus proving herself the true heir to John Prescott.
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07:53 am
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Bons mots
In an article in yesterday's Times on the proposed "presumed consent" for organ donation, a spokesman from the British Heart Foundation said, " 'The recommendations must be adopted in full. Half-hearted solutions won't do'."
Er, quite.
Also my brother, Doug, noticed a headline in yesterday's paper in Boston which read, "Firefighter's allegations spark heated debate".
And there's still nothing to top this gut-wrenching story (ha very ha) of a deceased baby whose organs were removed without his mother's consent. As Doug put it, "The baby boy's mother had my full sympathy right up to the point where she said 'gutted'. Possibly not the best word choice, there. Ahhhgahhd."
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01:53 pm
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Techno talk
Interesting article on BBC News Online on Future directions in computing.
Also some cool shipping technologies: The Economist Technology Quarterly mentions electric engines for ships (see report from US Congressional committee and article by Philippe Masson and others in Superconductor Science and Technology) and also Tom told me about giant "kite" sails for tankers – Sky Sails.
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01:36 pm
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Blogging is TEN
According to BBC News Online, the term "blog" was coined ten years ago by some guy writing about Robot Wisdom.
An example of good 'un: I recently met überblogger and technical evangelist Ted Patrick who works on Flex at Adobe – well worth checking out his blog.
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01:23 pm
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Proud parent! [and Blake]
My baby's student/university newspaper, York Vision, of which Loulla-Mae (Eleftheriou-Smith) is co-editor, has been voted best university newspaper in the UK at the Guardian Student Media Awards. I'm so proud of her, I could just burst! There was a photo of her in the paper yesterday but I'll have to see if I can get permission to scan and display it.
Just an aside: thought-provoking piece on William Blake on BBC News Online today.
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12:35 am
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Cat-astrophic
Scottish rabbit adopts kittens. Vee funny. Watch bunny's nose, especially. Here too.
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12:08 am
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Savage Beest
Saw a great flick week before last called The Savages, starring Laura Linney & Philip Seymour Hoffmann. Highly recommend it. It's a black comedy about a brother and sister who are estranged from their not-so-nice dad, but when his long-term girlfriend dies they have to start looking after him. Terrifically funny and also moving. Laura Linney actually came to the screening, at the London Film Festival, and she is as lovely in person as she is on screen.
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11:30 pm
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Funniest thing since Flight of the Conchords...
...is Yacht Rock. Shockingly this hilarious show was cancelled but ten episodes are still visible online. Do watch them all but you could do a lot worse than starting with Ep 4: Rosanna.
Also vee funny is Flight of the Conchords, also at HBO. Watch their tribute-stroke-pisstake of Barry White or their pisstake-stroke-tribute to David Bowie.
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02:11 pm
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Vindication is mine!
See? I toldja so: chocolate doesn't cause spots, it lowers blood pressure.
Hah!
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04:33 pm
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I'm beginning to sense an obsession developing at the BBC...
...and elsewhere in the UK, as three of the five most emailed stories across the country today included:
Testicles
Male phantom pregnancies
Condoms
I don't make this sh&t up!!!
Addendum 4 July 2007
Not to mention self mutilation – guy cuts off his johnson in a restaurant
and
a restaurant that serves nothing but johnsons...
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11:17 am
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Oh, *that* old chestnut!
Amazing. Plasma technology was first posited in the 1970s and Iain M Banks has been writing about it for some time (along with many other SF authors), but it's actually happening now, in Costa Rica.
Incredible.
However, the European Space Station resupply cargo ship can't get off the ground at the minute, so perhaps getting too excited at this stage is a bit previous!
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01:47 pm
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Oh, come ON!
Give me a break... what is *with* this country? Political correctness goes madder every day. Today, teachers are told not to encourage students to put their hands up with answers to questions in class, lest they risk leaving behind quiet pupils who "don't draw attention to themselves".
Can't they just call on pupils who don't have their hands up, like they did in my day? Surely that's the whole point of teachers, to look out for which kids don't participate and encourage them to do so. There's no law says you can only call on kids with their hands up. What about the noisy ones who just haven't bothered to do the work? Teachers call on them all the time.
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12:57 pm
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Pregnant winos
Okay, the wine-during-pregnancy row has reached new heights of ridiculousness... "they" (whoever "they" are) are now recommending that women do not drink at all during pregnancy or when attempting to conceive. (As to the latter, drinking during conception could be tricky for some.)
Two things: one, who's going to break it to French women that they can't have a glass of red wine with dinner? the same poor f&*%er who had to tell them they can't eat unpasturised cheeses for nine months?
And two, what about all of us of my generation whose mothers drank in moderation, and we're all absolutely fine? Many clinicians say the evidence that moderate drinking harms unborn children is "sketchy". Quite.
It's the same old bollocks: "The People" are too stupid to understand the meaning of the term "moderation", in the eyes of many, and so advice to drink in moderation is not strong enough for those few morons who binge drink during pregnancy and end up with [more morons] who suffer from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
Grrrr.
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12:55 pm
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Only a British reviewer could call Star Wars "...an utterly delightful romp"
See the BBC's rather good round-up of Star Wars links and the text of Barry Norman's 1977 review.
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04:54 pm
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Very, very ANGRY here...
...that critics say the cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil, will "encourage promiscuity in young women". Surely that assumes that most young women can actually connect the dots and understand that having lots of unprotected sex can give them HPV and cervical cancer – which I doubt most of them do.
So yes, let us by all means encourage young women to die of a totally preventable condition just to satisfy the moral certitude of a few pedants.
Grrrr.
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11:38 pm
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Too good to be true...
"The Russians ordered a consignment of three-foot long condoms... and the Americans sent them out in boxes marked 'medium'..."
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06:33 pm
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Six degrees of Kevin Bacon
Did you know that Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame directed an episode of Inspector Morse starring Ian McDiarmid of Return of the Jedi fame?
Love it.
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