When Youtube Imitates XKCD
And now Youtube features a button that makes Stephen Hawking read your comment back to you so that you can see what a fucking moron you are! WAHEY!
A Word From Our Sponsor
WH Davies he was the boy wasn’t he. Dossed about all his life, shoplifted, jumped trains, wrote poetry. Just like me in my younger days, with the exception that his poetry was actually good and mine sucked monkey balls.
Anyhoo, here’s a sample or two of his poetry.
For starters here’s his most famous poem Leisure.
WHAT is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
Corker or what?
Then we have, of a slightly more melancholy air, The Richest Stones
My wandering days have run their course,
And Age is in my flesh and bones:
Of all the temples, domes, and towers,
Where have I found the richest stones?
The little house where I was born,
And where my early childhood lies,
Was built with solid blocks of gold,
And all its walls had diamond eyes.
And yers a link to his collection Foliage at Project Gutenburg.
Happy Birthday GNU!!
Happy Birthday to the GNU operating system.
Here Steven Fry wishes GNU a happy birthday and introduces those who don’t know to the world of free software.
Go Buy
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow is out in paperback.
It’s on the 3for2 offer in Waterstones.
It’s also dead simple to shoplift from Waterstones.
Go now and either buy or steal this book.
Read it then give it to a teenager.
You have your orders.
Jeff Hoon Takes Political Lessons From Lois Griffin
In a recent debate on Newsnight Transport Seceratary Geoff Hoon admitted that he was willing to go a long way in curtailing peoples civil liberties in order to fight ‘terrorism’. This despite the fact that terrorist attacks in this country over the last ten years have been comparitively few and far between.
Truth be told is that the new plans which were being discussed are not part of the fight against ‘terror’ but just a further step down the path towards a society of totla surveillance.
The plans in question are to allow the security services to moniter e-mails and other forms of electronic communication with impunity. Mr Hoon said during the debate that
“If they are going to use the internet to communicate with each other and we don’t have the power to deal with that, then you are giving a licence to terrorists to kill people.”
By simply extending that logic it is obvious that since terrorists use money then the security services need to be able to monitor all our financial transactions, since they also live in houses then all our houses need to be surveilled.
The full story can be found here and we can see where Mr Hoon gets his debating style from below.
The Happening (A Film Review)
It’s not often that a cinematic work will stir my blood enough for me to volunteer comment which goes to show how I feel after having sat through two hours or so of M Night Syalaman’s latest opus ‘The happening’. Not in many years has a film aroused such bile in my gut as this steaming pile of monkey semen.
I implore each and every one of you reading this to avoid this film like a dose of the clap. The only good thing about this movie is that if you really hate someone you can recommend it highly to them.
the lot revolves around plants emitting a pheromone that incites humans to kill themselves. This I did not have a problem with. Suspending ones disbelief is all well and good when enjoying a work of fiction. What really incensed me however was the films total disregard for the world of science.
Making up science to fuel a story is great but twisting the language of science in a manner that would bwefit the most dishonest of creationists is vile.
I am more than likely over reacting but I really, really hate it when a person says that a theory is ‘just an idea’ or that ‘there are things we could never understand’ and when the person saying this is supposed to be a science teacher it just beggars belief!
In my opinion the whole reason behind this constant pushing of the idea there are things that science will never explain is just soft creationist bullshit using the film as a vehicle of social persuasion. Trying to make it seem as ‘common sense’ that science can not explain everything or that a theory is ‘just an idea’.
On top of that it’s a shit film. Terrible script, shite acting and an appalling concept.
PS A theory is not just an idea. A theory is proven to the maximum extent it can be given the current level of technology and scientific understanding.
An idea is a hypothesis. A hypothesis is not however pulled out of thin air. It is arrived at by careful observation and becomes a theory through experimentation proving it to be as true as it can be.
leave a comment