Does your dog hate being left out of the trendy, and incredibly expense, oxygen therapy fad? Do you have a fat bank account and all the common sense of a retarded Belgian hamster? Then get out the plastic, ring up the AirPress company and order the O2 Dog oxygen therapy system.
JK Rowling, the new Roger BannisterGreat. Not only does Rowling crank out crappy prose to make far more money than I do , but she can run the four-minute mile as well.
Gordon Brown has been served traditional US foodAnd this is the image:
Apparently, the BBC imagines that "roast tenderloin of beef, mashed potatoes, sautéed green beans and peas with smoked bacon and mint followed by a dessert of brownies with caramel and vanilla sauce" is indistinguishable from a sloppily made and what looks like ice-cold double cheeseburger.
The report criticises the Bush administration's approval of practices which would be illegal if carried out by British agents. It shows that in 1998, the year Bin Laden was indicted in the US, Britain insisted that the policy of treating prisoners humanely should include him. But the CIA never gave the assurances.That's what I call impressive; Bush is so powerful that he's able to implement policies three years before he took office.
(I)f Bill Gates is right and the robots are coming, they should be designed in a way that makes them fit most naturally into the lives of ordinary people.I'm sorry, but we've been down this road already and I think we have a pretty good idea of where it's really headed.
It's my daughter's fifth birthday here at Chez Szondy, so I'm off for the rest of the day to ride herd on a load of insane kindergarteners.
Obesity 'contagious', experts sayNow that the spectre of secondhand fat has been raised, can the same draconian measures leveled against tobacco be far behind?
"Nuclear power is the energy of the future," he said. "If we don't give the energy of the future to the countries of the southern Mediterranean, how will they develop themselves? And if they don't develop, how will we fight terrorism and fanaticism?"The president added that if the West considered that Arab countries were "not sensible enough to use civilian nuclear power", this would risk a "war of civilizations".
Aside from the fact that Libya already has plenty of oil to produce power, that Colonel Gaddafi is as flaky as a box of corn flakes, and that he has a track record of trying to get his hands on WMDs, if there is even the remotest chance of a "war or civilisations" wouldn't be prudent to forget appeasing our enemies in favour of making certain that they be kept as far from getting nuclear weapons as possible?
A US cat that is reportedly able to sense when a nursing home's residents are about to die is baffling doctors.Of course, the fact that Oscar took out large insurance policies on each of the patients had nothing to do with it.
Oscar has a habit of curling up next to patients at the home in Providence, Rhode Island, in their final hours.
According to the author of a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, the two-year-old cat has been observed to be correct in 25 cases so far.
Durham police are warning residents of Darlington to stay on the look out for a crazed, psychopathic, killer... Heifer.
From The Register:US wants trucks mounted with frikkin' laser beamsI was so disappointed to learn this wasn't about commercial haulers.
People are being told (by the Energy Saving Trust) to wear jumpers instead of relying on patio heaters, in an attempt to cut carbon emissions.What people are telling the
And now from NEC and Futaba Industrial Company comes the Hello Kitty Robo. It has face recognition, voice recognition, chats, plays games, and hunts for Sarah Connor.
Anti-Spoiler Alert: Though I'm talking about the latest and (Please, God!) last Harry Potter book, I am not going to make any startling revelations about it. Okay, one: I managed to stay awake. Barely.I am not a Harry Potter fan. That function at Chez Szondy is taken up by my wife, who regards J. K. Rowling's series about the schooldays of a young wizard as a charming and magical coming of age tale that is worth reading over and over. I see the books as an overheated and transient cultural phenomenon that in half a century will be looked back upon as the turn of the millennium version of the literary hula hoop.
I don't care for young Potter, but my beef isn't with the innocent fan. Rather it is with those who put J. K. Rowling on the same shelf with far better writers and call the Potter books "classics" or who think writing for children excuses bad writing. That does not, however, mean that the books cannot be enjoyed for what they are on their own merit. If you enjoyed and love the Harry Potter books and if they speak to some part of your soul that no other book has, then more power to you. I would not dream of criticising your pleasure.
But if I dislike it so much, why did I slog through seven books and five (and counting) films? Three reasons. First, I take an interest in my wife's hobbies. Second, it is a major phenomenon and is worthy of study as such. And third, it is such a jaw-dropping example of bad writing that it is actually fun to read a Harry Potter book while growling and waving an imaginary blue pencil over the page. It helps even more if you have the cardboard cutout of Mike and the 'bots that comes with the MST3K DVDs to prop up in front of you while reading.
B.C. robotics firm lands Martian contractNow that is what I call an aggressive foreign trade policy.
There is no policy that has been hawked, unsold, around Whitehall for longer than identity cards. It was always brought to us as a solution looking for problems.Read the whole thing, as the kids say.
Television reception poor? Satellite and cable haven't been invented yet? Then why not try to solve the problem with a B-29 bomber outfitted with a television transmitter.
Convalescing Fidel Castro said in an essay Tuesday that he has been so engrossed with Cuba's performance at the Pan American Games in Brazil that he forgets to eat and take his medicine.That and "convalescing" in a meat locker will do that.
We operate in a global, multi-racial, multi-religion environment, and we strive to be sensitive and respectful to all. To remain true to that spirit, we have decided that selecting the alternative name for our new organization is simply the right thing to do.Translation: We'll be good dhimmis. Don't hurt us.
From Newsday.com:Nelson Mandela celebrates his 89th birthday tomorrow in Johannesburg, launching a humanitarian campaign along with former President Jimmy Carter, ex-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other "elders" of the global village. The initiative stems from an idea by British entrepreneur Richard Branson and musician Peter Gabriel to create a world council of elders to tackle issues such as conflict, AIDS and global warming."World Council of Elders." How very grand.
Abandoning all understanding of who works for whom, Britain's Chief Medical Officer orders patients to remind doctors to wash their hands.
UK 'not being macho with Russia'Well, it's a bit hard to be "macho" when your weapon of choice is a handbag.
MIT has an press release on its programme to produce an updated version of the Space Activity Suit.
Raymond Island was surrounded by waterStop the presses!
Pagans have pledged to perform "rain magic" to wash away Homer Simpson, the cartoon character, who was painted next to their famous fertility symbol, the Cerne Abbas giant, yesterday.I love the "their" that the reporter tucks into the sentence. Apparently, the rule is now that a 21st century lunatic-fringe group can now claim ownership of an ancient monument built millennia ago by a people with whom said lunatic-fringe group have no actual connection by misappropriating a name attached to said ancient people by a third party.
From Sky News:Third Doctor Charged Over Terror PlotWilliam Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant were unavailable for comment.
For a time it puzzled me that after 50 years of tumultuous change the media liberal attitudes could remain almost identical to those I shared in the 1950s. Then it gradually dawned on me: my BBC media liberalism was not a political philosophy, even less a political programme. It was an ideology based not on observation and deduction but on faith and doctrine. We were rather weak on facts and figures, on causes and consequences, and shied away from arguments about practicalities. If defeated on one point we just retreated to another; we did not change our beliefs. We were, of course, believers in democracy. The trouble was that our understanding of it was structurally simplistic and politically naïve. It did not go much further than one-adult-one-vote.
We ignored the whole truth, namely that modern Western civilisation stands on four pillars, and elected governments is only one of them. Equally important is the rule of law. The other two are economic: the right to own private property and the right to buy and sell your property, goods, services and labour. (Freedom of speech, worship, and association derive from them; with an elected government and the rule of law a nation can choose how much it wants of each). We never got this far with our analysis. The two economic freedoms led straight to the heresy of free enterprise capitalism - and yet without them any meaningful freedom is impossible.
But analysis was irrelevant to us. Ultimately, it was not a question of whether a policy worked but whether it was right or wrong when judged by our media liberal moral standards. There was no argument about whether, say, capital punishment worked. If retentionists came up with statistics showing that abolition increased the number of murders we simply rejected them.
The same moral imperatives determined our attitude to the dissolution of the British Empire. It was right, so there was no further argument. We would not even discuss whether the prosperity and happiness of the Ugandans or the Rhodesians or the Nigerians would be better served by a partial or more gradual transfer of power; it had to be total and it had to be immediate. We were horrified by the arrogant way our grandparents' generation had used their political and economic power to impose Christianity on religiously backward peoples. Were we, as missionaries for democracy, not guilty of imposing media liberal democracy in exactly the same way?
His conclusion is a bit kinder than the evidence would lead me to be. I don't think the BBC is dedicated to an "ideology of opposition," but rather that of an undeclared and tax-funded political party with its own agenda, but still Mr. Jay's article is a ray of light in a dark cupboard that's been sealed too long.
Thing of Evil!
The Commission for Racial Equality, still thinking that it's 1970 and that the best way to promote racial harmony is to approach children's literature like Margaret Dumont in a sex-toy shop, denounced the 1930's comic book Tintin in the Congo as "racist" and demanded that the Borders bookshop chain remove it from their shelves least five-year olds glance at the cover and go bolting off for the nearest BNP office to join up.
California's best Chardonnay has been selected and the winner is Charles Shaw's vintage, which retails for $2.99.
Are Ian Fleming's James Bond novels mere pulp or literature suffering at the hands of blinkered snobbery?
Grandma gets ready to get down at Glasto
Once again treating four hundred years of tradition like an embarrassing skin disease, the government has declared that judges and lawyers need no longer wear wigs and bands in civil cases.
The reason professors sleep with their students in fiction is because any realistic portrayal of your jobs would bore readers out of their skulls within ten minutes.As an ex-academic I can attest to that on a stack of exam booklets.
A senior policeman demonstrates that he needs a little lie down:Technology such as cloned part-robot humans used by organised crime gangs pose the greatest future challenge to police, along with online scamming, Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Mick Keelty says.Sarah Connor was unavailable for comment.
Robot walks on waterJesus Christ responds, "Been there, done that."
2005: Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver condemns the "turkey twizzler" culture in British school lunch rooms. Demands students eat what he wants them to eat. Government yaps like happy little puppies at the thought of more social engineering opportunities.
The failed bomb attacks on London and Glasgow have damaged public perceptions of Islam, a survey has suggested.No doubt that would be the "No #&%$, Sherlock" survey.
The BBC has a report on the indolence of teenagers in Devon that poses this daft question:Do they really have nothing better to do?I am of that age where it is really not a good idea to ask me nonsense like that, as it tends to end in a rant about gutters, lawns, stables, weeds, houses, dishes, Hoovers, dogs, trees, boats, hulls, barnacles and their rooms, mixed with verbs like clean, mow, shovel, hoe, paint, wash, push, walk, swab, scrape, and dynamite combined with pointed use of the phrases, lazy, layabout, good-for-nothing, spoiled and idle-pated and posed against the alternatives of horse whip and keel haul.
Specifically, (Gordon) Brown's strong desire not to call Islamic terrorism by name echoes the insistence of the head of the Wizard government, the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge — to refer to their mortal enemy, Voldemort, as "he who must not be named."Where is a pack of annoying, wand-wielding school kids when you need them?
No one is in favour of governments dictating family size but we need to act quickly to prevent it.Translation: We are in favour of government dictating family size, so do what we say "voluntarily" or else.
Don Surber over at blog.dailymail,com compares Woodstock and Live Earth and has some cogent things to say about the geriatric nature of the latter's headliners"If you want to save the planet, I want you to start jumping up and down. Come on, mother-[bleepers]!” Madonna railed from the stage at London's Live Earth concert Saturday. “If you want to save the planet, let me see you jump!”This whole episode reminds me of one of my pet peeves, which is the relentless retreading of mid to late 20th century pop music in commercials and films. Not only do I regard this as cheap and lazy, but the tunes selected often date well back to the '60s, yet the steaming nits who insert this tripe think they're being young, hip and relevant when all they manage to get out of me is an angry snarl about all this "old people's" music every time "Born To Be Wild" creaks out of the screen.
You just can't beat that. What else could capture the canned juvenilia of a 48-year-old centimillionaire — who owns nine homes and has a “carbon footprint” nearly 100 times larger than the norm — hectoring a bunch of well-off, aging hipsters to show their Earth-love by jumping up and down like children? I suppose she could have said, “Now put your right foot in / Take your right foot out / Right foot in / Then you shake it all about…. That's what climate change is all about.”
Actually, I think the “Hokey Pokey” makes more sense.
Diver in lobster wrestling matchI understand you can still see lobster wrestling in Mexico.
Sweet Mother of God! I'll wake up any moment. I've got to wake up. I've GOT TO!
According to IRNA, the official Islamic Republic news agency, the national Police chief has implicitly verified the news about the confiscation of a number of squirrels, equipped with eavesdropping devices, on the Iranian borders. He has declined to give any more details, but, reportedly, when asked about the confiscation of 14 spy squirrels, he stated, “I have heard about it, but I do not have precise information”. IRNA adds, “These squirrels were equipped by foreign intelligence services, but were captured two weeks ago by the Police”.I think the Iranians should go have a little lie down somewhere.
British public safety officials today increased the national alert level to "Quite Elevated Indeed" -- the highest category possible -- and appealed to UK citizens to "keep a sharp lookout for diverse people engaged in activities.""We ask the public to report any behaviors by various people that may or may not be of a suspicious nature," said Lt. Clive Jameson of the Metropolitan Police Service. "We further ask the public to be especially vigilant for activities of broad stratas of people who may be from countries of some sort, especially those within the eastern and/or western hemisphere."
Tip o' the hat to Charles Palmer.
Astonishingly, many of the alleged jihadists have not been sacked because - it is claimed - police do not have the "legal power" to dismiss them.Translation: "Here, let me help you put that noose around my neck."
The BBC's Jeremy Bowen files a Balance indeed. The BBC prides itself on covering the full spectrum of opinion: Centre left, left, far left, and now Islamofascist.Some of the foreign BBC staff are quite open about their sympathies for Hamas. The senior BBC Arabic Service correspondent in the Gaza Strip, Fayad Abu Shamala, told a Hamas rally on May 6, 2001, (attended by the then Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin) that journalists and media organizations in Gaza, including the BBC, are "waging the campaign [of resistance/terror against Israel] shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people (and Hamas in particular, it seems-- ed.) ."
The best the BBC could do in response to requests from Israel that they distance themselves from these remarks at the time, was to issue a statement saying, "Fayad's remarks were made in a private capacity. His reports have always matched the best standards of balance required by the BBC."
When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.
By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.
Over in Euroland, its business as usual as Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's premier and leader of the bloc of 13 single currency members, says that the new European Union Treaty (the rejected constitution being fobbed off again under another name) should be the subject of public debate. That is, unless you're British, in which case you should be left in the dark until it's too late.The EU: Protecting the people from democracy for half a century.I am astonished at those who are afraid of the people: one can always explain that what is in the interest of Europe is in the interests of our countries. Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?
Start as you intend to continue, I suppose.The Prime Minister has also instructed his team – including new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith – that the phrase “war on terror” is to be dropped.Gordon Brown has banned ministers from using the word “Muslim” in connection with the terrorism crisis.
The shake-up is part of a fresh attempt to improve community relations and avoid offending Muslims, adopting a more “consensual” tone than existed under Tony Blair.
