August 2003

Supergroup

After a rant about the FBI’s comedy-cop indictment of a teenage cracker, this page includes an intriguing item about the Dalai Lama. Apparently someone tried to use his Holiness’s image to sell software and “his people” objected. The Dalai Lama has “people“? “Yeah, John Paul II’s people and the Dalai’s people got together and it […]

Read More

Self Demotion

Last time I was interviewing candidates for a job I had my “girl compensator” turned up quite high. In The Telegraph today Anne Robinson explains what I mean. [Free registration required, value of shares can go down as well as up, please pay attention to the pre-flight safety demonstration, your home is at risk if […]

Read More

You’ve Got To Laugh

Okay, all the worthy world affairs stuff is getting boring now, I know. Here’s some unworthy stuff about Iraq. Bonkers Iraqi parents name son after George Bush. British Spin has those missing Hutton Inquiry emails in full.

Read More

Mmmm: Lemony Hamas!

Check this surreal phenomenon out before the Powers That Be fix it! If you search the BBC’s News site for “Arafat“, the first link you pull up takes you to a potted biography of Lemony Sicket, mysterious children’s author. It’s another Giant Lizard conspiracy, I tell you. The rest of this entry is second-hand ‘Blogging […]

Read More

Terminology, Psychology, Who-ology, Stringology

It’s a busy ‘Blogging morning. First: here’s a scholarly (or at least reasonably well-informed) argument for me to remove my usual distancing quotation marks from “Islamofascist”, “balanced” by more criticism for the U.S. administration over Iraq and terrorism (specifically Al-Qaeda and friends) in a ‘Blog interview with Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc.: Inside […]

Read More

Cultural Centres

Even though Martin has recently stopped reading PooterGeek because it’s become “too self-referential”* lately, I am going to post his recommended link to Arts and Letters Daily. It looks like a superb regular stop-off point for literature lovers and culture vultures of every kind. There’s one for technophiles too. (Image of Martin courtesy of Adam) […]

Read More

GI Joe to the Rescue

This is an example of that rare thing, excellent tabloid journalism. (In case you think this is Right-wing, gung-ho, salute-the-flag nonsense you should, as Wiqqi would say, read it in the context of Salam Pax.) Update: Adam says the Salam Pax link is dead. That’s because “Where’s Raed?” is currently dead. Probably killed by the […]

Read More

Still Crap

I have pointed out here before that I am the World’s worst football fan. Appropriately, I “support” the “worst” team in the Premiership. They aren’t simply bad in a finishing-close-to-the-bottom-of-the-table-heavily-in-debt way. They are bad in a chronically-underperforming-and-dull-to-watch-yet-embarrassingly-in-credit way. I only mention this to point out that the day before yesterday (my terrible supporting consists of […]

Read More

All They’re Quacked Up To Be

The real news is terrible right now, so here is a random science story from September 2001. Sexual selection is a fascinating little cupboard of biology. My previous boss started out as a biologist working on sperm competition. As a full professor he amusingly listed one of his interests as “spermatogenesis”. He worked on mice, […]

Read More

In No Man’s Land

Today I have read two depressing Economist editorials about the “Road Map“. The first was in my subscription copy, written after the suicide bombing in Jerusalem, but before the assassination of Ismail Abu Shanab. It stated drily that things were worse than they looked. The second is online now. I don’t think a subscription is […]

Read More

Flypaper / Quagmire / Tarpit

Amber* sent a link to a New York Times article [free registration required yakety yakety] about how the United States’ postwar slackness has fostered terrorism in Iraq. She also writes to tell me that, like everyone else (but me), she has received 400 email messages from various worms. Ah, Microsoft. (According to Geoff, our head […]

Read More

Mingle Mangle Mingle Mangle

I am trying to wrap my head around the fact that John Pilger and Christopher Hitchens both write for The Mirror. (The title is the theme from The Twilight Zone—just repeat it over and over in a sing-song voice and you’ll see what I mean. Or perhaps you’ll just sound very silly.)

Read More

Lest We Forget

Little Green Footballs annoys me. It’s a ‘Blog which does the useful service of accumulating various racist rantings from Islamic extremists. And it’s a ‘Blog that does itself a disservice with its own racist rants. While dropping by today to disapprove, I picked up a link there to a letter in the Telegraph that every […]

Read More

Hey, Sloth Girl!

Congrats to fellow blogger Casual Savant who has submitted her dissertation and is now conspicuously inactive. Thanks for the postcard from Paris which finally arrived at work today—doncha love those productive Frenchies? Lovely handwriting as always. Here’s the obligatory Douglas Adams quote: "My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Bront,Ak(B, brother of Emily and […]

Read More

Rebels Without a Brain

This article about the “Iraqi” “resistance” adds a couple of new-ish twists to the tales of guerilla warfare. I love the bit at the end about those Yankee bastards bringing attacks down on themselves by insensitively playing John Cougar Mellencamp through speakers strapped to their Humvees. That’s just evil. Why can’t they celebrate by firing […]

Read More

From Hell’s Heart I Stab At Thee!

The jostling of the Google giants continues: Claire.Berlinski: 1150 Damian.Counsell: 974 Wait till my books come out, clever trousers. (Oh yes, here’s the obligatory Kirk link for those of you geeky enough to recognize the place where the Moby Dick quote was most famously re-deployed.)

Read More

Enemy at the Gates

Enemy at the Gates is to Saving Private Ryan as Battlestar Galactica was to Star Wars. Enemy at the Gates does several big-budget things well. It terrifies us with its depiction of a Stuka attack on troop carriers. It renders the grim vistas of the destruction of Stalingrad so spookily you’d feel sad just looking […]

Read More

Tour de Force

After his appearance in PooterGeek this week, Allan Brigham—this the last time I will refer to you as “celebrity roadsweeper“, Allan, I promise—invited me on one of his tours of Cambridge for free. What a revelation! Sonya and I joined the throng outside the Guildhall yesterday evening and (after some shockingly un-English touchy-feely stuff so […]

Read More

Who Breaks a Butterfly?…

I’ve pulled the Monotreme reviews and associated debate. PooterGeek has, surreally, already become Google’s 12th highest hit for “K*** vs O******”. As previous experience has shown, it would be number 1 within a week. No one deserves that—even R** P***** V**********. (The title of this post is the beginning of the Alexander Pope quotation in […]

Read More

Cruel Summer

Here’s another one from The Guardian, via Wiqqi, about the messiness of post-war justice in Iraq under the U.S.. There is something grimly ironic about an Iraqi trying to explain away gunfire to an American soldier with the phrase “every household in Baghdad has a gun”. I have no doubt that Americans are ballsing up […]

Read More

What Kind of Monster?…

I’m trying hard not to feel threatened as I absorb the news that PooterGeek’s readers’ comments have become more interesting than my postings. Before you guys start getting cocky, just remember who pays for the bandwidth around here.

Read More

Heat Stroke

I’m not sure whether this means Glenn Reynolds‘s stock is falling or Claire Berlinski‘s is rising, but, yesterday, his Weblog Instapundit actually reproduced Claire’s haiku on the death of her bonsai tree.

Read More

Pinoy Collation

I didn’t mention the non-coup in the Philippines at the time, but Maoi’s fellow countrywoman, Jessica Zafra, has some amusing reflections on the “tumultuous” events, quoted over at Casual Savant.

Read More

Quotes of the Week

A twenty-something female work colleague began a non-ironic sentence like this: "I don’t want a perfect body or anything, but, you know Halle Berry?…" …before continuing on to covet in detail Ms. Berry’s defined deltoids—only her deltoids, I must admit. If I could focus on Halle’s deltoids alone long enough to see what my co-worker […]

Read More
Older Posts