January 2005

Crystal Balls

Brian Whitaker in The Guardian—where else?—writes under the heading “Fig-leaf Freedom”: “portrayals of the election as ‘historic’ are way off mark” Unlike the election, Brian’s insights will ring through the ages like Orwell’s. He is, after all, the Middle East specialist who wrote of the US Presidential election: “What interests Arabs most is America’s attitude […]

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There In Black And White

A couple of weeks ago The Today Programme broadcast an item about how a group of psychologists had discovered that people who prepared job applications by hand were more likely to lie in them than people who made applications through online forms. Today invited an “expert” onto the air to discuss this finding: a graphologist. […]

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Clap Clap Clap

The “file not found” error message on counsell.com features Maryam, the daughter of my friend Nicholas, whom I last saw when I turned up one week early for his and Hind‘s Christmas dinner party. We shared a frozen pizza in his kitchen. Hind was on a train. This week computational-biologist-turned-epidemiologist Nick became the second one […]

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Comedy Genius

At lunch yesterday afternoon we were discussing infinite swimming pools. This led to a debate on how one might construct an infinite waterfall. I said I was going to make an infinite dance record and call it “DJ Counsell versus MC Escher”. The ensuing silence was so complete that the vapour rising up from my […]

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Have A Break

It is fiddly. It is perverse. Most of all it is sublimely pointless. He doesn’t even like KitKats. Chris Applegate of qwghlm brings us one of the greatest expressions of the geek aesthetic since those guys put a Webserver in a fly. While I’m on the subject of geek culture and food, this from geek […]

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Harsh But Fair

Much as it pains me to write this, it turns out that Sisyphus had one legitimate grievance. This post of mine might be interpreted to mean that the organisation formerly known as Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq (CASI) questioned the existence of “mass” “graves” in “Iraq” and the “arrest” of Saddam Hussein. I am happy […]

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Credo

And now for some distinctions that will be lost on our new visitors, particularly Sisyphus who believes all Muslims are Islamists so anyone, like me, who thinks Islamism is dangerous therefore hates all Muslims. That’s an interesting thread to follow and one which, by its lumping together of all adherents to a particular faith according […]

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A Day In The Life

Leasey: Hi, Damian. Who are your new friends? PG: The naked one with the beach ball painted grey and labelled “rock” is Sissy; the one in the cape and eye-mask is Benjy. Benjy: You LIE. I am ANON, crusader for TRUTH and JUSTICE. PG: Nice cape, Benjy. Leasey: Are these weirdos coming to the cinema […]

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Snapping Again

Woohoo! I finally won an Ebay camera auction and got a mint condition Dynax 5 for sixty quid from the efficient and polite hitchin2001. This is a bargain price for a gem of a camera. Watch out family, friends, and random strangers: I have my third eye back.

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If He Existed He’d Be Laughing

“THREE Muslim pilgrims were killed and 500 others suffered light injuries as they jostled to perform the ‘stoning of the devil’ ritual near Mecca, Saudi newspapers reported today. The crush was triggered by the arrival of ‘a large number of African pilgrims carrying their personal belongings’ at the site of the stoning in Mina called […]

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Brief Break

It’s going to be quiet here over the next couple of days, but everyone else I link to in that column on the right seems to be ‘Blogging like crazy lately so you should be able to find entertainment via my ‘Blogroll while I sort out a couple of things in meatspace.

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Watch Out For Those Feeble-Minded Tavern Girls

Following on from my James D. Watson link, yesterday a colleague of mine lobbed me a review copy of DNA and the Criminal Justice System by David Lazer. Click the smaller image below to see an interesting diagram it reproduces from a textbook in use in the early half of the twentieth century (unfortunately it’s […]

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Operation Overload

Kennedy says Iraq is ‘Bush’s Vietnam’. But, if Bush=Hitler, surely it’s his Eastern Front? That can’t be, of course, because Kabul was supposed to be America’s Stalingrad—as was, er, Baghdad. At least we can be sure that Abu Ghraib is Iraq’s My Lai—as long as it’s not true that September 11 2001 was the new […]

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Theodicy

And now it’s time for Thought For The Day. Over in our Manchester studio we welcome the Reverend Nimmo Platitude of St Gavin’s Church Of The Lost Apostle, Bamber Bridge: “Thank you, James. “This morning I toasted a bagel for my breakfast and, as I lifted one half of the deliciously warm, crispy-soft bun off […]

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Second Up Against The Wall

Before he joined the Guardian looney tune crowd Jonathan Freedland wrote a republican manifesto called “Bringing Home The Revolution“. Early on in it, I think, there is a nice little paragraph about how the American dream is to arrive with nothing, work hard, and then watch your son strive and study until one day he […]

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Ouch

Anthony and Jackie are both ‘Blogging about pain: Jackie about the pain women experience when giving birth and Anthony about the pain men ignore when they have long nails stuck in their heads. “The nail was embedded 4cm into his brain—barely missing his right eye. Six days after his 6 January work accident, Mr Lawler […]

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The Final Indignity

When I was ten he was dead scary. Now Darth Vader’s breathing mask gazes up at me from my carpet slippers. (I should point out that they were in a Next sale and therefore cheaper than the non-franchise variety. When I’m hangin’ in my crib I dress like a love god, but I do so […]

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Radio Porn

Kirsty Young has been standing in for wrinkly Yorkshireman Michael Parkinson on his Radio 2 show lately. Her voice is pure sex. When she read out the title of a book in her orgulous Scottish husk: “Why The Whales Came“, I listened and could picture both voiceless labio-velar fricatives blossom perfectly. The whales were probably […]

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Where Was Inspector Morse?

Good socialists here, here, and here ‘Blog the demise of Rosa Luxemburg, but it is important that the loss of another Rosa Luxemburg is not overlooked—by Chris especially, and by others of the Left who, unlike Dr Brooke, are now almost certainly working as management consultants, investment bankers, or barristers: “Dons at an Oxford University […]

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Glacial Acetic

I’m ashamed to say that, after I read it at the Motley Fool, it took me fourteen hours to get this joke: “My daughter asked me for some Nikes for her birthday. I said: ‘You’re nine—you can make them yourself.’” I’m proud to say that this one from Radio Two made me laugh instantly: “Who […]

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Back To The Drawing Board

I had started on this spoof combining the Mark Thatcher and Harry Windsor stories. You know the sort of thing: “So, Mr Thatcher, this was an ironic coup? Well, yah, we’d a bit to drink and a couple of chums had dressed up in fatigues for a party and one of the fellas—an old friend […]

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One Whiner, One Woman

As Tim Worstall notes, Maureen Dowd is whining again. This time, apparently, men want to be mothered before they will marry. She writes: “I’d been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and powerful men took up with the young women whose job it was to tend to them and care for them in […]

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