Monthly Archives: January 2007

More Advertising

29Jan07 – 12:04

A little while back, someone linked me to the Geostationary Banana Over Texas. I thought it was just a Web meme / bit of conceptual art fun. It turns out it’s both of these, but it’s also a real project to launch a gigantic inflatable banana into orbit. It’s worth reading that article right to [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Advertising, Art, Technology, United States | Comments (1)

A Message From Our Sponsors

29Jan07 – 09:59

The previous post included my first paid link to Amazon. In future, when I recommend a book or CD or DVD here I’ll link to its Amazon page. I always used to do this anyway because it was convenient. It also happens that I am a frequent Amazon customer and that their service has always [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Animals, Money, PooterGeek, Shopping | Comments (1)

Worzel Gummidge Watch

29Jan07 – 09:29

Under the headline COME ON, LET’S GET IT RIGHT ABOUT THE LEFT yesterday’s Observer prints letters both pro and anti the thesis advanced by Nick Cohen’s What’s Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way (excerpted at length in last week’s edition of the paper). One letter in particular made me smile: [Cohen]‘s caricature of the ‘liberal-left’ [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Cartoons, Literature, Newspapers, Politics | Comments (7)

Millions Of Souls Cry Out

24Jan07 – 12:56

I’m taking a few days off from blogging because I’m busy so I will leave you, as always on such occasions, with one of PooterGeek’s famously hilarious repackaged jokes. But first, this is perhaps a good time to link to one man’s account of his attempt to go without the Net for a week: Day [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Humour, Life, PooterGeek, The Net, Warfare, Work | Comments (3)

Catblogging At PooterGeek Now Out Of Control

22Jan07 – 20:16

Earlier today I linked to a picture of a cat in a box before linking to a picture of a cat on a man’s hat. That was before I discovered this animated image of a cat clinging to Jeremy Paxman’s hair.

By PooterGeek | Posted in Animals, Animation, Celebrities, TV | Comments (3)

Leggo!

22Jan07 – 09:33

Via things magazine, I discovered an article in the Archinect about how when the people of the virtual community Second Life are given freedom to build whatever they want they recreate suburbia.The author of the piece broadcasts his own prejudices. I hate shopping as well, but I winced at this: [L]ike most utopias, [Second Life] [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Architecture, Life, Philosophy, Politics, The Net | Comments (0)

Cat In A Box

22Jan07 – 09:05

I’m not going to reproduce it here, even as a thumbnail, because (as you can see from the discussion underneath) the creator of the image wouldn’t like that, but at the end of the following link is a lovely photograph. I like it and I am not a cat lover. Do read the photographer’s description [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Animals, Art, Photography | Comments (3)

Who Moved My Deep Freeze?

21Jan07 – 23:14

Today, via Photo Matt, I discovered a phrase that I wish I had known about years ago: “The adage, “Why should I care what color the bikeshed is?“, means: just because you are capable of building a bikeshed does not mean you should stop others from building one just because you do not like the [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Academia, History, Science, Technology, Work | Comments (0)

Kant, Not Puccini

20Jan07 – 21:51

You can download a series of Glasgow University lectures about Kant on MP3.

By PooterGeek | Posted in Academia, Education, Grim Up North?, Philosophy, Technology | Comments (2)

Overheard In The Newsagent’s

20Jan07 – 19:18

Remember this place? Yesterday I’m in there and a middle-aged white bloke in a cravat is sounding off at the (Gujarati) proprietor as the nearest consultable expert on the question of contemporary Indian pulchritude. “Everybody says that one on Big Brother is beautiful, but I’ve seen better. She’s very pale skinned. I wonder if she [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Asia, Life, Race, Shopping, Sport | Comments (4)

Needle

19Jan07 – 15:15

When I used to work for the Medical Research Council, I did my best not to bore people with it on this site. I took up the name “PooterGeek”—ironically, the suggestion of a summer student—so that when people searched for my name on the Web they would find biomedical publications to download rather than movie [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Academia, Blogs, Health, Medicine, Philosophy, Politics, PooterGeek, Science | Comments (3)

M Night Shyamalan’s Signs Of Sense In The Unbreakable Global Village

18Jan07 – 19:14

[A New England meadow. A delicately beautiful Indian woman in a simple smock dress picks daisies with which to decorate her hair.] INDIAN WOMAN [singing to herself as she gazes into the forest beyond]: “बिछड़े अभी तो हम, बस कल परसों,” “जियूँगी मैं कैसे, इस हाल में बरसों?” “मौत न आई, तेरी याद कयों आई?” [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Celebrities, Movies, Mystic Shit, Politics, Race, Tin Foil Hat Wearers, TV | Comments (11)

Doing Wrong

17Jan07 – 15:22

Friends have told me that my obsession with freewill and my belief that there is such a thing as evil are products of my Catholic upbringing. They are, in fact, products of personal experience and of a long, dull training in human biology. I know people who simply do not believe in evil. They are [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Biology, Friends, Philosophy, Religion | Comments (5)

Grammar Horror

17Jan07 – 11:25

[Brace yourself, dad.] I’m shopping around for a colocation service—crudely, a secure shed with a big pipe to the Net where I can install a server. As you’d expect I’ve been checking out local companies. One I won’t be using is Intramedia. The front page of their Website is dominated by what I suppose I [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Brentian Man, Computers, Language, Shopping | Comments (4)

Beige Man In White House?

16Jan07 – 17:38

Barack Obama has registered to form a presidential exploratory committee.

By PooterGeek | Posted in Politics, Race, United States | Comments (4)

Today I’ll Mostly Be Feeling Sorry For Myself

16Jan07 – 11:48

Go away. I have a cold.

By PooterGeek | Posted in Whiny Boy With A Minor, Self-Limiting Viral Infection | Comments (1)

They Run The Media, You Know

15Jan07 – 22:41

Jeremy Paxman gets hate mail from BBC viewers who incorrectly believe him to be Jewish. Christopher Hitchens claims to be Jewish, but his brother Peter claims not to be. Most people assume Nick Cohen is Jewish, but he says he isn’t. Several of my best friends are Jewish. If I keep fixing their computers for [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Friends, Media, Politics, Race, Religion, Tin Foil Hat Wearers | Comments (5)

Tim-ba!

14Jan07 – 10:05

Talking of recycling, it looks like producer Timbaland has some explaining to do to a Finnish computer musician about a backing track that Mr Land laid down for Nelly Furtado. [The previous link goes to YouTube, but you can follow these links to MP3s of the tunes.] There’s something amusing about a deep-voiced multimillionaire hip-hop [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Computers, Europe, Money, Music, United States | Comments (5)

A Weekend Trip To The Recycling Centre

13Jan07 – 20:03

I’m busy so, instead of writing my own stuff, I’ll just point at the efforts of some other bloggers. This at Fisking Central is a point worth making over and over again: Utopia doesn’t refer to a better world; it’s used to describe a perfect world. Belief in human perfectability—and its accompanying rejection of all [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Blogs, Education, Music, Philosophy, Politics, Pseudoscience, Sport | Comments (6)

Never Mind The Barmy Army…

11Jan07 – 14:38

…what about the shocking behaviour of Australian cricket fans?

By PooterGeek | Posted in Australasia, Englishness, Sport | Comments (1)

Christmas Cuteness

11Jan07 – 12:06

My niece spent most of the holiday either (briefly) naked or (for the vast majority of the time) dressed in one of her hideous Disney-licensed “Princess™” costumes. For the family photographer this was deeply, deeply frustrating. Here’s the best I could do under the circumstances. I took these on black-and-white film of course. You’d scratch [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Cartoons, Family, Fashion, Photography, Shopping | Comments (6)

“It’s super-smart!”

10Jan07 – 13:20

iPHONE: Hi, Steve. Who do you want to talk to today? STEVE: I’ve told you before not to say that. iPHONE: Sorry. My little joke. Who should I ring? STEVE: I’d like to speak to my broker. iPHONE: Are you sure you want to do that? STEVE: Of course I’m sure. Don’t get sma… Just [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Middle Aged Woman Confused By iPod, Money, Technology | Comments (1)

Nokia PC Suite Connection Tip

09Jan07 – 13:59

[Warning: This post is slightly geeky.] I have to clean up and transfer all my mobile phone contacts from my old to my new phone before I move to a new provider tomorrow—thereby saving about two-thirds on my mobile bill. For Friends of the Geek (and clients) reading this, my mobile number will remain unchanged, [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Computers, Shopping, Technology, Where Is My Flying Car? | Comments (11)

Lifting Airs

08Jan07 – 11:49

Part of my exercise warm-up is my brief run from my flat to the gym. A short distance from the front door of the club I begin walking cautiously to avoid being run over by a Mercedes or Jaguar whizzing down the drive. We are currently in the season of the resolutionists so, even during [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Crime, Exercise, Fashion, Life | Comments (6)

Concept Album

06Jan07 – 14:53

Germany has the lowest birthrate in Europe. Luckily, help is at hand.

By PooterGeek | Posted in Education, Graphics, Life, Mainland Europe, Sex | Comments (3)

Euston Manifesto Blog

06Jan07 – 12:16

It hasn’t been publicised, but there’s a new Euston Manifesto blog running alongside the existing site. The blog collects items of interest to signatories and supporters of the manifesto and invites civil debate about them. So far posts have been contributed by Jeremy Brown of Who Knew?, Alan Johnson of Labour Friends of Iraq, Jeff [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Animals, Blogs, Euston Manifesto, Tin Foil Hat Wearers | Comments (0)

RIP

06Jan07 – 09:20

Yesterday, over the phone, my dad and I held our own Ashes inquest. It was brief.

By PooterGeek | Posted in Australasia, Englishness, Family, Sport, World Domination | Comments (0)

Possibly The Sweariest Blogpost I’m Ever Going To Link To

05Jan07 – 10:47

Over at my other blog I’ve been writing about touching up women, and summarising what I learned about photographing weddings from watching Armageddon. The latter has proved to be popular with outsiders so I am linking it from here for those who aren’t regulars at The Wedding Photography Blog. I don’t mention it there and [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Blogs, Family, Food, Gratuitous Nigella, Life, Movies, Photography, Work | Comments (2)

Gone!

04Jan07 – 19:33

This’ll probably result in the withdrawal of my licence to blog, but I’ve removed my last post here because I read it back just now and it sounded a bit wanky.

By PooterGeek | Posted in PooterGeek | Comments (5)

Dust-Up At The Coffee Bar

04Jan07 – 11:10

I used to tithe a proportion of my earnings to Oxfam. At least three friends of mine have worked for them. One of them wrote the organisation’s first official monograph on the genocide in Rwanda. I stopped giving Oxfam my money when they sent me junk mail inviting me to invest in a so-called ethical [...]

By PooterGeek | Posted in Africa, Economics, Friends, Language, Life, Money | Comments (1)