Via Slashdot, here’s an abstract of a study of graffiti found on the walls of the Joseph Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, performed by a member of its IT staff. You can also browse the full dataset, including photographs of the inscriptions made available under a Creative Commons licence.
The take-home messages (as obtained with […]
The BBC News Website has changed its original headline:
SARAH PALIN LASHES OBAMA AT FIRST TEA PARTY CONVENTION
—bring your houseboy, and let’s party like it’s 1779!—to this one:
SARAH PALIN CONDEMNS OBAMA AT FIRST TEA PARTY CONVENTION
but, Liz Jones’s latest wibble—search for it if you like; I’m not going to link to it—retains its banner:
HONOUR KILLINGS? WHAT WE’VE DONE TO YOUNG EMMA […]
Foes of President Barack Obama and his policies can vent their frustrations by engaging in fictional warfare, thanks to a new online strategy game with a heavy political component.
The satirical game 2011: Obama’s Coup Fails, launched last month by a group of Ron Paul supporters that call themselves The Founders, throws players into combat against the […]
This [HD YouTube video] is a bonkers slab of wonderfully British-sounding soul-pop from V VBrown. Shame about the over-compressed production/mixing/mastering that turns every peak into white noise.
This [HD YouTube video—censored version] is an equally bonkers slab of ironic hair metal from the self-proclaimed “modern Spinal Tap”, Steel Panther. I know it’s meant to be a joke, but […]
Slashdot links to a report in the New York Times about a project to combine genetic material from lawyering and fund management and create the highest hourly fee known to man.
Richard W. Fields says he has come up with a win-win financial strategy for the downturn. He is investing in lawsuits.
Not in trip-and-fall cases, mind you, […]
This has to be one (if only one) in the eye for all those people who say there’s no point in listening to passenger plane safety announcements about how to slide down the inflatable ramp and put on your flotation aid because if there’s a crash the best you can hope for is to be […]
A lot of women think testosterone is a dangerous substance, but without it mankind would be incapable of feats like this.
[Flash video, via The Motley Fool]
[J]ust how effective is it to insult someone in an alien cultural idiom? Bush, naturally enough, looked bewildered, but he ducked speedily and seemed none the worse for wear afterwards. Gordon Brown, I suspect, would have stolidly absorbed the blows; Obama would probably have caught one shoe in each hand before throwing them across the […]
This is a neat little article that sketches out why your skin colour doesn’t determine your chance of growing up to become an elite sprinter; but your genetic make-up might:
There are no sprinters of note from Asia, even with more than 50 percent of the world’s population, a Confucian and Tao tradition of discipline, and […]
I’ve been very busy this weekend, but here are three things that I enjoyed reading in between upgrades and back-ups: Minette Marrin on Jacqui Smith and UK prostitution1, Shuggy on Barack Obama and the US constitution, and an obituary of William Donaldson:
[Donaldson] first came to prominence in 1961 as the London producer of Beyond the […]
Last year, Newsbiscuit ran a spoof “NEWSPAPERS RUN OUT OF ‘LORD LEVY IS JEWISH’ EUPHEMISMS” story [requires free registration] I was reminded of it when I read this from the latest statement by “the neo-Nazi North German Action Office”, as reported in the Wall Street Journal:
Inasmuch as it is a determined opponent of the western-plutocratic one-world […]
Al-Qaeda in Iraq have reacted to the US presidential election by issuing a statement on Friday directed at President-elect Barack Obama and his incoming administration.
…
[H]ardliners have greeted Barack Obama’s election victory with a stream of racist and other insults.
Because, previously, when Al-Qaeda in Iraq referred to Kurdish-speaking bomb victims as “Kuffir to be slaughtered”, they […]
TIGER WOODS WINS 2008 US OPEN DESPITE KNEE INJURY CAUSED BY ILLEGAL KARATE ATTACK FROM EVIL MAFIA GOLFER ROCCO MEDIATE. OBTAINS CRUCIAL PAR SCORE ON SUDDEN-DEATH HOLE USING “CRANE KICK” BEFORE COLLAPSING ON THE FINAL GREEN IN AGONY, MUTTERING “I DID IT FOR YOU, ELIN!”
LEWIS HAMILTON CLINCHES WORLD F1 DRIVERS’ CHAMPIONSHIP IN HIS MCLAREN, “HERBIE”, DESPITE […]
John.
[originally uploaded by Ryan Brenizer]
Excellent shots of the candidates for the US Presidency taken at the Alfred E Smith dinner by a wedding photographer are here on flickr. I wish there were more to look at. (And I wish the photographer hadn’t added that crappy “exposed film” border. It’s digital. Get over it. Don’t tart up […]
Imagine several million small children across the planet waking up on Christmas Day to discover that six of Santa Claus’s reindeer had had pixie dust blowouts at 30 000 feet over the North Atlantic, leading to a catastrophic loss of power and Santa’s sleigh plunging into the freezing ocean, killing all on board and scattering the […]
Wongablog has pictures and text from The Super Dictionary, a pedagogical masterpiece stranger than wearing your underpants on the outside of your clothes.
You could argue that Mick Hartley won this game when he collected
Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal.
from The Huffington Post, but I think quoting Naomi Wolf is cheating. Here’s a good one from yesterday’s International Herald Tribune. Roger Cohen writes:
From an inspirational notion, however flawed in execution, that has […]
I like that one of the authors of this US paper describing gene therapy to restore sight in sufferers from a rare form of blindness, itself a refinement of a treatment first given in the UK, is called “Elizabeth Windsor”:
“One of the patients said that the dim red light from his alarm clock had gotten so […]
I keep meaning to write something about the response of the liberal Left media to the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States—there are parallels with the way parts of the Right responded to Bill Clinton’s sexual incontinence—but, as I bring my fingers to the keys, I […]
[WARNING 1: The Dark Knight has been out for long enough now that most of you interested in seeing it should have seen it. To those of you who haven’t, know now: spoilery follows.]
[WARNING 2: As usual, I was late to this particular party, so I just wanted to publish this blasted blog post before everything […]
Recently, I was listening to a Marvin Gaye track via last.fm—is it just me or has their sound quality improved lately?—and I noticed this at the top of its user comments:
white person wearing chinos on cruise ship LOVES THE BLACK MUSIC
Which immediately made me think of Stuff White People Like, a blog that’s really about “Stuff […]
OPRAH: I’d just like to say what a great privilege it is to have you with us on the show today, Barry.
BARRY: Thank you, Oprah. I’m so grateful to God for my good fortune just to be here, but my good fortune is all the greater for my both being here and being here with you.
OPRAH: [holding […]
NASA ASTRONAUTS ARRIVE ON CENTAURI IV AND ENCOUNTER POPULATION OF HUMANOIDS SO PRIMITIVE THAT THEY STILL HAVE FACEBOOK ACCOUNTS.
PANEL OF HISTORIANS VOTES ON MOST HATED FIGURES OF 21ST CENTURY. SADDAM HUSSEIN, CLONED HITLER, HEATHER MILLS-MCCARTNEY TOP POLL.
HUMPHREY LYTTELTON FORCED TO STAND DOWN AS PRESENTER OF I’M SORRY I HAVEN’T A CLUE AFTER EXPOSURE TO SUNLIGHT LEAVES HIM […]
It’s all over for the ‘Head
On the front page of The Spectator online, Fraser Nelson suggests that David Cameron could be “the British [Barack] Obama”, which struck me as a coincidence, because I am the British Gore Vidal.
While I’m recommending films, I notice that The Amateurs [aka The Moguls] is being advertised on the Apple trailer site as on theatrical release in the States. This is odd because I’ve already seen it cheaply in the UK via Amazon’s DVDs-by-post service. Perhaps it went straight to video here because it had stinking reviews. […]
Unlike, I suspect, most remaining readers of The Independent newspaper, I believe it’s to the credit of the people of the United States of America that one of the most common questions they ask of tour guides as they are shown around the Grand Canyon is: “How did we make it?” If the Martians are […]
And this one’s for my dad, because I never thought I’d hear an American sports commentator on US TV say the words “probably all the way back to Preston North End”:
And now, a real horror video. Remember the media storms about racism on UK Big Brother? Keep them in mind as you check out Amber, a Jewish contestant on the US version, complaining, without any hint of irony, to the only black contestant on the show about “selfish, money-hungry” Jews. You can spot them […]
There’s a movie called The Ring about a video so frightening that anyone who watches it dies.
Here’s a link to a post at Drink-Soaked Trots.
Scientific research has confirmed that, finally, everything is on the Internet. This woman sells $40 000-worth of tumbleweed a year online. Does the phrase “organic tumbleweed farm” make you think of tanned hippie chicks and hippie fellas on mountain bikes corralling rolling bushes into enclosures as swirls of dust drift across the prairie around them? It […]
