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Heh. Who was that speaker again?

From an email circular promoting think-tank events around Europe:

London

21/02/06 Policy Exchange "Why the Agenda of the Future cannot be delivered by a person stuck in the Past" - William Hague MP, Shadow Foreign Secretary

RSVP: info@policyexchange.org.uk

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Seeing as Perry is dabbling in the kingdom of Animalia, I feel I should wade in with my own weighty observations. As it is summer in Australia, cockroaches are making their presence felt in even the most salubrious of households. This must be so - I live in a shared-house dump and they are everywhere.

Tonight, as I was in the shower, I noticed three large brown cockroaches (not the more numerous but less offensive small types) scurrying about the bathroom. This convinced me to abandon my do-not-kill-if-not-necessary morals and I thus plunged the three big brown blighters into the tiles with a - erm - plunger. You know - that rubber implement you use to unblock the drains. Well, it was the first thing that fell to hand. Anyway, this did the trick and happily broke the cockroaches perfectly in half. Fine - let them dry out a bit, sweep them up in a few days and be done with it. I am a student living in a shared house; cut me some slack.

I leave the bathroom after performing my twice-daily cleansing rituals - it is summer in Australia, after all - to attend to this and that. I return two and a half hours later to find the upper part of each cockroach still wiggling its (remaining) legs lamely; unsurprisingly, for it's stuck on its back and missing half a body. The lower part - sadly disconnected from the mothership - was not returning calls.

Am I the only one who thinks this an amazing natural phenomenon?

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This item from America's satirical Onion site is too funny for words. Would advocates of "intelligent design" get the joke?

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Even Homer J. Simpson is affected.

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If I were a Dane I'd be getting more than a tiny bit sick of this whole "plucky little Denmark" meme that is evolving in line with current events. I cannot help but think of some small but tenacious dog - perhaps a Jack Russell - when anything is described as both "plucky" and "little".

This does not compute. As we all know, in the canine world Danes are rather greater.

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Linux has been growing in popularity, now enjoying a higher market share than Mac OS. However, I fear that in all the hype and hysteria, the dangers have not had enough attention. We face a real possibility that the future of the creativity will be a barren world: a "tragedy of the digital commons" in which no one will create any content.

The truth is that Linux is one of the biggest threats to human creativity worldwide Some of you will find that statement remarkable, but it is true. As Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer has said, "Linux is cancer." Ken Brown of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution has said that: "Linux is a leprosy; and is having a deleterious effect on the U.S. IT industry because it is steadily depreciating the value of the software industry sector."

Moreover, because it is uncontrolled by a single entity, and because the source code is freely available and open to modification by anyone, it is a key way that pirated content can find its way onto the internet. Put a copy-protected CD into a Windows machine, and the copy protection kicks in. (OK you can get round it at the moment by doing things like pressing Shift while you put the CD in, but that's just teething troubles.) But put a copy-protected CD into Linux and it just ignores the copy protection. The software on Linux to rip CDs does not check whether publishers want their CDs copied. It will be easy to legislate against Microsoft's and Apple's tools that allow copying, but Linux is just too uncontrolled.

Fortunately, the US Congress is waking up the the threat of the tragedy of the digital commons. A new bill introduced to the US House Judiciary Committee before Christmas would ban the "analog hole". In other words, any equipment that can play music or films, like a DVD player or CD player, would be banned from having analogue outputs that could be used to pirate the content. Any outputs would have to use a "rights signaling system". Of course, certain professionals need access to analogue outputs and of course they would be allowed to have them.

That's the hardware side. But we will not succeed in fighting the evil of piracy unless we also deal with the software side. At the moment it is too easy to write software that can pirate content. Linux is just an anarchy and we need to ensure that all computer motherboards sold prevent Linux from being installed. We need a licensing scheme, headed by the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization, for all programming tools so that only trusted individuals may use them, and that inappropriate use of them is communicated via the internet to the government. To put it simply, either Linux dies - or the whole of human creativity will become a stagnant swamp. Anyone who disagrees with this is a communist.

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"'We're not heroes. We're from Finchley".

A line from the film Narnia, based on the C.S. Lewis fantasy adventures. Strongly recommended.

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One of our team brought this bit of aviation humour to my attention.

It is guaranteed to give you a bit of a smile.

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I have long gotten a laugh from Dilbert, the socially inept engineer comic created by Scott Adams. Usually, Dilbert is harmless, but occasionally he causes real damage. Last Sunday's cartoon, which features Dilbert's mother in an excessive shopping adventure that ends with organ harvesting struck me as rather amusing, but according to Scott Adams' blog, dozens of people failed to see the humour in it:

Recently I killed thousands more people. I don’t have exact numbers yet. The problem stems from my comic that ran on 11-20-05, implying that retail stores might harvest organs from bad customers and sell them on eBay. I’ve received dozens of letters (long ones!) from very angry people who assure me that the Dilbert comic will reduce the number of organ donors. The concern is that people will think their parts will end up on eBay and so they won’t be inspired to donate.

This would only have an impact on exceptionally dumb potential organ donors. But as you know, that’s a large block of the general population. Now I have to wonder how many people are smart enough to read an entire Dilbert comic and still dumb enough to think that the first person on the scene of an accident might be there just to harvest organs for eBay. It can’t be more than 1%. Let’s see, we estimate 150 million people read Dilbert, so 1% would be 1.5 million. And only 10% of them might have donated an organ anyway, so I’m probably killing 150,000 people.

It’s times like this when “oops” doesn’t seem sufficient.

I bet you did not know that cartoonists could be so dangerous. If you ever meet Scott Adams, approach with extreme caution.

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Those strange-sounding financial entities known as hedge funds, which are sometimes depicted as the Darth Vaders of the modern market, often have rather odd or dull names. So I was glad to come across a firm in the United States with a name that proudly celebrates the free market with unabashed gusto.

The firm has a great merchandise selection, too.

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Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.

- Ali Rahimi, Ben Recht, Jason Taylor, and Noah Vawter of MIT, getting down to the really important research. I wonder what they think of lampshades? (Link from Scott Wickstein).

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"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."

Robert A. Heinlein. Sackloads of other quotes by the great man here.

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When you spend as much time reading think-tank proposals as some libertarians do, there is a danger of losing all sense of proportion. For instance, there is a proposal to "reform" the state pension system, because it is due to become bankrupt in the next twenty years. Unfortunately, it may cost more to implement the changes (and bankrupt the system anyway). There is the call for "social justice", using the term in exactly the opposite way that it is understood to mean, in the hope of confusing your opponents into voting for you. Instead, they call you a liar and your normally loyal supporters stay at home. Then there is railway privatisation. Instead of allowing train operators to own the track themselves, we end up with the shambles of "National Rail" (and no doubt more subsidies wasted in the long run).

I have been looking for a term to describe such cunningly silly policy-making. So here goes:

Willetts, n. [pron. whil-itz] A policy proposal that is exactly twice as complicated as the problem that it is designed to solve.

David Willetts is by no means the only culprit, and his policy proposals are not always wrong, but with a nickname like "Two Brains", you're asking for trouble.

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After returning from a few free drinks at an opening, care of a new venture of Slugger O'Toole (News and photos at 11... er tomorrow) I have returned and done some random reading. I highly suggest these two lampoons, another alternate history report set in 1944 from Rand Simberg and the Attack of the Blog by Iowahawk.

Enjoy!

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"Don't fear failure. After all, without aiming high and occasionally hitting something else entirely, we'd never have discovered how tasty Northern Spotted Owls can be."

Stephen Green, of Vodkapundit, making a wonderful line in the course of an article where he writes about learning about individuality from Cary Grant. (The article is in the latest edition of the Objectivist publication, the New Individualist. Not yet on the web, as far as I can tell. Cary Grant is the patron saint of all well-dressed guys the world over).

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The great Peter Briffa speculates on who should lead the Tory Party. He has three suggestions. Which one should we go for?

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I promise only mild amusement, but sometimes mild amusement is what one needs. And there's a subtle mordancy underneath.

The latest splendid animation from Will Flash for Cash Productions in aid of the UK campaign against ID cards is here, and will explain the title of the post.

For those who missed it, their earlier biting attack on Mr Secretary Clarke and the glorious scheme using a cute musical puppy is here.

Welcome to a strange world. Sound, and familiarity with British political figures, most definitely an advantage.

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"Hi, we're aliens from another planet and our intentions are purely hostile."

The Simpsons.

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I was sorry to hear that Robin Cook croaked. When he was alive I wanted to toss him into a vat of hot tar, to make him howl; but now he's a stiff I realise what a loss he is to our nation.
- Harry Hutton

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After watching this I just had to do a hatchet job on an old standard:

500 Pounds

If you miss the plane I'm on,
I will know that you are gone.
Cause I've dropped 500 pounds upon your head.
Five hundred pounds, Five hundred pounds,
Five hundred pounds, Five hundred pounds,
Cause I've dropped 500 pounds upon your head.

Lord it's one, Lord it's two,
Lord it's three and Lord it's four,
Lord it's five hundred pounds upon your head.

Not a shirt on your back,
Not a penny left intact.
Oh, I will blow your arse to hell this-away
This-a way, this-a way,
This-a way, this-a way,
Oh, I will blow your arse to hell this-away

If you miss the plane I'm on,
I will know that you are gone.
Cause I've dropped 500 pounds upon your head.
Five hundred pounds, Five hundred pounds,
Five hundred pounds, Five hundred pounds,
Cause I've dropped 500 pounds upon your head.

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A powerful tornado has swept through the city of Birmingham in the West Midlands.

The twister struck earlier today, cutting a swathe of devastation through the districts of Kings Heath, Moseley, Quinton, Balsall Heath and Sparkbrook.

Mercifully, there are no reports of any fatalities but initial estimates put the cost of the damage as high as £7.50.

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The Sage of Edmonton has been listening to the cricket, and has stumbled on Australia's dirty little secret:

The Australian networks are picking up the BBC feed, so the network observes a strict one-Brit one-Aussie rule at all times in the booth. This leads to a lot of barbed, culturally volatile exchanges covered by a transparent shellac of collegiality. The English are generally poor at hiding their commingled fascination and horror at the gusto and glowing health of the Australians. The Aussies, for their part, maintain a suitable Zarathustran superciliousness--but it sure seems like homo australis is awfully vulnerable to the verbal stiletto that every Englishman above the age of four carries in his boot. Every time the various English broadcasters start to wax acerbic, their Australian colleagues become flustered and try changing the subject to the events on the field (as well they might, since their squad is making England's cricketers look more like Scotland's). Has any attention been paid to the Australian sense of humour, or absence thereof? They seem to mostly export soap and pop stars to the wider world while their British and Canadian brethren airlift comedians. It's not a good sign when your most sophisticated national ironist is Dame Edna Everage.

Most Australians will deny it, but Colby Cosh is right on the money. In my own case, I never had a chance; not only am I Australian, but I am descended from Germans. I could not tell a funny joke to win the Ashes.

This is not to say that Australians do not have a sense of humour. Comedy is a big thing here, but Australian humour does not translate well, being full of allusions that only the locals understand. And I sadly suspect, the quality is not that good either.

Why is it so? Or is it obvious, and, me being Australian, I missed the punchline?

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Could this be linked to anything?

Plans by an alliance of rightwing extremists and football hooligans to exact "revenge" on Muslims after last week's bomb attacks are being monitored by police.

The Guardian has learned that extremists are keen to cause widespread fear and injury with attacks on mosques and high-profile "anti-Muslim" events in the capital.

And so another unfortunate spoke is added to the growing cycle of violence. But beneath the predictable roar of indignant outcry, it behoves us all to take the time and trouble to examine the plight of the native British working-classes; a plight which is all too often trodden underfoot in the wholesale rush to judgement.

Over the last few decades, the British working-classes have had to endure the indignity of watching their homelands colonised by foreign settlers, while oppressive "zero-tolerance" policing and so-called 'anti-social behaviour orders' have made them virtual prisoners in the few, dwindling communities that remain to them. At the same time, their jobs have been exported abroad, while the trade unions that used to promote their interests have been politically neutered. Thus despised, impoverished and persecuted, is it any wonder that some of their activists have taken it into their hands to strike back?

Nor should it be forgotten that they have no guns, no helicopters, no batons, no dogs, no infra-red detectors, no CS gas sprays, no tazers or other quasi-military means of defending themselves. Instead, they are forced to use what few pitiful resources they do have in a despairing bid to restore some dignity to their lives.

Of course, violence should not be condoned because it actually further damages the patriotic cause. But the victims of that violence would learn a great deal from an honest reflection of what role they may have played in driving these patriotic campaigners to such desperate measures.

Few, it seems, are prepared to face up to the simple truth, let alone articulate it. Instead, there is likely to be a chorus of demand for more security measures such as surveillance cameras, ID cards and oppressive police powers, all of which will merely add fuel to the fires that rage within the activists, reinforce their sense of hopelessness and humiliation and virtually guarantee further patriotic operations in the future.

We can all agree that the violence has to stop but in order to achieve that end we must urgently and sincerely address the legitimate grievances of the patriotic community.

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"A libertarian is a conservative with an acknowledged vice, like say, a teenage girlfriend."

The as-ever brilliant P.J. O'Rourke (hat tip Catallarchy)

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... hears that his friend, an economist, is in Addenbrooks [in the US version of this joke, in Mount Auburn] with a badly broken leg, and goes to visit.

Physicist: What happened?

Economist: I had just stepped off the balcony, and wham! -- I fell and broke my leg.

Physicist: You stepped... off... the balcony? What on earth for?

Economist: How was I to know there would be gravity failure?

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This story raised a dry smile.

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Sorry but this was too funny to leave languishing in the comments section. For our non-UK readers, the Eurostar train currently terminates at the railway station in London rejopicing in the name of Waterloo:

Now that our relationship with France has reverted to its traditional millennium-long condition, can we be assured that before the Channel Tunnel Rail Link is finally completed in a year or two, the Eurostar London terminus at St Pancras will be renamed to align it more closely politically, historically and emotionally with the name of the present terminus south of the river?

Trafalgar, Salamanca, Vittoria, Blenheim, Crecy or Agincourt are just a few of the most obvious candidates history has so bountifully provided us with. A rather more modern choice, from 1940, might be Mers-el-Kebir...

Would not the choice of name make a particularly fine subject for a referendum?

Heh! I vote for Mers-el-Kebir as we can probably fool the multi-cultis into thinking we are being 'culturally inclusive' by choosing a non-European name!

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This gem is of unknown true provenance but I found it amongst the Freepers:

If you consider that there have been an average of 160,000 troops in the Iraqi theater during the last 22 months, that gives a firearm death ratio of 60 per 100,000.

The firearm death ratio in DC is 80.6 per 100,000. That means that you are more likely to be shot and killed in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, than you are in Iraq.

Conclusion: We should immediately pull out of ... WASHINGTON, DC!

Sounds like an excellent strategy to me.

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This arrived in my inbox via the Crikey email

A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named ‘’Governmentium’.

Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.

A minute amount of Governmentium causes one reaction to take over four days to complete, when it would normally take less than a second.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of four years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganisation in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each re-organisation will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as ‘Critical Morass’.

When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element which radiates just as much energy, since it has 1/2 as many peons but twice as many morons.

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Selected research on bread:

More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.

Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.

In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.

More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.

Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and osteoporosis.

Newborn babies can choke on bread.

Most American bread eaters are utterly unable to distinguish between significant scientific fact and meaningless statistical babbling.

Providing all the scientific support any nanny-stater will need to implement controls.

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Cricket will be suspended indefinitely at Albion College from now on, in order to preserve the playing fields, it has been announced.

Head Boy, Mr ARP Blair said: "The groundsman has explained to me that it is vital to maintain the cricket square and outfield that have nurtured Albion's spirit of fair play for nearly 300 years that we stop cricket immediately. Of course we must do what the groundsman says. His staff have have had great difficulties arising from boys running up and down on the pitch and using bats and balls in a most irresponsible manner. By stopping play indefinitely, he has explained, the mystery of the soil and their special gardening techniques (which he will explain to boys sitting the Rural Sciences exam), will allow them to keep the playing surfaces safe from any boys who might tear up the grass.

"We have to trust the groundsman in this. He, after all, knows more about fields than any number of cricketers. I've heard that some people are saying he only wants this so that he can spend more time drinking in the pavilion, and that I'm only supporting him to curry favour with those boys who have never seen the point of games or latin and would like this to be an agricultural college. Anybody saying such things is a traitor to the school's tradition, and if I find out who they are they will be very severely dealt with."

[Apologies to overseas readers for over-British allusions. Glossary available on request]

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The Great International Petroleum Exchange Uprising was noted here earlier, and plans for a T-shirt commemorating the event are in the works.

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According to Dutch health investigators, going to church can cause lung cancer and other respiratory problems, because of the carcinogenic effects of candles and incense. Dr Theo de Kok, says that it is "very worrying". With Christmas approaching, levels of pollutants would be expected to rise.

The solution is obvious. The European Union must immediately ban church-going for all children, impose a tax on adult church-goers, put health warning signs on the outside of all churches and copies of the Bible.

Oh, and ban Christmas.

Obviously, the EU must also impose diplomatic and economic sanctions on any country that does not comply with this (the USA).

In dreaming up appropriate health warnings for church-going, I like the following:

God kills!
Do not worship God in the presence of children
and cutest of all:
God can seriously damage your unborn child

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The Onion does not always crack me up like it used to, possibly because it grows more and more difficult to effectively satirize an increasingly bizarre world. But this piece, Housemates Reject Third-Roommate Debt-Relief Plan, is just devastating. They manage to sneak in a reference to virtually every conceivable critique of the IMF, from both the left and the right, from moral hazard to environmental degradation. They even address the topic of "conditional" loans whose conditions have nothing to do with improving debtworthiness or economic performance:

Although the donor roommates supplied additional aid in the months that followed, the AMF placed strict conditions on the loans. These conditions were designed to accomplish three goals: to prevent corruption and misuse of funds, to ensure that the monies were spent wisely, and to reduce third-roommate economic isolationism, integrating the debtor's personal economy more fully into the interdependent apartmental community.

"We only asked for three things, man," Huygens said regarding the structure of the loan. "First, that Chad quit partying so much. Second, that he open a checking account so he can budget his cash. And third, that he bring his kickass stereo system out of his bedroom and into the living room where we can all enjoy it. It was only fair."

The only way this could have been improved upon might have been to lampoon the "debt for nature" swap; Chad's debt might be forgiven in exchange for certain herbal products, for example.

Well done, gentlemen. More like this, please.