I cannot help but suspect that Babbage and Turing never really envisaged the marvellous uses to which computing devices would be set.
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Here, at last, is the truth that the US Government tried to suppress. They did not want the world to know but, thanks to the painstaking forensic skill and integrity of the Fourth Estate, the skeleton is finally out of the closet! 
Case closed. September 14th, 2004 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The old saying is that “dog bites man” is not news, but “man bites dog” is. Well, how does “dog shoots man” fit in? September 9th, 2004 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
James Lileks, riffing on John Kerry’s nomination speech last month:
 August 25th, 2004 | Comments are closed
God isn’t interested in technology. He knows nothing of the potential of the microchip or the silicon revolution. Look how he spends his time! Forty three species of parrot! Nipples for men! Slugs! He created slugs! They can’t hear! They can’t speak! They can’t operate machinery! I mean, are we not in the hands of a lunatic? If I were creating a world, I wouldn’t mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would have started with lasers, eight o’clock, Day One! August 23rd, 2004 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
From David Carr’s posting (quoting the Independent newspaper):
I have a cunning plan. Immunisation is crude and easy to avoid, especially for immigrants and people who move. What is needed is a form of treatment that is visible and difficult to fake. Vaccines can be expensive and there is a whole problem of producing and storing them. The paperwork involved in ensuring that all children have been vaccinated is complicated and errors can creep in. So the obvious solution is a full frontal lobotomy with a tatooing on the forehead. Consider a few benefits of such a scheme.
What is a little puzzling to me is how many schemes are being done to children which would be considered highly objectionable if applied to say ‘black people’. Part-birth abortion is virtual infanticide, we have NHS doctors calling for premature children not to be incubated. We have conscription into schools, prohibitions of all sorts, cameras in classrooms to allow parents to watch, ID cards for children. Child rapists and killers can get shorter jail sentences than a child has to spend at school, (and they sometimes gets jobs in schools). Child criminals are effectively told to “do it again, you have to kill someone before we do anything”, so the honest children get preyed on. The only short-term way of preventing this sort of abuse would be if children had the right to vote. Would four-year olds come up with worse lunacy than that which they have to endure? July 26th, 2004 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is the best animation I have come across in a good while. It it appears to be a genuinely non-partisan poke at the Bush vs. Kerry contest and although it may take a few minutes to download it is slickly produced and very funny, even for an Englishman. July 26th, 2004 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Now where did that come from? Japan’s economy is actually growing at more than a statistically obvious rate for the first time properly since the 1980s. The fact that a heatwave is being credited with boosting business leads to the obvious conclusion. Global warming is Good for Capitalism. Light those brown coal fires now! Chop down those hedgerows! Hunt those whales! Bring back leaded gasoline! July 21st, 2004 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
The New Yorker(!) teed off very nicely on the rather stuffy account of a certain testy exchange between VP Dick Cheney and Senate Minority Lead Pat Leahy. The background: The Veepster has been accused by none other than The Honorable Mr. Leahy of profiting (via Halliburton) on the blood of American soldiers spilled in Iraq. When Leahy approached Cheney at Senate function recently, full of smarmy bonhomie, Cheney told him to fuck off, or to go fuck himself (accounts vary, but everyone agrees the F-bomb was dropped). The Washington Times reported this as follows:
The New Yorker, well, took it to the next level. July 20th, 2004 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
And now the important news of the summer: a record crop is expected of grapes in the Champagne region [French link]. The absence of frost last Winter and mild weather in Spring is a hopeful sign for a good vintage, although quantity and quality do not necessarily follow. Over the coming weeks vines will be pruned of some of the grape bunches to ensure a greater concentration of sugar and acidity. So the next time some tree-hugging Greens moan about penguin habitats, they can console themselves with a nice bottle of Veuve Cliquot. July 17th, 2004 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
By now of course, all right (read ‘left’) thinking people are fully conversant with the theory that the Moon landings were faked by the US government in a warehouse decorated with papier-mache and pieces of screwed-up tinfoil somewhere in the Nevada desert. This elaborate hoax was perpetrated as an underhand PR attack on the Soviets, who would never have indulged in any such below-the-belt behaviour, being too busy with stuff like this (hat tip: The Bleat). I don’t know this for sure, but I am guessing that probably most of America’s nukes were fake as well, and possibly even some of their presidents. We already know that Star Wars was fraudulent (the strategic defense initiative, not the popular sci-fi movie series, which was, of course, entirely true to life) and it has been suggested in the past that Ronald Reagan himself was actually a puppet from ‘Spitting Image’. Although I suspect that particular theory may have arisen from some confusion about the difference between real life and what one sees on television. Clearly human evolution still has work to do. Anyway, for those of you who have not seen this already (not new itself, but possibly new to others than just me) irrefutable proof of the faking of the moon-landings can be found right here. Those of British origin will particularly appreciate these pictures. Essential viewing for all human beings who still have brains. (hat tip: Chicago Boyz) July 16th, 2004 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
A mugger jumps out and threatens a well-dressed man with a knife, and shouts: “You can’t do this,” says the outraged man. “I’m a local councillor!” “In that case,” replies the mugger, “hand over my money!” (via the Adam Smith Institute) July 13th, 2004 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
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