Celebrate ‘Human Achievement Hour’
As found via Dizzy Thinks: http://dizzythinks.net/2010/03/human-achievement-hour-turn-lights-on.html
Now, I didn't know it was imminent but I had heard of it before; once a year environmental organisations encourage people to switch off their lights and otherwise fail to consume energy for an hour, once per year under the banner of "Earth Hour". Presumably this will act as a sacrifice to placate the righteous and vengeful forces of Gaia and draw her attention from the bare faced audacity of our living on the earth.
The libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute have another idea- that we should go about our lives as normal to celebrate the massive beneficial effects of technology in our lives, they dub this "Human Achievement Hour".
“Environmental challenges will not be solved by turning off our lights and symbolically hiding in the dark,” ... “If anything, we should be looking to technology and innovation to help solve environmental problems.” - CEI policy analyst Michelle Minton
I would go one step further- turn all your lights ON as a beacon of optimism and truth to anyone cowering in their darkened home, or anybody out patrolling (presumably by bicycle) to estimate support for Earth Hour.
Do you want a future of 300mph flying cars, pocket computers and ever-rising standards of living; or a future whittling bits of wood in huts, shitting into a straw-filled bucket ready for composting to grow your own meager beans? The choice is yours..
27/03/2010 8:30pm - switch ON!
“Leading doctors call for ban on smoking in cars”
From here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7073299.ece
"Twenty of Britain’s most senior doctors call today for a ban on smoking in cars as part of a sweeping expansion of laws to protect children against the effects of inhaling smoke."
"The doctors say that the national strategy must include tobacco price rises, media campaigns, more effective health warnings and better provision of smoking cessation services."
And here's another thing:
"Leading internet radio presenters call for doctors to go fuck themselves"
Whenever such "Doctor's" pronouncements are in the press, they cause me to become quite annoyed and as such my blood pressure rises dangerously. Of course this is rather bad for my health and wellbeing. As such I call for a ban on 'doctors' sticking their frigging noses into affairs that don't and shouldn't concern them.
More and more the attitude of the state appears to be that our bodies are somehow owned by them, much like a mortgaged house is actually owned by the bank, and that action should be taken against anyone who has that audacity to 'abuse' 'their' property.
When did we become the property of the state? Was it when the NHS was founded, or did it come later? Was there a defined event, or was it a slow and creeping process? Answers on a postcard please...
Aargh! Firefox 3.6 is adding tabs in the middle!
I , presumably along with a lot of other people upgraded to FireFox 3.6 this week. Most of the changes are 'under the bonnet' so to speak; but there are a few differences in the UI as well.
Now, when you open a link as a 'new tab', the tab appears next to the one you currently have open; instead of at the far right hand end of the bar as before.
If, like me, this gets your goat then there is an easy solution.
Type about:config into the address bar, click "I'll be careful, I promise" on the nanny screen and filter the results for browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent . Double-click the entry to flip it from 'true' to 'false', and you're done.
As found here: http://lifehacker.com/5456366/make-new-tabs-open-at-far-right-in-firefox-36
Hi-vis jobsworth patrol
To cut a long story short, it's St Patrick's day today [edit: no it wasn't] , and much of Digbeth is closed off to allow the parade and related festivities to take place, as they have done every year in Birmingham.
Normally we residents of the surrounding area receive information about road closures etc, so we know what is happening and can make plans to accomodate. This year I received precisely fuck all.
Anyway, I had to visit my mother this morning, and returned home about 2:15. Every road in the vicinity of my flat is utterly clogged up with buses, taxis and cars; not helped by the many minicab drivers who attempt to cut the queues and end up blocking what little clear road remains when they try to get back in to the queue.
My flat (and the car park entrance) are within 50 yards of the somewhat generous road closures.
Last year I seem to remember residents being allowed through. Not this year.
A certian hi-vis vest wearing tosser seems to be taking great pleasure in his 'duties' of causing maximum inconvenience to everyone and wielding what little 'power' he has, or at least thinks he has; backed up with lots of authoritative sounding words like 'council' and 'police'. Apparently we're supposed to drive round hideously congested streets for hours, hoping to find a parking space somewhere nearby (clue: there's a festival on; there aren't any) and walk a mile or two home, then back again later to collect the car because he, THE ALL POWERFUL ROAD CLOSURE MAN OF JUSTICE, allows NO-ONE TO PASS!! I should "take it up with the council if I don't like it" (his words).
What I will say is this- fuck you, you utter waste of skin, oxygen and everyting else; you fuckpigs in yellow bibs (inspectors of various types, 'compliance officers' etc etc etc) are the one thing above all wrong with Britain today, and I know it's a terrible cliche but your backs will be first against then wall when the revolution comes. Fuck off and die.
N.b: I'm home now, thanks to a barricade nearby being unmanned and having blown down in the wind. The roads inside the cordon are of course deserted.
Jim Pavloff re-creates “Voodoo People”
Found via here: http://www.synthgear.com/2010/video/recreate-prodigy-voodoo-people/
Jim Pavloff re-creates The Prodigy's 'Voodoo People', putting together the original samples in Ableton 8, demonstrated piece-by-piece in this YouTube video:
Fascinating stuff I'm sure you'll agree, especially for an amusical idiot like myself seeing how one of my favourte tracks was produced.
Televised debates
Mr Eugenides is right on the money wth this post: http://mreugenides.blogspot.com/2010/03/on-debates.html
I strongly recommend that you read it.
I am personally wary of the idea of televised election debates between prospective prime ministers taking off in the UK. In my opinion, politics is already 'dumbed down' enough; with too many voters utterly unaware of the policies or ideological standpoints of the main parties or their leaders, ending up voting on the basis of 'first impressions' or similarly irrelevant bases. Another soundbite rich platform, with the best presented politician 'winning' and then forever lauded in a press that should know better will only make this worse.
People say that such debates would 'raise public awareness of political issues' but I disagree; people uninterested in politics won't watch the debate(s) anyway and will only have their preexising ideas reinforced by what they read about them afterwards.
Ho-hum.
Sport
Somebody sent me a link to this by email: http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/olympics/vancouver/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Englishman-wishes-Canada-would-apologize-for-win?urn=oly,224547 , a Canadian opinion piece regarding this in The Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/simon_barnes/article7041547.ece
This blog post forms my reply to that email, and my opinion on international sport in general.
Having read that article (on Yahoo sports) and the Times article he's talking about; I'm on Simon Barnes' side.
That kind of bullshit (Yahoo article) is exactly what I fucking hate about sport in general. Banging on about the fact that somebody who happens to be from 'your' country has won something- how pointless is that?
Morons thinking that because they share an arbitrary political region with somebody who on a certain day won a competition in skiing/football/wanking/whatever that means that they are good at anything, that 'they' have won and it makes them 'better' than somebody else.
It really is pathetic, especially considering that when *any* country's team wins something the people who shout "WOOO *WE* WON!!" the loudest are the people who sat on their fat arses the whole time watching it on TV! WTF has it got to do with you, arseholes? *YOU* DIDN'T WIN ANYTHING!
I personally don't give the faintest shit if nobody English ever wins any sport tournament or medal for the rest of time; its meaningless, it affects nothing. For the record, I similarly don't give a shit when 'we' do win something.
In fact, I would like Britain/England/whatever never to enter any sport tournament again, because it means I should never again hear endless streams of wankers proclaiming about how "they" won/lost and about how fucking important it all is. The Olympics, World Cup, Wimbledon, World Tiddlywinks Championship and all the rest of them can fuck right off, especially when the fucking government wades in and decides to spend MY fucking money on training athletes, broadcasting, building stadiums or whatever else so that they can all have a massive wank when somebody with the right miniature fucking flag on their shirt can win some fucking game one day. It's all such utter galloping bullshit and it gives me a headache.
Can't they spend all of the sport and Olympics money on building something useful, like perhaps motorways, 1Gbps internet connections, schools or 400mph maglev railways? How about not taxing us for it in the first place? Then maybe, just maybe we can 'win' at being a strong economy and then enjoy not only the stuff we've built but the riches and comforts we've all achieved using it, instead of 'winning' some meaningless fucking medals or trophies for playing games? Just a thought.