The Friday Night Smoke Live every friday from 11:30PM-2AM on ukbassradio.com

18Nov/101

The FNS returns tomorrow (19-11-2010)

Yes, it's the news you've been waiting for-

the Friday Night Smoke is back on air on the 19th of November at 11:30pm (GMT).

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26Oct/100

How Brummies dry their overalls

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25Oct/106

Daily Fail

Sometimes you see something so unbelieveably stupid that it instantly gives you a headache for the rest of the day. This is an example of such a thing.

"Nature's Lucozade: How the A-list's favourite coconut water is as effective as a sports drink"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1323610/Natures-Lucozade-How-A-lists-favourite-coconut-water-effective-sports-drink.html

My eye of course was drawn by the word 'Lucozade' in the headline, we at FNS towers are long-standing fans of the incredible healing powers of the revered orange beverage. Reading the said article however had effects wildly different to healing;

Coconut water has become the latest celebrity craze after studies showed that fluid extracted from young green coconuts is naturally full of isotones – the kind of electolytes which are added to sports drinks to aid hydration. [emphasis mine]

Let's have a look at the Wikipedia article for 'isotone' - "Two nuclides are isotones if they have the same neutron number N, but different proton number Z."
Somehow I doubt that is what this article refers to.

Probably it is either some kind of moronic misunderstanding or charlatanesque misrepresentation of the word 'isotonic', a word commonly used to market sport drinks and meaning that two solutions have the same osmotic concentration when compared. This is important for example when something is going to be administered by a drip; if the drip is too watery or too concentrated (i.e. not isotonic) compared to your blood, then bad things will happen (your blood cells for example will either shrivel or explode). For a sport drink this is somewhat less important. As for containing 'isotones', this makes about as much sense as saying that a warm coat contains particles of warm.

Methinks the Mail is printing bloody adverts as 'news' again.

Anyway, if we're talking sport drinks or electrolytes, Brawndo can't be beat. It's got what plants crave.


22Oct/100

No FNS tonight

There will be no Friday Night Smoke tonight, Gav is attacking his house with a variety of dangerous power tools again.
We will return to the air at some point in the near future- watch this space or follow http://twitter.com/fnsradio for updates. Or don't, it's entirely up to you.

In the meantime, this is what 105 tonnes of burning cannabis looks like:

Read more here:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1322448/Mexican-soldiers-burn-105-ton-mountain-cannabis-seized-drugs-raid.html

Yes, I have been reading the Daily Mail. I read lots of papers, dontchaknow.

1Oct/100

No pressure- 10:10 environmentalist campaign advert

This absolutely must be watched.

27Sep/101

Astroturfing

Found via David Thompson

Now here's an intriguiging one; accusations of astroturfing in the form of 'counter protests' outside a Tea Party event. I'll let the video speak for itself.

I would bet money that a very large proportion of 'protests' around the developed world (or in the US/UK certainly) from all corners of the political spectrum are in fact orchestrated by one body or another somewhere, to push some kind of other agenda. It's a shame, because repeated 'fake' protest dilutes the value of genuine protest on the occasion that it happens, making it very hard for genuine groups and causes to make themselves heard. it also makes very easy that a genuine and/or independent person putting forth ideas or arguments be accused of 'astroturfing'. No one can trust anyone or anything. Is there any way for this ever to be resolved, or it it something that in this age of instant media will only worsen? I fear the latter.

This post was brought to you by Sinister Inc. :P

18Aug/100

FNS quote of the day

In an article describing a 'happiness mapping' Iphone application;

The problem being that the phone is in the hands of a subspecies of humanity which are the biggest, most ignorant, arrogant tossers on the planet, next to the First 15 Rugby team of any college in New Zealand.

Ah yes, quantifying happiness. The most pointless of all pointless exercises, useful only for 'proving' a point that you've already though of. I might carry out a survey of people eating ice cream in a sunny midland car park and of people waiting for a bus in the rain somewhere in London on a monday to 'prove' that Brummies/motorists/tall people are 'happier' than some other group of people of whom I disapprove. In fact..

FRIDAY NIGHT SMOKE LISTENERS HAPPIER, HEALTHIER*

*than people being kicked repeatedly in the balls

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19Jul/105

Subsidy

Right, I notice today that yet another Twitter campaign is going among self-congratulatory trendy types to 'save' the BBC from having the indignity of having even a single penny of its multi-billion pound taxpayer funded budget cut. Of course all claim (as with any other public sector 'darling' that faces cuts) that any cut whatsoever would definitely result in the destructive loss of all of the valuable and productive parts of the organisation, as waste and unnecessary bureaucracy don't exist whatsoever. All of the BBC's budget is spent on [insert whichever programme you happen to like here] and the entirety of the NHS budget is spent on hard working nurses. Of course.

I also recall the ongoing discussion of providing rural areas with a 'minimum standard' of internet access (currently mooted at 2Mbps), paid for by charging everybody else more money in some way or another. Not content with buying up all the cottages and becoming arch-NIMBYs to prevent anything useful ever being done in the countryside (like for example, actual farming); smug back-to-the-land organic Guardian-reading types now want me to pay towards their frigging broadband so that they can all sit at home on the evenings and enjoy multi-megabit access to news forums, Wikipedia and the like so that they can further spread their own particular brand of corrosive bullshit.

In light of this, I have come up with a list of things that *I* consider enjoyable and essential to civilised life, that I *demand* that everybody else in the country subsidise for my benefit. To do otherwise would be, I dunno, denialist, or portray an absence of inclusive thought or put the cultural and economic future of the nation at risk, or something like that.

1) Decent sausage and bacon sandwiches.
On certain industrial estates around the west midlands, there is a real problem obtaining a good quality sausage and bacon sandwich; and at the outlets that do sell such foodstuffs often have lengthy queues at lunchtime for some reason. I propose that a tax be levied on tofu, rocket and soy beans for the purpose of funding a new network of butty huts to bring the fortifying goodness of a decent meat sandwich to all corners of the country. The tax should also fund a new government agency to monitor and regulate the quality and price of said sandwiches, and also the queues to obtain them.

2) Internet radio
For too long, the heroes of our independent non-commercial broadcasters have gone unsung and unrewarded. They work tirelessly to bring delightful programmes such as 'The SHAPE of things to come" and "The Friday Night Smoke" to the ears of countless dedicated and grateful listeners. Unsullied by commercial concerns and unencumbered by BBC bureaucracy, internet radio collectively serves millions of listeners every week. It's high time that the stations and DJs who have worked so hard for so long are justly recompensed for their sacrifices.
I propose a £5,000 per head annual tax on every person who has ever posted a '#savebbc6music' hashtag on Twitter. This will enable everyone involved in internet radio to buy a desperately needed new computer, and will also fund an army to protect us on the day that apparently Rupert Murdoch will turn into a giant robot (with machine guns for arms) that will attempt to destroy every media outlet of any kind not directly controlled by him (a Guardian comment warned me that this could happen). It's our only hope. To refuse to support this tax is supporting Murdoch robot murder. Think about that.

3) The late night availability of cigarettes and biscuits in Birmingham
For too long people in this fair city have been unable to obtain reasonably priced cigarettes, biscuits and rolling tobacco within walking distance between midnight and 7am on weekends. This has led to unbelievable anguish and suffering as people have had to let their night-time hunger go unsatisfied, or roll their extra large night-time 'cigarettes' from unsuitably dry tobacco.
To resolve this issue, I propose a £1,000,000 tax on every arsehole with a sense of entitlement who campaigns endlessly for some fucking thing or another that they appreciate to be subsidised to the tune of millions of pounds by some other poor sod (or alternatively everyone). The tax is to be quadrupled for each of those people who claims that their opponents are 'shills' for some shadowy organisation or another.
The money raised by these taxes (some billions of pounds) will fund an elite team of butlers, a fleet of delivery vehicles and a network of warehouses to store, distribute and provide said goods during the designated hours. It's our only hope..

29Jun/104

” £20 Elgar note withdrawal ‘a national disgrace’ “

As seen in The Daily Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/7861063/20-Elgar-note-withdrawal-a-national-disgrace.html

Once again the Telegraph deems the opinion of some bloke as worthy of printing in their newspaper, whereas we all know that such drivel is the stomping ground of blogs like this.

Professor Jeremy Dibble, from Durham University's music department, says that the replacement of the £20 notes featuring Edward Elgar with notes featuring Adam Smith is a "national disgrace" that "tells us much about the way in which the arts is now viewed in England. Bank notes should applaud the greatest aspects of England and English culture".

Sorry Dibble, but for one we are talking about BANKNOTES here. Items of money. Economists are far more at home on money than musicians are. Furthermore, I would rank Adam Smith's contribution to the modern world as approximately 6,000x more important than that of Elgar. The old notes look like something a 4 year old knocked up in an elderly version of Paintshop Pro before printing on a decrepit inkjet printer with a dirty, clogged 'refil' cartridge anyway.

In conclusion: STFU, Dibble.

12Jun/101

Gordon Brown never sleeps.


He only plans.

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