Anyone artistic out there?

Posted on February 6, 2003 by acb

I need a logo for my cuttings blog. It is to be called (what else?) “Sleazy bits of Trash journalism”, and after wasting a great deal of time, I have ended up with about 500 lines of Python code which turns Word documents into MT entries. Golly, isn’t that a lot of work, Daddy! What a lot you could have been earning instead of doing that! You could even have got the Worm book web site into shape.
All that is true. But I had a todo list, and an obsession. Now only the todo list is left, and the program is chumbling away, one directory at a time, while I try to write more or less sensible stuff. At the very least, I need good clip art of an overflowing dustbin.

Posted in Blather | Comments Off on Anyone artistic out there?

You want chills?

Posted on February 5, 2003 by acb
Mofaz was inspecting the refitting of an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine, which experts say could be armed with nuclear missiles, giving Israel a second-strike capability if it were attacked with weapons of mass destruction.
This is from a Ha’aretz/Reuters report, describing a visit by the Israeli Defence Minister, Shaul Mofaz, to Navy shipyards in Haifa yesterday. He also said that the US government is “determined to carry out the American attack, and I can say with appropriate caution that this attack appears to be inevitable”; but that’s hardly news.
Posted in War | Comments Off on You want chills?

Psychopathic

Posted on February 5, 2003 by acb
The Daily Mail is running a long and savoury hatchet job on George W. Bush this week, based on a biography published last year in America.
Today’s episode has a brisk rehearsal of his business career: failing quite lucratively as an oilman, and then making his fortune out of public funds as part-owner of a football team. It also has the following story:
“As a child, George Bush was unruly. With his friends, one of his less wholesome activities was catching live frogs, stuffing fireworks in their mouths, and then hurling the animals like grenades so that they exploded in mid-air.”
And this is the man for whom British soldiers will be dying as garrison troops in Iraq for decades to come.
Posted in War | Comments Off on Psychopathic

Doing it right

Posted on February 3, 2003 by acb
TNH on the right patron saint for the Internet:
Saint Isidore never had to be told to RTFM. As one who argues long and hard in a newsgroup, he fought against the errors of the Arian and Acephalic heresies. Like a sysop coping with an online world in which it’s always September, he strove to civilize and enlighten the incursive Goths, a barbarous people who held learning in contempt. Like a blogger, he concentrated not on producing independent works of his own, but on usefully directing his readers to the works of others and putting them into context, with many references and quotations along the way.
The whole essay is worth reading.
Posted in Literature | Comments Off on Doing it right

Poor old shoe bomber

Posted on February 3, 2003 by acb

CNN’s transcript of the final exchange between Richard Reid and his judge is full of miserable unintentional comedy. According the BBC, who should have known better, the high point was when Reid told the judge “Your flag will be brought down!” which made it sound like a defiant prophecy of victory in war. But what he actually said was much more apocalyptic. “That flag will be brought down on the Day of Judgement and you will see in front of your Lord and my Lord and then we will know.”

Continue reading →

Posted in War | Comments Off on Poor old shoe bomber

the bastard!

Posted on February 2, 2003 by acb
My friend Angus just sent me an email explaining that he can’t come to the book party because his mother-in-law is ill. Fair enough. With the generosity of spirit that really distinguishes him, he adds:
On a brighter note: good to see the worm book both in the shops and getting reviewed. I hope it fulfils both your expectations and S&S’s.
So naturally, I rang up, and asked what reviews? where reviews? And he couldn’t remember. “It must have been the Guardian, or the Telegraph, because they’re the only papers that we get on Saturdays. I remember there was this picture of a beautiful blue worm.”
But it’s not in the Guardian And it’s not on the Telegraphs web site. And it’s not on anyone else’s web site.
Unlike every other author in the world, I do read my reviews, and I do care about them, and I want to know where this one is.
I hope this desire persists even after I’ve found it.
Posted in Worms | 2 Comments

i am so ashamed

Posted on February 2, 2003 by acb

and so should you be if you find this funny at all.

Posted in Software | Comments Off on i am so ashamed

Sex in the snow,and elsewhere

Posted on January 31, 2003 by acb

It’s low on the front page in some very respectable papers, of course: Law on sex in public places to be reformed”, says the Independent; Last chance to have sex in the garden”, the Guardian‘s Home Affairs Editor warns his readers: the story is clearly too important to be left to a mere reporter. But only the Daily Telegraph goes straight for the really important story. “Sex in to be Legal in Public Lavatories” is the third story on its front page. Is this a way of reaching out to the Tory modernisers? Or does Charles Moore really know what his readers’ interests are?

Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | Comments Off on Sex in the snow,and elsewhere

Making Britain great

Posted on January 30, 2003 by acb
The Daily Telegraph carried an obituary of Col. Michael Singleton, the sort of pedagogue you just don’t get from modern teacher training colleges:
Long walks, cold dormitories and regular hymn-singing were also an integral part of the education, along with cricket nets and Latin prose.

Despite a brisk code of discipline, Singleton took a laissez-faire approach out of the classroom. Every November 5 the smallest boy in the school was sent down a tunnel to light the very core of the bonfire. None, so far as anyone can recall, was ever lost. ….

When war with Hitler was inevitable, Michael Singleton organised a company of the Hereford Light Infantry. He was later seconded to the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and landed in France just after D-Day. Fighting across Belgium and Holland, he was wounded three times and was awarded the MC for his leadership and courage.

Medical attention bored him. More than once he had a batman dress his wounds and discharged himself from hospital to return to his men. Singleton had a low esteem for the higher ranks, and was a stranger to snobbery.

What central heating there existed was not always effective, or even switched on. Boys were permitted to capture owls and keep them in the fives court, provided they caught enough sparrows to feed them. One boy recalls being given the task of rearing a lamb to which he developed some emotional attachment. The animal, called Lottie, disappeared shortly before the school’s Christmas feast, and the boy realised what had happened only when he was the first to be summoned for second helpings.
Two thoughts: if we are going to make a new place for ourselves as American mercenaries, this is the kind of education our officers and men will need. And even if we’re not, it’s probably better than quite a lot that’s on offer in the inner cities now.
Ask yourself, dear gentle Guardian reader, whether you would rather have your son brought up there, or at the Hackney school you have moved house to get away from.
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Making Britain great

Potato Wars!

Posted on January 29, 2003 by acb
I know it’s serious, and very painful, but you can’t help laughing when you read that
“In Bavaria, a 55-year-old woman suffered severe injuries when a potato smashed into her thigh as she walked near woodland with her dog”
It turns out that German Youth have been struck by a craze for “Kartoffelkanone”. “A spokesman for the police in Brandenburg said ‘Woodland on Sundays echoes to the thump-thump of these guns. It is a growing social problem that needs to be tackled’. ”

Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | Comments Off on Potato Wars!