It hasn't even been a full fortnight of Jury Service, and I've already hit the metaphorical Tony Hayward (late of BP) buffers. There's no 'novelty' to wear off, as this is my second time around on this particular freakshow carousel of delay and ineptitude. The Dickensian ghosts of the Marshalsea debtors' prison have been out in force this week, ( Read more... )

Some of you will have already seen (and probably discussed) this rather brilliant piece from the Chronicle, but it's simply too good not to include here. A taste:

"While brilliant and progressive research continues apace here and there, the amount of redundant, inconsequential, and outright poor research has swelled in recent decades, filling ( Read more... )

Poll "They gave her back to me, Scotty."

(Too many clues?)

Ranking as the start of one of the most wide-ranging conversations of the week, and a welcome distraction from a lot of number-crunching and policy-wonking, a former colleague threw out a question to a cynical wolf:

"Are we witnessing the death of embarrassment?"Evidence cited (examples recent and current ( Read more... )

'The Doubt actress, who is expecting her first child with fiance Darren Le Gallo, admits she is “too impatient” to wait for the child to be born before finding out whether she’s having a boy or a girl...Amy, 35, got engaged to Darren last July but says she’s been too busy to get married.' - Read more... )

Cory Doctorow (http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/22/perfect-daily-mail-h.html) seems to find this amusing:


( Read more... )

It's always refreshing when The Inquisitr pauses from wondering aloud which 'C' list celebrity is preggers or not, or endlessly going over the sordid details of a dead DJ's stomach contents, and re-hashes something quite interesting. In fact, when they posit questions (even rhetorical ones, extrapolating some secondhand research material), they ( Read more... )

Priorities* change, though:

1. Wake up.
2. Check messages.
3. Visit Facebook.
4. Pee.

'This is morning in America in the Internet age. After six to eight hours of network deprivation - also known as sleep - people are increasingly waking up and lunging for cellphones and laptops, sometimes even before swinging their legs to the floor and ( Read more... )

And "editorialize" is still a f*cking horrible word. It sounds like a lavatory cleaner that's just never going to rival Toilet Duck, either on grounds of cuteness or efficiency ( Read more... )

Q: How many lightbulbs does it take to change an arrogant sociologist's warped perspective on covert participant observation?
A: More than this moderator* has in his box of lightbulbs marked "tolerance and fairness".

Anyway, moving on...

As noted to astartesyriaca last night, Jody Hill's Observe and Report (Read more... )