Scary stuff: "After eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 406 death threats, 179 assaults, and four kidnappings, people are still in denial. They say, 'Well, this was just some wingnut guy who just decided to go blow up somebody.' Wrong. This was a cold-blooded, brutal, political assassination that is the logical consequence of 35 years of hate ( Read more... )

Wow, just watched this/last week's edition of Charlie Brooker's News Wipe which once again proved to be incredibly depressing. Aside from stuff about Fox and a Tim Key poem about Obama curing Gordon Brown's blindness, this week he had Adam Curtis (The Trap, The Power of Nightmares, etc) giving another brief history of TV news, which I will outline ( Read more... )

So, Doris Lessing. Another British Literature Nobel Prize winner. I've only read short stories, and she's not a writer who made a great impression on me. Though by all accounts she's concerned with promoting humanist virtues and literary experimentation and other worthwhile things, probably moreso than bookmaker Ladbrokes' choice, Philip Roth. ( Read more... )

I don't know what kind of people the US Department of Justice employs, but they are apparently living in the 19th century. Quotes from an unnamed source in The Guardian about corruption at BAE:The image of all these Bob Cratchits in Whitehall sitting at their high stools processing invoices from Bandar has been a startling one to us ( Read more... )

I bought the Lucky Soul album about 1 hour ago. I've only listened to four songs so it's a bit premature for a review, but when she sings, "I want you so bad that it hurts", I believe her. Yay ( Read more... )

Today's sporting news. Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, broke his nose playing football yesterday. He is now doubtful for next weekend's fixture, when he is supposed to be playing with Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. I suspect I'd be appalled if it was Tony Blair in the same situation, but you can't stop South ( Read more... )

From the BBC, Experts make flatulence-free beanResearchers use bacteria to lessen the amount of fart-making compounds in the bean. The BBC quotes a scientist at Venezuela's Simon Bolivar University: "Given that flatulence is one of the main limiting factors for the consumption of this important foodstuff, the implementation of processes which allow ( Read more... )