Cheats Prosper
By rights I shouldn’t be home yet, and I should be soaked to the skin, but my boss was kind enough to give me and my bike a lift home.
By rights I shouldn’t be home yet, and I should be soaked to the skin, but my boss was kind enough to give me and my bike a lift home.
I had to choose the day it decided to piss down after a fortnight of glorious weather to cycle all the way out here didn’t I.
After my PWEI reference the Guardian has appropriated the phrase as Radio 2 tries to talk pop out of the doldrums.
Llivia is a little bit of Spain within France’s borders. More precisely, it’s a little bit of Catalan Spain in Catalan France. Granted city status by a Spanish king, it was exempted from a swap of villages during the 1659 establishment of the French-Spanish border. The border is delimited by 600 markers, and Llivia itself got 45 to mark its own boundaries.
The US Supreme Court has ruled against Nike. Essentially the company was trying to argue that its advertising and press releases were protected under the first amendment and that as a result a false advertising case being brought against it should not be allowed to proceed. Now the original case concerning Nike’s claims that it doesn’t use sweatshops can proceed.
originally via The Inquirer
They do say that commited cyclists have the bodies of people ten years their junior. This morning mine belonged to a slightly unhealthy and quite knackered 23 year old. He was full of that sense of indestructibility and know-it-all superiority that youngsters have, though. And he got me to work in ten minutes more than my normal bus-train-bus journey takes.
I ended up taking the Middlewood Way, rather than the canal route, but otherwise everything worked out as planned.
Statistics-
Distance: 17.99 miles (The AA reckoned 16.7 if I’d stuck to the roads, but then I’d have had to battle traffic lights and morons drivers all the way.)
Average (rolling) speed: 11.8 mph (average actual speed, with stops at traffic lights etc. would be about 9 mph)
Top speed: My bike computer doesn’t record this, but I checked whilst drafting a bus down the hill into Stockport and it said I was doing 26 mph.
The journey home should be quicker, because- apart from Stockport and a climb out of Macc- I think it’s mostly downhill all the way.
Ok. It’s true one of the most annoying and dangerous US politicians has died in America. Aside from saying “THANK GOD!!!” and dancing on the tables with joy, one must look at the life Strom Thurmond led and what he meant to the Republican party, The South and to a way of life not since replicated. On the left, The New York Times front page leads with Stroms years of denying blacks civil rights. The Washington Times on the otherhand, calls him one of most “influential politicians of all time”. Hmmm….
Now back to more important matters. I found an interesting commercial this morning, brought to us by those great folks at the Center for Consumer Freedom. Why is this important? Well, over in America lawyers are gearing up to take fatty foods to court and seek damages because people don’t know when/how to stop shoveling food in their pieholes.
Now the interesting part. The Center for Consumer Freedom is paid for by fast food companies and a host of others. Watch the commercial and see how they portray lawyers as just out for money and how the companies are victims because “they made something taste good”…..
Well, I’m off to cycle to work. It’s only 16.5 miles by the direct route, though mine’s going to be a little further because I’m taking a detour to ride along the Macclesfield canal so I don’t have to deal with too many idiots drivers.
There has been a shocking outbreak of common sense.
The US Supreme Court decided that it wasn’t legal to arrest people for having consensual sex in their own homes, even if they’re *whisper it* homosexual. As a result of this, sodomy laws in a lot of states will have to be changed as they have been ruled unconstitutional. I ranted about this a while back.
A Dallas court also denied an attempt by Miss Roe (the woman who won the case that made abortion legal in the US) to reopen the case, ie she was appealing against winning the case. Cases can be reopended within a reasonable time, but Judge David Godbey ruled that 30 years was beyond that.
Finally, a UK High court ruled that while it’s perfectly reasonable to call in sick and go to the pub instead, it’s also perfectly reasonable for your boss to sack you for it if you get caught. Apparently Chris Evans hadn’t realised this, which is a shame as it would saved him a lot of legal costs.
I’m sure normal service will be resumed soon!
Which blog is the best of them all?
This is a geek’s idea of a pun. Its utterly useless, but somehow cool anyway. If your search doesn’t work, try typing it .sdrawkcab
An odd little search that turned up in my referrer logs, I think it would make a great title for something or maybe even a band name.
And now I’ve reinforced the feedback loop for the next time someone goes looking for it.
After trying to lumber us all with ridiculous, robber baron-ish Terms of Service a couple of weeks ago the good people at Cafe Press must have haemorrhaged store owners, because they’ve re-written the ToS to take out the contentious clauses.
I haven’t read the full document yet, because it was playing silly buggers, but it’s here.
Maybe I’ll re-open my store with them.
Maybe.
For those of you who don’t know. I am currently in Germany, working out of our Munich Office. So far, I managed to miss out on working, due to a combination of a late plane and a bomb threat. I managed to spend more time on the S-Bahn that I did in the air.
Denis Thathcher has died. This is not news that will be greeted with the same amount of jubilation and glee as when his other half pops her clogs.
(The day that thatcher dies is on We Love The City by the ever excellent Hefner.)
Books are getting bigger, which was one of Daz’s complaints about Potter.
Heavensent is turning into a bit of a sprawl, despite the bitesize sections it’s made up of, because it’s a worldwide war story. Post & Publish is intended to be short, a headlong charge through a blogger’s life with chapters shorter than some people’s posts. Eliza Effect, when (if) it gets finished, should be equally terse.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the 5th book in J. K. Rowling‘s series following the wizardry life of Harry potter. I will keep this brief and hence will not put any spoilers in it for people are likely to read it regardless or what I am going to say. Imagine being told that a rollercoaster s being built and you hear about it over the 3 years of its construction. Finally you get to ride it, well the book is like the first drop. You are very slowly dragged to the top of the drop and then it is over far too quickly. The book could have been about half the size and nothing really would have been lost.
Comics site The Pulse has an intern for the summer, who has read almost no comics. So they asked her to review some comics to see how accessible they were to ‘incomer’ not steeped in years of comics lore. The first issue of new DC comic Outsiders was justifiably slammed.
Evaporating Guy is some kind of brain-damaged superhero that I think we’re supposed to know about already. (You people probably know all about him, though: “oh, yes, Evaporating Guy, he first appeared as a backup feature in Big Fun Comics #238,” right?)
via MonitorDuty
Ok. I found a blog called expatyank, and jimney christmas, this guy is fantastic. He is extremely right wing, supports war and has an acute ability to be a complete racist!!!!
But the best part, drum roll please, he actually lives in Dorset with an English wife! All this pro-neocon shite eminating from this guy’s bungholio, BUT THE FIRST CHANCE HE GOT TO GET OUT OF THE STATES – HE TOOK IT!
Please, I beg of you, you must visit his site. It will reinforce all the negative american stereotypes you’ve been harboring for years…….
Before Abdoujaparov and Jim’s Super Stereoworld there was Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. And before that there was Jamie Wednesday a ‘jangle-pop’ band who were briefly unsuccessful before going their separate ways. Apart from spawning one of my all time favourite bands they are also tangentially responsible for the name of Pop Will Eat Itself after the phrase was used in an NME review of JW.
And tonight I download all 8 Wednesday’s tracks.
I was waiting for the punchline in Iraq, and it’s exactly as black as I’d feared. We now have 6 dead British soldiers, 18 Americans dead from violence (as many as 50 from all causes, according to some sources), God knows how many Iraqis and nothing to show for it.
Ba dum dum tsching!