Monthly archives: February 2011


Foundling

The baby had been left on his doorstep in a basket from Tesco, wrapped in a blanket and wearing warm clothes. A folded sheet of paper stuck down the side of the baby had ‘Test yourself’ written on it. Unfolded, it had a dna sequence printed on it.

“It matches.” the doctor announced after running tests on the baby and him.

“There’s no way that baby could be mine. I haven’t had sex in two years. And I still talk to her. She’d have told me.”

“That’s not what I mean.” the doctor sighed, “The baby’s dna is a perfect match for the sheet found in the basket.”

“Well of course it is.”

“And so is yours.”

“What?”

“The baby is you. You’ve been cloned.”


links for 2011-02-13

  • A small quay in one of the Russian ports is full of various ships. Some of them are rather intact while others are in complete ruins. Let’s have a look at some of them.
    (tags: russia boats)
  • There are many places in Russia where old Soviet locomotoves rest after their long service. Let’s explore one of such spots.
    (tags: russia trains)
  • Ministers are expected to publish plans to enable same-sex couples to "marry" in church, the BBC has learned.

    Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone is to propose lifting the ban on civil partnerships taking place in religious settings in England and Wales.

    There are no plans to compel religious organisations to hold ceremonies and the Church of England has said it would not allow its churches to be used.

    (tags: GayMarriage)

links for 2011-02-12


Piccadilly Skyline

Disco Ball

I went into town last Sunday to get pictures of the Chinese New Year celebrations. None of the pictures I took were all that good. However, wandering back to Piccadilly Gardens, I looked up and spotted the disco ball atop 21 Piccadilly. Then I looked all around and decided to take a wander and get pictures of the skyline around the Gardens.

skyline Tower turret

water tower

I wonder if that water tower is still in use?

IMG_3906 1904 Clayton House
Gardens Hotel

Long, long ago, when I was living in Surrey but occasionally visiting the Manchester office, I think the Gardens Hotel was one of the places I got to stay.

Thistle Ramada Primark & Debenhams Starbucks & Sachas

Mystery door

That structure on the roof with the open door intrigues me. The building on the right houses a branch of NatWest. Just saying.


links for 2011-02-10

  • The next time a TSA goon manhandles your junk, thank a writer named William Powell. His Anarchist Cookbook, which turns 40 this year, laid out how to build nitric acid explosives out of everyday objects, cook homemade nitroglycerin, and sabotage communications systems from the comfort of your home, all in concise, approachable language. It launched the era of the everyman bombmaker—and the notion that no one’s above suspicion.

Words count

I have a spreadsheet set up to track how much I’m writing. I’m a little obsessive like that, and it’s a way to procrastinate whilst pretending to be productive. It tracks the word count on my current projects- there’s room for three, but I’m currently concentrating on one in particular- and works out how many words I’ve written per day, the average for the last thirty days and the average for the year to date.

As of yesterday the thirty day average is 312.27 and the year average is 293.41.

These are not the numbers you are looking for.

I want to be hitting a higher average. 1000 is desirable, 500 would be acceptable. The average has been trending upwards recently, as I’ve spent more days writing, after a fortnight in January where my muse and mojo had both deserted me. And I am getting more words down than the contemporary average on most of the days that I do apply finger to keyboard.

But I have spent my whole life being my own worst enemy and mastering the art of creative procrastination (Exhibit A- I’m writing this post rather than any of my current works-in-progress). So I have to force myself to write. Which is what I shall go away and do now.

After I’ve bought myself an Earl Grey.

And checked my email.

And Facebook.

And……….


Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing 7

I haven’t written about the reactionary bigotsphere in a while. I only follow two, hand picked, reactionary bigots- following any more would be redundant as they all draw from the same uninformed prejudices and all express themselves in variations of the same self pitying whine. Neither of them has been all that busy lately and when they have they’ve just repeated the same boring nonsense as usual.

However, local reactionary bigot Richard Carvath- Salford’s one man lunatic fringe- did pop up last night to tell us what he has planned for the next few months. More of the same nonsense mostly, but also-

(4) An article to examine the underlying ethics and philosophy of my strategic and stylistic approach to political activism on the internet. Just why do I write [and generate other web content, e.g. lo-fi videos] in the way that I do? What are the motives behind the method? And what are the objectives? If I refer to ‘what I do that is distinctively me’ as ‘Carvathianism’ – what exactly is Carvathianism? Whilst most people quickly grasp what I stand for – for example, my pro-life stance – why do I manifest my agenda as I do? Carvathianism is essentially a socially conservative approach to engaging with a dumbed-down, pornographised, post-modern British society (and media, and so-called ‘intelligentsia’) by means of counter-intuitive techniques, humour and satire etc. There’s a sense in which what I do is a response to the challenge of communicating Christian socio-political themes to a largely ‘morally and spiritually illiterate’ mainstream audience through the maze of madness and irony that is our post-modern relativistic society. Why do I merge ‘traditional’ journalistic writing conventions with mind-bending (and moral-straightening) wit – with the occasional blunt instrument thrown in for good measure? What is the true depth of my academic engagement with the issues I address – and why present principles in an unorthodox, ‘middle-of-the-road-common-denominator’ manner? Why do I risk being dismissed as a dilettante or a fool because I often deliberately eschew arguing evidence of consequences with secular-humanists on their own terms; why do I sometimes refuse to play ball? Do I really believe that the fallacy of humanist first principles is so self-evident that the ‘evidence’ humanists hold dear on various issues is obviously non sequiter from the shine-through undeniable reality of absolute moral principles, and therefore logically it is unnecesary to engage in ‘reasoning the ridiculous’ with the Richard Dimkins crowd?………..i.e. do I really believe that the truths which underpin my stances are so self-evident and so unassailable that I can credibly stand my modus operandi largely upon the assertion of pure principle alone? When to use statistical and anecdotal evidence – and how? Why use sources sparingly (most of the time)?

Carvathianism? Can anyone pretend to have a grand philosophy just by sticking some suffixes onto their surname? I claim Pattinsonism. I’ll define it later. I’d go the whole, Carvathian, hog, but Pattinsonian used to be my user name on Hotmail.

It goes beyond being a word soup to become a word sludge which says nothing of any substance. There’s mention of humour and satire, but Carvath is only funny in the “we’re laughing at you, not with you” way and, unless he’s Chris Morris’ latest and most bizarre creation, I detect no satire.

I think Carvathianism, based upon the second half of the sludge, comes down to admitting that he can’t provide evidence to support any of his claims (because reality is on the side of “secular-humanists”) but he’s convinced that doesn’t matter because the version of God that exists only inside his head has told him what the “Truth” really is.

It’s all quite dumb, and reading it makes your head hurt. Under the right circumstances trying to follow the looping, folding and tearing illogic of it all might bring on some sort of transcendental experience. However, the bit which made me laugh most was later on, and much shorter.

Marriage is on my agenda.

I feel a little bad every time I mock Carvath. Not because he makes it all too easy, but because there’s obviously something wrong with him. He’s delusional, and the delusions are getting greater. If any of his family are reading this I’d ask them to intervene and get him some help before he becomes more of a risk to himself and others.


links for 2011-02-08


Collision cooking: salmon stuffed peppers

I have been practising collision cooking for several years. It’s a bit like fusion cooking, though occasionally messier. But it’s also a bit more than just throwing stuff together and hoping it doesn’t explode.

This meal was one I made up recently, a case of mixing what I had in an interesting way.

Ingredients:
Salmon fillets
Courgette
Large red pepper
Tomato
Lemon
I won’t do exact amounts. I had two fillets and a large courgette and ended up with enough left over to make myself risotto the next day.

Skin the salmon and cut into cubes. Cut the courgette and tomato up. Put all the pieces into a bowl, sprinkle with the juice of half the lemon and add seasoning (I only added a little pepper, if I were doing it again I’d have cut up some fresh parsley and added that).

Cut the top off the pepper. Remove the stalk and cut the flesh and seeds from the inside. I also took a sliver off the bottom to give it a level base.

Place the pepper on a baking tray, fill it and put the top on. Pour some liquid into the tray- I used tea with the rest of the lemon juice, but that’s just me.

I cooked the pepper at Gas Mark 6 for around 50 minutes. This chart says that that’s about 200 Celsius. You’ll know your oven better than I do, so you may want to set a different temperature or cook for a different length of time.

Remove from the oven and serve.


links for 2011-02-06

  • A lath is a thin, narrow strip of some straight-grained wood or other material, including metal or gypsum. A lattice, or lattice-work, is a criss-crossed or interlaced arrangement of laths, or the pattern made by such an arrangement. Lath is the basic material used in the formerly common building technique known as lath and plaster, which was used to make interior walls

The Fog of War

I watched this on DVD a few years ago, it’s a fascinating film. And now it’s available through Google Videos.

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a documentary film about the life and times of Robert S. McNamara. It was directed by Errol Morris and released in December, 2003. The film includes an original score by Philip Glass. It won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature for 2003. The film consists of interviews with former United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, detailing his life and the difficult decisions that he made during his career. The term “fog of war” refers to the uncertainty that descends over a battlefield once fighting begins. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War


links for 2011-02-05

  • A change in enforcement of Apple's app policy could force Amazon to take its popular Kindle app out of the iPhone and iPad App Store.

    Apple is trying to funnel all payments for digital goods through its iTunes store, preventing companies like Amazon from collecting sales through its own channels without giving Apple a cut.

    (tags: kindle apple)

The Solar System for simpletons

Bill O’Reilly is a well known and, sadly, influential US TV pundit. He specialises in a brand of arrogant ignorance which is amusing until you realise that a lot of Americans take it as guiding principles. He recently outdid himself by claiming that tides were evidence for God. When it was pointed out to him that it’s been known for centuries that tides are driven primarily by the Moon (with a 30% or so input from the Sun) he came back with a selection of questions designed to silence his critics-

“How’d the moon get here? Look, you pinheads who attacked me for this, you guys are just desperate. How’d the moon get here? How’d the sun get there? How’d it get there? Can you explain that to me? How come we have that and Mars doesn’t have it?”

Tough, tough questions. Which have all been answered, of course. Starts with a Bang gives short, coherent answers to all of O’Reilly’s questions. It’s just a shame that neither he nor the majority of his followers will bother to read them and actually learn something.

But, as a bonus, here’s a clip from The Colbert Report which was included in the post-


links for 2011-02-04


links for 2011-02-02


Sounds of Soldiers is now available in various formats through Smashwords

You can now get Sounds of Soldiers for ereaders other than the Kindle. Smashwords have it in Epub and other formats, including rich and plain text for those of you who like to just dump a text file onto your phone and read it. The price is $2.99.

Get Sounds of Soldiers at Smashwords.

Here’s the extended blurb I recently wrote-

Five years ago the United States began to self destruct. As momentum toward a nuclear civil war grew at home, US covert kill teams- and then the military- rampaged through Europe attacking imaginary enemies. The USA found itself at war with former allies. Great Britain closed its borders and stayed mostly neutral.

Robert Jones didn’t get on the train out of Paris after it was bombed. He chose to stay on the continent and make a name for himself covering the conflict with reports on his blog. He saw the first blows, witnessed nuclear explosions lighting up the Mediterranean and was present for the final acts.

Now the borders have been reopened and Robert Jones is back from the war. He has returned to Manchester to reconnect with friends and family, to investigate the changes the city has gone through and to find out what life was like away from the warzone. He’s striving for a new, peaceful life, but there are still some ghosts and secrets from his time on the continent which are ready to come back and shake it up.

A novella about what happens when a technothriller goes horribly wrong, Sounds of Soldiers is part travelogue from the future, part war story satire, and takes a look at how the civilians usually ignored by the big war fantasies cope and survive.