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Daily Blog 05/05/2013

  • The “better off on benefits” fallacy has become common. In truth, there has always been a clue that it is an urban myth: no one who claims it exists has ever actually given up work to live the benefits high life. And why not? Probably because deep down they do not believe it, but it is also true that even when the benefit of working is highly marginal, most people want to work. As unemployment climbs above 2.5 million, and 6.8 million counting as underemployed, the reality is there are fewer than half a million job vacancies. The real issue for the government is not making work pay, but making work exist.

    tags: benefits politics

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Daily Blog 05/04/2013

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Daily Blog 05/02/2013

  • The ruins pictured are those of The Ancient Mariner pub in Workington, Cumbria, which was extensively damaged in 2003 after a gas leak caused a massive explosion followed by a fierce blaze. Since the 1970s, the pub had been given the dubious nickname ‘Honky Tonk’ and was allegedly popular with sailors in the merchant navy who docked in the nearby port.

    tags: pub cumbria ruins

  • GTA V is the first full-sized new Grand Theft Auto from Rockstar since 2008’s Grand Theft Auto IV. It’s been in development for several years and it’s coming out in less than five months. But we know about as much about the game as we do of a book whose cover we haven’t cracked. That’s normal. Rockstar keeps most of the surprises and many of the features of their sprawling games secret until gamers can discover them with controller in hand. Until then, as is tradition, Rockstar reveals small portions of their games through trailers and through the occasional one or two-hour-long demo. They usually play the game in front of the press, as they did with me, proving that their game really runs though understandably not yet letting a nosy reporter just hop into the action and drive anywhere.

    tags: GTA videogames

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Daily Blog 04/29/2013

  • Robbie, you may feel like you are just a mere family entertainer, a singing clown that no-one takes seriously but we acknowledge the flashes of inspiration in your music and that you have the ability to write really good lyrics within the pop format and that you have worked with really good songwriters from the more rebellious side of the equation. In short you seem to be a lot more than a dancing bear and there seems to be a genuine tingle of passion and humanity in your soul which is all too rare in your part of the pop world.

    tags: music politics TakeThat

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 04/28/2013

  • A news item over at Archaeology reports that a little wireless robot called Tlaloc II-TC will soon “investigate the far reaches of a tunnel found beneath the Temple of the Plumed Serpent at Teotihuacan,” entering a chamber “estimated to be 2,000 years old, and [that] may have been used as a place for royal ceremonies or burials.”

    tags: archaeology robots

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Daily Blog 04/26/2013

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Daily Blog 04/25/2013

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Daily Blog 04/20/2013

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Daily Blog 04/17/2013

  • 28th April this year will be the 50th anniversary of “Black Sunday”, when eight pubs in the Ellor Street area were scheduled to close (one actually floundered on for a few weeks, but its fate was sealed.) This was when the whole area was being redeveloped and much of the housing had gone, but loyal customers still returned for a Saturday night singsong or a game of darts on a Sunday from as far afield as Little Hulton or Kersal. The fact that some long-serving licensees endured to the end reflects the community spirit that the pubs helped to keep alive.

    tags: manchester

  • From rare sports cars and competition vehicles to more family-friendly vehicles that brought motoring to the masses, this might well be the most complete collection of classic Japanese vehicles anywhere in the world.

    tags: japan cars

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 04/16/2013

  • Nestled in the hills of Japan’s scenic Gunma Prefecture lies a car museum unlike any other I’ve ever seen. Actually, to even call this place a “car museum” is to understate just what you’ll find here. A visit to the M. Yokota Museum is like taking a trip back to a different era, and the exquisite selection of vintage Japanese cars is only one part of the experience.

    tags: japan cars

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 04/15/2013

  • Around 400 B.C., Socrates was brought to trial on charges of corrupting the youth of Athens and “impiety.” Presumably, however, people believed then as we do now, that Socrates’ real crime was being too clever and, not insignificantly, a royal pain to those in power or, as Plato put it, a gadfly. Just as a gadfly is an insect that could sting a horse and prod it into action, so too could Socrates sting the state. He challenged the moral values of his contemporaries and refused to go along with unjust demands of tyrants, often obstructing their plans when he could. Socrates thought his service to Athens should have earned him free dinners for life. He was given a cup of hemlock instead.

    tags: hacking politics

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 04/12/2013

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Daily Blog 04/10/2013

  • Winnick, the MP for Walsall North, said: “It would be absolutely hypocritical if those of us who were opposed at the time to what occurred – the mass unemployment, the poverty – were to remain silent when the house is debating her life. This will be an opportunity to speak frankly.

    “Obviously when a person dies one regrets it. But what I do regret first and foremost is the immense harm, certainly in the West Midlands where deindustrialisation occurred.

    “Even if it could be argued that some of it was inevitable, the manner in which it was done – the brutal contempt towards those who were innocent victims – was absolutely disgraceful.”

    tags: politics Thatcher

  • The blunt, pathetic reality today is that a little old lady has died, who in the winter of her life had to water roses alone under police supervision. If you behave like there’s no such thing as society, in the end there isn’t. Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. It isn’t sad for anyone else.

    tags: politics Thatcher

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 04/08/2013

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Daily Blog 04/07/2013

  • In a project led by Staffordshire County Council and funded by Natural England, a large concrete terrain model on Cannock Chase, representing a section of the Great War battle of Messines Ridge, is to be excavated.

    The battle of Messines Ridge took place in June 1917 near Ypres in Belgium; the terrain model in Staffordshire represents the section of the front captured by New Zealand troops.

    tags: wwi archaeology model

  • The Staten Island Boat Graveyard – officially called Witte Marine Scrap Yard or Arthur Kill Boat Yard – is the final resting place of dozens of rusting, rotting, abandoned and decommissioned vessels. Rossville’s last commercial maritime salvage yard, the semi-submerged boats are popular with local urban explorers and others interested in Staten Island’s maritime history.

    tags: boat GhostTown abandoned

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 04/06/2013

  • Here’s a poster currently displayed on the wall in the manager’s office of Homebase Haringey – which clearly shows the company is using workfare as a means to reduce their payroll costs:

    tags: workfare politics

  • This is what we have learnt. Those who have attempted to capitalise on these six deaths have proved themselves to lack basic decency and humanity. A three-year crusade to demonise unemployed and disabled people has culminated in the attempt to represent this lone monster as emblematic of the entire welfare state. Driven in part by the political spinner Lynton Crosby, the Tory strategy to win the next election is clear: turn large sections of the country against each other.

    tags: welfare politics

  • Thirlwall dissected the kingly rule that Philpott had over his first wife (unnamed), then Heather Kehoe, a 16-year-old he left this wife for when he was in his forties, then Mairead Philpott, then Lisa Willis. A crucial idea – seen commonly in abuse cases and until now rarely spoken of – is Philpott’s yearning to keep all of these women almost perpetually pregnant. Babies and more babies. Seventeen babies. Not bred to milk the benefits system. Bred as his girlfriends and wives cannot look or move elsewhere when they’re rotund and vulnerable. Bred in tribute to his enormous prowess and machismo. Followed, time and again, by court cases at Philpott’s behest to remove custody of babies from his ex-wives and girlfriends. Taking children from their mothers was Philpott’s ultimate tool of power, after mental and physical cruelty. “Women were your chattels,” said Justice Thirlwall. “You bark orders and they obey. You were kingpin and no one else mattered.”

    tags: crime

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 03/29/2013

  • The rich have to pay for the poor’s avarice, with many currency speculators at Price Waterhouse having to take on extra work to make ends meet. They’ve barely finished destabilising the yen when they take two buses to a cleaning job, polishing a bedsit in Tower Hamlets. Many CEOs find their salary runs out and live on cat food until their bonus arrives, and 40 per cent of the board at the Royal Bank of Scotland are now on the game.

    tags: politics

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.


Daily Blog 03/26/2013

  • Ohio really is a middle America bellwether, which is to say, as goes Ohio, so goes the country. Ohio is neither on the cutting edge of social thought, nor is it a heel dragging reactionary state. It’s big and purple and right down the middle (see: the last several presidential elections). If Ohioans have come around on the subject of same-sex marriage, everything its opponents are doing from this point forward is a rear guard action, i.e., slowly backing themselves into Mississippi and hoping the Supreme Court never gets around to saying that not allowing same-sex couples to marry anywhere in the US is unconstitutional.

    tags: usa GayMarriage

  • We have lots of customers in the USA, but sometimes the shoes we send them take longer than they should to arrive, or even go missing. And, when some of our customers asked us not to use ATHEIST-branded packing tape on their shipments, we started to wonder if the delays were caused by the US Postal Service taking offence at our overt godlessness…

    tags: atheism US

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.