http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/02/19/mideast/index.html
I may be a bit wrong. Every time I hear or read a headline that starts with a variation upon “Condoleeza Rice today had a three way” my mind switches off and I miss the rest of the sentence because I’m having bad, bad thoughts.
If they said the same about Bill Clinton I’d just sort of tut and carry on.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6320781.stm
Molecular engines that could power nanomachines have been built at Edinburgh University.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/nico_pitney/2007/02/science_moves_forward_bush_mov.html
It must be repeated continually until people pay attention- Bush’s half-arsed nod to Climate Change is not as big a step as he pretends and his plans are still useless.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2004693,00.html
Children are to be taught about climate change in geography. Soon 13 year olds will understand the problem better than the "leader" of the free world.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2003520,00.html
Penguin is to produce a "wiki-novel". Spinneyhead has a wiki lying around somewhere, I just haven’t got round to doing anything with it yet.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6321351.stm
I’m not terrified of the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, I accepted them a long time ago. What worries me is that, yet again, the warnings are going to be ignored.
Send Bush, Blair and all the pro-war idiots to Iraq to deal with the mess they’ve made and bring the soldiers back to install solar water heating on all the South facing roofs they can find, that’s what I say.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ian_williams/2007/01/the_heat_is_on.html
Bush’s secret plan to combat Global Warming- invade Canada. I must check out Little Mosque on the Prairie, which kept being mentioned in the comments.
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/ethicalliving/story/0,,2003270,00.html
Children’s pester power is turning Green.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6289367.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6288957.stm
American industry groups are calling on George Bush to introduce mandatory emission standards in his State of the Union address. He’s not going to, but the sentiment is appreciated.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6287085.stm
Australians take to their bikes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/6289357.stm
2012 Olympics to be the "greenest ever".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1996493,00.html
Tony Blair takes the credit.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6289067.stm
Beachcomber pictures. Locals scavenge what they can from the wreck of the MSC Napoli. It’s like Whisky Galore, only with Pampers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6284377.stm
More pictures.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6288845.stm “Barrels of wine, shoes, hair care products, beauty cream, steering wheels, exhaust pipes, gearboxes, nappies, foreign language bibles and BMW motorbikes have all been washed up on the pebbled beach.”
http://smuggling.co.uk/
Smuggler’s Britain. Branscombe used to be a popular beach for landing smuggled goods.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6287047.stm
Can you keep what you find on the beach? (No, you’ve got to report it and you may then get a reward.)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1996505,00.html
Does anyone really believe the supermarkets talk of going Green? Much like George Monbiot, I’m convinced it’s all PR and the very nature of their business makes them unsustainable.
I’ve stopped posting about US politics as much as I used to, though I’ve not stopped following it. So it’s good to see the Democrats retaking the House of Representatives and looking like they’ve gained significant ground in the Senate. I guess the Republicans (or maybe just George W Bush and his groupies) are now so unpopular that they just couldn’t steal enough votes to swing the result.
The George Bush buttplug. There’s nothing I can say. So here’s some copy from the website.
This President will really f*** you up the butt. You’re already familiar with the sensation, so why not REALLY FEEL IT with our exclusive Presidential Pooper Plug. Invade an Iraqi, an Afghani, or at even an Iranian when you want. With this fat headed, huge stub of a plug no ass is safe anywhere.
Made of 100% silicone with 4″ of useable length and a head 1-1/2″ in diameter, this butt plug will issue a 110% American ass drubbing. A 2-3/4″ base prevents the little prick from digging in without a timetable for withdrawal.
via Fleshbot
Technorati tag: George Bush, Sex Toy, Butt Plug, Satire
Darren at ProBlogger has set a challenge- tell him how you’d proceed if you were to start your blog all over again.
I started Spinneyhead in January 2001. The simple and most obvious thing I’d do would be to post more often, and longer posts. That would have been a little tricky, of course, given the fact that I was mostly posting on work time. Looking back on it, I should have posted more often about work and what I was putting up with, but done it after hours.
2001 wasn’t a good year for me, and I came out of it a lot poorer and significantly less healthy. Too much time on the road, drowning my sorrows and maxing out the daily expenses allowance on big meals. All in all it was ideal fodder for the sort of work blog that would get you sacked now but would then have been a short cut to notoriety (and maybe a book deal) then.
Then, of course, there was September 11th. I was working in Cardiff that day. At some point someone set up a TV in a corner of the office and, as we found out what was going on, we all gravitated to it to try and take in the events. I was shocked, obviously, and living with a guy who claimed he knew people who worked in the World Trade Centre made the degrees of separation smaller. Yet somehow I didn’t find myself caught up in the clamour for War On Terror the way so many others did. Even back then I felt that some of the stuff we were being sold was utter rubbish. Such as when people kept telling us that no-one had ever thought terrorists could use civilian aircraft as weapons. What about the Tom Clancy novel where an avenging Japanese pilot landed a 747 on the State of the Union? Surely Clancy was just the sort of people Bush Jr.’s people read?
Maybe I should have published these thoughts, controversial then but justified now, and had another shot at notoriety.
But the honest truth is, sometimes when you’re in a shitty situation it’s just too hard to see how bad it is, let alone write about it objectively. Especially when the person who’s making it worse, by agreeing to every idiot idea from management, is supposed to be your friend. And I’m not great with conflict, so I didn’t really want to tell the truth to all those revenge blinded Americans.
So in the end, this is the Spinneyhead you got instead. It’s still here. My enthusiasm has waxed and waned but never died, and the family has grown. Maybe, after all, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Technorati tag: Spinneyhead, Problogger
I think Tony Blair loves Dubya so much he’s trying very hard to emulate the Chimp in Chief by becoming as stupid as possible. A few weeks ago he showed a lack of understanding of efficiency when he said that energy saving wasn’t as important companies’ profits. Then there was the admission that some hypothetical higher being was as important to his decision making as reality. The last couple of days have seen the whole honours for loans scandal. And now he admits that he’s incapable of learning from his mistakes.
Technorati tag: Tony Blair is a liar, Tony Blair
Okay, so Tony didn’t do a Dubya and say that God told him to invade Iraq. But do you really want the country to be run by a man who’s decisions are influenced by what he thinks his invisible friend will make of them?
Michael: But you mention there, I mean the Prime Minister, the commander in chief, has the ultimate say about the nation going to war and that’s the most serious decision you can take in any event. I mean you’ve been called a liar and a warmonger and all that sort of thing, what’s your feeling, your attitude when you read that? And also too when you read of casualties and people blame you for those casualties, I mean that’s a terrible, awful thing to live with and I wondered how you coped with it.
Tony: Because the King of the Potato People won’t let me. I begged him. I got down on my knees and wept.
Michael: Of course.
Tony: I was just doing a little test — a little test to see if you had gone crazy. CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! If there is one thing I can’t stand it’s crazy people.
Michael: And you sent them there.
Tony: You don’t think there’s anything amiss? I’m sitting here wearing a red and white checked gingham dress and army boots and you think that’s un-amiss?
Michael: Sorry, what do you mean by that?
Tony: I mean by other people, by, if you believe in God it’s meant by God as well and that judgement in the end has to be, you know when you are faced with a decision like that and some of those decisions have been very very difficult, as I say most of all because you know there are people’s lives, this is not just a matter of a policy here of a thing there, but their lives and in some cases their death. The only way you can take a decision like that is to try to do the right thing according to your conscience. And for the rest of it as I say you leave to the judgement that history will make.
Michael: So you pray to God when you make a decision like that?
Tony: You want to fly on a magic carpet to see the King of the Potato People.
(Red Dwarf: Season Five- Quarantine)
Technorati tag: Tony Blair, Mr Flibble
I’ve been ignoring US politics, because it’s so depressing. The reasons are summed up in Counting Bush’s Mistakes at the Smirking Chimp.
The Environment: Here’s a little pop quiz: What happens if all the coral in the world’s oceans dies? Answer: Coral is the first rung on the food-chain ladder; so when it goes, everything else in the ocean dies. And if the oceans die, we die.
The coral in the world’s oceans are dying (called “bleaching”) at an alarming and accelerating rate. Global warming is the culprit. Nevertheless, this administration continues as the world’s leading global warming denier. Why? Because they seem to feel it’s more cost effective to be dead than to force reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. How stupid is that? And time is running out.
via BlogLeft
insultthepresident.com “Because Everybody Deserves An FBI File”.
Okay, here is what happens. We write an insult, or you type in your own insult, and we (1) post it to the website for others to read, (2) send a physical letter of your insult to the President, and (3) mail you a copy of the letter with a certificate of authenticity, suitable for framing. That way when someone comes into your cubicle/home and sees a certificate that says,
“On April 10, 2006, Mary Smith told the President of the United States, ‘I’ve got things growing in my refrigerator that make better foreign policy decisions than you!'”
and they ask, “Did you really send a letter to the President that said that?” you can say, “YES I DID!” Sure, lots of people talk about disliking the President and his policies, but you TOLD HIM. Let the flame letters begin.
via A Logical Voice
Technorati tag: Dubya
IncompetenceWatch will arrive soon, Damian promises, but the first post on it may be about the hosting company he chose. Meanwhile, a Canadian man is paying back his credit card debt a penny at a time as a protest about outsourcing of his information to the US.
“I don’t want the CIA or George Bush to know how many cases of Viagra I bought last week, or what church or charities I donate to,” he told Reuters.
Rogers said his card has since been cancelled by Vancouver-based Citizens Bank, but he will continue paying his remaining balance of C$1,000 (490 pounds) one little bit at a time.
Technorati tag: Incompetence Watch, Credit Card
The magnetic North Pole is drifting away from North America so fast it could be in Greenland within 50 years. Watch Bush launch an invasion so they can get it back.
Technorati tag: North, North Pole
bahcount is a utility that counts down the seconds left until noon, January 20, 2009 in a small window. This is the expected date Bush will cease being president of the USA. The program takes your timezone into account and counts down according to EST. Various command line options are available.
What I want is a version I can stick on the website.
Thanks to Tim for the link.
Technorati tag: Bush
The White House denies it, of course, but Dubya claiming he invaded Afghanistan and Iraq because God told him to rings horribly true.
One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: “President Bush said to all of us: ‘I am driven with a mission from God’. God would tell me, ‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’. And I did.”
Mr Bush went on: “And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, ‘Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East’. And, by God, I’m gonna do it.”
Technorati tag: Bush, Iraq, Afghanistan
Two videos for you-
He-Man performs 4 Non Blondes only hit
via Drawn
Asshole President
Song by Jim’s Big Ego, creators of an old fave of mine- Stress
via Screenhead
It looks like a Photoshop, but this is the world’s most powerful man asking Condi Rice if it’ll be okay for him to have a bathroom break.
via BoingBoing
Technorati tag: Bush
Now that bush has declared katrina a greater disaster than 9/11 do you think he’ll declare war on global warming?
Of course, dubya’s opinion would probably be that oil is the enemy and therefore it must all be burnt to protect us.
Welcome to all the visitors who have come to Spinneyhead as a result of the City Life article on blogging.
I’ve been blogging since January of 2001, though in the early days I had a tendency for very brief posts. There have been a number of changes in emphasis and design over the years. Check out the archives, at the bottom of the left hand column, for a taste. If you check out the individual posts you may even see examples of the last couple of page layouts. For a more detailed look at the evolution of Spinneyhead’s style (or lack of it), you could check the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive.
Greatest Hits
Some posts get more attention than others, and you can’t always tell which ones will be high performers. The Sex Toy post has been consistently popular and spawned further posts and some clothes. (If you want to claim your free vibrator, click on the button below.)
The next three most popular links all involve videos-
Fred the Dursty Parrot, which samples and mocks the Limp Bizkit front man’s sex tape.
Take My Breath Away, a video for a cover version (found on the site of Didsbury based Hippocamp records) of a soft rock “classic” which involves exploding aeroplanes, freefall cats and GW Bush giving the world the finger.
Queerest of the Queer, another bit of impromptu mockery, this time of a former WWE wrestler turned right wing nutjob.
Around Spinneyhead
There are seven blogs in the Spinneyhead family. You can see the most recent posts from each of them in the column down the right hand side. Briefly, they are-
Spinneyhead- a group blog that is still dedicated to wasting time at work (where there is Internet access andthe filters let it through). This is where all the stuff that doesn’t fall into one of the specialist categories goes.
How to Save the World for Free– I started this because my parents are planning to build a low energy eco-house. The subject matter has expanded to encompass more than just the kind of equipment and designs they’ll need, but that original idea lies at the hear of it.
Spinneyworld– all about the cool stuff that goes on around us. The idea is to recruit a blogger from each time zone to report on events such as festivals that happen in their area.
Digest– dedicated to good food, whether it be food that tastes good or food that is good for you. They’re the same thing more often than you’d think.
Dig– Spinneyhead has an allotment, though work on it has been slow this year. Dig is a lazy person’s guide to growing and harvesting their own food.
Scale– because I’m a geek who never grew out of his modelmaking phase. Mostly about my own projects but occassionally spiced up with interesting news and photo reference links.
Steam Geek– this is my Fred Dibnah blog. It’s all about fascinating old technology, mostly from the Victorian era onwards. This is another blog that is going to provide lots of photo reference material, just for some very strange models.
There are other sections to the site. The Galleries are here. They spawned Discontinuous Infill, an occassional zine-on-a-disc about all sorts of writing on walls.
Cycling On The Pavement is a selection of longer articles and fiction. There are a few chapters from ongoing novel projects in there. I self published a print-on-demand novel a few years ago. There’s an expanded downloadable version here. Treat it as shareware, you can pay as much or as little for it as you want.
Deputised Experts is syndicated by Webcomics Nation. If you have a website and want to put a regular (Mondays and Fridays) crime comic strip on it then you can “tooncast” it. You get extra content, I get more exposure. It’s cool to be the creator of a cult comic, but it would be better to be the creator of a popular one.
Update A few things I forgot to mention in the first draft. I’ve recently had problems with the way the blog appears in Internet Explorer, which appear to have been more IE’s fault than mine. They’re fixed now, but I do recommend you use Firefox to read Spinneyhead, or subscribe to all the RSS feeds, where the formatting issue won’t be such a problem.
And I really ought to give a shout out to everyone else from the article- Stephen Newton, who wrote it, Lord Rich, Southern Bird, I love air guitar, Call-centre confidential (RIP), Airport Exile, North West Passages, United Rant, Manchester Buccanneers and Bitter and Blue.
Technorati tag: City Life
