Ballard identified himself as a libertarian. “I’m all for free sex, alcohol and would liberalize the drug laws if some way could be found to protect adolescents,” he once told The Independent.
From the July 2009 edition of Reason.
From the July 2009 edition of Reason.
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry when confronted by creationist nonsense? Neither, apparently, do palaeontologists. From Yahoo News: Paleontologists brought to tears, laughter by Creation Museum. And on the sixth day, God created creationist fools?
Perhaps not quite the legend David Carradine wanted to leave behind…
What bollocks Eurosceptics like UKIP come up with to rationalise their xenophobic beliefs. According to a UKIP report, “Brussels [is] making 8 UK laws every day”. Actually, this is based on 2,754 pieces of legislation introduced by “Brussels” in 2009, consisting of directives, regulations, Commission decisions and “legislative instruments”. Most of which will probably never be implemented by the British government, or at most used as the basis for British laws.
Apparently, UKIP members are still fighting the Second World War, and “Brussels” does sound a lot like “Berlin”. However, the European Commission does not make laws for member countries. They report on which policies will best serve the interests of member countries and the EU as a whole, and members of the European Parliament subsequently vote on these to establish directives. Adopted EU directives and guidelines then have to be integrated into national legislation.
Unless Spanish waiters and French bartenders inherently scare the living daylights out of you, the system does make sense. Ambiguous legislation drives up the cost of doing business across European borders, and in many cases will reward as business acumen in one country what might be punishable as fraud in another. National tax breaks and loopholes would result in a race to attract multinational corporations, leaving smaller local enterprises to carry the regional tax burden.
The bean counters at UKIP then shudder at the cost of all of this:
EU Commissioner Gunther Verheugen estimated in 2006 that the cost of EU regulation on economies Europe wide was around £581bn, equal to the total economy of a medium-sized European nation.
What they fail to mention is the benefit of doing business within the EU to the collective economies of all member countries. When a British company supplies products or services in France or Germany, the taxable income flows back to the UK, creating a regional benefit. Unless, of course, the company in question makes use of any of the available offshore investment opportunities to avoid paying tax on its profits. Tax avoidance opportunities created under… British laws.
Oh dear.
So did the great man foresee a better way to allow music lovers to indulge their passion? In Frank’s own words, from The Real Frank Zappa Book:
We propose to acquire the rights to digitally duplicate and store THE BEST of every record company’s difficult-to-move Quality Catalog Items [Q.C.I.], store them in a central processing location, and have them accessible by phone or cable TV, directly patchable into the user’s home taping appliances, with the option of direct digital-to-digital transfer to F-1 (SONY consumer level digital tape encoder), Beta Hi-Fi, or ordinary analog cassette (requiring the installation of a rentable D-A converter in the phone itself . . . the main chip is about $12).All accounting for royalty payments, billing to the customer, etc. would be automatic, built into the initial software for the system.
The consumer has the option of subscribing to one or more Interest Categories, charged at a monthly rate, without regard for the quantity of music he or she decides to tape.
Providing material in such quantity at a reduced cost could actually diminish the desire to duplicate and store it, since it would be available any time day or night.
Monthly listings could be provided by catalog, reducing the on-line storage requirements of the computer. The entire service would be accessed by phone, even if the local reception is via TV cable.
This certainly sounds very similar to the business model of the Internet music business…
Now here’s an outlaw whose end simply begs to be made into a Takashi Miike movie: Big Nose George Parrot. Jailed for killing a Wyoming deputy sheriff and a Union Pacific detective, Parrot was sentenced to death. Not content with waiting for the authorities to do the job, a lynch mob numbering around 200 people snatched Parrot from jail and he was promptly hung from a telegraph pole. In a series of increasingly suspect medical studies, Parrot’s body suffered the following indignities:
- The top of his skull was sawn off.
- The piece of skull was presented to medical assistant Lilian Heath, then 15 years old.
- Heath used the cap as an ashtray, pen holder and doorstop.
- Skin from Parrot’s thighs and chest was removed.
- Together with his nipples, the skin was tanned and made into a pair of shoes and a medical bag.
- The dismembered body was stored in a whiskey barrel for about a year.
- Parrot was finally buried in the yard behind the office of one of the doctors who mutilated him.
Read more on Wikipedia.
What do you get when you accidentally watch the 1999 version of Beowulf, starring Christopher Lambert, instead of the more recent Robert Zemeckis production? Well, grab several dozen cinematic clichés from recent successes like Lord of the Rings and classics like Conan the Barbarian, mix in the spirit of a young Rutger Hauer, season with a horribly violated adaptation of a classic work of fiction, and serve up to bored teenagers too young to know any better and sure to be mesmerized by the shiny CGI. Ooh, sparkly, sparkly…
Rather buy the more recent version from Amazon.
Stoker did not invent vampires. If we define them, broadly, as the undead—spirits who rise, embodied, from their graves to torment the living—they have been part of human imagining since ancient times. – The New Yorker
Are we genetically predisposed to appreciate listening to Sinatra or staring at a Seurat?
Science writer and blogger Ben Goldacre (him of the Bad Science blog and numerous Guardian articles) is having a spot of trouble with radio station LBC. Read all about it here.
Lordy lordy lordy. Politically backward MP Graham Stringer has called dyslexia a “fictional malady”, made up as an excuse for poor educational standards. Squawked the man channelling his inner parrot: “The sooner [dyslexia] is consigned to the [...] dustbin of history the better.” Ironically, Stringer holds a BSc (Hons) in Chemistry from the University of Sheffield, and should be more scientifically literate.
Meanwhile, dyslexics around the world have joined in calling him a posstot.
Most reviewers of the China Sea Chinese Fast Food restaurant in West Haven, CT appear to hate it. True, many not for immediately believable reasons (like random “Mongorian” invasions), but one review stands out for it’s passionate love of China Sea’s cuisine. By pure coincidence the reviewer’s name is chinaseawh5968, what are the odds?
Can’t find nobody else dish like “China Sea”: I loved China Sea, I been with china sea about 15 year.The food was delicious, people are very nice over there. They got every things I need, High speed services you can’t find no where. They made boneless spare rib #1, Even I move to far way, I still coming back !
And five stars to boot! I hear they do a pretty mean hamster appetizer as well…
An Italian priest has let the cat out of the bag by telling children attending a children’s mass that Father Christmas does not exist.
The priest said he had never intended to hurt anyone, but it was his duty to distinguish the reality of Jesus from the story of Father Christmas which was a fable just like Cinderella or Snow White.
Oh, the irony.
From an article on Salon:
President-elect Barack Obama has long stated that he would shut down the U.S. military detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base when he assumes the presidency next month, and most have assumed that meant he would also put an end to the widely discredited military commissions that the Bush administration set up at “Gitmo” and transfer the cases to U.S. federal courts or military courts-martial. With that in mind, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has instructed his staff to have a blueprint for closing the detention center and the military commissions ready by January 20.
Yet, the article continues, “the machinery at Guantánamo grinds on, seemingly oblivious to what lies ahead.” Roll on President Obama, and get the military tribunals referred to real courts of law.
