Senator Richard Lugar on the dark art of social media mind control in the name of Western democracy:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/06/twitter_vs_terror

"As it is, my retirement plan is to keep working until I drop dead and leave an unattractive corpse and a shedload of debt to banks, credit card companies and bartenders. [...] All this liberating technology means we're free to work anywhere we want, right? So why do thousands of people all fly to one town from all over the world to discover new technology that, err, means we don't have to fly anywhere anymore? Has no one thought of saving the baby polar bears?" - Andrew Thomas.

http://www.tgdaily.com/games-and-entertainment-opinion/45331-ces-its-all-crap (Highly recommended, by the way.)

“Before Twitter, if I wanted to know what a person thought their cat was thinking...I would have been an idiot.” - Seth Meyers.

http://www.inquisitr.com/55697/steve-ballmer-ces-2010-keynote-speech/

Let's get some of the nonsense out of the way to begin with, because it's after three o'clock in the afternoon and I want a cup of tea my Inboxes are already fit to bust.

Firstly, as viewers of today's Daily Politics programme on BBC2 will attest, it only takes the duration of Prime Minister's Question Time to wipe the smug looks from the faces of Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson who, just half an hour previously, had been actively dismissing the idea that there was any kind of plot afoot to unseat the PM. That, and a leaked letter from former Cabinet ministers Geoff ("Buff") Hoon and Patricia ("Peter Capaldi in drag") Hewitt addressed to Labour MPs, calling for a secret ballot of the Parliamentary Labour Party on the matter of the party's leadership in the run-up to the General Election. The letter itself (full text here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8443882.stm) is a work of strategic art, crafted more in the style of Sun Tzu than Machiavelli. Why? Because it exploits an unpopular (and hitherto unelected) leader's weakness for self-affirmation. Nowhere in the text of the letter is the suggestion ever made that the Labour Party would do better without Gordon Brown running it. In fact, what the letter calls for is an end to all the uncertainty, rumour, and speculation surrounding Gordon's leadership style.

Hmm. Can you see what they did there? It's quite clever. On the face of it, you'd think that Brown's remaining supporters would be falling over themselves to sign up for the thing, with no solid reason not to think it's a terribly good idea all round. A couple of my correspondents have even posited the notion that Gordon himself is behind it, performing an untidily anonymous proxy version of John Major's "Back me or STFU" gambit in the 1990s.

That seems unlikely; even if his turn at today's PMQs was unusually boisterous after a very shaky start, he certainly wouldn't have felt comfortable leaving Hoon and Hewitt to mastermind any backstage recovery plan on his behalf. Hoon is the awkward uncle you can't trust to leave alone at a wedding reception for fear of him hurting himself demonstrating his awesome dance moves, and Hewitt has pissed off everyone she's ever worked with. She's leaving the PLP after this Parliament anyway, and already juggling think-tank appointments. So, no, the dramatis personae doesn't match up with any kind of dream team hit list coming out of Number 10. It's smarter than that.

Geoff Hoon, having bungled his way through a number of Ministerial jobs, found a niche as the Party's Chief Whip - a sort of John Reid, Cabinet Enforcer Lite figure. Stunningly, perhaps, he made a good fist of it. He also kept track of who thought what as the transition from Blair to Brown took place. Useful information, that. One never knows when it might come in handy and, as various backbenchers considered (aloud, within his hearing, and over the Christmas and New Year party season) their threatened marginal seats at the forthcoming election, the plan began to take shape.

At the time of writing, no currently serving Cabinet minister has yet backed the secret ballot proposal, either as a challenge, or as an exercise in supporting Gordon Brown.

Expect that to change...


Update: I don't doubt his sources for a moment, but here's Nick's somewhat iffy list of potential Cabinet Ministers who might've jumped aboard the plot...if they hadn't decided not to:

Harriet Harman, David Miliband, Bob Ainsworth, Jack Straw, Jim Murphy, and Douglas Alexander.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2010/01/why_attempt_to.html

How is it possible to run a national radio station in the first decade of the 21st century without a single female presenter on its staff?

http://www.talksport.net

Oh, of course:

Women don't like sport.

Silly me.

http://science-professor.blogspot.com/2010/01/this-i-do-not-believe.html

Has someone been rattling the bars of its cage again?

Because God knows those villagers really need something else to think about.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/8441084.stm

http://twitter.com/jsnell/status/7411793894

Neatly (and wittily) supplemented by Xeni Jardin here: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/05/ill-probably-hold-ou.html

Link for sheep (electric or otherwise) without Apple iPhones: http://www.google.com/phone

________________________

Unrelated Quote of the Day:

"Every time I meet a Nigerian now, I feel I should shove my hand down his pants just to make sure everything's okay."

Life in the Foreign Office. It really doesn't get any better than this.

Stateside: 'If we don’t somehow manage to wrest the public schools from the clutches of the left, it will bring us all down. A recent example of its insanity is the approval of a proposal (scheduled soon to come before the Berkeley School Board) by the Berkeley High’s School Governance Council to eliminate science laboratory classes because “science labs were largely classes for white students.”'

Hmm. Maybe they're having trouble seeing past all the lab coats which are, admittedly, generally white.

More here: http://nasblog.org/2010/01/04/the-sheer-racism-of-white-science/

[Insert personal anecdote here about Merv, who was a first-year chemistry student at uni and a bit of a goth, and dyed his lab coat black. The rebel.]

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z86V_ICUCD4

How to build your own one: http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Most-Useless-Machine

(Cheers to Laughing Squid.)

"Children's Secretary Ed Balls has challenged his Conservative opposite number to a public debate on education in England. Mr Balls said he was writing to Michael Gove to propose dates for a question and answer session with parents, pupils, teachers and governors." - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8439471.stm

Two of the most obnoxious men in British politics, head to head in a debate?

Apart from hoping that the roof will cave in, and crush them both to death, I can see only one winner here: David Laws*. (And he's a bit of a knob-end, too.)

Tactical Note to Messrs Cameron and Clegg: When referring to Gordon Brown as "a Prime Minister desperately clinging on to power" remember to preface the PM part of that with the word unelected. At every opportunity. Really hammer the point home. Again and again. He'll get the message eventually and, with luck, so will the electorate.


*http://www.libdems.org.uk/spokespeople_detail.aspx?name=David_Laws&pPK=b73d665c-8dcd-4c66-8ab2-4db5d2618630

...jobs for the boyos?




"But the con-tin-u-a-shun is yours for the making...Steven*."


*Who is Scottish. Of course.

Easy with the sympathy, though. Remember this is the same outfit that's been pushing a spurious personality cult for the past two thousand years...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/6917990/Vatican-reveals-Secret-Archives.html

This is a splendid story for many reasons, not least the rather obvious one about common sense winning out against a delusional, power-hungry company which seeks to dominate and control its environment (the Internet) by either swallowing or eradicating smaller fry. However, when you read the following piece about the National Arbitration Forum throwing out Google's sob story concerning Canadian start-up Groovle.com, consider what really underpins The Mighty G's arrogance here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8435576.stm

In essence, the basis of Google's claim was that users would be too stupid to be able to tell the difference between two distinct words - Groovle and Google.

And by users, they mean you.


Stay sharp, and have an excellent 2010.

Regards,
sensaes.

Just...look at it:



Details: http://www.everythingusb.com/umazone-us0498-tube-usb-speaker-18239.html


*Sigh.*


Bonus link: Rather too much input from Stuart Miles (a cheeky young pup who was predicting the death of the netbook the other day*, and believes that Sky+ has "changed the way I watch television and freed me from the schedules"...er, like a VCR never did that?), but Rory Cellan-Jones' self-explanatory piece is worth a look...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/12/gadgets_of_the_noughties.html


*http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8421491.stm

This is slightly fascinating, if not worrying, and has been the subject of correspondence elsewhere throughout the day, so I'm going to throw the link out here, too:

http://www.onlineguardian.net

Since approximately midnight last night, this outfit has been hi-jacking the URLs of media discussion boards, and stamping spurious "banned" notices all over the place (forums maintained by http://www.forumotion.net in particular seem to be affected, but I'm getting reports of others now, including Forumice.Net and some oldschool BBs).

Weird.

Edit: Hmm. Correction - it seems to have been going on since the beginning of December...

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r23464178-Is-My-ISP-Blocking-Access-To-Websites

Oh, yes.

_________________________________

The "Needs to be a t-shirt" Edit:


Social media can go f*ck itself.
INVITE YOUR FRIENDS TO WATCH IT HAPPEN!


(Inspired - if that's the right word - by this: http://community.livejournal.com/netbookworld/5843.html)

Edit: The whole...calendar thing is pretty irrelevant at this end of operations, but that's never seemed to stop the natives whooping it up (or whatever it is they do), and temporarily putting the brakes on the planet. Weird. Anyway, normal business will resume as and when.



It always does. ;o)

_____________________________

Bonus Holmes-related items from the dump file: In-house, and not-at-all-shallow* 'discussion' of the Rachel McAdams/Irene Adler character poster for the new film...

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/37584298.html

...and never let it be said that movie marketing isn't a journey into inappropriate strangeness...

http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2009/12/20/most-retardedly-cynical-movie-merchandise-tie-in-ever/

...because it really is.

(Cheers to the senders.)


*It's no longer enough to feel sorry for 'em. In line with many suggestions received throughout 2009, and the "snowball of stupidity" effect which took hold during November-December, an executive decision has been made regarding what should happen to LiveJournal - and its peculiar excesses - in 2010. Edit (via D's input): "This is like that Easter Egg in the Roehampton Student Zone policy doc in 2007. Death by small print FTW." Kudos!

Cheers to M for this slice of Norwegian reality television:



Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY_CidIS8YM

___________________

Bonus link (unrelated): Girl gamers are geekier than guys...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=gal-gamers-geekier-than-guys-09-12-23

...shock, horror.

First of all, Werner Herzog's The Bad Lieutenant - Port of Call: New Orleans (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1095217/) really isn't a remake of Abel Ferrara's similarly-titled 1992 film. If anything, Nic Cage's Terence McDonagh is the Southern weirdo cousin of Harvey Keitel's original character - progressively more strung-out, but less acutely troubled, and unapologetically more blasé about the chaos surrounding him, much of it of his own making. (Please be assured, since they tend to fall into two camps these days, that this is a good Cage movie.)

Herzog brings a refreshingly quirky outsider's touch to both the environment (figuratively and literally washed-out, post-Katrina landscapes contrasting strongly with underworld hotel opulence, and garish casino and bar neon), and the plot, which only suffers from one major credibility flaw near the very end. (No spoilers, but if you're heavily invested in the notion that good fortune only favours the brave, you'd best prepare to re-evaluate that presumption in the light of Herzog's evidence.)

Although much of the narrative is bleak, it's wittily offset by moments of ingeniously unsettling symbolism, with Herzog's use of animals and wildlife (filmed in extreme close-up, with fish-eye lenses, and freehand steadicam zaniness) providing an almost subliminal layer of commentary on the proceedings:



The bemused onlooker in that scene, by the way, is Val Kilmer. It's an odd piece of casting, given that his character seems somewhat younger and less senior than Kilmer's years might suggest, but he makes a good fist of it, as does the ever-reliable Brad Dourif as Cage's much put-upon (and heavily indebted) bookie. Eva Mendes, as the hooker girlfriend/love interest, reclaims any acting territory lost in her last pairing with Cage (Ghost Rider), and even Fairuza Balk turns up for a cheeky cameo. Highly recommended.


The complete absence of nuns in BL-PoC:NO (in-joke there for fans of Abel Ferrara's original film) is more than made up for in my personal film-of-the-year choice, Rick Jacobson's Bitch Slap (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1212974/), as former Xena, Warrior Princess star Lucy Lawless, and sidekick Renée O'Connor both put in appearances garbed in unlikely habits. TV stablemate Hercules (Kevin Sorbo) is also in attendance in this beautifully tongue-in-cheek, pseudo-Grindhouse love note to exploitation cinema of the '60s and '70s:



A complete delight, from its Joseph Conrad-quoting prologue, through its deliberately bad matte effects, and Russ Meyer/007/Modesty Blaise visual referencing, to its Sun Tzu-and-blood-drenched conclusion - an instant pomo cult classic.

This really doesn't work without a Gaffney, but never mind:

http://nasblog.org/2009/12/22/perhaps-yale-administrators-are-the-sissies/

...comes a bit of a volte-face:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/nerd-and-geek-should-be-banned-professor-says/


Down with this sort of thing!

Perhaps he'll set up a charity for 'em with the proceeds?

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp19qiash2U

Marvin the Paranoid Android's (s)hit singles.

The first one, Side A ("Marvin"): http://thebigcdomain.com/media/wav/marvin1.mp3
Side B ("Metal Man"): http://thebigcdomain.com/media/wav/marvin2.mp3

The less successful second one, Side A ("Reasons to be Miserable"): http://thebigcdomain.com/media/wav/marvin3.mp3
Side B ("Marvin, I Love You"): http://thebigcdomain.com/media/wav/marvin4.mp3

Composed by John Sinclair, with vocals by Stephen Moore (the original Marvin from the BBC radio series, TV series, and albums).

Share and...enjoy?



__________________________

Edit: Bonus Christmas present for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...



...the Build-Your-Own-Nuclear-Reactor-Kit parts are being sent separately. (Of course.)

http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2009/12/nuclear-reactor-wall-charts.html (Via Boing Boing.)

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/17/twitter-reportedly-hacked-by-iranian-cyber-army

Happy birthday (again) to astartesyriaca. xx

And have a great weekend, everyone.

___________________

Edit: This just in...



Henri says, "FTfaGoS."

But he's often rude like that.

...or is there something generally unnerving about seeing Iron Man in a domestic setting?



It's a bit like finding a Dalek sitting on your toilet.