A non-word (or, at a pinch, composite word) which, when spelled like that, looks like an especially complicated sort of colitis.

Anyway, it's what all the allegedly "cool" kids (students, not baby goats - with or without colitis) are into:

http://www.collegewikis.com

If this was academics_anon you could probably have a fascinating debate about all about it.

But it isn't. So please don't.

...I'd just like to remind UK nighthawks (and American masochists) that - by way of a little light relief - the second of three Presidential debates takes place later tonight:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7656382.stm

Being the middle one of the trilogy, you can look forward to seeing Barack Obama losing a hand in a lightsaber battle, and finding out that John McCain is his father.

"Starbucks, the coffee chain giant which boasts of its green credentials, has come under fire from environmental groups for wasting more than 23m litres of water a day by leaving taps running non-stop. An investigation has revealed that every Starbucks branch has a cold tap behind the counter providing water for a "dipper well" sink used for washing spoons and utensils, but staff are banned from turning the water off under health and safety rules."

More on the lunacy here (and on Channel 4 News later):

http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/851237/Starbucks-accused-wasting-23m-litres-water-day/

_______________________

There is a loose Bond connection here, since water is relevant to the machinations of S.P.E.C.T.R.E Quantum in the new film, but I'll justify that icon with this link:

http://www.swatch007villains.com (Select your global region of domination - and villainous timepiece - with care. Mwahahahaha! Etc.)



Hate to play favourites, but...mmmm! ;o)

_______________________

And finally, were the Stasi behind the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II?

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=13961

Here's your Monday morning coffee break special:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/02/mind-control-pattern.html

And, much as I love a well-oiled girl, this is going a bit far...



Poor Agent Fields. More about the slick (sorry) Quantum of Solace homage to Goldfinger here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/moslive/article-1064929/The-Bond-Homage.html

'As for Sarah Palin (remember the West Wing-style advice from the top to "let Palin be Palin...") well at a Colorado fundraiser last night she described Obama as "our opponent is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

This heralds a new raft of negative ads from the McCain team timed to go out after Tuesday's Presidential debate. They'll attempt to link Obama to two men: convicted money launderer Tony Rezko, and a former activist with the Weathermen, William Ayers.

Rezko helped the Obamas to buy their Chicago home in 2005 by purchasing part of the garden next door; he's due to be sentenced a week before polling day for fraud, attempted bribery and money laundering.

Sarah Palin based her comments last night on a New York Times investigation into the whole Ayers connection (proving, perhaps, that she does read those pinko liberal newspapers after all...)'

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/muckraking+you+aint+seen+nothing/2487557

Edit: Via boingfeed, here's Sarah Palin in 30 seconds...



Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3Bma3vBG5g

"Nucular", no matter how many times it's said, is still not a word. Harrison Ford, please take note...also.

"Nearly 20,000 Catholics from around the world have sent paper and electronic postcards to Vatican organizers of the Synod on the Word and to their Bishop delegates, asking them to restore women leaders such as Mary of Magdala and Phoebe to lectionary texts from which they have been deleted. The Synod begins October 5 in Rome, and will be in session until October 27."

From http://www.ascribe.org (via http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/55275.html).

Accompanying music to this entry courtesy of the Strange Days CD, free in today's Mail on Sunday* Sunday Times newspaper (which also contains this Orwellian gem: "Ministers are considering spending up to £12 billion on a database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4882600.ece).

For the true cynics, and those who just don't know, here's a classic reminder about who reads which newspaper:



Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxdMFRwztl4

________________________________

Edit: Opus Dei TV cartoon spectacular!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3123917/Opus-Dei-cartoon-and-TV-series-to-boost-image.html

(Perhaps they should put it on ice? Er, in the sense of going full-on Disney with it.)


*No, sorry - it's The Sound of Music in that one. Not quite feeling strong enough for that yet...

Fascinating article about the internal goings-on at the Beeb over the nuclear warning announcement, and who would deliver it:

'...Whitehall was obsessed as much with the voice that would be used to announce Armageddon as it was with protecting what was left of the British population.

Senior civil servants in charge of drawing up the pre-recorded radio announcement became concerned that only a recognisable broadcaster should be used for fear that an unfamiliar voice would create the impression that Auntie had been "obliterated".'

More here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/bbcs-dilemma-over-who-would-announce-a-nuclear-attack-949703.html

_________________________________

Bonus: Is the world ready for an "official" sequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula?

Rhetorical question, I'm afraid, as the world's getting one anyway, along with an inevitable movie version:

http://www.getthebigpicture.net/blog/2008/10/4/dracula-ii-electric-boogaloo.html

...but prepare yourselves to embrace a slightly new definition of "attention whore" just in case.

Firstly, I do appreciate that this probably cuts to the heart of LiveJournal's extra-special, cliquey-wiquey, "whispering-behind-the-bikesheds", all-girls-together overriding mentality. Nothing wrong with that (if you're fourteen), but it's only fair to point out that this is why I find it funny, and why it's something that continues to put a lot of people off the hosting service. (Not me, I hasten to add, and I'll put my hand up to sending out another LJ invitation to someone yesterday.)

The thing is, some people labour under a delusion that LiveJournal's all about the numbers, as though the front page statistics you see when you log in ("Eight billion Journals created since Tuesday!" or whatever it says) represent a personal challenge to be somehow met and conquered, rather than a sub-IPO advertisement to potential investors. Even before the Russian LJ franchise was formally launched, those cheeky vodka-addled mercenaries had made a high-stakes game of it. Remember all those crazy "Friending" binges of three or four years ago? Well, if you'd suddenly found yourself unexpectedly "popular" with a cluster of users you'd never even heard of before, the chances were that your username had gone up on a message board based in the Ukraine somewhere, next to a deadline for "adding". Such a board was the blogosphere's equivalent of a tipster's sheet, and many of the in-house "adding communities" were the more upfront end of a new and truly international pastime.

For those of us more concerned with content than mere statistics, it was a bit of an affront to the guiding modus operandi of blogging. The commercial potential of a blog, along with occasionally proffered inducements to post, may or may not be factors affecting the choices of topics covered, but the associated in-house readership numbers are less directly important to the output process itself than, say, accessibility and style. (This, incidentally, is another canny wheeze worth sharing, because the Google ad revenue model - subscribed to by LiveJournal and its ilk - is extraordinarily easy to fiddle and weight artificially, and remains generally hidden to users who stay cocooned within it, or "Friends-lock" all of their entries. I'll be specifically touching upon this latter point later, as it has some direct bearing here.) Nevertheless, we saw the joke, and duly warned those who were likeminded and sympathetic-to-the-cause, and who may have been sensitive to such nonsense. (Guilty as charged, by the way. As the practice has continued to wax and wane more recently, I've left a few "F*ck offski"-style comments on Journals m'self...)

The curious thing about all of this, despite the phenomenon's relative infamy outside LiveJournal and the faint, lingering aftertaste of suspicion and mild paranoia still extant within it, is that - as suggested above - a substantial proportion of users adhere to the notion that, for example, a large number of "Friends" equates with "popularity". But they effectively miss the trick by seeking to isolate (and, indeed, subdivide still further) that potential readership. Granted, there may well be a correlation here between chosen content, and a desire to "protect" it - one particularly cruel interpretation being unconscious guilt and fear about all that highly personal moaning and bitching "leaking out", and inadvertently reaching its subjects rather than its selective "audience". (Utterly nonsensical, of course, since the evolution of Frienditto from a "staging-post" site into a much more invasive, standalone, post-intercept application - once again with Russians helming the hardcore coding - sent the wiser LJ folk scuttling back to mass e-mail as a more secure alternative. E-mail being about as secure as a postcard blowing down a windy street. Just ask Sarah Palin...)

Now you could be forgiven for thinking that this post is some sort of extended advert for Open Blogging Week, but it isn't! (And nor is it by any means some "let bygones be bygones" apologia to the eager beavers of the former Soviet Union, even if they've now turned their attentions to messing with Facebook and Friendster, probably regarding poor old LiveJournal as a conquered virtual territory now.) What it is, more than anything, is an acknowledgement of difference, because although there are certain commonalities of approach in the wider blogosphere, and I continue to find people who choose to bang on endlessly about themselves, when there is a world of fascinating stuff out there to focus upon and dissect, endlessly amusing, that's not to say that I don't appreciate the diversity. To be perfectly honest, there are probably people on that 54-strong "Friend of" sensaes list who do nothing but devote every entry they make to an extended discussion of what their own anuses look like...figuratively speaking. I wouldn't know, because I don't read 'em. Nevertheless, I'm glad they've got people who openly declare an interest in that sort of thing by taking pride of place on the LJ equivalent of their blog rolls. The only - and by now hopefully obvious - point to make about LiveJournal posts, whether they are recorded in personal Journals or via "Communities", is that if you're going to have a go at someone on matters of numbers, you'd do well to compare all those comments received, and highly selected (potentially subdivided) subscribers on a list, against posts which aren't "protected", and are pretty much "out there" for anyone to read.

Like this one. ;o)

...they may want to feed him to a crocodile:

"The parents of a 7-year-old boy who broke into an Australian outback zoo and fed a string of small animals to its resident crocodile are likely to be sued after police said the boy was too young to be held responsible."

More here:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20081003/tod-uk-australia-zoo-b7e5c6f.html

(Cheers to helice.)

______________________________________

And why some academics are less smart than their students:



'An archaeological site in Donje Mostre, in the Bosnian Valley of the Pyramid, has unveiled a Neolithic artefact that has been dated to 6000-3000 BC. The discovery was made by students of the German University of Kiel on September 23, and was announced by Zilke Kujundžic, who is actually one of the main opponents to the pyramid project, having filed numerous petitions for the work to be stopped, claiming the entire project is a hoax...'

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Mysterytopia/~3/410291288/miniature-bosnian-pyramid-found.html

Follow-up to http://community.livejournal.com/anti_gravitas/106391.html

You lot rarely get to see any of the behind-the-scenes stuff which actually fuels my occasionally Machiavellian glee at LJ's ineptitude/malice (take your pick), so I'm grateful to one of my correspondents for providing the following screenshot (now duly annotated):



Honestly, what can you do with 'em?

Apart from take some of the heat elsewhere, of course: http://sensaes.journalspace.com/?entryid=276

_______________________________

Edit: May as well pay the rent while I'm here...

Good riddance to conscience-free rubbish. Met chief Sir Ian Blair finally stands down:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7648664.stm (Includes embedded video.)

Personal aside: I daresay The Indy will have a good cartoon for this one tomorrow, helice, but in the meantime here's that Gaffney from last year:



Lentamente ma inesorabilmente.

Update: Cheers to helice for this suitably operatic tribute to the full-of-himself former prima donna of the Met...



...and, judging from my Inboxes today, his former (God, I'm starting to love that word almost as much as Sarah Palin loves the word "also") colleagues are no longer short of an effigy for Guy Fawkes Night.

And the U.S. embassy is finally hauling its scaredy-cat arse south of the River, and saying cheerio to Grosvenor Square:

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews/idUSL271639120081002


Magic Words of the Day: Finally, former, and also.

'Could voting for president be hazardous to your health? An analysis of Election Day traffic deaths dating back to Jimmy Carter's 1976 win suggests yes, but the authors say that's no reason not to go to the polls.

The study found that on average, 24 more people died in car crashes during voting hours on presidential election days than on other October and November Tuesdays. That amounts to an 18% increased risk of death. And compared with non-election days, an additional 800 people suffered disabling injuries. The results were pretty consistent on all eight presidential Election Days that were analyzed, up to George W Bush's victory over John Kerry in 2004.

"This is one of the most off-the-wall things I've ever read, but the science is good," said Roy Lucke, senior scientist at Northwestern University's Center for Public Safety.'

More here: http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,,2-13-1443_2402618,00.html

"...20-year-old Natalie Sutton, said that during her hockey initiation ceremony she was forced to put fish in her bra and then eat it." [The fish, presumably, not her bra...]

That's one of the milder ones.

More here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7647099.stm (Contains embedded video.)

And here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/education/universityeducation/3118909/Student-dressed-as-Nazi-in-initiation-ceremony.html

...concerning the respective natures of "Good" and "Evil" (and people's perceptions of same) in the past, I'll give the old girl her due here, because she's authored a jolly interesting piece for the Telegraph on religion and belief:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/30/scigod130.xml

Warning: It's basically plugging her new book on the subject.

(Cheers to disinfo - now apparently free of dodgy escort agency advertisements - for the heads-up.)

_____________________________

Edit: Oh, hang on. This is still LiveJournal, isn't it?

Right you are...

Here's some bloke's view on women who fake orgasms:

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/women-and-faking-orgasms.html

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn9WduykYpA

(Via the_huff.)

Not if it features Alicia Keys trying (and failing) to play Chopsticks on a piano, and someone who resembles Eddie Izzard in an emo wig...



Ah, that'll be Jack White, then.

MPEG rip of the video for "Another Way To Die" here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/149665186/Another_Way_To_Die_Yahoo_Premiere_AKO.mpg

My (unchanged) thoughts on the song here:

http://sensaes.livejournal.com/604855.html

You're not forwarding my sensaes@livejournal.com e-mail.

Apart, that is, for the spam.

*Wags finger.*

Tut.

Not really "yours" in any sense,
sensaes.

P.S. Overheard en route:

Schoolchild lighting friend's ciggy: "Did you know that cigarette lighters were invented before matches?"
Second schoolchild, inhaling deeply: "No way."

Don't all rush to fact-check that one on Wikipedia...and don't ask what they're teaching 'em at school these days. (Knife-throwing and How To Tell If Your Best Friend Is Gay Without Making A Huge Fuss About It, according to some of my correspondents...)


Oh look, that yellow bar's appeared on this entry. Quelle surprise...

'The three property staff – property officer Laura Hesketh and assistants Gary Davies and Justin Taylor – admit that stolen garden gnomes are an endless source of amusement.

Laura said: "It's quite funny to walk into the store and see a row of gnomes on the shelf. Last year there was a spate of gnome thefts in Preston and we had to look after them for a while."

Gary added: "We had about 20 in at one time, and I would say three quarters of them were reunited with their owners after the court case. I think the people of Preston are very attached to their gnomes..."'

More here: http://www.lep.co.uk/news/Garden-gnomes-among-theft-victims.4538759.jp

Semi-related Edit: The Past Times website (http://www.pasttimes.com) has undergone another revamp, but not without casualties. Some gargoyles, for instance, do not show up following a keyword search. This chap, for example...



...who, unsurprisingly, is one of a set of three.

http://www.pasttimes.com/Statues/Speak-No-Evil-Gargoyle/invt/812453

Don't let this get you down...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7641733.stm (includes embedded videos)

...because, if it all goes tits-up, I've got something delightfully impractical for you to do with your dollar bills:



Details here:

http://art.commongate.com/post/The_Art_Of_Moneygami

(Cheers to boingfeed.)

Edit: Personally, I'm in the process of melting down my pound coins and turning 'em into a really natty suit of armour. [Note: This is ILLEGAL. Do not emulate as if you're some snotty-nosed child copying something he saw MacGuyver do once on TV.]

George Lucas still wants your money.

(Again.)

http://fox.co.uk/dvd/star_wars_trilogy_6_disc_-12048/12048/

http://fox.co.uk/dvd/star_wars_prequel_trilogy_6_disc_-12047/12047/

...over the MRI:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=403669&c=1

No. That's a Myatt.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art-and-architecture/news/spot-the-difference-the-genuine-fake-masterp.htmls-942813.html

(Cheers to helice.)

http://www.worldcat.org

__________________________

You know, sometimes it's better not to ask...

'Young people think a steady stream of immigrants is eroding Britain's national identity and threatening jobs, a survey said. Almost two-thirds (60%) of the young people surveyed in the poll by the British Council thought the presence of foreign immigrants was "diluting" their sense of national identity. A quarter said immigrants posed a threat to British workers' jobs and 12% said they thought the influx of people from abroad was a risk to security and public order. Two thousand people aged between 18 and 35 were asked about their attitude towards immigration and their sense of national identity.

The British Council said the results were "worrying".'

More here: http://news.uk.msn.com/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=9786170

'More than half of all Americans believe they have been helped by a guardian angel in the course of their lives, according to a new poll by the Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion. In a poll of 1700 respondents, 55% answered affirmatively to the statement, "I was protected from harm by a guardian angel." The responses defied standard class and denominational assumptions about religious belief; the majority held up regardless of denomination, region or education - though the figure was a little lower (37%) among respondents earning more than $150,000 a year.'

More here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080918/us_time/guardianangelsareheresaymostamericans;_ylt=Ag6460Ou7T.0hzQJd0PdBKMDW7oF

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_3018786.html

Messy Sex and Death Bonus: Did the Earth move for you?

Only in a manner of speaking...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7629433.stm

(Cheers to fortean_news.)

...will this be one of the coolest things you'll see today:



A pinhole camera made out of a human skull.

Details here: http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/09/23/pinhole-camera-fashi.html

_____________________________

Bonus item/s: Demonic possession and the artist - a series of related articles...

http://surrealdocuments.blogspot.com/search/label/Possession

(Cheers to techno_occult.)

'A stalker wearing a Phantom Of The Opera-style mask stabbed a woman to death and injured another before turning the knife on himself in an east London college. Witnesses said the killer, wearing a curly black wig as well as the white mask, repeatedly stabbed the woman's lifeless body in the frenzied attack. They heard the victim's co-worker scream "he's killing her".'

More here: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23558936-details/Stalker+in+a+Phantom+mask+stabs+receptionist+to+death/article.do

This, of course, is in addition to today's events in Finland:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7630969.stm

___________________________

Edit: If the nutters don't get you, the radioactivity and cancer will...

"Three academics and a computer assistant have died after working in the same building. The one-time laboratory at Manchester University was used by Ernest Rutherford at the turn of the last century. He is known to have begun a series of experiments using radioactive material in 1906. Officials from the Health and Safety Executive have now ordered a review to determine whether former lecturers, students and ancillary staff were contaminated by traces of radon and polonium left in the building. All four of those whose deaths are under review worked in the university's psychology department, which moved into the old physics department in 1972."

More here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3068585/Four-cancer-deaths-at-university-may-be-linked-to-radioactive-experiments.html

Update: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7644030.stm

"In 1993, a man was rushed to the hospital for a stab wound he inflicted on himself. Though he was depressed at the time, the act wasn't intended to end his life; it was to prove to his family that he wouldn't bleed — because he was sure he was already dead.

The patient had a rare disorder called Cotard delusion, in which people believe they are dead, or even non-existent. But at the hospital his delusion took a new turn: He now believed his close family members had been replaced with perfect replicas sent by the police to spy on him. These are classic symptoms of another rare disorder, called Capgras delusion, in which a person believes loved ones are actually imposters."

More here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-20071121-000006.html

http://www.shopmanifestopress.com/drofdebo.html

(Cheers to boingfeed.)

Edit: I can't remember now who was asking about LJ style sheets for layout tinkering, but someone recommended thefulcrum, if that helps...