I was supposed to be at the Wendy House right now, dancing the night away with my lovely fiancé. Because of my trick back, he has ended up going on his own. He seems to be having a good time, though, judging by his texts. Meanwhile, I have sorted through all my BPAL (and will be doing a HUGE sales/swaps post soon) and dyed my hair...

Anyway, this entry does have substance, I swear!

Firstly, nominations for my Very Prestigious Blog of the Year Awards are now closed, and you guys voted for shortlists of five, so that's what you will get in the morning. Each category will be whittled down to a shortlist of five, and presented in handy poll format. Then the voting can commence! I'll leave the poll open for a week, and after that the winner of each category will be put into a new poll to see who gets the overall title.

And, of course, there will be shiny new graphics for each stage ;)

Secondly, Amused Cynicism has taken the ball I threw earlier and run with it. I do love the way he words things:

this is the same British government that is talking about severing the Internet connections of people who break copyright law by downloading files on P2P networks. Because the government are not hypocrites, I’m sure they will now either drop these plans, or disconnect themselves from the Internet.

Tee Hee Hee.

Thirdly, another excellent post on The Curvature, eviscerating a columnist in the Daily Fail.

Fourthly and Finally, Jonathan Calder reports on some gossip in the Murdoch Rag about who is going to be running for Lib Dem Party President. Apparently there are rumours of champagne Charlie and Paddy Pantsdown throwing their glasses/undies into the ring.

I have many comments I might possibly make on this bit of scuttlebutt, but like Jonathan, I shall restrict myself to the very restrained: this blog supports Ros Scott. Knowing what Ros is standing for, and having met her, I honestly cannot see another candidate coming forward who will do the job as well or as diligently as she, however old a parliamentary warhorse they might be.

Woes first:

- Having bought myself a little Ka, and fallen in love with its distinctive shape and quirky little bumpers, imagine my horror to discover that this year they are launching a new, redesigned version that looks like a cross between a Fiesta and a Yaris, and is no longer distinctive at all. Poor Ka-Ligula's younger siblings are not going to be anywhere near as cool as him.

- having discussed Pinky and the Brain on my previous post, I thought about upgrading my old World Domination Workout Video to shiny disc... and they're only on Region 1! Curse you, evil region encoding of doom!

- Even BBC Parliament is not immune from the curse of Sport. Don't they realise that some of us would rather watch repeats of old House of Lords debates hoping to spot our facebook friends than watch the bloody Olympics?

The Yays:

- Lookit the cute widdle snakey! He's so CUTE! (hat-tip: ginasketch, who still would like you to buy her art)

- Charlie Brooker's awesome post is awesome.

The Tee Hee Hee?

- The Honourable Lady Mark Valladares delivers a smackdown to a troll called Jay. I, personally, am waiting for Silent Bob to turn up.

... And thus, I give you linkspam! I promise I'll make a proper entry soon, it's just that I've been playing Doctor Who Top Trumps all day...

stephashley_fd talks sense about knife crime.
purplecthulhu talks sense about illegal download warnings.
lizw talks sense about the Max Mosley judgement.
Going to see Tennant in Hamlet? Thinking of taking some Who stuff along for him to sign? Hahahahahahahaha.... No.
My Top Trumps fever has reached a nadir when I'm looking at these and thinking cooooooooooooooool! but I do want to get one of these for shrublette. Because chemistry is ace.

From here, via nwhyte, burkesworks, pickwick, purplecthulhu and others:

On Monday, July 7, 2008 the EU intends to sneak through a law to clamp down on file-sharing. If it gets passed, you could end up being disconnected from the Net for ever if your ISP decides you've been file-sharing.

You weren't supposed to know about this.

They buried these laws inside a huge package of other telecoms legislation, slipped it out the day before the EU breaks for the summer, and hoped nobody would notice. Most MEPs won't even have a chance to read this legislation before they have to vote on it.

Their stealth tactics could still work, unless we act now.

Right now.

The most informative, yet easily understood, article on the subject is here.

Write to/E-mail/phone your MEP *today* (if you're in Yorkshire and the Humber like me, ours is Diana Wallis - diana@dianawallismep.org.uk), and hope that they read their mail on Sundays or Monday mornings. UK residents not in Yorkshire can do it through Write To Them. It's not like you have anything better to do on a Sunday, is it?

Pass it on.

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In other news, I will be doing a proper review of the season finale for Who and posting it to dw_academy later on. I don't expect it to be all hearts and flowers...

They've found the deleted scenes from Metropolis! Sci-fi geeks rejoice! And pray Cthulhu we get a showing of it at the FFW next year...

matgb has a highly amusing post about the hypocrisy of the guy who sued the BBC for showing Jerry Springer: The Opera and upsetting his delicate religious sensibilities (related Facebook group).

Don't watch anything on YouTube which isn't allowed to be there, else you'll get got.

Creationism hits science classrooms in the UK. and we are funding it via the state school mechanism. *I* am paying for some poor kids to be taught complete bollocks as though it is fact. Amused Cynicism makes comment more eloquently than I ever could.

The Torygraph have picked their top ten ever Doctor Who episodes. No surprises that it's Ten-heavy, but perhaps surprising that it contains no Trout. And, obvs, Caves of Androzani should be #1.

James May is amazed that the BBC are upset with him for drinking a G&T, when really, they should be upset with him for putting slices of lemon in it. LIME, James, LIME!

Jeremy Thorpe says Robert Mugabe must die. I guess there's a limit to everyone's Liberalism, eh?

David Davies shows just how pro-liberty he really is. Hey ho. Is anyone actually surprised by this?

Chicky Yog imagines Gordon as a barman and finds him wanting.

The turkeys HAVE voted for Christmas: Mike at PB is right. Any PPC opposing any of the lot who voted for this is going to have a field day.

neohippie posted this video:



... and I had to share it because... well, don't you think the mad dancing dude looks like lanky Lib Dem councillor Jon Ball? Well, except the lanky dancing dude is a better dancer, obviously... ;)

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neohippie also mentioned that the above video gives her the same sort of warm fuzzy feeling like that "I love the whole world" Discovery Channel commercial, and that vid gives me the warm fuzzies too, so I'm going to repost it (link is here)



Apparently the sainted XKCD get the warm fuzzies from it too, since they have done their own version...

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And speaking of things that give me the warm fuzzies, Amused Cynicism has reported something that makes me just want to go out and buy a Joss Stone album:

After the show a reporter asked her what she thinks of piracy, and people who download her songs off the Internet. Her response baffled the reporter, as she simply told him: “I think it’s great…” There was an awkward silence for a few seconds, the reporter probably expected to hear something else from her. “Great?,” he said.

“Yeah, I love it. I think it’s brilliant and I’ll tell you why,” Stone continued. “Music should be shared. [...] The only part about music that I dislike is the business that is attached to it. Now, if music is free, then there is no business, there is just music. So, I like it, I think that we should share.”

“It’s ok, if one person buys it, it’s totally cool, burn it up, share it with your friends, I don’t care. I don’t care how you hear it as long as you hear it. As long as you come to my show, and have a great time listening to the live show it’s totally cool. I don’t mind. I’m happy that they hear it.”

Stone went on to say that most artists have probably been “brainwashed” by the record labels, when they discourage their fans from downloading music. Of course, Stone is not the only artist who actually wants people to share their work. Last year rapper 50 Cent made some positive remarks about filesharing, and Nine Inch Nails take it even further, as they upload their music onto BitTorrent sites themselves.

We all know that artists who support filesharing benefit from it, and one day the music industry will wake up to that. But until that day, lets say a big hurrah for Joss and point and laugh at Kiss... And now I have the urge to listen to Steal This Song by Mitch Benn...

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You know when people tell you that climate change is all made up so that we can be made to pay more taxes? And that the world has fluctuating temperatures anyway, and it's silly to think that man could affect it?

Show them this. Nice hard maths, how do I love thee.

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One more very cool thing before we slip down the slope of depressingness: The facebook Nexus app. Someone on nwhyte's f-list says they might have the smarts to make this for LJ: I hope they do. Of course, the coolest thing about mine is that it looks like the mothership in LifeForce. YAY for Patrick Stewart made from blood!

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The results are out for Henley. The Tories won, which is not a big surprise, with a lower turnout and a decreased number majority, but an increased percentage majority. Lib Dems increased their vote share slightly, but not appreciably. But the real story is in the lower orders. Labour came fifth. They lost their deposit. They were beaten by not only the greens, but the bastard nazi party.

As they say on PB, happy first anniversary, Gordon.

* bleak smile *

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I don't know what I think about this article, except that lots of people should read it.

Despite the vast number of religions, nearly everyone in the world believes in the same things: the existence of a soul, an afterlife, miracles, and the divine creation of the universe. Recently psychologists doing research on the minds of infants have discovered two related facts that may account for this phenomenon. One: human beings come into the world with a predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomena. And two: this predisposition is an incidental by-product of cognitive functioning gone awry. Which leads to the question ...

Is God an Accident?

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The full text of the Lords judgement on anonymous witnesses is here. I know what *I* think about this - I'm not against witnesses' identities being kept out of the press, but complete anonymity with no cross examining makes evidence very unreliable in my view... There must be some sort of happy medium? I mean, if the only evidence you can get is an anonymous witness, then that's surely not enough to convict?

Or am I old-fashioned in clinging to the idea that one should be innocent until proven guilty? More and more often these days it seems like I am...

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Ready to get more depressing? There's a Romanian girl. When she was ten, she was raped by her uncle. She didn't find out she was pregnant until it was too late for her to have an abortion under Romanian law, so she wants to come here to have one. Surely nobody sane could object to this? She's ELEVEN, and she was RAPED!

Well, apparently there are people who object to it (check comment two on Unity's post on LC), and I am fully in agreement with innerbrat on their complete lack of sense and morals.

Forcing an eleven year old girl who was raped to carry an incestuous child to term is not protecting unborn children. It is child abuse. There's no other term which fits. It makes me feel sick to the stomach that people can even contemplate it.

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It occurs to me that maybe I should have started this entry with the depressing stuff, and ended on the cool vids to cheer you up... Oh well. If you're depressed now, just scroll back up... ;)

F-list, I am posting to charge you with a Sacred Duty. If you love music, if you hold sonic entertainment dear, it is your task to download at least one illegal copy of a song a week, because if you don't, Kiss will release a new album (Hat tip - von_geisterhand).

If we get another Crazy Nights, I'm blaming you lot. Get downloading, now, before it's too late!

ETA: Best Google Ad EVAR on the notification emails for the comments on this post.

Good news: GRATS GEORGE!!! Nobody deserves a beautiful wedding more than you, mate.

Bad News: OFFS you have GOT to be JOKING?! Have they learnt nothing whatsoever from all the recent data fiascos? Clearly not. Then again, maybe it's a late April Fool... Or maybe they announced this today in the hopes that it would be burying in all the noise about abortion...

Could be either: Moffat is taking over from Rusty on Who. On the one hand, Moffat has written all of the best episodes of new Who, so even if he takes the show in a bad direction, at least it will be a better-written bad direction... But on the other hand, we don't know what that direction will be. Still, at least we can comfort ourselves with the hope that it's unlikely to involve bloody Billie Piper. We can has TEAM Tardis, and not just DUO Tardis, Oh Grand Moff? Pretty please with a cherry on top?

New NiN album is completely free.

Apparently, to say thank you to all his loyal fans for their continued support, Trent says this one's on me. Don't forget the single too!

Bless his little cotton socks.

(x-posted personal journal, 6musicrockshow, theyorkshergob)

I'm being very blonde today and keep getting distracted by shiny things, so depth is not about to happen. Have a random series of unconnected paragraphs instead:

Do you know any Swiss people? Direct them to this petition. Sadly I, as a Brit, can't sign it. But I'm passing the link on in case you know anyone who can.

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In the light of this article, in which the US government blithely states that it would be quite happy to commit what I would call an act of war against us, when we are supposedly it's closest allies, Davide Simonetti has a convincing argument that American Imperialism isn't on the horizon, but is actually with us and has been for some time (thanks to Amused Cynicism for the link).

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qi_quote is... well... Quite Interesting today.

Sir Richard Burton, the Victorian explorer and translator of The Arabian Nights spoke 40 languages and dialects. At 19, he could already speak seven of them. Born an Anglican, he converted to Roman Catholicism, then Hinduism, then Sikhism, then Sufism, then Islam, before finally reverting back to Sufism. He also wrote A History of Farting and spent the latter years of his life measuring the cocks of African tribesmen.

I wonder if he'd be able to tell matgb and I why we have both been doing incredibly stinky farts (that smell the same, too) since Sunday night...? It's not like we've had the same diet... [/tmi]

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I have a friend, raven_oreilly. This friend is American, and was brought up in a household where she was taught to believe certain things. She has been going through the process of questioning those beliefs for a while now; reading lots of books, researching, finding things out and evaluating what she's found. She might decide that the beliefs she was brought up with are entirely correct, she might not. But watching her emerge, butterfly-like, from the restrictive cocoon of received wisdom and into the freedom and daylight of thinking for yourself is a beautiful thing, and it will remain beautiful whatever colour her wings turn out to be.

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Speaking of beautiful: Sam West. He's beautiful, obviously, but so are his words.

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Vince Cable Watch Special!

Millennium Elephant (well, his daddies) organised yet another Lib-Dem-Bloggers-meet-top-Lib-Dems thingie, and apparently last night was the turn of the lovely Mr Cable (the previous ones being Ming, Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg). alixmortimer is the first to get her report in (with a fabulous punning title), but others are bound to follow in due course

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And finally, Vote for Mister Splashy Pants!