http://rustle.blogsome.com oh, you know, stuff. Sun, 04 Dec 2011 13:37:24 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall earlier this year. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2011/12/04/sunflower-seeds/ http://rustle.blogsome.com/2011/09/03/aldeburgh-suffolk/ The above represents the number of planets in our solar system over time. This is something I was thinking about the other day. Depending on how you define something, data that you might expect can only go one way sometimes goes in another direction. From the Sumerians discovering Venus, to ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2011/08/28/planets-over-time/ “This porridge is too hot!” she exclaimed. So, she tasted the porridge from the second bowl. “This porridge is too cold,” she said So, she tasted the last bowl of porridge. “Ahhh, this porridge is just right,” she said happily and she ate it all up. i write a lot of reports. i read a ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2010/07/29/boards/ the BBC has done a great job with iplayer. it’s fantastic not to be tied to the schedules and to hear about a programme from others and then go watch it. but there are several things that are a PITA. * the programmes are generally only available for 7 days * the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2010/06/14/recording-bbc-iplayer/ ita’s car was hit from behind. just a bump, which caused a bit of a dent. once we sent off the pictures, wisely taken at the scene on her iphone, the driver admitted responsibility. today we get a letter from this insurer’s solicitors offering, in addition to repair etc, £1000 ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2010/04/30/p635/ When you order something from Wickes, builders merchants, they send you an orange balloon and a piece of string. You tie the balloon to your gate, thus speeding up delivery and minimising missed deliveries. Nice. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2010/03/14/orange-balloon/ This is the UK without the nice warming effect of the gulf stream. This is described on the weather reports as “the gulf stream taking a vacation”. But is it? I remember reading articles predicting this as part of the continuing change in climate. A quick google reveals quite a ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2010/01/08/the-gulf-stream-the-day-after-tomorrow/ Obama’s recent announcements on future military policy in Afghanistan and Iraq came after a well-publicized deep think. He wasn’t going to come to some snap formulation, but ponder deep and hard with real experts. The results are a little disappointing. Here was a BIG opportunity. He missed it. The end ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2010/01/03/its-a-shame/ I like the iphone but there are things I don’t like, primarily that it just doesn’t like ubuntu, which means it’s hard to sync music etc. I also don’t like the hassle in connecting it to different computers where it assumes nefarious intent at every stage. So i ordered one ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/12/14/clunky-android/ We’ve been cleaning up our new office in central London (built 1891). Whilst the scaffolding was up I took the opportunity to snap some of the details in the stone work. They don’t make things like this any more etc. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/11/13/they-dont-make-things-like-this-any-more-etc/ each year i try to better the halloween pumpkin from the previous year. this year i even impressed myself http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/11/01/halloween-cat-lantern/ i love reddit. i’m not much into “community”, i contribute little, am unsociable, cantankerous, and dismissive; but Reddit is just great. anything of any import finds it’s way there, and i like the sense of humour. there are many facets to reddit. people post, and vote up or down, all ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/11/01/go-fight-the-real-war-on-terror/ i read recently that ayn rand’s “atlas shrugged” was the favourite book of a bunch of VCs. I’d read “the fountainhead”, which I quite liked (at least most of it), so i thought i’d give atlas shrugged a chance. life is simple in ayn rand world (i now understand where ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/10/11/a-nietzschean-disneyland/ last (probably) from Orwell’s road to Wigan pier: We live, admittedly, amid the wreck of a civilization, but it has been a great civilization in its day, and in patches it still flourishes almost undisturbed. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/08/04/almost-undisturbed/ more orwell (road to wigan pier” Of course the post-war development of cheap luxuries has been a very fortunate thing for our rulers. It is quite likely that fish-and-chips, art-silk stockings, tinned salmon, cut-price chocolate (five two-ounce bars for sixpence), the movies, the radio, strong tea, and the Football Pools have between them averted revolution. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/08/01/averting-revolution/ orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier: You cannot disregard them if you accept the civilization that produced them. For this is part at least of what industrialism has done for us. Columbus sailed the Atlantic, the first steam engines tottered into motion, the British squares stood firm under the French guns ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/07/31/better-not-to-stay-there-too-long/ http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/07/19/banksy-in-africa/ the swimming world is rocked by new swim suits. a two-time gold medalist refuses to indulge in “technological doping”. middle-ranking swimmers have started breaking world records with the new attire. i guess we understand now why the original olympics were conducted nude (gymnos in greek). so let’s hear it for ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/07/19/nude-swimming/ what’s the effect on mortality of a recession. not much, apparently, but there is a significant change in how people die. A 3 per cent increase in unemployment led to rises of about 4 per cent in suicide and 6 per cent in murders but a 4 per cent fall in ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/07/08/how-to-die-in-a-recession/ following on from zac’s mott and bailey cake, zoe had a school project to make something viking. the answer was obvious, maybe the world’s first viking village cake - http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/07/08/viking-village-cake/ a few years ago, in an idle moment, i thought back to the 1980s (the aftermath of the oil shocks) and found myself wondering whatever happened to oil running out. it wasn’t something i’d heard in the last decade. strangely it seemed to be off the agenda. the more i ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/06/25/5-minute-oil-ramble/ most evening i sit and work while listening to bbc radio 3’s late junction on the iplayer. currently listening to this one, which is typically good. shame you can’t listen if you’re out of the uk. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/06/18/late-junction/ * just recovered my password to this blog after linux upgrade * linux upgrade went badly and had to start from scratch. a pain but 9.04 is nice. * it’s been 25c in london and that is good. * getting to the end of “the amber spyglass” with zac. highly recommend his dark ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/06/15/now-that-is-interestingg/ Last.fm is down: We’re really sorry, but due to datacenter temperature issues beyond our control Last.fm is currently offline. Please bear with us as we scramble to catch overheating DC/AC inverters… stay tuned, we’ll be restoring regular service as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience. In the meantime, check out our ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/05/31/hubris-2/ i’ve had a proper week off. no work, no other work, no other other work, nothing. it feels good. i say it again about the hay-on-wye festival, it’s good, it’s very good. i saw just one thing on my own (niall ferguson- excellent), and a bunch of stuff with the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/05/31/hay-2009/ this evening i was cooking and zoe was tapping away at the mac in the kitchen. zoe: what’s a night stand? me: well, it’s like a small table that goes next to the bed to put a glass a water on, or a clock. zoe: why is facebook asking me if i ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/05/18/facebook-kids/ My favourite TV show when i was growing up was Whickers World. I loved the guy in the suit pontificating on the world outside. This was back in the day when no one but the very rich traveled anywhere, when it took days to travel to Japan, for instance. Once ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/05/03/the-bird-shit-runs-out-times-are-hard/ the swine flu map looks a lot busier than it did yesterday. it’s great to have kids. we had an hours session of q & a this evening. it turns out that the Zs have both been learning about the black death. zac asked if he was going to die of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/04/28/swine-flu-map/ software is free (open-source). software comes shrink-wrapped for a fixed price (is resold) or is downloaded for a fixed price. it’s given away free, except for commercial use; free, but there’s a charge for support. or you can use a basic version for free, but the extra whistles cost something ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/04/25/software-pricing/ this is a nice story. (and further evidence of the spread of gladwellism). it also accords with something i’ve always believed. that trainers are evil devices designed to remove all sense of ground. they do. give me a flat leather sole anyday. so it seems as though running with bare ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/04/19/trainers-are-evil-devices/ waiting for the kids to get ready for bed i caught five minutes of david starkey’s series on henry viii. it made me wish i wasn’t eschewing television at the moment. it was a great five minutes. henry and francis i of france were to meet for the very first ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/04/15/field-of-the-cloth-of-gold/ just saw a jared diamond lecture (video) on religion. He lists five reasons for religion: 1. explanation 2. politics 3. morals 4. warfare 5. beauty the talk was fine but it’s a ropey list. (1) covers, at least (2), (3) and (4) as well. beauty and “truth” are left, which is nice. of course religion is a ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/04/14/hypothesis-generation/ the villagers of Broughton surround a google street view car and the police are called. yes, it’s madness. the best thing that google could do is to use the material they have. fancy a trip out? what about Broughton? let’s take a look on google. oh, an angry mob (with ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/04/03/mmm-maybe-not/ i have a new favourite internet site, dropular. It’s a great place to lose some valuable time but, strangely, I never seem to mind. Dropular is a media bookmarking service loosely based on the idea of a droplet contributing to a pool, filling it ever-so slightly one by one. This ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/03/30/dropular-a-beautiful-place-to-lose-some-time/ in the enterprise world there are very few file server cloud solutions. i only know of two that fit the bill. i’ve talked about egnyte. but there is also mezeo. they have a product that ticks the boxes. their client works, users can map drives (though webdrive is probably ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/03/28/file-server-cloud-solutions/ i studied chinese foreign policy. i enjoyed that they often made policy moves out of left-field. there was the incident that saw chinese sailors moon overboard at russian cadres on the beach; the invitation to the US ping-pong team that brought about nixon’s visit in 1972, the “pre-emptive counter-attack” in ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/03/26/almost-unthinkable/ * slumdog millionaire is not “the feelgood movie of the year”. at all. * had a conversation in a lift today with an office messenger about thomas pynchon * spent a whole bunch of time on one graphic for a ppt presentation, probably needlessly. felt like chippendale carving the back of a ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/03/26/stuff/ i like the way music can be listened to now. i hear about some new album, take a trip to last.fm and go listen to it, free of charge. if i like it enough, want to take it out on an mp3 player, then i’d buy it. been listening to new ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/03/23/lastfm-on-demand-listening/ i just got sent this link. i like that it tries to lay responsibility for the economic crises on individuals. individuals you’ve never heard of. some guy in AIG, a senator responsible for deregulation. it reminds me of visiting the anne frank museum in amsterdam. there they name the german ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/03/22/an-individual-is-wot-did-it/ this is why the cloud works. any cloud solution comprises a modular framework. there are a number of choices for each module (mostly). over time, whatever solution you choose will just get better. you’ll swap out modules and change things around but it will get tighter, and more functional, over ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/03/17/first-rule-of-the-cloud/ korea’s daewoo corporation is buying half of all the arable land in madagascar in return for $6bn over 20 years. I feel more convinced than before that Korea needs Daewoo’s success in Madagascar, not only to prove that its model is different from the models of Britain, the United States, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/03/16/colonialism-that-will-be-the-daewoo/ if you do a google search for enterprise cloud file server solutions, you’ll see Egnyte all over the first page of results. you won’t see much else. it appears as though there is a massive gap in the market here. there are personal back-up solutions and file-sharing sites aimed ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/03/14/enterprise-cloud-3/ i have never regretted spending money on art. i have rarely bought art. today i went to the affordable arts fair in battersea park. it was enjoyable. i saw two pieces that i really liked and was in two minds whether to dip my hands in my pocket. but i’ve ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/03/12/bought-art/ sir ken robinson made the best TED talk i’ve seen. it’s a master class on how to deliver a presentation and contains lines i’ve shamelessly copied on a number of occasions. i often wonder if he makes any difference to education anywhere, that being his subject. in the last couple ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/03/07/coining-phrases/ the minimum requirement of users is for the same. if chosen, the default should be exactly what they had before. it’s good to offer something more, better, but nothing must be taken away. same means working with files in the same way; outlook, blackberry functioning as before; the same applications, working ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/03/05/enterprise-cloud-2/ I’m missing the trail-blazers who have migrated medium to large companies into the cloud. where are they? i see some hydrid implementations, mail, collaboration etc, but not the works. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/03/04/enterprise-cloud/ Zac’s half-term project was to make a model of a motte and bailey castle. and we get to eat it, too. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/02/21/motte-and-bailey-cake/ a couple of days ago i lost internet connectivity. the dsl light on my router is flashing it’s little heart out. the house is in chaos. i’ve been trying to work at home using a 3G card. zac can’t shoot anyone online, zoe’s locked out of club penguin and ita ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/02/21/redundant-connections-are-now-necessary/ my parents have moved to Hythe in Hampshire to retire. It’s a small town by the sea where you can watch the ferries sail from Southampton to the Isle of White and vice-versa. I visited with the kids today and stumbled by this house. In 1931 a certain TE Lawrence ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/02/17/myrtle-cottage/ yesterday was groundhog day. with the free day, due to the “adverse weather conditions”, we watched a movie with the kids . . . groundhog day. zoe said it was boring because the same stuff kept happening. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/02/04/groundhog-day/ waiting for a train that never comes. shutdown - day two. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/02/03/shutdown-day-two/ Mayow Park February 2008 Mayow Park February 2009 It’s a one in twenty year snowfall in London. It was like going out to a theme park. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/02/02/mayow-park-snow/ extra day off school for the kids. London is in complete shutdown. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/02/02/london-shutdown/ got back at 10pm and realised all i’d had to eat all day was a sandwich. but remembered that, at the weekend, we had to drive past wing yip i stocked up on good stuff. currently eating char sui buns, steam for 10 minutes. happy to be alive. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/01/29/char-sui-buns/ the guardian has been running a serialisation of 1000 books that should be read. aside from finding out i’d read only 208, it did introduce me to robert graves’ “count belisarius”, which i’d not heard of before. i’ve read ” i claudius” and remember seeing derek jacobi in the tv ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/01/28/count-belesarius/ we’re looking for some office space in the city. i trawled around the web and stumbled on a site that contained a couple of properties that might be interesting. i enter a couple of details, including name, email and phone number. within a second i get an automated mail. then ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/01/27/desperate/ i’d heard a lot about The Wire, that it was the best TV show ever made etc. etc. I bought series one and, behold, it was good. I bought series two and, lo, it was still good. then i got back to normal life. but i’ve begun to get cold ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/01/23/hooked/ nice article on quantum biology, via njr0. reminded me of Kauffman’s “investigations“. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/01/15/quantum-biology/ google map of where V2 rockets hit london, some details. great to see this kind of thing. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/01/14/v2-map/ celebration. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/01/13/celebration/ as terry was saying, billion is the new million. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/01/10/billionaires-shortbread/ we spent a very fine new year’s eve at a party. i, having drank too much, sat in the passenger seat watching the world go by. Ita, having drunk nothing, navigated the way home, despite the traffic snarls due to central london festivities, very well. until, that is, we hit ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2009/01/01/car-crash/ something to put the new year into perspective. Another report notes, “Yellowstone has blown every 600,000 years or so over the past 2 million years. The last big eruption? About 640,000 years ago when the park spit out about 240 cubic miles worth of rock, dirt, magma and other stuff.” yes, there ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/12/31/there-she-blows/ i snapped this a few weeks ago at a train station on merseyside. would it make you feel safer? http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/12/28/feeling-safe/ In Roman times success as a general often turned out to be far more dangerous than failure. There are countless examples of generals returning in triumph only to be murdered by the emperor, generally because they now represented a threat as a viable alternative to the incumbant that discontented factions ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/12/22/the-decline-and-fall-of-western-civilisation/ another depression catch-up: the UK’s awful stimulus package creates some weird effects. Gordo’s 2 pence in the pound cut in VAT, spooned out with a large dollop of promised tax rises, made everone feel they were going to be worse off. So they were put off spending, right? Wrong, maybe Gordo ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/12/16/depression-catch-up/ Anthony Burgess famously competed with Gore Vidal over who had written more books (Burgess’ Wikipedia page runs far short of the number listed in “also by this author” in any book). It’s quite astonishing, given that he also spoke a ridiculous number of languages, wrote music, librettos and much more. I’ve ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/12/09/a-dead-man-in-deptford/ comment from tonight over drinks: this is the end of the nice decade yes in-double-deedy. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/12/03/comment-2/ as scared as i am about the economic catatrophe that we are all going through, i’m beginning to get concerned that the moves by the federal agencies are all wrong. short-termism seems to be the way of it all. almost everyone supports the various bail-outs, few want to stay back ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/11/30/economic-darwinism/ i’ve just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s “outliers”. I find myself in the position of having read each of his three books, which is odd since I don’t really like any of them. There was an interesting blog post citing his (and his growing army of write-alikes) anecdotal style. I think this ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/11/26/and-it-is-worth-reading/ there’s been a lot of traffic about passwords recently. just how secure is yours etc. I use the same few passwords for everything, and it seems the US administration at the height of the cold war did the same. remember that “secret” code preventing unauthorised use of nukes, well it ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/11/24/passwords-and-codes/ Shortly after the great tsunami hit, I was reading Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall . . . ” and I came upon a wonderful description of a similar event in antiquity. Whilst on the plane back from Berlin today I had a similar experience whilst reading Tacitus’ “The Annals of Imperial ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/11/18/credit-crunch-in-ancient-rome-3/ What is living comes to death, for its very being is a contradiction; in itself it is the general, the class, yet its immediate existence is as an individual. In death the class shows its power over the immediate individual. yeah, whatever. Here’s where his corpse is buried - http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/11/16/hegel/ i’m addicted, but going to bed now. One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life. I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/11/16/sartre/ Only a fool remains alive, but such fools are we! And that is surely the most foolish thing about life! http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/11/16/ok-just-the-one-more-for-now/ oh, go on, let’s have another - It seems to me that I may be living too long. Indeed: my nearest relations have all died, and so have some of my best friends, and even some of my best pupils. However, I do not have a reason to complain. I am ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/11/16/lets-have-another/ It was Camus who said that the most important event in life is death. Spurred on by a number of hits from people googling “philosophers graves”, of which i’ve written before, I give you this: http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/11/16/the-most-important-event-in-life/ I’m enjoying Tacitus‘ “The Annals of Imperial Rome”. Roman history is meaty and full of fascinating incidental characters. As with reading Gibbon, you learn to recognise certain patterns. Anyone who wins a number of victories while the emporer sits in Rome is bound for a sticky end. If they’re honest ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/11/16/bound-for-a-sticky-end/ there was some hope once that “emerging markets” would somehow de-couple from the established economies. but countries in asia and eastern europe are suffering badly. russia has just put rates up to 12pc to try to rescue the rouble. their markets are 70pc down on the peak and have been ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/11/12/russia-fucked/ we had a fireworks evening on Friday. It’s my favourite “festival”, partly because it’s something that’s purely british (particularly coming soon after the intensely annoying halloween tirck-or-treat nonsense), and partly because blowing stuff up in your garden is fun. we just had a couple of families come round, all buying ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/11/09/blowing-stuff-up/ i confess to having a lump in my throat during the BBC’s coverage of the Obama win. It happened just after they showed Martin Luther King’s “I’m tired” speech, then cut to Obama in Chicago. But I’m already sick of “it’s cool to be American again”. it ain’t all or ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/11/08/inspiration/ of course i want to see obama win, but i’d be content with either outcome. wouldn’t it be cool to see what would happen with a mccain win? wouldn’t you want to see? so, yes, either way is fine. meanwhile i have more work to do than i can shake ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/11/04/but-ill-be-monitoring/ great story. The English is clear enough to lorry drivers - but the Welsh reads “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.” i’m not in the office either. I’ve spent the day variously making a plant cell with zac out of a ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/10/31/i-am-not-in-the-office-at-the-moment/ just back from berlin. it amused me that the only image of lenin left in east berlin appears to be this one, on the wall of a swimming pool, directly opposite the russian embassy. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/10/23/lenin/ the hitch on our recent troubles . . . Remember the scene at the end of Peter Pan, where the children are told that, if they don’t shout out aloud that they all believe in fairies, then Tinker Bell’s gonna fucking die? That’s what the fall of 2008 was like, and ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/10/22/the-fall-of-2008/ i have a perculiar attitude to neal stephenson. i loved cryptonomicon, but it took the longest time for several people to persuade me to read snow crash. i loved that, too. i’ve had a copy of the first book of the baroque cycle sitting on my shelf for ages, and ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/10/22/writing-a-tome/ standing in the line at marks and spencer, pint of milk and green beans in hand, bemoaning the state of the english language. yep, that’s “all entirely” and “really true” and “tender flavour”. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/10/20/green-beans-in-hand/ suicide is up in the US as a result of foreclosures. In July, on the day the house was to be auctioned, she faxed the note to the mortgage company. Then the 52-year-old walked outside, shot her three beloved cats and then herself with her husband’s rifle. Notes left on the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/10/15/pay-off-the-house-with-the-insurance-money/ krugman spells it out in his latest op-ed in the new york times, gordon brown may have saved the world. too bad that no one in britain reads the NYT. gordo’s popularity ain’t high. recognition isn’t an issue for krugman, though, he’s just got the nobel prize. i flew back from ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/10/13/gordos-way/ my prediction(originally made when the FTSE was over 6000) that we’d see it dip below 4000 by christmas was way off. we’re already there (3,932 at close today). the only people smiling must be all those who have contributed nothing in the last few years (me included) into a pension scheme. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/10/10/3932/ a while ago i questioned the bail out plan (at that time) proposed by paulson. why not inject capital into the banks directly? in the UK Gordon brown has been having a pretty torrid time, politically. in his charisma-free fashion he constantly mumbles something about steering a course through the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/10/10/go-gordo-go/ So i’m in washington dc. * it’s clean (the pavements even get washed every night). * the weather is glorious * there are no CCTV cameras, not even around government buildings. what’s with that? why does london need so many. * biking around washington is great. being a tourist, occasionally, is good. * i’ve been ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/10/10/washington/ a friend bought me (this is Ben, so he actually charged me, too) a signed copy of Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. It’s an enormous book and i’ve still not read it. however, i did like snow crash and cryptonomicon a lot. actually it took a lot of people to get ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/10/01/a-good-thing/ the thing i used to like about SF short stories was the leap in imagination that the writer takes, like Robert Silverberg’s robot pope from “Good news from the Vatican”: “If he’s elected,” says Rabbi Mueller, “he plans an immediate time-sharing agreement with the Dalai Lama and a reciprocal plug-in with ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/09/29/or-for-that-matter-wheels/ now that a bail-out has been agreed we would expect that the market would take an upturn tomorrow. maybe it will carry on for a few days. but that should be it. at some point it has got to hit home that all that has been focused on lately is ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/09/29/a-good-time-to-bet/ i saw today that the total CDS market (credit default swaps) is estimated at between $62 trillion and $90 trillion. Yes, that’s right, trillion. Credit default swaps hedge against default risk, but have been used to speculate on the ability of companies to repay debt. Interestingly the “price” of a ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/09/24/its-not-going-to-be-pretty/ just a quick question, which i’m sure there is a good answer to - why doesn’t the fed buy the stock, rather than the debt, of the troubled banks? i’m thinking that the banks should issue fresh stock, a rights issue, but instead of an investment bank we have the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/09/21/what-am-i-missing/ the British regulatory authority, the FSA, has banned short selling of financial stocks. This is also banned in the US, where there are current investigations into possible improper short selling. Optimism is high that this could be the beginning of the end of the crisis. Except that it won’t be. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/09/18/sell-sell-sell/ i’ve been telling people for the last few months that i expected the FTSE to fall to 4000 by the end of the year. frankly i was laughed at by some. i don’t think anyone agreed. One senior banker just said “if that happens then you’d just have to thank ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/09/16/its-only-september/ we haven’t seen enough blood on the carpet yet. looks like there is about to be some more with lehman bros going down. expect some others. who knows how much lehmans owed to what banks. the knock-on effects could be pretty big. watch the banking sector tank tomorrow. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/09/15/watch-the-banking-sector-tank-tomorrow/ David Foster Wallace is dead. From 2005: Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/09/14/no-such-thing-as-atheism/ i’m trying to put together a deal. there are two contenders, a large firm and a small firm. the large firm moves around its personnel, or they leave, such that you rarely meet the same people twice. the small firm organizes lunch, a nice lunch, same people, nice wine. it’s ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/09/12/the-foods-better/ In Shropshire, England park officials have instigated a policy of questioning lone males: David Ottley, Telford & Wrekin’s sports and recreation manager, said in a letter to them: “Our Town Park staff approach adults that are not associated with any children in the Town Park and request the reason for them ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/09/10/its-a-fair-cop-i-was-ogling-them-kids/ apologies for another one of these but jon stewart (”the most trusted man in america“) is knocking them out of the park: http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/09/06/the-most-trusted-man-i-america/ lovely jon stewart piece on republican hypocrisy. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/09/04/republican-hypocrisy/ i happened on a short cut today in Finsbury, cutting through Bunhill Fields cemetery. I knew nothing about it beforehand and was happy to discover the graves of william blake, daniel defoe and john bunyan (pictured). http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/09/02/graves/ end of the holidays here. the kids have had a week in the south of france; a week camping with other kids, running around with knives without a health and safety officer in sight; and a week on a canal boat in the rainy north. although it’s disconcerting to realise ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/08/25/a-long-walk-with-a-boat/ sofia, mott, bethan, zac, zoe http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/08/10/provence-2008/ when the dutch were colonising indonesia they tried to turn jakarta into the amsterdam of the east by building canals. these brought dyssentry and malaria, which brought death. cecil rhodes became one of the richest men in the world turning british colonies in africa into his personal fiefdom. the australian governor of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/08/10/empire-games/ stansted airport: security types enforcing the no liquids/creams over 100ml rule, jamming the departure queue, being surly, causing stress and general unpleasantness. gatwick airport: greeters dressed in bright yellow, helping people get their less than 100mls into clear plastic bags, advising where to get small containers, taking passengers through fast track ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/07/25/airports-you-choose/ St Giles Church, Cripplegate was the only thing standing on the site of what is now the Barbican in 1945. It’s still there, surrounded by modern brutalist (in the nicest possible way) architecture. And every now and then it sells second hand books ridiculously cheaply. Last week i picked up ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/07/22/unlikely/ another day another dive in the FTSE and other exchanges. The FTSE closed below 5200. One analyst predicted a fall to 3000. 3000 would take us back to 1994. 4000 is almost a conservative view now. the banks are busy with rights issues, but you can pick up shares ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/07/15/nothing-in-the-pot/ i was recommended fip (click “ecouter”), which is a french radio station. odd and quite charming. thanks to icaro. * linux is a pain in the arse at times. whilst i can’t imagine going back to a mac or windows, i do find myself annoyed rather too often. * the kids are on holiday ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/07/11/now-listen-to-fip/ i love nick cave’s ’stagger lee’. at the end of this evening ita and i watched a bit of cave in concert on bbc4. just as he did when i last saw him (in alexandra palace), he played this song as an encore. It was back in ‘32 when times were ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/07/06/mr-stagger-lee/ gone are the days when a woman’s second husband was the guy who killed the first. gone are the days when the dust cloud on the horizon meant your village, or your city, was about to get wiped out by the hoard. despite the obvious butchery of the 20th century, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/07/01/happiness/ peter carey appeared on last week’s desert island disks. for those not familiar with this radio programme, it involves picking the 8 records, one luxury, and one book to take to a desert island from which there is no escape. actually everyone gets the bible and the complete works of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/30/said-said-said-said-said/ it’s 4 in the morning, the birds are singing and i should be going to bed. this picture is a sketch of me by derren, shown to me tonight. looks how i feel most of the time. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/29/me-by-derren/ astonishing table of US current food prices comparison with last year. lemon and celery hikes? http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/27/celery-hikes/ imagine a world where sir ken robinson was secretary of state for education. i like everything he says and, particularly, how he says it. the best speaker that i know of. he’s just won the benjamin franklin award and gives a speech (audio is bad for the first minute only). ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/23/sir-ken-robinson/ leda and the swan by fred einaudi, which made me smile. others here. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/22/leda/ we’ve been toying with the idea of moving out of london for a while. for the cost of a london family home, it’s possible to buy something bigger and better, if you’re prepared to travel over an hour. we’ve largely given up on the idea, partly through inertia, partly because ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/22/culturally-incomprehensible/ The fastest bird in the world, the peregrine falcon is a welcome recent arrival to London’s skies. Normally nesting in coastal cliffs and in mountain areas, peregrine have taken to breeding on tall buildings and preying on a wide range of birds including pigeons. One or two pairs are known ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/18/fastest-bird-in-the-world/ lame (?) blackberry promo in the city this afternoon. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/18/blackberry-icecream/ On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/18/orwell-of-the-day/ i like charlie brooker simply because he can write. today, on product placement: Let’s say you’re trying to launch a new soft drink. Traditionally you’d have to spend millions on a commercial, and millions more booking airtime for it. Screw that. Here’s what you do: put up one billboard. Just one. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/17/a-skull-flies-past-your-logo/ there was a post on reddit today about the number of times one single story appears on the first few pages. i don’t actually visit the site (i use rss) but that is exactly what i like about reddit. just like the real world - sometimes you see a headline ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/14/reddit/ i’m interested in faust because it’s the first example in literature, that i know of, that is predicated on absolute freedom. i love marlow’s treatment of the story but, in essence, he chooses just to shag helen of troy and get his hands on lots of loot. a paucity, in ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/12/faust-2/ some guy has written a book on the death of philosophers, literally. francis bacon died of hypothermia stuffing a chicken with snow. rousseau dies in a collision with a great dane on a paris streets. roland bathes was hit by a dry cleaning truck. diderot choked to death on an apricot diogenes dies holding his ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/09/death-of-philosophers/ i’m listening to Tallis’ Spem in Alium and enjoying it. i first came across it in reading about an art installation in which this 40 voice piece was played with one speaker per voice around the edge of a room and the visitor could walk around or stand in the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/03/gave-yt-him/ i read jared diamond’s guns, germs and steel recently. i learned to live with the prose after a while and i ended up liking it a lot. he basically argues that the entire history of mankind comes down to what plants and animals are best farmed. if you were lucky ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/03/the-banana-is-fucked/ john “iron mad” wilkinson, iron entrepreneur died in 1808 and, according to his wishes, was buried in an iron coffin. i was reminded of this today with the report that Fredric Baur, the inventor of the pringles can had died. he opted, of course, to have his ashes buried in a ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/06/02/according-to-his-wishes/ i had some occasion recently to mention this to Terry. I thought it good to quote. On wiping one’s arse, from Rabelais in the 16th century: But to conclude, I say and maintain that of all arse-wisps, bum-fodders, tail-napkins, bung-hole-cleansers and wipe-breeches, there is none in this world comparable to the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/05/31/in-your-nockhole-a-most-wonderful-pleasure/ Gore Vidal, 82, is in the UK on a mini-tour. last night he was interviewed on “The South Bank Show” by Melvyn Bragg. Tomorrow, again with Bragg, he’s in conversation on stage in London. At he weekend he’s in Hay-on-Wye. I have tickets for Saturday. Here’s hoping he makes it ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/05/20/next-up-hitler-in-colour/ heard of a hang drum? me neither until now. a new instrument made by two guys in switzerland, and very sweet. $1500 new, with a waiting list, or $4,000 second hand. just an amazing sound. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/05/18/hang-drum/ Clay Shirkey’s book “Here Comes Everybody” is worth a read. In the video, below, he’s also worth listening to. He tells a nice storey three-quarters of the way through a four year old kid watching a dvd with her dad. Half-way through the movie she goes searching behind the TV. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/05/18/knowing-all-the-moves/ i feel bad that i can’t get zac GTA4. i know it’s as good as it gets right now, but he’s only 10. the law says he can’t buy it and, more importantly, ita says he can’t have it. i probably agree. but, from what i’ve read, i think it ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/05/18/they-get-a-hot-dog-i-get-a-hot-dog-etc/ I wrote a post about corporate IT before, but Robert X Cringely nails it here. The five P’s of IT are Pride, Prejudice, Politics, Price, and Performance, with the last two being by far the least important. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/05/17/five-ps/ johann hari, recipient of the orwell prize for journalism, wrote an interesting article in todays boris-fest of an evening standard. in the tradition of aldous huxley he tried out Provigil, an treatment for narcolepsy that appears to enhance brain function by inhibiting tiredness / laziness. It is said to enhance ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/05/07/our-chemical-future/ lunch at 12.30. fine restaurant, fine wines. after several bottles we retire to a london hostelry for several beers. home on the train busting for a pee. picked up at the station, peace, family. a neighbour pops round with a small child. thence off to vote. a short walk in ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/05/01/all-is-well/ i’ve said before that my favourite drink is a licorice whiskey sour. well, after seeing laurie anderson last night at the barbican i suggested a trip to charlotte street to get one. it went down well, and after one we exited for a cigarette and ordered two sicilian whiskey sours ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/05/01/whisky-sours/ i use windows a lot of the day (and hate it), a mac at home in the kitchen (and hate it), but my OS of choice is Ubuntu. I’ve said before how much i like it, so i’m not going there now. Yesterday I updated to hardy heron. i lost ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/04/28/heron-2/ I walk through the Barbican most days. To begin with I disliked it. But after a while it began to grow on me. Eventually I learned to love it. The Barbican estate was built on an area of central London that was heavily bombed during the war. It was called ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/04/28/heron-1/ today zoe asked me if i’d go on the smokehouse. this is a bbc tv show featuring kids forcing their parents to give up smoking. as far as i understand it the kids get to impose whatever regime on their parents that they feel might work. step one, of course, is ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/04/21/smokehouse/ it used to be hard to be real. i’m talking, of course, about the media. it’s got a lot easier and the more real, the more genuine, the more popular it is. moving representations of the real world, as far as we know, began in the rituals of ancient greece. the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/04/21/a-time-for-provocateurs/ more food gloom, including people in Haiti buying sugar-flavoured mud to eat. and you’ve got to love the news reports stating that this might mean political trouble, starving people not being enough impetus for your average westerner. as bob marley said, a hungry man is a angry man. and yes, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/04/19/apparently-its-going-to-be-really-nice/ I had the misfortune to travel, this week, via the new Heathrow Terminal 5. I assumed i would be ok since the problems i had heard about seemed to relate to baggage handling, and i had carry-on luggage only. i was wrong. T5 supposedly cost 4.3 billion sterling. it is ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/04/18/looks-quite-nice-at-night/ this graph tells it’s own story. a statistic i heard the other day is that US investment banks are currently borrowing from the federal reserve around $35bn each and every day. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/04/15/borrowed-reserves/ In the corner of the Science Museum in London is a plastic case containing the realisation of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine. To get to this corner you have to make your way through bright shiny interactive things designed to grab your attention. It is not surprising, then, that this corner ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/04/11/babbage-would-have-approved/ it’s april madness once again. i drove to a few places close to home today. it took me 45 minutes to do one 5 minute journey, then something similar on the next trip. why? because of the government funding system. it’s plain nuts. the government used to operate a “vote” ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/04/10/a-habit-not-easily-broken/ two days ago it was 18 degrees C in London and people were walking around in t-shirts. Today it is snowing. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/04/06/today-it-is-snowing/ wow. interesting to get some numbers for this. Lester Brown, director of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, said yesterday that land turned to biofuels in the US alone in the last two years would have fed nearly 250 million people with average grain needs. “This year 18% of all US ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/04/06/foie-gras-and-ox-tail/ went to the london coliseum today to see sylvie guillem and russell maliphant’s “push”. the tickets were stupid prices so we ended up in the gods. watching it from the distance i felt the urge to reverse pinch, or whatever the phrase is for that movement on the iphone to ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/04/06/reverse-pinch/ Phaeton went for a joy-ride in his dad’s chariot, wreaking havoc wherever he went. Not only did he turn Africa into desert, make Ethiopians black, and cause amber to manifest itself, but he may also have been responsible for the story of Lucifer, the fallen angel. For a long time ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/04/01/the-comet-in-question/ for the last year or so i have been using a blackberry and have had to do without FM radio on my phone. it wasn’t a feature i used a lot, but enough to annoy me when it’s absent. i’ve never felt the need to get an MP3 player, in ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/29/p480/ i’ve been reading duns scotus. the trigger for this is his influence on charles sanders peirce, and it’s possible to see, in scotus, peirce’s jumping off points. but what strikes me, as it often does when reading philosophical writers from several hundred years ago, is the god stuff. it is ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/28/how-not-who/ today was an incredibly frustrating day in corporate wonderland. however a blog post by johnnie moore made me smile at the end of it. It’s said that Tony Blair admitted his discomfort at finding, during his first months of office, that he kept pulling the levers of power and then discovering ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/28/leveraging-blancmange/ quote of the day - Zac to Zoe: No offence, Zoe, but you’ve ruined my life. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/28/no-offence/ Krugman writes: those who worried about the fact that this brave new world of finance lacked a safety net were dismissed as hopelessly old-fashioned. In fact, however, we were partying like it was 1929 — and now it’s 1930. For those (many) commentators who insist that it’s not going to be ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/22/we-will-not-have-any-more-crashes-in-our-time/ it was with some amusement that i read yesterday that the Fed were expected to make a massive cut in interest rates. Massive cuts can be made when there’s something to cut. When rates are 3% there isn’t a long way to go. The eventual .75% cut left rates at ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/20/the-party-of-the-century/ wow. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/17/subprime-victims/ the internet has killed off some nice money-spinners, or so I thought. there was once a time when any reasonably large company paid someone significant sums to collect press cutting that mentioned the company or its associates. With the advent of RSS, news streams and search engines, those days are ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/14/alive-and-overcharging/ I wanted to buy a domain name. It was taken. I looked it up on whois and found that it had been owned by this guy for 10 years, that he was not a trader, and that there were no contact details. I went to the registrar and tried to ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/14/quite-scary-in-a-way/ Check out flickrvision, it’s uber cool. i think i could watch it for hours. there’s a map of the world and images appear from wherever they are posted to flickr, as they are posted. Yes, just like twittervision. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/12/flickrvision/ Jason Calacanis posted some good pointers on start-up economies recently, though I believe they are just as relevant to any business. I particularly like his recommendation to buy expensive chairs and cheap desks, rather than the other way around (one of my pet annoyances). As a kind of counter example ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/12/corporate-it-2/ Sylvie Guillem is an incredible dancer. I’ve seen her dance a few times and each time was amazing. Push, with Russell Maliphant, is showing at the London Coliseum in April, go see. I saw it some time ago as Saddlers Wells with Ita. After the show we were hanging out ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/09/sylvie/ If a common heritage conferred peace, then perhaps the long history of conflict in the Middle East would have been resolved years ago. For, according to a new scientific study, Jews are the genetic brothers of Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese, and they all share a common genetic lineage that stretches ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/09/brotherly-love/ I’ve been meaning to write something about this for a while, but haven’t because I wanted to do a long post about all its evils. I just don’t have the time, so here is something less. Your typical corporation is run by a small board (maybe 5-8 individuals) and a slightly ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/09/corporate-it/ how not to start a letter to one of your customers: If you connected or upgraded before 29 June 2007 (or before 18 September 2007 if you connected through Carphone Warehouse) the following applies to you. If you connected or upgraded on or after these dates the following changes already form part of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/07/thankyou-o2/ one of my favourite firefox extensions is allpeers. It’s a p2p extension that allows file sharing with friends. When it first surfaced I thought it was an amazingly useful addition to firefox. I tracked it through its beta and into general release, encouraging friends to get on it. Today ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/03/04/no-peers/ Your typical office, or public, building tends to have some kind of receptacle for spent cigarettes. They tend to have some kind of abrasive surface to stub it out, and somewhere to put the butt. We (smokers) expect such things. Today I happened to be visiting a hospital in South Wales. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/26/expectations/ Zac likes to play PS3 first person shooters. So do I. Interestingly he’s said more than once that if he was ever in a real war then he would just hide. Via Rob (and boingboing) a new study: The researchers also found that: 1) Players showed no signs of desensitization ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/26/just-hide/ i blogged an anecdote a while ago from david owen, the former british foreign secretary, about his wanting to off idi amin. interestingly, as part of the diana inquest, the MI6 chief states in his testimony that no assassination has been carried out by MI6 since at least 1966. we ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/25/no-assassinations/ - skype is pretty crap, really. talking to james in australia earlier today there was more down than up time. - although i always said that i’d never get into drinking expensive wine £6 a bottle seems to be the base line nowadays - i don’t watch any sport religiously but enjoyed ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/23/cheese-is-good/ this may be the finest drink in the known world. a licorice whisky sour from schochu (roka), charlotte street, london. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/23/finest-drink-in-the-known-world/ I’ve worked from home for three days this week. I am astonished to discover how many phone calls are made to the house. 90% are spam, of course. If it weren’t for needing a phone line for broadband i’d toss it out entirely. What annoys me is that when i, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/21/cold-calling/ Today saw the 17th young person in the last year to commit suicide in the small town of Bridgend, Mid Wales. The media has been awash with stories of internet pacts and the like, for which there is little or no evidence. The number of suicides of people aged 15-24 ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/19/bridgend-suicides/ i went to see pina bausch tonight at Saddlers Wells. This was outside the theatre in the interval. At the average London play there are maybe twenty or thirty people puffing away but, as i’ve noted several times previously, for dance the number is several times larger. Before the show ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/18/smoking-with-pina/ The kids and I got a kick out of this sign at Waterloo station today. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/14/some-people-are-gay/ On the way to a meeting near Tower Hill the other day, I walked past Pudding Lane (where the Great Fire started) and All Hallows Church (the oldest in London and from where Pepys watched the fire). I also came across a pub called The Hung Drawn & Quartered that ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/14/pepys/ Mayow Park, South London, yesterday morning http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/14/mayow/ i’ve just come back from watching the england vs switzerland game at wembly. the whole experience was more like going to the theatre than watching a football match. as i entered the ground and made my way to my table at the brasserie, i passed oyster bars, champagne bars, restaurants ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/07/footie/ martin amis is an essay writer of rare talent. as with christopher hitchens, or gore vidal, it is a real pleasure to find oneself holding a new book of their essays. amis’ is called the second plane and is all post 9-11 stuff. the first essay having been written just ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/06/the-second-plane/ so ms is going to buy yahoo. anyone who thought that ms were still in with a shout is surely wiser than they were. this is the most senseless and stupid takeover since time warner and aol. (famously on that occassion robert hughes invited the time warner ceo to take ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/02/ms-yahoo/ two unrelated items. i heard bach’s gigue from partita number one today on desert island disks, played by adras schiff. immediately i had to have it. but after 20 minutes of pirate-baying and amazoning etc. i still had not procured it. this is so wrong on many levels. why can’t i ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/02/02/music-two-unrelated-items/ these australians did a pretty good job on clinton. early days as it might be, it does look as though obama has all the momentum. the kennedy’s have come out for him, and will presumably be followed by other democrat grandees. the republican side is harder to call. i don’t ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/01/29/the-shooter/ one of my smallest items of expenditure is Rizla Blues. Or it should be. I’ve noticed prices creeping up month by month, to the point where i found myself paying 69pence for a packet the other day. This is still just 40 sheets of gummed paper, right? You can get ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/01/29/100-years-of-the-blues/ i was at the albert hall earlier. it was a beautiful day and it was good to be in kensington for the first time in a while. lady blessington, of whom i am fond, lived on the albert hall site in a house with three acres in the early 19th ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/01/28/albert/ derren put me on to robertson davies years ago. i read “what’s bred in the bone” (vol. 2 of a trilogy) and liked it. i recently came across the concluding volume, “the lyre of orpheus”. i read that and liked it, a lot. today i went for a coffee on ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/01/27/robertson-davies/ bugger thomas hobbes, this is all you need to know. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/01/27/bugger-hobbes/ you read something like this and wonder, now where would i invest my dollars? stringer (sony) sounds victorian. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/01/26/davos-panel/ we have a friend staying with us, down from northern england, to visit the american embassy tomorrow. as a convicted drunk driver, she needs to be interviewed before being cleared to visit a relative in seattle. she tells me she has had three emails explaining the security restrictions at the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/01/25/phone-alone/ once again i have become bored with my music. i have lots of it and spread it across three computers to retain some variety. ubiquity is not necessarily a good thing. but no matter what i turn to i get nothing. of course this has happened many times before. i ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/01/24/party-radio/ i’ve just begun to read of some of the mortgage deals that were a part of the sub-prime problem in the US. The mis-selling looks pretty big, brokers operating a production line of ready-made documents, even further falsifying them without their client’s knowledge. One would think that many of punters ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/01/23/turning-the-taps-off/ Some parents i know report interesting things in this year’s round to get your kids into a half-decent state senior school. The open day at Haberdashers required a police presence due to the number of parents and offspring eager to gain entry to one of the few south london schools ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/01/18/its-not-pretty/ this is a nice quote from Rick Falkvinge of pirate bay: In the 1960’s, there were dystopic movies about a big brother future where the government had installed cameras in every home. Now we’re almost there. The only difference is that we bought the cameras ourselves. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/01/15/dystopic-movies/ it seems to be taking a long time for europeans to get excited about the american election campaign. which is odd. mainstream tv & radio mention it in headlines, obama beats clinton in iowa, romney fails to shine. it’s not a hot topic amongst anyone i know, outside of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/01/09/elections/ everyone is being discouraged from driving and urged to take public transport. the other day i had to drive on a 350 mile roundtrip to drop off my daughter. or i could take the train, i thought. checking the times i reckoned it could save me up to two hours. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/01/04/rail/ in david hare’s play “murmuring judges” he mentions that, on average, a policeman on the beat witnesses a crime once every eleven years. this is why the british police abandoned the beat and developed a response methodology instead. of course, crime increased. i was reminded of this yesterday after my mother ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2008/01/03/response-methodology/ one of the great british christmas traditions is the release, under the 30 year law, of secret government papers. this year there were no really big surprises. but there were some nice stories. 1977 was the queen’s silver jubilee. i remember the streets being closed off, trestle tables and much ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/12/29/that-sort-of-thing/ for christmas zac got a new pair of cruzshoes. like heelies, these are trainers with one wheel in each heel. they are everywhere. zac has owned a pair for a couple of years. it struck me today, that kids don’t even move in the same way i do. he never ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/12/26/hover-shoes/ i’ve been complaining about the BBC’s windows only iplayer for ages. so have many other mac and linux users. the bbc, to their credit, does seem to take notice. i’ve had a couple of comments from senior tech people at the beeb, for example. and now they’ve released a flash ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/12/15/flash-bbc/ terry has a post on airport security. Similarly i just got back from Berlin. I never pull out toiletries and place them in the required clear plastic bag and , up until today, have never had a problem. Similarly with cigarette lighters. However, in Berlin Shonefeld flughaven I was caught ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/12/14/airport-madness/ last night ita and i went to see “the mask of the red death” by punch drunk. we stood in the cold queuing along the street by the battersea arts centre for 20 minutes before donning a white mask each and the walking in shadows and darkness through incredibly detailed ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/12/08/mask-of-the-red-death/ i’ve been reading marlowe’s doctor faustus, not only the play but it’s origins (The Historie of the Damnable Life, and Deserved Death of Doctor Iohn Faustus). what really interests me are the parts that deal with the imagination of the protagonist. when one can have anything . . . Marlow comes ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/12/06/imagination/ i mentioned mark haddon’s “incident“, well i’m reading that to zac, but to zoe one of enid blyton’s famous five books. the juxtapostion is so good. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/12/06/haddon-blyton/ in one of the sherlock holmes stories our protagonist refers to memory as storage in an attic. he won’t fill it with junk. there is no evidence to support the view that you can in anyway fill your head with junk, but i hold with it anyway. i much prefer ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/12/01/427/ All citizens should live in glass houses. So says Ibsen in Pillars of the Community. It is, he says, all about freedom and truth. Well he’s right, of course, that’s just it. Like it or not more and more of what we do and say is recorded. And we’re getting better ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/30/glass-houses/ My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,507. Eight years ago, when I first met Siobhan, she showed me this picture and I knew that it meant ’sad’, which is what I felt when ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/28/when-i-found-the-dead-dog/ britain has undergone a quite sizeable change of late. the official numbers declare 1.1 million immigrants in the last couple of years. i’m amazed that this was allowed to happen. happy about it, but surprised. it’s another example of the hanging conundrum. democracy is good, majority rules - ah, but ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/27/the-bastards-look-like-us/ i used to describe the outfit i worked for as a zero-bullshit environment. that was probably not true, but was close enough. that company was highly successful and got bought by a very large company. back then we used to have meetings for a purpose. people who had things to say ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/26/meetings/ jason calacanis is a smart guy. his human search company, mahalo, now returns a selection of pages, using tabs, when making a search. no specific page on mahalo? then check out google, yahoo, youtube or flickr all neatly just one click away. i checked it out with the first thing ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/22/minde-divine-habits/ what is the world’s most printed book? why, the ikea catalogue, of course. the bible is toast. the reaction most people give me to this fact-et is one of dismay as well of surprise. none of these people are religious. odd. well, i guess you could look at this ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/20/flat-pack-chip-board-altar-piece/ there is a periodic bbc show involving people at home taking an IQ test, together with a bunch of people in the studio. after the results are in, they compare results, firemen with bakers, women and men, northerners and southerners. it always struck me as interesting that they never used ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/19/a-moron-is-a-moron/ terry just posted on mahalo. it’s so good it hurts. Ask yourself again: does Mahalo look more like Google or more like Wikipedia? The idea of Mahalo-as-search-alternative-to-Google is just Jason operating Mahalo in stealth mode in broad daylight. “Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a search engine out of my hat! Oops! That’s ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/18/the-love-triangle-angle/ i’m increasingly coming across references to the death of email recently. a number of blogs i read have talked about alternatives. that’s interesting in itself since most of the blogs i’m referring to are by people that know each other. ie people that don’t know me, people that wouldn’t send ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/16/its-not-that-hard/ i got another mail from wayn today, yes wayn, not wayne. “where are you now”. it’s a site that keeps track of where you are, where you’ve been, where you’re going. only no one talks about it anymore, it’s all dopplr. anybody who’s anybody uses dopplr. just another micro-movement in ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/15/chasing-butterflies/ Robert X Cringely (aka Mark Stephens) was an early Apple employee that stuck out for the cash when Steve Jobs was spraying options about to save cashflow. He wrote and presented the best history of the PC industry to date, revenge of the nerds. He’s trying to build a rocket ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/10/the-only-thing-we-wont-be-able-to-do-is-hide/ i read this guardian piece today on ICT education. I have a big problem with current provision, based on my understanding of my kids’ experience. It appears to me that they are effectively being trained to use microsoft products. it doesn’t matter that it’s microsoft, more that this is not ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/08/keyboard-skills/ i saw a documentary years ago about a dutch town that removed all road signs, railings (even outside of schools), cobbled the streets, took out traffic lights etc. The traffic flow improved. At junctions drivers looked each other in the eye and negotiated who would move first, the same outside ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/07/and-she-lost/ wow. According to the plan, the house will rise to a height of 173.12 meters, equivalent to that of a regular 60-storeyed residential building. However, Antilia will have only 27 storeys in all, which means each floor will have a ceiling considerably higher than the current average of nearly three meters. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/06/worlds-first-billion-dollar-house/ this has got to be one of the most instructive interviews with bush i have seen. qudos to the irish interviewer. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/05/i-dont-like-death-either/ is there anything more useless than a clock that shows the wrong time? of course there is, but you get my point. there is a campaign to get public clocks fixed. and it’s true, many (maybe most) public clocks are stopped. i walked to school for years past a church ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/05/calibration/ Aside from the well known factet that “Hitler has only got one ball . . .” he apparently also had chronic flatulence. Adolf was the victim of uncontrollable flatulence. Spasmodic stomach cramps, constipation and diarrhea, possibly the result of nervous tension, had been Hitler’s curse since childhood and only grew more ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/03/farter-of-the-reich/ “The chances were a million to one but, as any good wizard knows, million to one chances come in nine times out of ten.” “Give a man fire and he’s warm for a day; set a man on fire and he’s warm for the rest of his life” http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/01/2-from-pratchett/ i wandered up and down my street today shadowing two small children as they banged on doors demanding treats with menaces. i got talking to an old lady who, contrary to my expectations, was all in favour of the practice. She’d lived in the street for years and only knew ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/11/01/demanding-treats-with-menaces/ ok, one more. this i love, although i have no idea where i got it from (494000 google hits and none the wiser) - It’s like this: even the Samurai have teddy bears, and even the teddy bears get drunk. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/10/31/another-one/ i’ve not been blogging because i mislaid the password to log in. (i know, i know). making matters worse the email address registered at blogsome is an old one for which i’ve also lost the password after changing machines:-). despite changing the email account on blogsome it continues to send ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/10/31/passwords/ i watched a part of a tv documentary about prime numbers and it reminded me of another quote from my recently rediscovered book of notes, this time from St Augustine: The good christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger exists that mathematicians have made ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/10/25/fallibility-may-yet-succeed/ i’m very glad i have blogged. terry recently lost a lot of his archive. it would hurt to lose that. i’ve been blogging for coming up to three years. terry also says that he’s planning on blogging daily. that’s good. i’d like to also, but it’s a little unlikely. still, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/10/24/another-blog-post-in-the-bank/ maybe things are looking up: In a link-up with Adobe, the BBC will use the company’s Flash-based video system to make the iPlayer service available to be streamed by Mac and Linux users by the end of the year. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/10/18/never-speak-too-soon/ well, this is nothing short of a scandal. I only hope it’s not true, although i suspect it is. In which case I only hope that enough people cause a fuss. This organization is not allowed to unduly mention Nescafe in a programme, yet can seemingly try to force anyone ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/10/16/bbc-bastards-redux/ your doctor tells you that this is the drug for you, one of the most popular antidepressants out there. Ah, but 6% of users report suicidal thoughts when taking it, and many of those have ended their lives. But fret not, for an extra $500 (not claimable on health insurance) ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/10/01/suicide-gene-test/ i like trivia. top marks goes to any fact which can have no bearing on anything whatsoever. yesterday i discovered a belter. st john’s wood is the only london underground station which does not contain any letter from the word ‘mackerel’. ta-da. in the interests of rectitude i wondered whether this was actually ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/09/29/trivia/ a pack of 4 nectarines. the instructions read: wash before use. refrigerate after purchase. consume at room temperature. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/09/27/instrucions/ maker suicide apparatus: Detroit, MI (AHN) - Police found a body of a 41-year-old man in a wooded area next to a guillotine he built and used to kill himself. The man was from Melvindale, Michigan and was discovered by workers from a nearby shopping center. According to Dale Covert, Allen Park ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/09/16/very-determined/ the bbc radio player has been “experiencing severe technical difficulties” for many weeks now. “We have had a problem with the database that runs the BBC radio player,” said the BBC in a statement. “The current issue has arisen in the last couple of weeks. We’ve rebuilt much of the software and ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/08/17/bbc-bastards/ i just got back from a trip to spain. i travelled back with three kids, 13, 10, 7. at the airport i decided to not pay the extreme amount for a cab (£95), but take the train, then 2 tube trains, then another train. london is a bitch to get ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/08/06/effort/ for a while now the bbc has offered, for seven days after broadcast, an opportunity to listen to its radio output. this involves using realplayer, but at least it can be used on any platform. now the bbc’s tv output is also available (in beta). however, only if you use ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/07/28/annoyed-bbc-licence-payer/ a recent report shows that, contrary to the rules, nasa astronauts have been flying the shuttle after “heavy use of alcohol”. this brings to mind the bbc’s recent “top gear” polar special in which a race was staged to the north pole, one team using huskies and a sled, the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/07/27/heavy-use-of-alcohol/ i bought a book by ted nelson the other day, “computer lib”. it’s all over the place, there are multiple columns, many diagrams and pictures, it can be read from either end. basically he tried to prevent the reader starting at page one and reading straight through. i like it ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/07/25/computer-lib/ the populace of GB generally welcome a bit of global warming. it can only be good, right? vinyards springing up, more holidaymakers etc. but hold, what’s this, the bloody jetstream has shifted south. low pressure everywhere. 3 months rainfall in one day. everywhere is underwater. yikes. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/07/25/britain-is-drowning/ i used to have a pair of round sun glasses. they got stolen a couple of years ago. last week i lost my present pair of (unround) glasses in the camb whilst punting (don’t ask). so i thought i’d get a pair of those round ones again. i’ve kept an ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/07/24/round/ we are now up to seven members of the british government who, in the last couple of days, have admitted to smoking cannabis, including the new home secretary. this comes at a time when the government has indicated it is going to reclassify the drug in order to make ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/07/20/pot-kettle-etc/ i just got back from a few days away with the kids at center parcs. center parcs is a sort of upmarket butlins, lots of activities, like archery, abseiling, sports, and chalets in the woods. the kids love it. there are no cars and you have to get around by ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/07/17/except-responsibility/ terry pointed me to fixmystreet.com. i’m impressed by the idea. you enter a postcode, or find a location on a map, and specify what problem there is, like a lamp post out of order, hole in the road, or abandoned car etc. Of course, if it’s already been reported then ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/07/06/fix-my-street/ i’ve been using ubuntu feisty fawn for more than two weeks now. i can’t speak of it highly enough. i used two previous distributions of linux and liked them, but there was always something that didn’t work or needed too much effort to get working. feisty, though, is like a ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/07/05/feisty/ i saw michael moore’s ‘sicko‘. it’s a pretty powerful film. i hope that it’s watched in europe as much as in the states. it’s good to reflect occasionally on things that we’ve got right, and ensure that it stays that way. i read that he was asked about people watching the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/07/05/sicko/ it appears that goddesses aren’t allowed to leave the country. Some might remember that I wrote a story around the kurmina and McD’s. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/07/04/goddess-gets-fired/ about the only thing that bugged me about using linux daily was search. i like to lump most things together and find things by search, but where google desktop always turned up trumps for me in the past, on linux i had something imaginatively called “search” which indexed something for ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/06/28/search/ i’ve been trying to find a keyboard and mouse. these things i use everyday and most of the time. i’m always fascinated by how folks don’t seem to care very much for things that they use almost constantly, and then spend large sums on stuff they hardly touch. well, a ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/06/27/keyboard/ this is nice. there was a reference to kula in blog post i read. i can’t remember hearing of it before, so i wikipediad it. it’s good. All Kula valuables are non-use items traded purely for purposes of enhancing one’s social status and prestige. Carefully prescribed customs and traditions surround the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/06/23/kula-ring/ back in 1987 bbc radio ran a 5-part series on the Monterrey fetival of 1967. i guess it was a 20th anniversary thing. Monterrey was the first big festival, though for some reason people seem only to talk about Woodstock. anyway, i recorded the whole thing on tape, carefully (but ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/06/18/381/ i spent yesterday afternoon building a computer. it worked first time, although today i found that i’d obviously stuffed up the mic connector to the motherboard. when i can be bothered i’ll crack open the case and sort it. the point, though, is that the hardware isn’t so hard. i ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/06/17/just-a-bit-of-aggro/ i just watched probably the best episode of dr. who ever. a great sci-fi time-travelling plot and incredibly tight script. i love a time conundrum. The episode was called “blink”, and was by steven moffat. total class. but what makes me smile is that . . , nope, it’s not possible ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/06/13/theangelshavethephoneboxcom-is-already-taken/ i was playing swingball with zoe. zac comes along and says he’ll play the winner. since zoe is only 7 i’m hitting pretty slowly and occassionally bang it the wrong way to help her out. “hey”, zac says, “you’re not supposed to do that”. i explain that she’s young ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/06/12/swingball/ the bbc reported today that 12 barbers have been murdered this month in Basra. I couldn’t find a recent news source on the web, but there was this from the Indy. The revolt in Iraq against the occupation has been confined hitherto to the five- million-strong Sunni community. The ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/06/07/the-way-mr-hussein-cut-hair/ we took the kids to the Gormly exhibition at the hayward gallery on the south bank. as you approach the gallery you start to spot figures atop buildings. each is a metal cast of gormly’s body. some look like they’re about to jump. indeed, the police have received numerous calls ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/06/04/in-a-cloud/ ‘later with jools holland’ is a bbc show that showcases bands jools likes. i saw it the other night and caught the white stripes playing ‘icky thump’. if i was 14 this would be the stuff i would be into. the next day i looked it up on you tube ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/06/04/if-i-was-14/ a while ago i posted about hecklers at the labour conference being arrested under the prevention of terrorism act. actually a friend of mine at university had his room entered by the police under a similar act, claiming they’d heard a gunshot. they were really after drugs, and actually arrested ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/05/27/whos-the-twat-in-the-big-blue-hat/ how many ferrero roche chocolates are served up each year by british ambassadors around the world? fancy a man in uniform? how many eligible bachelors are there amongst the hampshire police force? there’s a fuss, right now, about whether these questions are eligible for a proper response under the british freedom ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/05/25/how-hard-is-that-query/ web 2.0, metadata, folksonomies, &c. the world changes. amazon tells me what someone else bought who also bought this book, lastfm tells me what other music people who listen to my kind of thing also listen to. neither of these things has changed my life, i have to say, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/05/22/just-the-price/ i haven’t worn, or even owned, a watch for a long time. Maybe 20 years. i could never figure out why i’d need to. the time is everywhere. i did once put my name down for a watch that approximated the time in words, but it seems it never got made. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/05/18/satsuma-time/ zac with his own piano composition. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/05/12/zac-piano-ii/ i promise this is the last mention of the hitch book. i’m almost done now and it gets better page by page. jonathon miller had a series on the BBC called “the natural history of disbelief”. (i read somewhere that it’s on the web in full somewhere). it was a fine ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/05/11/the-book/ i mentioned christopher hitchens new book. well, i bought it and am currently half way through. it is every bit as much of a treat as i suspected. he takes a very different tack to dennett and dawkins (evolution of religion, evidence for it etc.). the hitch let’s go of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/05/11/god-is-not-great/ lastfm is a really nice service. listen to music in any media player and, via a plugin, get it “scrobbled” into lastfm. thence be able to slice and dice the data that emerges. most played artist, song, etc etc. also you get to listen to your very own radio station, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/05/07/musical-neighbours/ it seems to me (and i may be wrong) that the HD-DVD fiasco may be the most important web event to have occurred in recent times. i think that it’s because the secret (that which must not be communicated) wasn’t any kind of trade secret known to an individual ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/05/04/cat-out-of-the-bag/ fad foods and supplements. i see pomegranate juice bottles everywhere, green tea etc etc. now it’s sunshine. i mention it for two reasons. firstly that i always wondered how skin types that have developed for certain lattitudes fared in less appropriate climes. and, secondly, this end quote: Referring to Linus Pauling, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/05/02/d/ today is may day, hurrah, and what a fabulously warm sunny day it is for a demo. in london it all kicked off in clerkenwell green, handy for a sandwich and a pint in the crown. in the early stages the three largest groups (in order of numbers present) were ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/05/01/class-war/ so, as promised: accession My dad worked in one of those out of the way industrial estates, tucked in behind a small village in Cornwall, pleasant in the few weeks of summer, but harsh and gray the remainder of the year. He worked a machine which baked rubber sheets around a steel ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/29/accession/ on the very night that one of my stories was performed down under, towit the sms exchange: person in australia: Russ can you send me a couple of stories please? The one about a late train cos someone through himself under it, and the one about the unconceived child floating around ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/29/proper-short-storey/ following on from daniel dennett and richard dawkins, the hitch has also jumped into the pool with the splendidly titled, “God is not Great“. There are four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/26/hitch-fix/ a british ministry of defence think-tank has pondered long and hard, coming up with a view of the world in 2037(pdf). i assumed that to mean the year but perhaps it’s rather 23 minutes to 9. although i didn’t read it closely it appeared to be more about today than ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/25/return-of-marxism/ this image comes from a series produced circa 1900 by a german chocolate company, predicting what the year 2000 might look like. I blog this as it’s the second view of the year 2000 from 1900 that i’ve seen this week. This is a list of how things would look in ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/24/past-futures/ i’ve never known google to go down. right now, however, there is no google.co.uk or .com or .de, google reader also is not working, though gmail is fine. fancy! perhaps they powered down their servers for earth day? http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/23/google-off-day/ in the wake of virginia tech, the new york times published a graphic of daily deaths by gunfire. i think it’s well done. deaths are split into four groups, by age, and within that into other discreet groups, like black men murdered, or women suicides. i found some of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/23/death-by-gunfire/ tonight i went out for cocktails in freuds on shaftesbury avenue, dinner in mon plaisir (oldest french restaurant in london), monmouth street, followed by the tiger lillies at the soho theatre. thence to garlic & shots where we huddled in what felt like an air raid shelter, hiding from the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/21/tiger-lillies/ my guess is that banksy is not too bothered about this. in covent garden today a guy was selling pictures of banksy graffitti printed on canvass. £20 for the small ones, £30 for the large. as i stood there he sold two. i asked him whether banksy made anything out ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/21/painted-over-in-error/ when someone dies a family member has to go through their things. some are kept, some sold or discarded. there are always documents, usually letters, often journals, sometimes odd writings that someone has to sort through and do something with. what now? ita brought this up when i got back ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/18/the-deads-files/ i think i understand how this fatblogging works. rather than eat the food, you take pictures of it. jason calacanis and duck, barcelona http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/18/fatblogging/ london. nicely posed before a monument to edith cavell a protester against war in general (a woman in black) poses for my cameraphone. edith cavell was a british nurse in belgium for the red cross in 1915 and helped allied prisoners escape. she was executed by firing squad for breaking military ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/18/women-in-black/ here’s something nice. you get to kick someone a few times. try it. you can even do it anonymously. here’s my results. terry jones needs a kicking too. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/16/nohari/ poster seen in the pie and mash shop, exmouth market, london http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/13/freedom-project/ Tiger gotta hunt. Bird gotta fly. Man gotta sit and wonder why, why, why. Tiger gotta sleep. Bird gotta land. Man gotta tell himself he understand. Kurt Vonnegut is dead. Despite threatening suicide for decades, with at least one serious attempt, he died as a result of injuries caused by a fall. i was blown ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/12/bird-gotta-fly/ according to the UN 1.3% of NewZealand women have been raped. 0.9% for the UK, 0.4% in the US. Of course the numbers in certain parts of Africa are probably far worse, but there are no reliable stats. in many countries the perpetrator faces little chance of any onerous sanction. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/11/rapex/ i’m not sure exactly when i’m going to the hay festival this year. I wish i had time to stay for the whole thing. i just had a look at the draft schedule. i’m interested in seeing the following: bruce robinson martin amis richard perle clive james marcus brigstock richard dawkins simon schama i particularly want to ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/11/hay-2/ fuck. all they need to do is to add “friend”. maybe with a reciprocal arrangement. and why not aquaintence, follower, acolyte, admirer etc. linked-in is toast. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/09/geni-2/ it’s nice to see the slower among us finding geni. yes, this is going to be absolutely huge. if only there were a decent sub-sub-sub AIM out there, where rather than go to a VC, angel etc, geni could go to those who would take a fraction of a percentage per ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/09/geni/ there was a conference called sxsw (south by south west), or something like that. what emerged was twitter. they’d released their product in july 2006, but within a few days of sxsw their total user numbers had doubled. what do these folks do? well, you can subscribe to someone else’s ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/06/a-good-kind-of-stalking/ i came across this banksy the other day in clerkenwell. the wall had been repainted since, but they’d left the graffiti. i guess it’s just a step away from preserving it in some more major way. a market trader whose stall had been hit by banksy recently sold his stall ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/01/banksy-yet-again/ i bought a pair of trousers last week. subsequently i become conscious of their having a button fly. i hate them. why oh why? what possible advantages can there be over the zip? i don’t use steam powered cars. please explain. they’ve got to be less user-friendly, more expensive to ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/04/01/button-fly/ so i mentioned ayn rand’s the fountainhead to an architect friend. of course he’d read it. just how many works of fiction on architecture could there be? well, at least 40: Martin Chuzzlewit Charles Dickens 1844 A Laodicean: Or the Castle of the De Stancys ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/03/24/architects-in-fiction/ i saw this, via metafilter, and thought of a story i wrote. the bbc wouldn’t take it because of mcdonald’s litigious nature. i pointed out that it wasn’t anti-mcDs, or indeed anything else. they asked me to change the name to something else and get rid of the references to ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/03/23/the-golden-arch/ from somewhere a week or so ago came the name ayn rand. i’d never heard of her. if i had any pride ,i would exhibit it over the breadth of my knowledge in such matters. this was a gap. i love gaps. i looked her up, of course. there was her ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/03/23/ayn-rand-a-gap/ thanks Rob for this story. coral in the Great Barrier Reef is/are committing suicide. Instead of being killed by bacterial invaders as previously thought, Ms Ainsworth’s studies reveal that the cells within the coral activate programmed cell death, or PCD - a cellular process which acts like a self-destruct mechanism. james lovelock ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/03/21/great-barrier-grief/ there’s a review show that i watch on the beeb, newsnight review. it’s one of two or three serious arts programmes left on uk television. on radio there are probably three or four more. i watched on sky plus with its integrated dvr. it has transformed tv for me. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/03/17/just-do-something/ Just now Jake and I are spread across a blanket on the grass. We’ve got a bottle of wine going and Jake’s drawing on something through a cigarette holder and is smiling and smiling. You know, I think we’ve really got something here. I cast my eye about and ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/03/16/neighbours/ this week baudrillard died. i want to know how quickly his wikipedia entry was changed. i want to know if someone’s first thought on hearing he was dead was to edit wikipedia. btw his wikipedia page contains this: This article is about a recently deceased person. Some information, such as the circumstances of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/03/14/useful-over-meaning/ i read this and thought of a story i once wrote. and here it is: This is Love Each morning I awake to the soft singing of Shirley. Each morning she surprises me with something different. She has a million tunes. She runs my shower, temperature perfect. I dry myself on a ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/03/12/this-is-love/ the conservative party in the UK has called for greater use of open source software. they estimate that £600m would be saved annually. mention is made of the close relationship between the labour government and microsoft (big bill making several trips to see big tony over the last few years). ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/03/09/a-season-ticket-for-the-titanic/ zac’s got the blues a week and a half ago. check out the right hand harmonica, left hand piano half-way through. the video was taken on a phone, sideways. rotating it was a complete pain, and resulted in loss of image quality and sound. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/03/05/zac-gets-the-blues/ i caught an ad for the “award winning” aero bubbles. there are now awards for branded confectionary, this one is the “product of the year“. sadly neither the shockingly bad nestle website nor wikipedia carries any info on the product or its award. the nestle site does mention the (older?) ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/03/04/product-of-the-year/ quite beautiful pictures of gnats squashed against a windscreen at speed. via boingboing http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/03/02/squashed-gnat/ I was doing this yesterday, 10 minutes to name all 50 states in the US. I did badly, 34, getting North Dakota but forgetting South Dakota, duh. What’s interesting is how you approach this type of exercise. Thinking about it, this is how it went for me: * imagine a map of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/03/01/50-states/ $1m is spent a day in second life. CBS just took part in a funding round for electric sheep. monster.com is one of a few recruiting organisations to build virtual recruiting offices in SL childline is setting up a help community for SL there are more bands playing live gigs in SL than you ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/28/p323/ the global incident map covers “terrorism events and other suspicious activity”. via a rather fine military blog, the danger room. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/28/terrorism-events-and-other-suspicious-activity/ i’ve tried second life a number of times. there are a few problems for me. the first is that i actually don’t want to meet anybody much, and that is part of the attraction for many users. i do, however, want to observe, to know what is going on. and ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/28/to-see-is-to-be-seen/ ok, this is a blog post which comes from being in the pub most of the afternoon. actually there are no pubs anymore, so it was a restaurant/bar. and we drank a pinot grigio (several bottles), and had a pretty good time. i met an old city maven and we ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/24/if-it-starts-to-hurt-you-then-you-have-to-say-so/ If you are going to top yourself, and you plan on jumping, the advice is to make sure you jump from at least 10 stories high. but it won’t always work out. This guy survived a 16 storey drop. Just a month after his 16-story fall and merciful landing onto a ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/22/make-no-mistake-you-will-be-motoring/ The above picture is of Germaine Greer’s plaque on Writer’s Walk, Circular Quay, Sydney. Choosing to write this wasn’t designed to make her popular, I guess. And she hasn’t changed. This about Steve Irwin’s death at the business end of a stingray; I had been asked whether I was “surprised” by his ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/21/ballyhoo-rules-and-its-not-ok/ a recent study has shown some genetic basis for suicide attempts. “We’re hoping our findings will eventually lead to tests that can identify those at high risk for attempting suicide,” says Virginia Willour, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/20/genetic-link-to-suicide/ i read a while ago, a couple of pieces from norman mailer about the deleterious properties of plastic. i couldn’t find the actual article online, but there is this quote: plastic, ubiquitous plastic, there to numb an infant’s tactile senses. It is the front-runner in the competition to see what can ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/19/heavy-plastic/ i wrote earlier about vanuatu, and mentioned that their national anthem is called “yumi, yumi, yumi”. It turns out that this means “we, we, we.” Surely a prime contender for a web 2.0 startup name? http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/18/yumi-yumi-yumi/ Jacques Derrida and a colleague are having dinner with Derrida’s mother. It happens to be the day that the classic french dictionary has included, for the first time, Derrida’s word “differance“. His colleague says that they should celebrate this great achievement, that differance, with an “a”, is now in the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/18/differance-with-an-a/ the island of tanna, in vanuatu, famously hosts the cargo cult. oft cited as a metaphor for many things, particularly by richard feynmann as a metaphor for psuedo science; and by richard dawkins as a representation of all religions. it’s now been going 50 years. to quote boingboing: Residents of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/17/john-frum/ john mortimer, the english writer, describes going to his old school, eton, and looking at the wall where students have written their names over the years. all use large capital letters, except one, shelley. some time later he happens to visit harrow school, again there’s a place where students have ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/14/lower-case/ i just watched a channel 4 programme called “do you want to live forever”, about Aubrey de Grey, he who believes that humans are able to live almost indefinitely. There wasn’t much science on offer, but plenty of argument from scientists. Having read “sex, power, & suicide”, as mentioned previously, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/08/311/ red wine, green tea etc. etc. apparently all around the western world we’re swallowing vast quantities of anti-oxidants to avoid getting cancer. I recently read “sex, power, & suicide” by Nick Lane. It was the first time I’d seen the anti-oxidant myth debunked. I’m never going to get this right ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/06/antioxidants/ ok, the audio sucks, but here is a 1 minute irish coffee, and this one didn’t cost a tenner. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/02/01/1-minute-irish-coffee/ we’ve all read a bit about vista. but i ask myself what the big deal is. i’ve yet to work it out, so i turned with great interest to steve ballmer’s interview in the FT. sure enough there are gems to be found: Vista’s an open system in which other people ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/31/we-do-do-and-can-do/ i went to a high-end hamburger joint today with a friend. I asked him why all these kind of places had that pulp fiction picture with uma thurman sitting in jack rabbit slims. i can’t remember exactly what he said, but i think it’s because you can hear ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/31/p306/ More than a million people live in London’s flood plains, and they should be worried. Longer term (think a dozen years) the Thames Barrier is not going to be sufficient to hold back the tides. I guess someone somewhere has this in hand? But even right now things look pretty ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/26/the-thames-barrier-living-in-the-flood-plain-is-never-without-risk/ the UK is to introduce citizenship classes in which children will be taught . . . er . . . something about being British. Despite reading the news articles and listening to government spokesmen, I still have no idea what they are talking about. It’s quite hard to work out ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/25/ishness-2/ it seems that the humble mobile contains more germs than a toilet seat or the bottom of a shoe. “The phones contained more skin bacteria than the any other object; this could be due to the fact that this type of bacteria increases in high temperatures and our phones are perfect ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/19/302/ Its a bit on the windy side in London at the moment. Consequently (just as it is when it’s a bit wet, a bit snowy, or a bit sunny - yep, basically a bit anything) nothing in Britain is actually working properly. LIVE DEPARTURES: FARRINGDON (ZFD) As of: Thursday 18 January 2007 15:18:44 Important ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/18/a-blustery-day/ this a map of a set of territories whose population is rapidly expanding, just two years after being ‘discovered’. that’s right, 0.1% of the world’s population play World of Warcraft. As it is with the real-world population, Chinese subscribers are the largest demographic in Azeroth, totaling 3.5 million players. Next up ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/15/8-million-and-counting/ yep, you couldn’t make this stuff up: SACRAMENTO - Contestants in a radio stunt called ‘’Hold Your Wee for a Wii'’ have revealed new details about an on-air water drinking contest that left a 28-year-old mother of three dead. Jennifer Lea Strange died after drinking well over a half gallon of water ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/15/when-you-really-need-a-wii-wee/ so i mentioned before about queuing up videos on youtube. but that’s not really satisfactory. what i want is to download them and play them in itunes. if you have a mac this is expertly done with tubesock. it costs $15, and i have an aversion to paying for software, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/15/i-tunes-you-tube/ we all know that the east is threatening the west’s economic and political dominance. but who are these people? what do they want? where better to look than the chinese version of google, baidu, who recently revealed the top 10 questions on their search engine in the what, should, how, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/15/297/ i read somewhere that youtube was the 12th most popular site on the web. i predict a rise of several places in pretty short order. last night we had people around. we played youtube videos for a couple of hours, thinking back to songs we would really want to hear, right ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/14/canned-heat/ I was playing this video to the kids. In fact the kids, particularly zoe, have taken to youtube pretty quickly. They mostly play music videos, old stuff like deep purple (zac) and newer disneyfied girlie pop rubbish (zoe). It occurred to me that it would be nice if you could line ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/12/youtube-jukebox/ This is believed to be the oldest known suicide note, written by an egyptian 4000 years ago. Death is before me today As the odour of myrrh, As when one sitteth under the sail on a windy day. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/09/first-recorded-suicide/ according to wikipedia: Sims need to have fun; if they don’t, the fun level bar eventually lowers and they become depressed, but however depressed they become, they are unable to commit suicide (they are not programmed to do so). But as a player are you able to kill one? Well yes, and ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/06/virtual-suicide/ I’m trying to recover, like someone who has meant to commit suicide but then makes for the bank because he finds the water too cold. this about his illness, some time before shooting himself in the abdomen at the height of his powers and dying a day later. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/06/famous-suicides-no977/ I bought a mac mini for the kids for christmas. it’s great, they love it, as do i. we use it in the kitchen for all sorts of things, music, dvds, radio, homework etc etc. if i were forced to choose to keep just one computer in the house, the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/05/mac-mini/ So far there have been at least three copycat hangings as a result of Saddam’s execution. the youngest was 9. Mubashar Ali, 9, hanged himself, while re-enacting Hussein’s hanging with the help of elder sister, 10, after tying a rope to a ceiling fan and his neck in his home ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/05/i-can-do-that/ ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/04/ads/ this from a prediction for games circa 1980, via IFTF. Actually the predictions were pretty good, although when you compare the above to World of Warcraft . . . http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/03/game-predictions/ I’d much rather have been the Silver Surfer, but not sure he was an option. Your results:You are Iron Man Iron Man 80% Green Lantern 70% Spider-Man 65% Superman 60% Hulk 60% Supergirl 53% The Flash 50% Catwoman 45% Batman 45% Robin 40% Wonder Woman 33% Inventor. Businessman. Genius. Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test http://rustle.blogsome.com/2007/01/02/iron-man/ when i saw the initial pictures of saddam up to the moment of the hanging, i wondered how long it would be before the net spewed forth the whole thing. well, here it is. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/12/31/the-real-thing/ In a precurser to what will surely come, the Nintendo Wii promises to get a little more NSFW in future. Leisure Suit Larry is coming to town. With the Wiimote strapped firmly on your hips, you must thrust and gyrate in a “pleasing” manner. For the sexually inept, your conquest ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/12/21/more-glee-with-the-wii/ I bought Zac a PSP on the first UK release date from Game, a chain of video game stores in the UK. One of the buttons got stuck. We took it to the store in Bromley yesterday. The PSP is well over a year old now, and my hopes of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/12/21/game/ The problem: many countries prohibit animal sacrifice The solution: buy an animal over the net, then watch someone else kill it. “We have a dedicated IP address and people can watch the sacrifice no matter which country they are in,” said organization official Shakeel Dehalvi. Animals are available on the Web sites ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/12/19/sacrifice-online/ I found a collection of buttons on the bottom of a blog post today. You’ve probably all seen something similar. It’s the same issue as with RSS (no longer just a link, but many links to RSS readers). In this case you click one of the buttons and effectively recommend ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/12/19/digg-etc/ the 2nd installment: tried fools (cont.) HARLING Brigitta called early today, around lunchtime I think. I was half-asleep and my conscious was filled with Sartie’s Gnossiennes. I didn’t want to be disturbed and I let it show. She cried. We made up with a cuddle. Her hair carried a hint of the meadow I ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/12/18/tired-fools-2/ i looked at the referrers data for this blog today. i got a hit from a query on jamespot. The search was for “porn OR countryside“. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/12/18/porn-or-countryside/ being quite drunk, and with a combination of other circumstances (chiefly people asking and realising i’m not going to do anything with it in the short term), i’ve decided to blog my book. well, we’ll see how it goes. so, from the beginning: tired fools CHARLES BAUDELAIRE Common sense tells us that the things ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/12/15/book-look/ place a guy in total sensory deprivation for three years and see what happens. yes, it’s been done. How about a trip to the dentist: A group of masked guards in riot gear shackled his legs and hands, blindfolded him with black-out goggles and shut off his hearing with headphones, then marched ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/12/14/nice-experiment/ there’s a new ripper abroad. this time he’s in Ipswich, suffolk, five bodies and counting. last night there were four bodies and prostitutes were urged to keep off the streets, the bbc interviews a girl going to work as normal. she has to feed her heroin habit, she explains. today ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/12/13/jack-is-back/ mirrors installed on a Japanese train station to deter suicides. I’ve written before about the japanese online suicide pacts that have become increasingly common. Well, I stumbled upon a BBC story on it. The reporter goes to meet someone who’s trying to find someone online to die with: “Last night I ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/12/06/i-have-pills-and-charcoal-briquettes/ Boingboing reports that a Spanish NGO has created a homeless teenage avatar for Second Life: The kid hasn’t any land nor properties, except for a cardboard box, some newspapers and a sign that says: ‘Help a child have a second oportunity in his First Life.’” As yet there are no reports of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/12/05/big-issue/ Thomas Midgley, award winning scientist and inventor. In 1921 he discovered that “knocking” in petrol engines could be prevented by the addition of iodine. He worked his way through he periodic table until he found something even better, lead. This had a somewhat undesirable effect on public health and has been ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/12/05/great-figures-in-history-no83/ I have never been a fan of the emoticon, in fact i quite loathed it. But I realised today that i’m cured. Halleluja. According to wikipedia, the emoticon goes back to 1857. The entry also includes this: In an 1969-04-16 New York Times interview, Alden Whitman asked writer Vladimir Nabokov: “How do ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/11/23/supine-round-bracket/ a commentor on my previous post says: the same over-enthusiastic claptrap that will have us careening up a technological spike toward singularity on the wings of AI angels (or devils, depending on your viewpoint) i’m not at all unsympathetic to that point of view. however, looking at the evidence, i’m not sure ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/11/16/comment/ Aubrey de Grey believes that one day soon humans could live forever. It goes something like this: * We systematically prepare damage to the body at a cellular level. * Significant advances in our ability to do this occur every 20-30 years. * Like spinning a frisbee, we carry on living indefinitely. de Grey ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/11/14/talking-about-my-generation/ well it’s looking pretty good for the Ds. No doubt accurate counting would reveal a landslide. As to what difference this victory makes, here’s a sobering factet: in a Republican congress, Bill Clinton’s christmas card list was debated for 140 hours (i kid you not). in a Republican congress, the Abu Ghraib ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/11/08/against-expectation-fears/ Bill Clinton summarises the republican position: You have to vote for us because our opponents are no good. And because they’ll tax you into the poor house. And on the way to the poor house you’ll meet a terrorist on every street corner. And when you try to run away from the terrorist you’ll ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/11/08/rig-the-vote/ i was wondering what had become of the old boy. In another interview he says that it will take 100 years to get the country back to where it was 6 years ago. but you got to get them out first. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/11/07/welcome-to-the-third-reich/ silence http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/11/01/a-post/ Internet porn, a good thing? It seems the number of rapes goes down with greater access to porn. The bottom line on these experiments is, “More Net access, less rape.” A 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes. States that adopted the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/31/porn/ maybe that’s unkind, but it’s certainly the kind of accusation made against him by the god-botherers. The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America. I am one of those scientists who feels that it is no longer enough just ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/26/richard-dawkins-founds-his-own-church/ A story in The Times shows how much of Iraq’s historical artifacts are being destroyed by looters. Among examples in the letter, seen yesterday by The Times, was a Babylonian sculpture of a lion dating from about 1700BC that lost its head because the terracotta shattered as looters tried to remove ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/26/ooer-over-ur/ If you are a black cab driver, constantly delivering passengers or roaming around London in search of a fare, what do you do when you need to pee. Note the wide neck of the fabric conditioner bottle, above. Out of my office window this morning i watched a black ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/24/comfort/ we’ve been here before, a drought in rural Australia. Every four days, saddled with dust-bowl fields and a mountain of debt, one male farmer takes his own life. That suicide rate is double the national average. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/21/three-suicide-stories-in-one-day-aint-enough/ another ‘no shit, sherlock’ story. a canadian doctor warns of the high suicide rate among cancer patients. At about 24 suicides per 100,000 among cancer patients per year, the rate was between two and two-and-a-half times that of the general population. Overall, the U.S. population records 10.6 suicides per 100,000 people, including ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/21/gasp-suicide-rates-among-cancer-patients-high/ An avid reader brings my attention to this story. ATLANTA (AP) - A 16-year-old girl counted down her suicide attempt through text messages to a female classmate who had rebuffed her sexual advances before crashing her vehicle into an oncoming car, killing a mother of three and injuring the victim’s 6-year-old ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/21/5-4-3-2-1/ A guy tops himself on the day he was due to be executed. The suicide came about 15 hours before Johnson was to receive lethal injection for the 1995 shooting death of her husband Jeff Wetterman, 27, at the family-run convenience store in Lorena, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) south of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/21/you-cant-kill-me-id-rather-die/ Chris, in the comments of my previous post, draws my attention to an even longer sniper kill, by a Canadian, Rob Furlong in Afghanistan. It’s all on wikipedia. 2430 meters, which beats the previous best from the Vietnam war. A 3-man al-Qaeda weapons team was moving into a mountainside position when ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/18/longest-sniper-kill/ His quarry stood nonchalantly in the fourth-floor bay window of a hospital in battle-torn Ramadi, still clasping a long-barreled Kalashnikov. Instinctively allowing for wind speed and bullet drop, Shadow’s commander aimed 12 feet high. A single shot hit the Iraqi in the chest and killed him instantly. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/17/long-shot/ another myth exploded? Variation in divorce rates by religion: Religion % have been divorced Jews 30% Born-again Christians 27% Other Christians 24% Atheists, Agnostics 21% these are american numbers. i assume that less atheists actually get married, but i may be wrong. this maybe helps to explain things. not mentioned, of course, by the splendidly named ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/07/pray-together-stay-together-or-not/ i went to the globe to see titus andronicus this evening. as i was going in i heard someone mention people fainting during the performance. i told ita that one instance had probably become urban legend. firstly, the play was fantastic in many ways, not the least of which was the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/07/titus/ The kids’ grandmother has fretted about their souls since they were born. Should anything happen to them they would face eternity “in limbo”. But wait, heavens be praised, the Pope has decided to abolish limbo. If an un-baptised kid dies now, then they go straight to heaven without passing go. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/05/the-kids-are-saved/ I bring you the rather splendid maps of war, showing a graphical representation of empires rising and falling since 3000bc. It’s great up until the 20th century, but i guess you’d expect that. Shame it stops in 2006. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/03/maps-of-war/ he gave the world the C5, now comes the A-bike. only this one looks pretty good. weighs nothing, smaller than an umbrella, and costs very little. beats anything i’ve seen. sir clive sinclair gets it right? not sure about those wheels on london roads. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/10/02/a-bike/ yesterday i was waiting on london bridge station when tezzer pointed out a guy munching on a twig. i asked him what it was. it turned out to be khat (or qat, which is useful to know if you play scrabble and find yourself without a U). the guy pulled ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/30/curiosity-and-the-khat/ This is a rather splendid guide to writing a suicide note. Some examples: Tip #6 In general, use first person. It creates a sense of intimacy and makes it easier for a reader to see things from your point of view, if you want to use a different viewpoint, be sure that you stick ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/28/a-sense-of-intimacy/ i remember hearing, a few months ago, an interview with gore vidal. vidal was so down on the world situation that the interviewer asked him if he saw any hope. i had never heard him despair before. he answered, no. and now i read vonnegut is the same way. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/24/kurt-still-hurt/ tonight my emoticons disappeared from my skype chat window. why? who stole them? to what end? we should be told. the guy i’m chatting to lost his, too. UPDATE It’s been pointed out to me that I’m using googlechat. I am an idiot. panic over. i should get some sleep. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/22/emoticon-gone-3/ Steve irwin spent his tv career bothering dangerous animals before finally getting himself killed on camera by one of them. he subsequently is offered a state funeral, turned down by his family, and instead a faux state funeral is instigated anyway, with video contriutions from hollywood and an address by ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/21/britains-answer-to-steve-irwin/ yes, the real world becomes more like the onion every day. steve (croc-botherer) irwin died a while back and the memorial ceremony has just taken place at the zoo. up to 300 million people worldwide tuned in to watch. “We have lost a friend, a champion,” actor Russell Crowe said in a ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/20/steve-irwin-and-the-continued-onionfication-of-the-world/ Women with breast implants have a suicide rate 73% higher than regular, unenhanced female population. Link. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/20/breasts-to-die-for/ from fred wilson’s AVC blog: YouTube is going to win bigtime. They’ve built the audience. They’ve built the value added services that make their service fun to use. And eventually they are going to get the content owners to play ball. Begging for forgiveness is going to work for YouTube. And when ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/19/youtube-to-blow-them-away-get-blown-away/ i stumbled into a youtube ™ video. it takes a popular song, changes the lyrics entirely, and plays over a re-edited hollywood film. there are hundreds of them, mostly bad. but not all. and why not? but it’s a nightmare of a legal issue. there was a solution to sampling ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/18/youtubes-beautiful-its-true/ I now seem to have a thing about books that come in multiple volumes. proust, gibbon, etc. and all this from someone who prefers short books. right now i’m two volumes through george orwell’s “collected essays, journalism and letters”. recommended to all. there are many good things about it. today ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/18/236/ banksy continues to take over the world. his paris hilton cd stunt, where he replaced her new cd in many shops with his own doctored version, received much publicity. The cds have made it to ebay. this one is currently at £310, but hasn’t met its reserve price. and this is ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/16/banksy-takes-over-the-world-again/ A well-known player of World of Warcraft dies in real life of a heart attack. His guild decide to have an in-game funeral. It’s beautiful, there’s snow and contemplation, a fire, many people paying their respects down by the lake. However, another guild decides that all these people in one place ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/14/yes-we-know-we-are-arseholes/ before 9/11 i played a lot of backgammon. not so much since, i think it’s a sense of proportion kind of thing . . . anyway, i played on fibs (first internet backgammon server), there you can play some of the best, and some of the worst, players in the world. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/12/old-news/ the croc guy, steve irwin, recently killed by a stingray was offered a state funeral. his family turned it down. “He will be remembered as not just a great Queenslander, but a great Australian,” Mr Beattie told Channel Seven. “Whenever I travel overseas, particularly to countries like the United States, he was ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/08/croc-guy/ if only this were true. a lost commentary on the lord of the rings by noam chomsky and howard zinn. Chomsky: We should examine carefully what’s being established here in the prologue. For one, the point is clearly made that the “master ring,” the so-called “one ring to rule them all,” ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/07/chomsky-audio-commentary-from-lotr/ i was clearing through one of my desk drawers doing shit for someone else’s company admin (yes, if you’re feeling guilty, it’s probably yours), when i found a scrap i’d torn from a newspaper. it was a quote from condi: There is nothing I am worse at than long-term planning. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/03/wholly-implausible-steps/ stairs, london http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/03/zoe-stairs/ donegal, ireland. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/03/zac-beach/ tall people, on average, earn more than shortarses. why? well, according to a new study, it’s because they are smarter. While height, on its own, bears a strong relation to pay, when adult height is included along with measures of childhood intelligence in pay analyses, it no longer does the explanatory ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/09/02/tall-people-are-smarter/ The UK government is planning to make it a criminal offence to download images of extreme and violent pornography, even where it is “simulated”. this takes me back to this. from the guardian: According to a Home Office document published yesterday, which outlined responses to the proposals, 223 individuals opposed the measures ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/08/31/extreme-and-violent/ The number one region on google trends searching for “stars and stripes” is . . . . . . . iraq. it is, really. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/08/27/stars-and-stripes/ number one lanuguage areas for “linux” on google trends: 1. Russian 2. Hungarian 3. Romanian 4. Italian 5. Polish 6. German 7. Portuguese 8. Finnish 9. Swedish 10. English Yep, english is 10th. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/08/27/and-more-linux/ google trends is an example of the large number of information tools that now exist on the web. type in a search term and it will show you trends, the top cities, regions, and languages. So if you look at “sex”, what is the number one country? here you go: 1. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/08/27/google-trend/ the london evening standard has a column entitled “no shit, sherlock!”. i guess this belongs there. He analyzed the religious practices and body mass index, often referred to as BMI, of more than 2,500 people during an eight-year period from 1986 to 1994. He found that the use of religious media ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/08/25/religion-makes-you-fat/ I sit here at a desk having a nice cup of tea. This, new research suggests, is much better for me than drinking mere water. It stimulates, refreshes, hydrates, and prevents every known illness(ish). It also provides a little break in the day (just like a cigarette), the perfect sort ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/08/24/a-nice-cup-of-tea/ Bruce Scheier has written the most sane and sensible, and informed piece i’ve seen to date on TERROR. Highly recommended, though quite how politicians can be persauded not to pander to group fear i have no idea. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/08/24/antiterror/ I’ve often wondered how long it would be before someone was arrested and jailed for looking at manga/anime pornographic images of children. No children involved, just drawn or photoshopped images. Well, here we are. This one is a bit of a sad case. Some guy taking adult porn images of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/08/16/no-children-were-harmed-in-the-making-of-this-image/ “why can’t all the good things in life come without the downsides?”, intones the advert for coke zero, the great coke taste with zero sugar. that’s zero sugar, but plenty aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sodium benzoate, and other yummies. aspartame? While it is well-known that aspartame contains phenylalanine and is unsafe for those ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/08/06/without-the-downside/ . . . and this morning i couldn’t get a ticket at the station. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/08/04/inconvenience-caused/ seen today, clerkenwell green, london. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/08/03/a-male-was-shot/ A friend tells me that he and another are to spend a weekend slaughtering a pig. Apparently this is big in spain also. First watch a video explaining how to slaughter and dismember porky, then proceed. The liver should be eaten immediately. Breakfast is pretty much sorted, bacon, sausage and, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/07/29/bye-bye-porky/ ah, these are just great. japanese drugs adds, marvellous. and there’s more. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/07/14/more-2/ via boingboing http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/07/14/hand/ apparently he’s dead. Rick Wright, the keyboards player later told an interviewer: “I saw this guy sitting at the back of the studio… and I didn’t recognise him. I said, ‘Who’s that guy behind you?’ ‘That’s Syd’. And I just cracked up, I couldn’t believe it… he had shaven all ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/07/12/syd-barret-2/ i’ve missed the new dr who since ecclestone went, but caught the last episode of the series. the cyber-men Vs the darleks. and everything that should be. the final scene was exceptional. the doctor appearing to rose, now cut off from him forever. she tells him she loves him, he ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/07/09/a-rose-by-any-other-name/ i hadn’t noticed before, but flikr displays exif data now. this is the data from the camera which is encoded in the picture. like this: Camera: Sony Ericsson D750i Exposure: 0.003 sec (1/320) Aperture: f/2.8 ISO Speed: 100 Exposure Bias: 0/10 EV Orientation: Horizontal (normal) X-Resolution: 13425152/10112359 dpi Y-Resolution: 39300439/44936621 dpi Software: R1AA008 prgCXC125952_EU_1_CL 4.5 Date and Time: 2006:06:24 ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/07/06/exif/ a slashdot story reveals the new tech going into replacing lost limbs and the like, for US soldiers. it’s only a matter of time . . . but did you take a good look at the picture? i’m an american soldier, my leg gets blown off. every day i look down ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/07/03/robocop-or-rogue-trooper-or-something/ i have always had difficulty with greetings. years ago it was all pretty straightforward, a simple shake of the hand. complications in judging the firmness of grip, perhaps, but essentially one knew what to do. this has all changed. a friend of mine once made the mistake of gripping a hand ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/07/01/greetings/ it is architecture week, or just was, or something . . . and a new structure has been errected in clerkenwell green, something new for the tourists to gawp at as they follow the ‘historic trail’ in one of the oldest parts of london. this thing looks like it’s ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/06/26/clerkenwell-carrot/ http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/06/26/what-put-the-cat-in-catford/ what with the world cup, these blasted flags are everywhere. the flag originated in the first crusade where crusaders of all nationalities wore the cross. in the first crusade all wore a red cross, though in subsequent crusades the colour varied: In the first crusade all wore red; in the third, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/06/07/white-flag/ i just got back from a week at the hay festival. last year bill clinton called it the “woodstock of the mind”. well, given the weather (rain) and the ensuing mud, this year it was more like the glastonbury of the dualit-owning classes, you know, people called poppy or beatrice ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/06/02/hay/ a cafe in hay on wye http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/06/02/beware/ yes, i’m still reading gibbon’s decline and fall. (will it never end?) current curiosity = greek fire. i love the name, it should surely be in common use as a phrase that denotes something mysterious and effective. over several hundred years (7th century to 13th century and counting, i’m not finished yet, remember) ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/05/25/greek-fire/ Abdalrahman founded the throne of Cordova in 756, a dynasty that ruled 250 years from the atlantic to the pyrenees. nowadays historians call him governor of spain. he lived in complete luxury and retained absolute authority. he had hundreds of wives and concubines. his palace was decked out by the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/05/21/fourteen/ when i was a kid my dentist once told me i had a monkey-bite. when i asked him what he meant, he told me to go home and look up hottentot in the dictionary. i did. i guess dictionaries were a little less politically correct then, right now the compact ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/05/16/hottentot-not/ many moons ago i wrote a story involving a guy who couldn’t go out because he couldn’t afford the increased insurance premium. if there’s a way to bill by the unoccupied day or hour, then at some point someone will do it. i was talking to someone in motor insurance ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/05/12/fully-comprehensive/ There have been several filtering issues on the net recently, chinese google and smartfilter. I like this ideas, which looks pretty good to me. boingboing is a popular group blog that got caught in a filter. some guy came up with the idea of a distributed boingboing. Hey, guys. I ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/03/15/distribution/ So often it is when we are most sure of ourselves that we lose our footing and plummet from the heights we thought we had attained. Today is pancake day, an argument ensued about something or other. A new entry appeared on the bottom of Zoe’s notey (naughty) list. You guessed it, Dad ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/02/28/hubris/ Zoe has a new system. Two lists, one of “notey pepelle”, one of “nis peplle”. Now no one is left in doubt as to what Zoe thinks of them. Given sufficient cause she rushes away, gets her little pink book, stands in front of the person, strikes them off the nis ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/02/28/notey-pepelle-nis-peplle/ More Gibbon, this time a tsunami. From vol.3 of the Bury edition of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 26: IN the second year of the reign of Valentinian and Valens, on the morning of the twenty-first day of July, the greatest part of the Roman world was ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/02/13/gibbon-tsunami/ I’m currently reading Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” and came across this: The modern improvements sufficiently explain the causes of the diminution of the cold. These immense woods have been gradually cleared, which intercepted from the earth the rays of the sun. The morasses have been drained, and, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/01/12/oldest-reference-to-global-warming/ Bromley (Greater London) has for years sported a mural of its most famous son, HG Wells. As a sign of the times the mural has now been wiped and replaced by a new mural, this time of Charles Darwin. Tags: darwin, bromley http://rustle.blogsome.com/2006/01/12/out-with-the-new-in-with-the-old/ here. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/12/12/people-i-admire-no-493/ talking about World of Warcraft, i guess you’ve seen this story. hoards of chinese in “factories” playing WoW, doing the drudge work, selling credits to more affluent westerners who can’t afford the time to amass them to play higher levels, but are willing to fork out a few quid. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/12/10/wow-ii/ Parents of a kid who committed suicide, by jumping out of a 24 storey window, blame it on his obsession with World of Warcraft. Yeah, yeah, heard this one before. But wait, this is actually quite interesting. before committing suicide, the boy left four letters and one hand-written note to ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/12/08/test-of-faith/ someone came up with WWII as if it were being played online. i went to navigate away but got hooked reading it. > Stalin: hey hitler you dont fight me i dont fight u, cool? > Hitler[AoE]; sure whatever > Stalin: cool > deGaulle: #### Hitler rushed some1 help > Hitler[AoE]: lol byebye frenchy > ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/11/28/hitleraoe-has-joined-the-game/ Zac was watching mary poppins. “Why” he asks, “is he allowed to tell people what to do all the time?” He is referring to George Banks, the father. I have to explain to him that in those days the father was the head of the household, men ran everything, women ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/11/28/george-banks/ i don’t do reviews, but fuck, you’ve got to get babyshambles - albion. i spent a chunk of today in a car listening to it. just great. i looked up some lyrics and found they’ve even covered the moldy peaches which is solid proof of their (his) integrity. there are maybe ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/11/18/185/ news that tamiflu has been used on animals in bid to save valuable zoo collections. well, actually came from here. which prompts the question, how many ways are there to kill an elephant. hey, what about torching the bastard. yeah, and let’s get thomas edison to do it. (i’m not even ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/11/18/more/ i can’t tell you how much i’m looking forward to a pandemic of H5N1 (i know, i know). even more so now. governments all over the world have been stockpiling tamiflu in anticipation. it turns out that tamiflu has a known side effect of causing “psychological dosorders”. One of these ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/11/18/all-my-interests-in-one-post/ 1-reading to zac “haroun and the sea of stories” by slaman rushdie, realising how smart that book is. getting into the flow of it, the performance, it’s small sections, inviting you to just read the next, and the next. its beautiful metaphors sculpted to the ears of children, ideas cascading ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/11/12/reasons-to-be-cheerful-part-deux/ A Cartoon from 1930. Unfortunately the little creatures of the forest show Mickey the error of his ways and he makes a swing from the rope instead. Imagine a world where he succeeded. Ahh to dream. Tags: suicide, mickeymouse http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/11/11/mickey-mouse-in-suicide-attempt/ As friends we: scream, talk, argue. Then we run around until our legs hurt. As friends we: share think help. Then watch Doctor Who until we get so scared we almost run upstairs. As friends we: fall out part smile. Then jump on a trampoline and scream. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/11/07/zacs-first-poem/ An abstract from a recent paper: This article assesses the link between country music and metropolitan suicide rates. Country music is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work. The results of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/10/23/4-hungry-children-and-a-crop-in-the-field/ furniture polish. a nice choice. famed singer billy joel attempts suicide, apparently in connexion with an affair with his drummer’s wife. Joel was saved by the very man he was betraying - drummer Jon Small, who rushed Joel to the hospital. Joel was later transferred to a psychiatric ward. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/10/13/we-didnt-start-the-fire/ I’m currently looking to introduce a management information system, whatever that means, into a company. to me it just means information retrieval, people who want stuff should be able to get it. i’m looking at wikis and rss because this seems to me to offer a nice way of structuring ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/10/11/professionals/ Well, this is Dr Bruce Prescott, compassionate man about town who happens upon the general geographical area of a suicide. Naturally it makes him think. Often, real insight can be gained in such moments. I think i should do him the honour of quoting him in full. Last night someone ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/10/02/after-the-fact/ The suicide of two teenage girls in paris has sparked off calls for, well, i’m not sure. It seems the girls were goths. “Sadly the suicides don’t surprise me,” said Jacky Cordonnier, a French expert who advises the government on cults. “There is a drift into Satanism. A structured movement with no ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/10/02/hi-boys-bye-boys-2/ A friend is staying with us right now. He’s been in spain for a few months and today went out and about on the buses. His last journey was from Bermondsey to Sydenham, first in a number 12, then a 185 (in the abscence of a 176, for any london ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/10/02/london-bus-attacks/ We now have Britain’s first internet pact suicide. Christopher Aston, a 25-year-old student from Liverpool, northern England, and unemployed Maria Williams, 42, also known as Sanchez, from south London, were found dead in a car in the British capital on February 23. They had poisoned themselves with carbon monoxide fumes from ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/10/01/first-british-internet-suicides/ Two girls provide a surprise for their boyfriends on the 17th floor of a towerblock in Paris. The girls had gone to a relative’s flat and told the two boys to wait in the living room while they prepared a “surprise”. One of them called from the bedroom: “OK, come in.” ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/09/30/hi-boys-bye-boys/ Yesterday we saw an octagenarian bundled out of the Labout Party conference for calling out the word nonsense while the Foreign Secretary was mouthing the word “democracy” in the context of Iraq. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the man was then detained by police under the “Prevention of Terrorism ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/09/30/blair-apologises/ a comment recived from anon to my last post: Didja apologize to her for downloading all that pirated music? Give her some cash? Tell her how great Hidden Vagenda is, that you only just downloaded it for free last night? To top it off, you brazenly pose for a photo ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/09/25/kimya-2/ we’re not those kids . . . Tag: kimya http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/09/25/mardi-gras-came-and-went/ Near Exmouth Market, London. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/09/21/poor-middlesex/ Someone tried to commit suicide today by jumping of the portico of the british museum. nice location, not enough height. i’ve said it before, i’ll say it again, you need ten stories to make sure. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/09/15/167/ Hunter S Thompson’s suicide note turns up, entitled “Football Season is over”: No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun - for ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/09/11/166/ I mentioned before about Banksy’s little trip to the middle east. Well it went mainstream on tv today. ITN’s middle east correspondent took a trip out to see them. he interviewed palestinians about them who were generally positive. they even managed to get a statement out of banksy. In reply ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/09/08/165/ kids are so mean. he won’t let me play with it. Tag: psp http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/09/01/long-awaited-day/ In the UK (population 60m) the average daily suicide count is around 10 people. A report by the Office for National Statistics reveals that certain days are more popular to end it all than others. It tend to be beginnings. On Mondays, on average, 12 suicide. In fact the numbers fall ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/28/the-day-no-one-dies-sort-of/ The kids have been seeing a lot of their granny lately. This is a page from an activity book that they’d been given based on the story of Elijah. Other things that have turned up include a cross on Zoe’s wall complete with (temporarily) dead jesus. The other day Zoe said ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/20/which-of-them-do-you-think-worshipped-the-tru-god/ If I could invest in one company right now it would be Vestergaard Frandsen. The company have developed a water-purification straw, the “lifestraw”. It seems too good to be true, it’s cheap and will cover the annual water consumption of one person. The company is nominated for some award ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/18/the-final-straw-for-unclean-water/ A blogger witnesses a jump off of a bridge. Complete with pictures. have a nice day. Tag: suicide, jumper http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/16/blogged-jump/ hitchens was asked once what motivated him. hate, he said. he flies high in this interview for washington prism, a persian language online publication. here we get somewhere. They [Islamist radicals or, as Hitchens calls them, Islamo-fascists] gave us no peace and we shouldn’t give them any. We can’t live ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/13/hitchens-hate/ hitchens in slate. It never seemed to me that there was any alternative to confronting the reality of Iraq, which was already on the verge of implosion and might, if left to rot and crash, have become to the region what the Congo is to Central Africa: a vortex of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/13/imperial-hubris/ Malasia. A guy suicides by drinking weedkiller, embarrassed by the public argument going on in the street between his two wives. The reports said the truck driver was with his younger wife, who is aged 20, at his mother’s house in the central state of Pahang when his first wife, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/12/polygamy-thingammy/ I like wikipedia, it has a very Peircian taste. Surely, he would piss his pants at such a thing. Jimmy Wales co-founder of wikipedia, gave a talk at the Open Source Applications Foundation, blogged by ross mayfield, socialtext entrepreneur. it’s well worth a read, though it’s blogged live and the english ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/12/wikipedia/ The London bombs killed 55 people. I read yesterday (was out and about, could have been the Guardian) that this 55 people came from 22 different countries. I find this quite remarkable, obviously. Other related: I hear reports from friends that some muslims have taken to carrying six-packs of beer to show they ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/10/bomb-related/ Since 1947 it has been a widely held belief in Israel that “Holocaust survivors do not commit suicide; they heroically prove the continuity of the Jewish people”. A new study reveals this not to be the case. In fact the suicide rate in holocaust survivors is three times greater ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/10/highest-suicide-rate-in-history/ A Hong Kong Councilor proposes that an area which has seen numerous suicides in recent years should be converted into a “suicide theme park”. Councilor Lam Kit-sing said the island should capitalize on the grisly reputation of one of its holiday homes, where 20 people have taken their lives in ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/09/suicide-theme-park/ Quite the most complacent and idiotic article I’ve read in a long while is this one. Suicide bombing is a memie which is out of the bottle. Home made explosives are relatively simple to make. Why just kill yourself, hey, take a few others with you. This is murder suicide ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/08/suicide-bombing-is-the-new-black/ Pink Floyd ‘wish you were here‘ at live8, thankyou fred wilson. Waters looked like a pub rocker until ‘comfortably numb’ (not found an mp3 of it yet). So the Floyd back together again for the first time in 25 years, and the last, right? Not necessarily: “It’s not excluded that we could ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/07/remember-when-you-were-young/ I came across a puzzle, supposedly by einstein, which he claimed was able to be solved by only 2% of people. To stop my numerous children from killing themselves whilst waiting for dinner I gave it to them. Here are Olivia and her friend Alix. And, yes, they solved it. Tags: ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/07/my-kids-and-einstein/ I saw this earlier. The kind of suicide on the rail network that we are used to. That and someone telling me I should post some writing on my blog. So this: I Two cheers for the unidentified body currently lying on track twelve. A last trump in Paddington Station. Not exactly ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/06/this-train-will-not-be-calling-at-didcot-parkway/ If you’re a graffiti artist then one of the world’s largest walls must seem pretty attractive. After duping museums in London and New York, and plastering much of London and Bristol with intelligent graffiti, Banksy sojourns to the Middle East. As Banksy says it’s “the ultimate activity holiday ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/05/banksy-continues-to-impress/ This is apparently a fake notice, as plausible as it might appear. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/03/this-notice-is-for-your-own-safety/ The tube is plastered with a poster bearing the legend “7 M1llion Londoners”. The “1″ and “London” are picked out in red. 7 million londoners, 1 london. This is presumably a result of the recent bombings. Even more common nowadays, however, are hoards of police. These have got to be ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/08/02/here-harry-int-that-cat-stevens/ A police interview with one of the failed london bombers seems to bear out the modus operandi discussed in the book “Imperial Hubris”. The book describes how Al Qaeda websites openly ask supporters to post details of possible targets, asking for photographs, maps and anything else. The websites call upon ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/07/31/osama-bin-voldemort-2/ Today I happened to have been reading two books. The first “Imperial Hubris” by Anonymous, and the second (to my children) “Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince”. I realized after 20 pages of the new Potter that He Who Must Not be Named, the Dark One, or Voldemort, is Osama ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/07/31/osama-bin-voldemort/ although interested (obviously) in suicide, the posts that come up on my rss feeds relating to murder-suicides i ignore. there are a lot of them. days go by when they are all there are. some guy who’s been dumped by his girlfriend kills her, maybe a kid or two, then ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/07/17/murder-suicide/ A 12 year old hanged himself from his bunk bed using his school tie after his mother took away his playstation to punish him for getting a detention at school. In a statement, Mrs Lloyd, a housewife and mother of two other younger children, told the hearing that her ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/07/15/playstation/ I’ve been in Norwich this weekend. As I wandered around I was aware of something odd going on, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I took the kids to see the Lord Mayor’s Procession. Then I got it. The place is almost completely white. Take a look at ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/07/10/multiculturalism/ well. So this guy who sought to prove the relation of marijuana to cancer developed a study. The Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance program provided Tashkin’s team with the names of 1,209 L.A. residents aged 59 or younger with cancer ( 611 lung, 403 oral/pharyngeal, 90 laryngeal, 108 esophageal ). ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/07/09/marijuana-protects-from-cancer/ In our occasional series on suicide methodologies i have, to date, deliberately steered clear of one. This is, of course, to strap explosives to yourself and then catch a bus, or maybe a train. Only I’d rather you didn’t. The BBC are reporting that the bombs today were suicide bombings, and ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/07/08/how-to-kill-yourself/ I blame the french. They’ve got form. Think Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour. And it would make sense of Chirac’s comments yesterday. Ok, maybe not. Whoever they were, it gave me two decent walks today, the first after missing a bomb by 2 minutes. I was impressed by how mellow ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/07/07/london/ Well, in Scotland the protests have started in earnest. We saw earlier that “I predict a riot“, and some violence has been seen. Of course, there are many clowns in the crowds, peace activists, ageing rock stars, even the odd politician. There’s another free gig on tonight so the numbers ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/07/06/i-predict-a-riot-2/ I think Live8 was extraordinary. Mr Geldof, if it was he, scripted the show brilliantly. It wasn’t so much a gig as a giant political broadcast you could dance to. Memorable moments were The Who singing “who are you” as the photos of the G8 leaders flashed one by one ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/07/03/i-predict-a-riot/ If you’re short you are twice as likely to commit suicide. “Suicide is more common among short men,” according to Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute in a paper published by the American Journal of Psychiatry. “An increase in height of five centimetres (two inches) cuts the risk of suicide by 9%.” “Short men are ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/07/03/131/ want to send someone a large file? caught by a mailbox limit? fret not, “you send it” is here. it’s all web-based and it works. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/30/you-send-it/ Another in our ocassional series on reasons to commit suicide. Today we have VLT addiction. That’s Video Lottery Terminal addiction. Apparently a bit of a problem in Canada, perhaps like the pokies problem in New South Wales. We used to call it gambling. Four months before an addiction to video ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/28/vlt-addiction/ I just knew there was some reason for my last post. Rather like always smoking far more on National No-Smoking Day, I blog suicide on the happiest day of the year. That is according to Cliff Arnall, a part-time tutor at Cardiff University. He used the equation: O + (N x ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/24/happiest-day-of-the-year/ If you’re intent on suicide then you could go searching the web for effective means of doing so. You might find that cutting your wrists isn’t very effective (it isn’t), jumping works (but make sure the building is at least ten stories high), pills take a while and guarantee nothing ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/24/if-youre-intent-on-suicide/ I posted a while ago about a song lyric I came across, Lazyboy’s “Underwear goes inside the pants.” I’ve been looking to get hold of the song but itunes doesn’t have it. But I found the video. It’s good. Check it out. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/22/lazyboy/ I used to be an avid buyer of newspapers. No longer. Whereas I used to buy The Guardian or The Independent, I can now read both, plus The Australian, Washington Post, NYT etc etc etc all online and cost free. I am not alone: More than one-fifth of people who read ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/21/unforseen-consequences-of-the-web-part-1/ In a move reminiscent of Fight Club, artist Gianni Motti managed to purloin the Italian Prime Minister’s body fat after a liposuction at a swiss clinic and used it to make soap. He subsequently sold it for $18,000. According to Motti, the artwork called Mani Pulite (which means “clean hands” ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/21/berlusconi-washes-whiter/ Well, bugger me. Condi Rice announcement in Egypt today: “For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither,'’ she said. “Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspiration ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/20/condi-wears-new-white-hat/ Eli Lilly have been testing a new anti-depressant. Screening out volunteers for those who suffered depression, the company tested their product on a “healthy” control group. Unfortunately one young volunteer, who signed up to help put herself through college, has just committed suicide. Eli Lilly were extrememly reticent to publicize ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/19/hidden-suicides/ There are many ways to commit suicide, but this has to be a first. In Thailand a man superglued his nose and mouth, suffocating as planned. As a nice postscript: Police indicate the man suffered a history of moodiness. Tags:suicide, superglue http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/18/superglue/ In China publicity is out on a miracle drug: an excellent way to prevent ulcers. They also reduce the risk of Parkinson’s disease, relieve schizophrenia, boost your brain cells, speed up your thinking, improve your reactions and increase your working efficiency. What can they possibly be talking about? More: a kind of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/17/miracle-drug/ The final episode of Doctor Who airs Saturday. Christopher Ecclestone bows out and is regenerated. David Tennant will emerge as the new Doctor. All assuming, of course, that the good Doctor manages to save the world from the impending Dalek invasion. . . But have no fear, the BBC have a ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/16/regeneration/ One million americans: are HIV positive. are in jail for non-violent offences. sign petition to protect system of checks and balance. wrote to the Bush administration protesting logging in a national park. washed their clothes in cold water. purchase their medication in Canada. have Ankylosing spondylitis (spinal arthritis) and related diseases. suffer from juvenile diabetes. suffer from cancer each ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/15/one-million-americans/ How to make firefox awesomely fast, if you have broadband: Go to the address bar in Firefox and type in “about:config” Look for the following lines: network.http.pipelining = false network.http.pipelining.maxrequests = 4 network.http.proxy.pipelining = false Change them to (by click/double-click the line): network.http.pipelining = true network.http.pipelining.maxrequests = 30 network.http.proxy.pipelining = true This configures the browser to make 30 requests ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/15/firefox-settings/ Odd this. Five former players for the Winthrop High School football team have committed suicide in the last two years. Head Coach Joel Stoneton is still haunted by the very first call he received in April 2003 when a sophomore on the team committed suicide. The phone calls keep coming. Stoneton ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/15/clusters/ Yet more astonishing scientific breakthroughs: continuous drinking for as little as eight weeks can produce deficits in learning and memory Butterfield, also director of the Center of Membrane Studies, said these findings are especially troubling for college students who may engage in binge drinking. “People should exercise caution against binge drinking since ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/15/stuff-you-may-not-already-know-mmmm/ from the FT: Microsoft’s new Chinese internet portal has banned the words “democracy” and “freedom” from parts of its website in an apparent effort to avoid offending Beijing’s political censors. Users of the joint-venture portal, formally launched last month, have been blocked from using a range of potentially sensitive words to label ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/12/stand-up-for-freedom/ If you don’t use del.icio.us yet, then you should. Here’s another example of its usefulness. Fred Wilson, a New York VC, has a blog. He asked readers to tag mp3 files they thought he might be interested in so that he could listen to them on his ipod. It works like ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/12/delicious-music/ This really is amusing. Googlemaps enthusiasts have found several UFOs (well . . .) in various maps. Googlesightseeing has the details and the comments are a scream. thanks imo http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/11/ufos-spotted-incontrivertible-evidence/ News that a couple in the U.S. have been charged with child abuse for bringing up their three kids on a strictly vegan diet. The matter came to light when their underweight 3 year-old daughter was taken to hospital after suffering a seizure. At the couple’s home in the 300 block ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/10/110/ Less than 1 in a 1000 suicide attempts are successful. Most are not really attempts at suicide at all. This looks like a typical example. Let’s face it slashing one’s wrists by a pool full of people is hardly going to work is it? The local town council said the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/09/109/ The California assembly just voted to retrict the number of pages in any school text book to 200. AB 756 would force publishers to condense key ideas, basic problems and basic knowledge into 200 pages, then to provide a rich appendix with Web sites where students can go for more ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/08/108/ This chap, Schopenhauer, wrote The World as Will and Idea. In this masterwork there is one chapter of just over three pages on The Metaphysics of Sexual Love. Schopenhauer on love: It is the ultimate goal of almost all human endeavour, exerts an adverse influence on the most important affairs, interrupts ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/07/love-2/ Yet another incredible scientific breakthrough: The multidisciplinary team found that early, intense romantic love may have more to do with motivation, reward and “drive” aspects of human behavior than with the emotions or sex drive. Brain systems were activated that humans share with other mammals. So the researchers think “early-stage romantic ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/07/love/ Sign in Placa George Orwell, Barcelona. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/05/he-loved-big-brother/ On Flickr there is but one entry tagged as aspidistra. On del.icio.us be there none. I shall amend shortly. ‘You talk a great deal about aspidistras,’ said Ravelston. ‘They’re a dashed important subject,’ said Gordon. Yes, Rustle is reading Orwell. Tags:orwell, aspidistra http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/04/flying-aspidistras/ I always liked the concept of gods that die. It came up today, which brought to mind a poem. To lay buried in one’s own creation, lifeless, extinct The last breath inflating the final seed that grows on. Gods may die. In Crete Zeus was interred, Dionysus at Delphi, To join Apollo, whose tomb Pythagorus ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/03/gods-may-die/ The Guardian carries a transcript of the appearance by Christopher Hitchens and his brother Peter (Daily Mail Columnist). They famously don’t get on, or don’t get on famously, whatever. In fact they hadn’t spoken for four years. Aside from an amusing interlude when a woman in the audience complains that ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/01/a-round-turn-with-two-hitchs/ In Bombay a local trader is seeking the permission of the court to commit suicide, not because he is ill, but because he is being harrassed by the police. “These police officers have also labelled me as underworld don Dawood Ibrahim’s henchman in Andheri and have also said that I ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/06/01/keyser-soze/ Beijing. A student leaps from a 24 storey building, unable to cope with his IAD. That’s Internet Addiction Disorder. He left four notes before he committed suicide. In the letters Xiao, playing the role of a character from a computer game, said that he wanted to meet three friends who ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/31/internet-addiction-disorder/ Just back from the Hay-on-Wye literature festival. Well, it was great. We camped out at the Hollybush Inn which, we discover, has changed somewhat since last year. At first we struggled to understand the bunch of insanely smiley helpers that guided newcomers along the dirt roads, helped out in ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/31/hitch/ We’ve had the youngest suicide. Here’s a contender for oldest suicide. A 100 year-old man steps in front of a train. tags: suicide http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/31/reaches-a-century-takes-his-own-wicket/ George Orwell said that second hand bookshops will never die. But in the UK half of all second hand bookshops have closed in the last three years. Tomorrow, however, I’m off to a small town with 38 bookshops: Hay-on-Wye. It’s the annual literature festival held in one of the most ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/27/hey-hey-hay/ Walking past a jewellers shop today I noticed a sign in the window. 10 YEAR GUARANTEE ON ALL DIAMONDS How nice to have peace of mind. Just imagine how you’d feel if you accidentally dropped your diamond ring on a hard surface or, heaven forbid, inadvertantly left it out in the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/27/peace-of-mind/ In Australia the greatest “at risk” age group for suicide is 25-34, in the UK 35-44. In the Netherlands and the US its the over 75s. (stats). Why should aged men take their lives? Men are very production-oriented and not process-oriented. They tend to build work relationships rather than personal ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/26/final-leap/ News that the yellow boards I’ve been blogging about are to go. Another familiar London sight may soon be a thing of the past, but whether this particular icon will be missed at all is still being debated. Bright yellow ‘murder boards’ are to go according to the Telegraph. Scotland ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/26/over-board/ More incredible scientific breakthroughs College students who get drunk at least once a week are significantly more likely to be hurt or injured than other student drinkers, according to new research from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. remember you heard it here first. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/23/breakthrough-2/ A new breakthrough in understanding how the brain works when it comes up against sarcasm. No really . . . * 1-The left hemisphere language cortices interpret the literal meaning of the utterance; * 2-The frontal lobes and right hemisphere process the intentional, social and emotional context, identifying the contradiction between the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/23/no-really/ It’s banksy time again. In new york recently, he covertly added his own artworks to various galleries and museums. Well his additions have been found again, this time in the british museum. The text of the exhibit ran: This finely preserved example of primitive art dates from the Post-Catatonic era. ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/21/the-peckham-rock/ There’s this guy, one of the 40%+ that don’t vote, doesn’t know or care that much about politics, iraq, the Project for a New American Century. But he has grown up with Star Wars. He trundles off to catch the new flick, Episode III Revenge of the Sith. In an ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/17/88/ As a result of hardline economic liberalisation the number of rural suicides have risen sharply in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. More than 4,000 farmers have killed themselves in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh since a programme of free-market measures was implemented by a “hardline liberalising regime” with the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/16/british-aid/ I’ve posted about young suicides before. Here’s a younger one in Indonesia. The most recent case of childhood suicide occurred on Saturday, when Renaldi Sembiring, 5, hung himself after his parents refused to allow him to go to a friend’s birthday party. tags: suicide http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/16/youngest-suicide/ flickr tags: typical from just 76 pictures. and deli.cio.us has 10 URLs. Technorati : typical http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/14/typical/ The word “set” has the longest definition in the english language*. Wordweb (which comes heavily recommended) lists one proper noun, 12 improper nouns, 24 verbs, and 7 adjectives. Flickr offers 1329 pictures. Del.icio.us, just 10 web pages. *OED And I can add to the whole mess by bunging in ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/14/set/ An amazingly inciteful piece appears in the St James PLAINDEALER today. [St James, Minnesota, north east of chicago, south of minneapolis. Population 4,616, slightly more females than males, predominantly from german and northern european extraction. Median age is 35, income $33k. 71% graduated high school, 14% college. Ah ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/14/83/ Apparent Murder-Suicide Brings Sorrow To Chicken Plant Shock and sadness overtook workers Thursday at the BC Natural Foods chicken plant in Fredricksburg after an apparent murder-suicide. Police said Jose Martinez shot and killed his common-law wife, Alice Torres, then turned the gun on himself. “With sorrow, I share the unfortunate news that two ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/13/headline-of-the-week/ The last pope is to be beatified. How nice. Ordinarily a miracle is required. The Vatican has a team of investigators whose job is to investigate claims of miracles. It is not so clear what John Paul’s miracles (two are needed) have been. However, shortly before John Paul died a certain ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/13/saints-preserve-us/ Another group suicide in Japan, involving five youths shutting themselves in a car with burning charcoal. Again this is likely an internet arranged pact. Australia is planning to outlaw the use of the internet to encourage, aid, or abet suicide. An inquiry into the Criminal Code Amendment (Suicide Related Materials) Bill ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/13/no-quick-exit-from-gods-own-country/ As I posted a while ago, the BBC are planning to make their archive available on the net. Big Picture mentions a press conference, held yesterday, in which some details came out. All TV and radio broadcasts from the last 7 days will be available to stream, but only ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/13/78/ yours for $33. From celebrity skin. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/13/robin-williams-fecal-matter/ Yes, spring is here, the sun is out, the bluebells have appeared, all is well. Unless that is, you have low serotonin levels. . . . research in Scandinavia and Canada has demonstrated that those who commit suicide have low levels of serotonin - the neurotransmitter in the brain which regulates ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/09/the-joys-of-spring/ This guy has just landed an eight year stretch for vandalising SUVs. Eight years, 96 months, fuck. The US Dept of Justice rates this as just below the average sentence for kidnapping, and somewhat above sexual assualt. Still, gotta protect those palaces on wheels. It reminded me of Professor Avenarius in ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/09/stupid-ugly-vehicles/ During a visit to my kids school i was taken around its ICT room. The kit was new and shiny and everything was run through microsoft. When i spoke for a while to the teachers it became apparent that basically the kids IT education consisted of being taught to use ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/08/closing-the-gates/ apparently longhorn retains the infamous blue screen of death, but adds a nice new red screen of death for really serious problems. another reason to stick with microsoft. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/08/red-screen-of-death/ In Japan a popular method of suicide is to sit in a car with a few lumps of burning coal. Another story today of a group of three individuals who are believed to have made a suicide pact over the net. At least seven groups totaling some 30 dead, including those ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/08/it-cant-be-much-fun-for-them-underneath-the-rising-sun/ Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul Gains said he and Hartzell’s family were disappointed they did not get a chance to see justice served. This after a death row inmate committed suicide. Yeah, much better to be able to watch the guy fry. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/08/die-before-you-fry/ Russell T Davies has turned Dr Who from a slighlty scary family show to the most subversive mainstream programme on TV. The picture above is the Jagrafess, a ceiling of meat with teeth, or a Rupert Murdoch from the year 200,000. The Doctor frees mankind from the concentration of media ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/08/murdoch-as-a-ceiling-of-meat/ Following on from the previous post on tagging, it’s time to get with it with skype. There is an excellent, if rather dry, post on the skype phenomenon at fractals of change. If you are not using skype then you really should read this, then go get a headset. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/05/skype-hype/ rob at Truth Like the Dark has an excellent post on using delicious. Anyone out there who isn’t using tagging, or who is still hooked on bookmarks, needs to read it. Recommended reading. photo from flickr - tagging http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/03/tagging-revolution/ Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, was concerned before the iraq war that he may face prosecution if the war proved illegal. He says that he pressed for a ruling signed off by government so that, if it came to it, he wouldn’t be standing ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/01/too-bloody-right/ The recent Question Time debate included several questions to all the party leaders on schools bullying, specifically related to youth suicide. Anyone who cares to look at news feeds in this area will be astounded at quite how many there are. One example: It was a dark and cool night At night ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/01/no-one-goes-to-school-at-night/ With just a few days until the election two new papers have been leaked. One of them had such a narrow distribution (Head of MI6, Senior Cabinet) that it looks like the leak came from Whitehall. It doesn’t look like the senior civil service is too keen on a blair ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/05/01/67/ Tonight on the BBC debating programme, Question Time, each of the leaders of the three main parties took part. Instead of sitting around a table together, as is the established format, they appear serially in front of an audience chosen from viewers based on questions they have submited. Basically they ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/29/question-time/ i’ve had my first google for “ejaculatory latency”. i’m so happy, really. sigh. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/28/yippeeeee/ Ahh the web. well, there are a couple of good pieces i read recently. first an excerpt from The Wisdom of Crowds (Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business,Economies, Societies and Nations) by james surowiecki. i haven’t read the book yet but it ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/21/wisdom-of-crowds/ From Vasco, Goa. According to investigating officer of the Mormugao police, Mr Uttam Raut Desai, the deceased couple have been identified as Shravan Shambhu Gawas (33) and Alka Shravan Gawas (25). Alka was nine months pregnant, and was supposed to deliver her child within next few days, disclosed the police officer. Mr ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/18/exteme-step/ Youth minister, Mark McGowan said: In Western Australia and in Australia generally we have large numbers of young people who are depressed and we also have a very high rate of youth suicide. It’s a strange phenomena. It doesn’t make sense for such a friendly and successful country as Australia but ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/18/friendly-and-successful/ I learnt a new term today. Intravaginal Ejaculation Latency Time (IELT). In a four-week study of 1,587 men, researchers report that men who suffer from premature ejaculation (PE) had an average intravaginal ejaculatory latency time (IELT) of 1.8 minutes, compared to 7.3 minutes in men who did not. Men with ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/15/59/ I just finished a paper entitled “Pulu: A Methodology for the Evaluation of Von Neumann Machines”. Abstract: The development of suffix trees that paved the way for the analysis of the Internet has refined Internet QoS, and current trends suggest that the development of scatter/gather I/O will soon emerge. In ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/15/cs-paper-generator/ recent research suggested that talking about suicide to teenagers did not lead to an increased risk in suicide attempts. but things can be taken too far. one japanese teacher was suspended this week after teaching his students how to kill themselves. his suggested method was, apparently, to jump off ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/14/stand-on-the-endge-and-take-one-step-forwards/ this is really nice to use. it shows the usage of baby names. move your mouse over it, or type in a name to see its popularity over time. trust me, it’s beautifully done. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/12/names/ i love flikr. i’d like the search to be better, more user friendly. i guess it will come. here for my photos. the one shown was from this afternoon. zoe (5) wanted to see riverdance at the hammersmith apollo. it was incredible. generally i accept the restrictions on automatic weaponry. there are, however, ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/11/riverdance/ the Independent on Sunday carries a front page outlining the wedding of Major Thomas Crapper. The new Mrs Crapper, who has let it be known that she would prefer to be addressed as “Debs”, said the couple intended to live in Bath and have what they describe as “lots of little ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/10/some-bloke-dies-some-bloke-gets-married/ googlemaps are very cool. what others are doing with googlemaps is very cool. do it yourself. unless you are in the UK. In the UK the Ordinance Survey (paid for by UK tax pounds) does not allow free use of maps. no googlemaps for the UK. this is dumb, very dumb. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/10/maps-to-everywhere-else/ Decision by the Charity Commissioner for england and wales on the application for charitable status by an org called the National Federation for Spiritual Healers: . . . concluded that NFSH is established for the exclusively charitable purpose to promote public health by the promotion of spiritual healing for the benefit of the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/09/spiritual-healing/ A Madras woman has two blind children. All attempts to find eye donors fail. The woman registers as an eye donor, then hangs herself. photo from flikr http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/09/two-eyes-two-sons/ it is Zoe’s birthday tomorrow (5). cards have started to arrive, some containing crisp new five and ten pound notes. I put these in a safe place. An hour ago Zac (7) brought Zoe to me and asked whether i thought that 25 books was good value for £5. Yes, I ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/09/early-capitalism/ I’m not a big fan of television. The kids watch while eating breakfast in the mornings so that I can sleep in a little longer. other than that Zac watches a bit of Timeteam and there’s the odd doco every now and again. However, this has changed with the new ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/09/new-who/ A lifer in a UK jail has just lost a case in which he pleaded that under human rights legislation he should be allowed razor blades in order to self harm. Mr Justice Newman, sitting at the High Court in London, said Watkins was now asserting that, under the European ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/07/i-met-murder-on-the-way/ We’ve come across container schemas before. When I read the National Intelligence Council report, it merely confirmed my view that this situation is where a lot of us find ourselves. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/06/container-schema-ii/ New Zealand has the highest youth suicide rate (15-24 years) in the world by some margin. Concern is such that in New zealand there are restrictions on the reporting of suicides. The word SUICIDE is not to appear in a headline. There are to be no photographs. The method of suicide should ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/06/man-dies-somehow-might-not-be-anyone-elses-fault/ There is much speculation in the press about the possibility of the first black pope. In fact it would be the fourth black pope. St Victor 189-199AD St Miltiades 311-314AD St Gelasius I 492-496AD There are no official portraits of any of these, and no direct evidence that they were black, other than ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/06/black-popes/ Apparently, asking a teen about whether they’ve ever thought about suicide does not make them more likely to try it. A new study shows. Further, more must be done. Studies show that many suicidal teens are slipping through the cracks, despite the fact that at-risk teens often exhibit obvious warning signs ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/05/teen-suicide/ While everyone waits with bated breath for our avian friends to pass over a suitably mutated influenza virus, there is some more news. A new study has revealed that obese mice are 10X more likely to die of flu than svelte ones. If this result is also applicable to humans . ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/05/fat-plague/ is this the first murder over a piece of virtual property? guy A lends guy B a “dragon sabre” in the online game “Legend of Mir 3″ guy B sells the sword for real cash. guy A kills guy B. story. this comes hard on the heels of the woman who trashed her ex-boyfriend’s virtual ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/05/virtual-sword-real-blood/ there is a very interesting post on fartnoise. go check it out. On 29th March reuters carried a story that the abu ghraib abuses were effectively sanctioned by Lt General Ricardo Sanchez. Several geneva-convention-busting techniques were authorised. The incriminating document was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under freedom of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/03/free-press/ by the time that anyone reads this the old guy may well be dead. (SILENCE) right now he may be dead and some PR guy is putting the finishing touches to a press release. (SILENCE) a reasonable job has been done so far. he is “dying with serenity”. my personal favourite is ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/04/01/pope-on-the-ropes/ I found this through a Singaporean VC’s site. Not heard the song but i’d love to. “Underwear Goes Inside the Pants” Lazyboy Why is marijuana not legal? Why is marijuana not legal? It’s a natural plant that grows in the dirt. Do you know what’s not natural? 80 year old dudes with hard-ons. That’s not natural. But ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/03/31/there-was-cheesecake-and-pork-chops-everywhere/ A while ago a friend gave me a copy of Malcolm Gloadwell’s “The Tipping Point”. It was, as he would say, good. It was a NYT bestseller, a look at how ideas spread within the culture. Later, some months ago, I was at another friends who’d just been interviewed by ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/03/26/more-think-than-blink/ Banksy has been at it again, this time in New York. He entered the MoMA, The Brooklyn Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Natural History, leaving behind each time a different piece of his art on the walls. Some of his work hung for days before being ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/03/24/banksy/ Just $10. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/03/23/t-shirt-of-the-week/ It’s spring. Just a week or so ago it was -6C, now in 20’s and I’m sitting in a t-shirt in the sun. The kids have been tasked by the school into listing the signs of spring. OK, that’s not so bad. We go out into the garden and point ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/03/23/spring-sprung/ recently anglicised american finally jives with english cuisine http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/03/23/lard/ #flickrWords .flickrImg { float: left; } courtesy of Spell with flickr. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/03/21/words/ The BBC is finally going to open its creative archive. This is great, and about time. I’ve blogged about this before. Interesting also because already a bunch of people out there have started putting out BBC content on their own sites because of the lack of an alternative. Like this dramatisation ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/03/18/bbc-creative-archive/ Jean-Paul Sartre: Smoking is the symbolic equivalent of destructively appropriating the entire world. France’s National Library have airbrushed a cigarrette from a photograph of Sartre for a current exhibition. Apparently this is to get around a law prohibiting tobacco advertising. Also: Man is not the sum of what he has but the totality ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/03/12/the-age-of-reason/ From Jaques Lacan’s “Jouissance”: Look, you arrive into the world with this intense attachment to the great whole, It. You have it, all the answers, everything. Only it’s gone now, you’ve just been detached. That’s all over. Within a country house at Guitrancourt, Courbet’s “L’Origine du monde” occupies a space behind a ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/03/09/origin-of-the-world/ http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/03/09/nothing-to-say/ Dumbarton, Scotland. Animal behaviourists are concerned at an apparent spate of canine “suicides” in the town after at least five dogs are said to have thrown themselves from an historic bridge in the past six months. The Independent. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/03/05/canine-suicides/ I stayed for a couple of days in Rotterdam at the Bazar, a funky hotel. This was at the entrance to one corridor: Unfortunately the snow came down, flights from Amsterdam were cancelled, and I had to train it to Brussels to catch a Eurostar home, arriving some 34 hours later ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/03/05/virgin-coke/ The excellent british comic, Arthur Smith, apparently once quipped: North London has blue plaques saying who lived where, south London has yellow signs saying who was mugged where. My favourite blue plaques are these: On the left is the house Jimi Hendrix lived in. On the right, the house George Frideric Handel lived ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/23/mpis-again/ (from Fark.com photoshop competition. Old to new masters) http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/22/starbucks-photoshop/ any excuse to give Henry Reed’s great poem an airing. As you may guess this was set in WWII Britain, a new recruit going through training. (Don’t fret, this may go somewhere.) To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday, We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning, We shall have what to do after ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/21/today-we-have-naming-of-parts/ so i’ve decided to start a new website. i’ve become mildly obsessed with Metropolitan Police Incident Signs (MPIS). I find myself taking detours to see them. Of course, by their very nature, these signs aren’t always in the most salubrious of areas. I intend to post all these pictures by ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/20/artifice/ highly irritated by the continuance of the french connection “fcuk” marketing nightmare, i decided a few weeks ago to launch my own variant, namely “king cnut”, or maybe ‘king cnut. i would get some t-shirts designed and sell them on the web. so, i take step one . . . ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/20/king-cnut/ While on the subject of warnings, and shortly after resuming smoking after a self-imposed one month ban, here are my personal favourite alternate warnings for cigarrette packets. smoking kills time. smoking is a small act of rebellion. smoking gives you 5 minute breaks during the day. smoking annoys people you don’t mind annoying. There is ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/19/smoking-warnings/ I’ve just come back from barcelona. I love the street art. Noel Niel is the spanish equivalent to “Neither him nor him”. These put me in mind of Banksy, a Bristol based street artist who graced my former home with a fine example of his work: It’s well worth a visit to his ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/18/street-warnings/ this came up last night. i’m not interested in whether it works or not, it still doesn’t work. it’s to do with the economic imperative. homeopathy depends on pills which contain a memory of a particular substance. (think one drop of something in a large swimming pool). it is indeed unlikely that ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/11/homeopathy/ Awesome snowflake photography here. This site has twelve-sided flakes, triangular flakes, bullet shaped, arrow-heads, and a weird twin-prism: Johannes Keppler first published “On the Six-Cornered snowflake” in 1611. Descartes followed in 1635 with an accurate description of the morphology of the snow crystal. Robert Hooke in 1665 published a series of drawings ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/08/snowflakes/ There has not been enough in the media about this. It’s not every day that one gets to go to cia.gov is it? This is the National Intelligence Council’s view of how the world is going to shape up towards 2020. They talked to all the “experts”, ran conferences on ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/07/national-intelligence/ an auto-didact friend once pronounced “Pepys” (as in Samuel Pepys) as “Peppies” rather than “Peeps”. I gave him a hard time and he’ll never do it again in polite company. - truth wins a man emmigrates from scotland by the name of “galloway”. he ends up in australia. when asked to ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/06/signs-too/ A new sign appeared yesterday. Not so long ago this would have hit the TV news, now it barely gets a mention in the local press. http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/05/serious-assualt/ Seth Godin has three good posts today on the labour market. Only yesterday I was discussing with a friend how difficult it is to connect a potential employee with a potential employer. Current methodologies suck. Interestingly if you check trackback on Seth’s posts you’ll see an enterprising soul recruiting ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/03/job-hunting/ A friend emails: I expressed some concern . . . about your - how can I say this - preoccupation with suicide. Of course, I realised quickly enough that you’d be killing others before you got on to yourself. So I’ll keep an eye out for the signs. When I get time I will ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/02/blogging-our-was-to-openness/ Ahh, my favourite subject. But here I mean Police Incident signs. Anyone who lives or works in London will know the ones I mean. Big yellow signs with large black writing that say things like “MURDER”, followed by “Male attacked and murdered outside KFC at 11.30pm, Thursday . . Call ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/02/01/signs/ Giving up smoking has made me (temporarily?) more irritable. A friend recommended a book to me (Philosophy in the Flesh - Lakoff and Johnson). Last night I sit down to read it. Who would not be irritated by this: English in is made up of a container scheme (a bounded region ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/01/31/giving-up/ So the rate of suicide in the U.S. army has dramatically reduced. Presumably this is not due to the decrease in stress levels of the average GI. No, it turns out that the chief suspect here is Lariam, an anti-malarial drug which has not been routinely used for more than ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/01/29/more-suicide/ Two things. First Anatomy for Beginners. Last night I watched Gunther von Hagens cut open a guys chest, pull out his lungs, cut open his heart, all on TV. Having seen his plasticised exhibits in London, and missing out on his live dissection last year, it was great to find Channel ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/01/26/anatomy-and-the-eff/ I was thinking about why I’m blogging, about why anyone blogs. [and making it difficult for myself by pumping out The Chemical Brothers new album “Push the Button” at the same time.] Of course there are a number of obvious answers. Fred Wilson (A VC) pretty much sums up the ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/01/25/blogging-peirce/ What do you believe is true, even though you can’t prove it? The 2005 Edge question provided some interesting material. One favourite came from Donald Hoffman, Cognitive Scientist University of California: I believe that consciousness and its contents are all that exists. Space-time, matter and fields never were the fundamental denizens of ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/01/25/c-s-peirce/ Apparently the higher the IQ the lower the risk of suicide. That’s the latest findings as published in The British Medical Journal after data analysed from a million Swedish men. There is a strong inverse association between intelligence test scores and suicide, said Finn Rasmussen, associate professor from Sweden’s Karolinska ... http://rustle.blogsome.com/2005/01/24/suicide-is-painless/