Every time I do a software release, no matter how minor, even if I just change one word, in French, to another French word, someone will send me mail or post on a forum, "Thanks, this release seems a lot faster!"
[Via ranchero.com]
The latest Coverville podcast was The Kate Bush Cover Story. IMHO, the highlight was Mike Scott & The Waterboys' cover of Why Should I Love You?1
I suspect that Birmingham City Council will soon be changing the default settings on their web content filter:
The authority's Bluecoat Software computer system allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism". [Emphasis added]
If the decision to block atheist sites and those devoted to non-'mainstream' religions turns out to be a result of a deliberate policy decision by some middle-ranking manager with an agenda then that individual should be making an appointment at their local Jobcentre any day now.
I wouldn't be surprised if this 'ban' turned out to be a consequence of the IT department accepting a bunch of default settings on their shiny new software package. Not that this is an acceptable situation – if you're going to buy a software package, you should make sure it's doing what you want it to, which may not be what the makers anticipated when setting the defaults – but it's an easy trap to fall into.
As it happens, I was looking at the National Secular Society's site at the weekend. It's good to see them taking the lead in this case; I may just throw a donation their way.
[Via Qwghlm]
Apparently America's late night humourists are having a hard time finding jokes to tell about Barack Obama:
"We're carrion birds," said Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show on the Comedy Central channel. "We're sitting up there saying 'Does he seem weak? Is he dehydrated yet? Let's attack.' "
Jason Wilson brings tales from The Lifestyle Beat:
Not too long ago, I was at a party with a number of people who have successful careers in lifestyle journalism. I was chatting with a beautiful, sexy friend who writes for a magazine that covers luxury spa vacations. She got that job, in part, because she wrote a wonderful travel book about bathing culture which one critic claimed "bred a new publishing hybrid, the beauty-travel memoir, Bruce Chatwin by way of Allure magazine."
As we chatted, I shared some good news with her: I had just been hired to write a newspaper column about spirits and cocktails.
"You should really meet my friend," he told me. "He's the perfume critic at the Times."
"Really?" I said. "Let me just see if I'm hearing this correctly. The luxury spa columnist would like the spirits columnist to meet the perfume columnist."
"Yes," she said, with a beautiful, sexy smile.
"Wait," I said. "Did you just hear that?"
"What?"
"Oh, nothing," I said. "I just thought for a second that I heard the sound of the Apocalypse happening." [...]
(See also Monsters of Whodom, Doctor's Boys, Bad Wolf Byebye and Doctor Who – Season 3, all by mimi-na.)
[Via Harry, commenting at The Life and Opinions of Andrew Rilstone]
Tarantino's Mind – a tall tale, or the key to the oeuvre of the new Cecil B DeMille?1
[Via Daring Fireball]
I had no idea The Process of designing a stop sign could be so excruciating. (And funny.)
[Via kottke.org]
The Incredible Hulk, abridged:
INT. CULVER UNIVERSITY – VIRGINIA
EDWARD NORTON tries to get some records from his old computer and runs into LIV TYLER.
EDWARD NORTON
Liv! I need you to help me, when I get angry I turn into The Hulk.LIV TYLER
Didn’t we just have a Hulk movie like five years ago? Does Hollywood get mulligans or something? Will they keep remaking this shit every five years until one of them doesn’t suck?EDWARD NORTON
I guess we’ll know in five years.
Iain [M] Banks on story ideas that may never come to fruition:
Q: Could you write a science-fiction novel without wars and violence?
Iain Banks: Good grief yes. I've toyed with the idea of writing a Shakespearean – okay, a sub-Shakespearean – comedy set in the Culture where some feckless / rather dizzy / profoundly spoilt human characters suffer a series of misunderstandings (with hilarious results), attended by jaded and long-suffering drones. It's just I'm kind of a sucker for the unlimited special effects budget written SF hands a writer – and big explosions (I blame Gerry Anderson).
Again, though, it'd be a narrow idea-window for me to hit; a story that needed to be SF, but didn't need all the pyrotechno-gizmology I've become so fond of. Any ideas I've ever had in this direction, when sternly asked the question "Couldn't you do almost exactly the same story set in our reality, present or past?" tend to look pretty shifty, break eye contact and start drawing doodles in the dust at their feet while starting to whistle.
Definitely possible though.
[Via Malaclyps]
Teri Garr gave a terrific interview for The A.V. Club's Random Roles feature:
[Re After Hours...]
AVC: What goes into auditioning for Martin Scorsese?
TG: Well, I wrote about it in my book, which you obviously haven't read. I had lunch with him every day for a week at his loft, and I saw that he was very, very into movies. He had lots of posters and films around. So I liked him, because I like movies too. He was also very respectful of actors, because of Bobby D [Robert De Niro], and any time you were on the set he'd go [to the crew], "You can't talk to the actors! Can't touch them! Don't talk to them!" Like, what are we? Crabs or something?
Never, ever annoy a mantis shrimp:
Mantis shrimps are aggressive relatives of crabs and lobsters and prey upon other animals by crippling them with devastating jabs. Their secret weapons are a pair of hinged arms folded away under their head, which they can unfurl at incredible speeds.
The 'spearer' species have arms ending in a fiendish barbed spike that they use to impale soft-bodied prey like fish. But the larger 'smasher' species have arms ending in heavy clubs, and use them to deliver blows with the same force as a rifle bullet.
[...]
With each punch, the club’s edge travels at about 50 mph
Wait, there's more…
[Each...] of the smasher's strikes produced small flashes of light upon impact. They are emitted because the club moves so quickly that it lowers the pressure of the water in front of it, causing it to boil.
[Via MemeMachineGo!]
To say that the town of Baarle-Hertog is in Belgium is not entirely accurate:
Baarle-Hertog is noted for its complicated borders with Baarle-Nassau in the Netherlands. In total it consists of 24 separate pieces of land. Apart from the main piece (called Zondereigen) located north of the Belgian town of Merksplas, there are twenty Belgian exclaves in the Netherlands and three other pieces on the Dutch-Belgian border. There are also seven Dutch exclaves within the Belgian exclaves. Six of them are located in the largest one and a seventh in the second-largest one. An eighth Dutch exclave lies in Zondereigen.
The border is so complicated that there are some houses that are divided between the two countries. There was a time when according to Dutch laws restaurants had to close earlier. For some restaurants on the border it meant that the clients simply had to change their tables to the Belgian side.
Simon Kuper reckons that "stupidity is part of the football business":
As football's transfer market cranks back into action, one remembers the sad words of the English striker Luther Blissett. Milan bought Blissett from Watford in 1983, reputedly by mistake after confusing him with another black player. His sole, unhappy year in Italy gave football one of its greatest quotes. "No matter how much money you have here," Blissett lamented, "you can't seem to get Rice Krispies."
There will be many more Blissetts this summer. Clubs still sign foreign players and tell them: "Here's a plane ticket, come over, and play brilliantly from day one." The player fails to adjust to the new country, underperforms, and his transfer fee of millions is wasted. This happens because football clubs are incompetent. Just as oil is part of the oil business, stupidity is part of the football business. [...]
[Via Pitch Invasion]
