Phlegmatic

[Poll #1877567]

If you frequent twitter or you have a lot of facebook friends with a certain set of political beliefs, or you read the Huffington Post, then you may have seen this article in the last couple of days:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ramesh-patel/growth-cameron-austerity_b_2007552.html

The author, one Ramesh Patel lays bare the lies about the United Kingdom's budget deficit spread by George Osborne. What's more, Patel isn't some left-wing hack taking backhanders from Ed Balls's press office - he's a tory! "As a Conservative I have no pleasure in exposing David Cameron's deficit claims", he says.

What a story! I'm somewhat sceptical though...

( Read more )

I'm sure this is the start of a science fiction novel.

A very useful test to work out if it's worth reading someone's internet post about politics.

My cousin Rolf.

Year of the Compromised Password

Coffee, hula hoops (2), owl. (Photoshop? Maybe.)

Mapping the surnames of London. (Apparently it's not politically correct to point out that there sure are a lot of furriners in London, so I won't. No sirree.)

Ancient NAZI buddhist statue from space! (Sort of...)

Traveller has made it into urbandictionary.com.

Life on the other worlds of the solar system, as predicted in the 1930s and 40s.

What happens when you detonate a nuclear bomb underwater?

Oh, for f***'s sake, what do they teach them at these schools? (In this case Eton.)  This man clearly is not clever enough to be Mayor of London.

Space colony art from the 1970s.

Every awful political discussion you've ever witnessed on facebook. And livejournal.

The Astronomical Unit has been redefined.

A graphical representation of all Doctor Who baddies.

One of the all time greats of Formula 1 has died. Not a driver or a team owner or an engineer. A neurosurgeon.

Skyrim is very, very moddable. That's not always a good thing...

How mummy daleks persuade their children to go to sleep.

Annoyed by Apple fanboys who think their latest MacBook is ace and so much better than a PC? You need one of these.

25 really bad computer gaming setups.

Thirty years of the Commodore 64. (And what do today’s children think of it?)

Steampunk - A Modder's Guide.

Managing email realistically.

Anyone want to buy EA?

Getting online while on holiday. (The article isn’t actually that interesting. However, the flame war in the comments is quite funny. Seemingly there are two kinds of people in the world: those who can’t understand why someone would need or want to be online while they’re on holiday and those who can’t understand people who can’t understand why someone would need or want to be online while they’re on holiday.)

Age distribution of users of various social networks.

[Poll #1857582]

Following on from yesterday's poll...

You decide to shop around the next time you need some gardening doing, and this time you choose a different gardener, Adam, who does a good job. This gardener does not ask you to pay him cash-in-hand, but instead his company (Adam the Gardener Limited) sends you an invoice. Since the company is VAT-registered, the fee includes VAT at 20%.

Adam the Gardener Limited has one full-time employee (Adam himself) plus his wife (a rich lawyer) who works part-time for the company (without salary), and owns a small share of the business. Adam and his wife are the two directors of the company, and his wife also acts as company secretary. The company pays Adam a small salary (equal to his personal allowance for Income Tax and less than the threshold at which he and the company would have to pay National Insurance* payments). The company has lots of clients locally and is profitable. It pays Corporation Tax at the small companies rate, and pays most of its profits to its two shareholders in the form of dividends. Adam has no other income other than his salary and dividends from the company. His wife's main income is her law firm salary, which is enough to make her a higher (but not top) rate taxpayer.



* Note for non-UK readers: National Insurance is essentially an additional income tax on employees and a tax on jobs for employers.


[Poll #1856110]

Spanish wind turbines kill "6 million to 18 million birds and bats annually".

Doctor Who Van Gogh t-shirt, by Truffle Shuffle

Best Photo of the Month

The next Total War game will be Rome 2!

A Song of Ice and Fire and Minecraft

Lifeguard fired for helping drowing man

Evolution of the F1 Car 1950 - 2012 (really nice piece of animated graphic design)

Explaining the British government's economic policies and the current economic situation.

Neil Gaiman is working on a Sandman prequel.

Christopher Tolkien's first interview in something like forty years. He was a cantankerous old fart then. Do you think he's improved...?

The first photo ever uploaded to a website. (You mean you didn’t know that CERN has its own girl band? And what’s more, they’re pretty good. And now would totally be a good time for a commercial release for “Mr Higgs”.)

In response to the National Trust's campaign (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/press/press-releases/view-page/item804930/) which struck me as some nightmarish combination of Baden-Powell and Enid Blyton and altogether too goody-goody and outdoorsy (not to mention plain old-fashioned), here is my own "Fifty Things Children Should Do Before They Are Eleven and Three Quarters":

1. Stay inside all weekend playing even though (or in fact because) it's sunny outside.
2. Choose to play a video game simulation of a sport in preference to the real thing.
3. Eat nothing but sweets and chocolate for an entire day.
4. Choose your own clothes, regardless of what your parents want you to wear.
5. Have a pet cat.
6. Learn to play chess.
7. Learn to play poker.
8. Watch a violent or scary 15 or 18-rated film.
9. See all six Star Wars films.
10. Refuse to eat some food that you don't like that an adult wants you to eat.
11. Have a collection of something.
12. Learn to swim.
13. Save up to buy something with your own money.
14. Look up rude words in a dictionary and learn what they mean.
15. Read a novel that isn't aimed specifically at children or "young adults".
16. Know more about a particular subject than both of your parents.
17. Own an mp3 player and manage your own playlists.
18. Know how to operate a personal computer.
19. Complete a long computer game.
20. Have your own email address.
21. Make a shop assistant look stupid by knowing more about the thing he is trying to sell your parents than he does.
22. Embarrass your parents by asking a rude or politically incorrect question quite loud. Something like "Mummy, why is that man so fat?" or "Daddy, are those people 'chavs'?" would do.
23. Refuse to participate in some extra-curricular activity (e.g. playing a musical instrument, trying out for the school football team or joining the Brownies) that your parents want you to do either because a) they used to do it or b) they wanted to but never had the chance or c) they used to do it and were crap at it and are living their dreams through you.
24. Play an 18-rated video game.
23. Look at the night sky through a telescope.
24. Go to a good zoo.
25. Visit a science museum.
26. Visit a history museum or a castle.
27. Do nothing but watch television for an entire weekend.
28. Learn a magic trick.
29. Have a hobby that you do because you want to, not because adults want you to.
30. Take part in a mass water-fight.
31. Know how to use a digital camera, from taking photos to uploading, editing and sharing them.
32. Write a computer programme. Even something as basic (pun intended) as making "Sharon smells!!!" appear all over the screen counts.
33. Buy something online (even if an adult has to do the actual payment).
34. Be alone in the house for several hours at a time.
35. Be able to have an intelligent conversation with an adult.
36. Have a favourite football team.
37. Sell or swap something that you own and negotiate the price.
38. Make paper planes.
39. Build something huge, and of your own design, out of LEGO.
40. Buy a member of your family a birthday or Christmas present with your own money that they really like and weren't expecting.
41. Be really, really bad at something but laugh it off.
42. Make up your own mind about the existence of gods, ghosts, fairies and other superstitions regardless of what your parents tell you to believe.
43. Conduct an experiment of your own design.
44. Create your own game.
45. Make some money of your own.
46. Play with your food.
47. Have a nickname and give your friends nicknames.
48. Own a bike (or other personal transport) and be able to ride it to see your friends.
49. Know how to handle yourself in a fight.
50. Know what kind of clothes make you look good and what kind make you look like a weirdo that nobody will want to be friends with.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9295997/BBC-cancels-Dirk-Gently-drama.html

OK, this isn't quite on the Firefly level of infuriating cancellations, but it's still pretty annoying. Apparently ratings were low. Well what do you expect if you tuck something away on BBC f***ing Four with no publicity? This should have been a mainstream comedy drama. The main three actors were all recognisable to a mainstream audience, it's based on a couple of books written by one of this country's most enduringly popular authors and it's (sort of) a detective series, for Arkleseizure's sake! It should have been on BBC2 if not BBC1. Instead, it was tucked out of the way alongside the likes of 'Michael Portillo's Great British Railway Journeys'* and 'Canal Walks with Julia Bradbury'. In a hundred channel environment, BBC4 is not the first place to look for light entertainment / comedy drama.



* This is a real programme. It sounds like a joke programme that a desperate Alan Partridge would come up with to pitch to BBC execs, only for them to shake their heads sadly. To be fair though, tonight's episode takes the former Defence Secretary to Wrexham, so I will watch it.