Phlegmatic

You don't need this laptop.

Trying to understand the EU's actions against Apple and the Republic of Ireland.

It's not shocking that professional employers judge applicants for client-facing roles partly on their appearance and their dress. What is shocking is that not only do state schools not teach this stuff, they sometimes don’t like it when employers try to do it instead.

Useful smartphone test. When I last bought a smartphone, I read lots of reviews, but one question that was never asked was “How good is it at making and receiving calls?”, that is “How good is it at actually being a phone”"?”

According to the latest Rowntree Foundation definition, someone in the top 0.32% of global incomes is now "in poverty". Muppets.

British WW2 propaganda posters.

Think you're good at Lego building? This guy is better.

If you were an American games company raising funds on Kickstarter for a new family card game "that combines speed, hilarious gestures, and your silly side for 2-6 players, ages 6+", and you weren't that familiar with politically incorrect British playground slang, what's the worst name you could come up with...?

"Nobody ever got sacked for buying IBM" …but maybe in this case, someone should have been.

When I was an auditor, this sort of clever statistical analysis was called a logic check. This is a good logic check on why American police might treat certain groups differently. (Hat tip to ford_prefect42.)

Archaeological evidence of a major bronze age battle in northern Germany c.1250 BC.

Open plan offices are bad. There are two people in my workplace. I’m married to the other one. And we work in different rooms. Imagine how bad it is to work right next to people you don’t even like…

Ranking British universities for free speech.

If you needed body armour, why wouldn't you want it to look like Boba Fett's?

Male competitive athlete? Little chance of winning an Olympic medal? Here's what you need to do.

This is the best headline of 2016 so far. (I take no responsibility for any distress caused by your own imagination after reading this. Those mental images are all yours.)

Useful discussion on minimum wage laws. (Thank you ford_prefect42)

John Cleese on political correctness.

Denmark is not a socialist utopia.

Fair Trade coffee. Good idea? Let's ask some economists.

Stock Photo University

Finding Boshek - The Man Who Could Have Gone to Alderaan

Nice little collection of AVRO Vulcan photographs.

Sajid Javid is probably a better politician than standup comedian, but nevertheless this is quite funny.

Wearing skirts is considered to be indecent in Morocco...

...and in Plymstock, Devon.

Strange tales from the bad old days of search engine optimisation.

How much did the coalition government manage to reduce the welfare bill by?

"The next time you see a mob gibbering and shrieking and demanding someone's dismissal, don't hunker down. Speak up. Someone has to, for Heaven's sake."

And this is the person behind the lynching. "A very flawed accuser."

Who can stop the wind turbines?

Uncle Bryn on Gareth Bale.

"NHS 111 to blame for rise in A&E attendances is a really dreadful explanation for something that did, in fact, not happen". (Thankyou Steer for a good piece of analysis.)

Ed Miliband thinks that an Italian who runs an American company and lives in Monaco should pay "his (British) taxes". This is a Labour policy I can get behind – get foreigners with no connection to the UK to pay all our taxes. Brilliant. I would totally vote for this policy. (When you think about it, it’s pretty much the policy that successive Greek governments have adopted for years…)

The German government uses Battlestar Galactica LARP (on an actual warship) to train diplomats.

Apparently women aren't rational. (This is the latest in a long line of what I like to call ‘pseudo-economics’ books that litter the shelves of high street bookshops. Just as you find history shelves full of books about secret societies and how the freemasons are looking after the Holy Grail until the aliens land, you will find books in the ‘Economics’ section written by the sort of people who think Adam Smith is a member of One Direction. Pfft.)

Hmm. We've been thinking we could do with a projector for the business...

Schoolboy suspended for saying he could make classmate 'disappear' with the One Ring. Actually, the funniest thing about this story is that there is a town in Texas called ‘Kermit’. *

The To Kill a Mockingbird sort-of-sequel. Should we be suspicious? Yes. No. Yes.

Rotherham Council, the council that allowed 1,400 children to be gang-raped and sexually abused by muslims, is to be taken over by central government until elections can be held.

Is Rotherham the tip of the iceberg? "How much does the Labour Party know about the stench of corruption, sexual malfeasance, public maladministration and greed, incompetence and pro-Asian bigotry emanating from Labour's heartlands?"

Or is the whole Rotherham problem simply a case of a "rotten borough"?

Top 10 'Things that Ed Balls Has Forgotten'.

"How Sci-Fi's Most Prestigious Awards Became A Political Battleground"

Bryan Henderson doesn't like the phrase "comprised of".

"Big accountancy firm accused of saving people money" I particularly love the phrase “in blatant accordance with the law”.

Adding up the wealth of the poor - the meme that refuses to die.

The World's Poorest Man.

The Information Commissioner's Office is the public body that enforces privacy and electronic communication regulations. Guess what they forgot to renew.

Random Guardian comment generator.

Today is the 40th Anniversary of Margaret Thatcher becoming leader of the Conservative Party. The Labour Party has never had a female leader, but it clearly knows how to attract female voters.

* Has anyone else read ‘A World of Ice and Fire’? Lovecraft references I can take, but Sesame Street…?

Young people lack workplace skills, say British Chambers of Commerce. Schools don’t do enough to engage with the business community, in my opinion. Many are only interested in academic success, sport, music and drama, and think about employability skills once a year if that. So this survey comes as no surprise to me.

This is exactly the sort of thing they should be teaching in schools.

'France is finished', says John Lewis MD.

Come on, it's long overdue. Surely there should be a knighthood for Jeremy Clarkson.

The speech that Mrs Thatcher cancelled after the Brighton bombing. The language seems quite Tolkienian- ‘dark shadow’ etc, only she’s talking about union thuggery and Labour corruption, not orcish thuggery and Sauronic corruption.

Odd images from Google Earth.

Psychological research? Reach for the Monster Manual! (Incidentally, you can buy the new 5th edition Monster Manual for £29.99 from The Shop on the Borderlands...)

This BBC Cornwall news story is nowhere near as exciting as its headline suggests.

A new series of The Clangers!

Paul Krugman on Scottish independence. (And it's nice to see that even neo-Keynesians have come around to my way of thinking on the Euro.)

Prices, Paul Krugman, and Consistency

This is why poor kids don't grow up to be interior designers.

Is Apple quietly killing off its best product?

Why US forests are fuelling Europe.

Logic and theology.

Five ways that films get gunfights wrong.

Interesting account of 9/11 as it happened, as seen by White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.

Universities must convert widening access into graduate jobs. I see that the university at which I will be lecturing is the second best in the country at promoting social mobility while the one I studied at is the second worst.

This is why all those Scottish independence campaigners were protesting outside BBC Scotland.

The best moments from Friends, animated as 8-bit style GIFs.

Why don't children want to learn the violin? (Do they have to ask the question? If you can play the guitar, you are cool. Also, a highly paid career is open to you. If you can play the violin, you probably look uncool and violinist salaries are terrible. I used to audit one of the world’s great orchestras, and except for their superstar conductor, ALL of the musicians’ salaries were really low. Supermarket checkout girl low.)

Who killed lard?

What would the political map of Europe look like if all the nationalist parties got their way?

Today is the 75th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.

This...this is a Lego Star Destroyer.

Got decent broadband? Looking for a way to show it off? How about live streaming HD video from the International Fricking Space Station?

Was dinosaur blood "not too hot, not too cold"?

This is sad. I wonder if Satao was descended from the elephant in Mike Resnick’s SF novel ‘Ivory’. (Incidentally, I strongly recommend that book.)

Welsh kids are really bad at getting into Oxford and Cambridge. (Is the appropriate response to this to feel smug at having done so?)

Remember my LJ post discussing whether you had to agree with an author's views to like their work? Any Marion Zimmer Bradley fans here...?

"The only serious black mark against the NHS was its poor record on keeping people alive." Oh, that's ok then.

I love this article about France midfielder Paul Pogba playing Football Manager on the plane.

O Fortuna Misheard Lyrics

Football's rudest names. One day in Football Manager, I'm going to include the Peruvian leagues, just so that I can manage Deportivo Wanka.

Noddy Holder given the Freedom of Walsall. I've been to Walsall. I think I'd just want to be free to leave.

World of Warcraft player gets to level 90 without picking a side. That's a lot of herb-picking.

PC only game being developed by some ex-Team Ico staff. That's interesting...

Gamechanger - The Virtual Tabletop Gaming Surface.

Black-Footed Cat kittens. I want hybrid pets!

Ten Myths About Britain's Relationship With The EU

More than half of UK households take more in benefits and services than they contribute in tax.

Which UK political party's "Friends of Palestine" group linked to an article saying "no Brit should consider voting Labour as it is run by a Zionist Jew...the time is ripe to cleanse British public life of Zionists and Jerusalemites"? The BNP? No. Respect? No…

Was the Post Office sold off too cheaply, and if so could anyone have known?

How to get fast internet access if you live in a small hut in Svalbard.

Pseudoscientific wank from the pages of audiophile magazines.

New York Public Library, 20,000 historic maps for free and Call of Cthulhu.

This is a nicer Silmarillion than any copy you own.

Celebrities that Look Like Mattresses

Why Hasn't Westeros Had an Industrial Revolution?

Game of Thrones TV series renewed for at least two more seasons.

Dunk & Egg news.

What impact would Scottish independence have on the national debt of the rest of the UK?

What did Einstein refer to as "the eighth wonder of the world"?

Sir Chris Hoy wants to drive Le Mans 24 Hours

Is the Co-Op ungovernable or is it simply run by incompetents?

How far down is the missing airliner likely to be?

Remembering when everyone hated Windows XP.

If Google was a Guy, part 1.

If Google was a Guy, part 2.

This is why basic economics should be taught to every child.

1. Only the poorest 13% (approximately - eligibility is based on whether parents receive certain welfare state benefits) of children in state education are eligible for free school meals. Does this mean that social mobility for the remaining 87% doesn't matter? Clearly, some of those 87% are already at the top of the tree, but in the middle are very large numbers of pupils from what politicians would call "ordinary" working class or middle class backgrounds. Those pupils should also have the opportunity of social mobility in a true meritocracy.


2. In order to survive this long, a grammar school has probably avoided being subject to rule by a left-wing council (because left-wing councils tend to close them down on ideological grounds). Those left-wing councils tend not to be elected in affluent, middle-class areas - so of course they're "stuffed full of middle-class kids". I can give a local counter-argument to this. Devonport is the part of Plymouth around the naval base - it's poor, but not especially left-wing and still has a boys' grammar school and a girls' grammar school. I've spent a lot of time in both because of the "You're Hired!" competition, and each has lots of kids from obviously less well off backgrounds.


3. Sir Michael's whole argument that grammar schools do not promote social mobility is somewhat weakened by his own background. Today he's one of the elite quangocrats who run the country and a knight of the realm. He grew up the son of a London postman. And he went to a state grammar school.