devolute.net

Hurrah! A full day of selective quoting from his many speeches, taking care not to mention anything he said about stopping poverty, the US class system or his anti-war stance. The picture of the day can be found here.

Sometimes it feels nice to rant against blatant stupidity and get the support of my peers (read: fellow redditors). I’m happy to be upmodded when it’s something I care about. Sad? Well, maybe. But in this case; when it involves media-scaremongering that makes people terrified of their own neighbourhoods (specially when it’s my neighbourhood), I’ll happily take those votes.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler campaigned for power under one of the most ridiculous manifestos of all time. Despite the fact that his conspiracy theories regarding the Jews were patently ridiculous, the student population found him irresistable with his ridiculous hair and laughable mustache. When Otto Krinkhoven, one of the fashoinistas of the time, was asked who he was voting for, he drily replied; “Hitler’s got my backing”. The Nazi party was born, largely due to the written medium’s failure to convey sarcasm.

The landslide victory Hitler recieved was largely due to the German student population’s heroic capacity to invest in a jape; so was the great Night Of Ironic Broken Glass, as all over the country, uniformed goons broke into Jews’ houses and places of work. This was hilarious at the time, since they were all so obviously not racists. It was trumped only as the axis forces fell to allied troops, giggling at how Crazy they all were.

As the Allies drove into Berlin, they were greeted by public derision, as the Germans proclaimed “Herauf Sie Kerle, können nicht erleichtern Sie es sehen sind alle ein Witz?” (”Lighten up you guys, can’t you see it’s all a joke?”).

To this day, it remains an offence in Germany to deny the holocaust, or to tell a joke. Lest we may forget. This unpublishable history lesson was brought to you by Rich’s “Stop voting for Jeremy Clarkson or you’re worse than Hitler” campaign. Yes, he knows he’s a hypocrite.

Clarkson shown in picture may be different to that in text. We can be ironic too.

I know from personal experience that winding up racists can be pretty good sport. However, this takes it to the next level. White Power? White Flour! A textbook example of countering ridiculousness with more ridiculousness. A hoard of KKK’ers take on regiment of clowns in Knoxville, USA [indymedia.org]. I always did think humour was the best weapon.

Was awoken up this morning by a police officer knocking on my door. He told me there had been “an incident” and wondering if I’d seen anything. As I wasn’t dressed and was rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, he figured pretty quickly I hadn’t. Only once I’d got myself sorted and ready to go to work did I discover that the road outside our house was cut off by blue police tape that I had to work my way through to get to work. I figure I was technically in a crime scene!

Apparently a bank-van had been held up by armed men as it refilled a near-by cash machine. I don’t think anyone was hurt, but they made off with a hell-o-a-lotta cash. South Road in Sheffield does seem to be attracting an inordinate amount of police attention recently. I don’t know why, maybe because it’s close enough to the city centre to have targets of value, but far enough from the city centre to be free from CCTV etc. I’m only speculating here. I have absolutely no idea.

The constant rain and subsequent flooding yesterday was pretty amazing. I’m lucky that I live and work on some of Sheffield’s higher ground, so I wasn’t personally effected. However at work we could watch the citys traffic cameras online. Roads either became blocked with traffic, closed off, flooded or in some cases blocked with abandoned cars and flooded. We saw industrial buildings to the North of the town catch fire and Sheffield Forgemasters (who coincidently, I’ve helped develop a website for) were pretty much submerged. I’m now quite familiar with Sheffield and it was eerie to watch recognisable places and structures suddenly acquire their own moats in real time. The local web forum was full of people posting pictures of their homes and offices partially submerged and their cars floating. The roads, bridges and the station is still a mess.

For me, it was also interesting to see how locals made pretty much immediate use of web forums, imageshack pictures, blogs and youtube posts to spread their, sometimes quite scarey, stories.  All in all, a case-in-point example of a so-called Media 2.0 ‘hard news’ day.

I’ve been listening open-mouthed as Frank openly mocks and stereotypes most of my friends on the radio. God, now I know what it’s like being a black muslim lesbian. Frank’s one of those two faced people who will lie to your face, and when he’s found out will say no, okay, I’ll tell you the truth now. And when he’s got your trust he’ll lie to you again, and piss in your mouth. Frank is a government anti-drugs information campaign, and my much-maligned friends are pot smokers.

The Talk To Frank campaign has been running for several years now, and has stepped from a friendly helpline service to an all-out televisual propaganda festival. From the first, Frank’s been all about matey advice and informed decisions. He’s also been about misinformation and eroding the last remnants of trust the perpetually disgruntled youth have in the British government. Frank doesn’t give a shit, he was hired to scare the crap out of kids TODAY, what happens tomorrow when they find out he’s been feeding them a crock is someone else’s problem.

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There’s a lot of talk in the news today (even in grown up papers) about racist taunts being used against Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty in this years ‘Celebrity’ Big Brother. This isn’t especially surprising and is a result of the following two factors: Firstly, Shetty is better spoken than the rest of the screeching banshees that make up the house, she’s blessed with good looks, is wealthier and comes across as reasonably intelligent. Naturally, some jealousy has set in. Secondly; The show is composed mainly of self-obsessed, not especially bright and very, very bored people. What should we expect when they are living alongside someone from another country? These aren’t going to be highly-tolerant Grauniad-reading libertarians, desperate to learn about another land and a different culture are they? No. They’re type A thick ignoramuses making snide childish remarks. Big surprise.

However, what’s really saddening about this is not how it reflects on society (seriously; who gives a damn about Big Brother contestants?), or on the media or anything else. What’s really sad is that MPs have seen fit to make statements about it. This includes Gordon Brown. It’s all a little ‘old men trying to get down with the kids’, like watching grandad trying to skateboard. Why do they care? Well, a more sinister view might be that it follows what Chomsky-types may suggest: Bullshit like this is fielded so that the real stuff, the stuff that matters, is drowned out by this petty unimportant crap. Remember; these are the leaders of our country! We’re embroiled in wars that aren’t going especially well right now, surely they’ve got something more important to talk about? Or do they think we should worry about more important stuff like the words of a couple of knuckle-dragging non-entities on some silly tv show?

I’ve taken to watching the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, which follows it every night. To those who know me this won’t come as a surprise; I am a bit of a political whinge-bag and satire is always very much what’s for dinner. However, TDS (as I’m now going to call The Daily Show) is very American and I’m not. Although you can watch it in the UK on More4, this is a somewhat watered-down edition for us Europeans. So I’m forced to BitTorrent it. I’ve started watching for two reasons: Firstly; I’m unemployed and apart from job-seeking and the odd little project, I’m not exactly super-busy (more on this in a later blog post, though). Secondly; It’s brilliant TV. Not only are these shows full of bad puns and wonderfully delivered swipes at the powers that be, but it’s also pretty educational. It’s all delivered from a centralist / media-critical point of view, but personally I don’t have a problem with that. The past weeks have featured an insightful interview with the Pakistani president and the moment Fox News labelled disgraced Republican creepy-congressman Mark Foley as a Democrat.

It’s quite worrying viewing sometimes but host Jon Stewart gives us Europeans a little insight into perhaps why things are the way they are in the US (and hence Iraq too I suppose). It’s reassuring to hear that it’s not just me who finds the content quite educational, as this Indiana University study claims, despite being ‘fake news’ it’s just as real as the ‘real news’ channels. Whether this is down to excellent TDS reporting, or a poor show from the other news networks, I’m not sure. I’ll hazard a guess and say it’s a bit of both. I heartily recommend my fellow ‘Eurofags’ to download via BitTorrent, tune in via More4, or at least head to YouTube and grab some clips.

DHS favourite; the colour-coded terror alert system is an easy target for parody. This Wired article pretty much hits the nail on the head (yes, Wired again. Sorry). Statistically, a rather more severe threat than terrorism to your average American is ‘Accidental poisoning’. I’d suggest that steps are taken to make those toilet duck bottles look a little less alluring before citizens rights are trod upon any further. Also at a rather more elevated level is death by the flu. Coincidentally this is exactly how I feel it’s going to end at the moment *sneezes*.

Whilst I’m letting others take a stab at my pet hates for me, I think MySpace’s ‘victory’ in winning 1st place in PC World 25 Worst Websites list is a great achievement for News Corp. Spam, spyware, paedo-sensationalism, the perpetual “THNX FOR TEH ADD”, poor accessiblity standards compliance and the sort of wit not seen since ‘Noels House Party’ stopped brodcasting, means that MySpace pretty much sums all that is bad about the internet in one domain.

A pal showed me this video which was for meant for internal Microsoft UK employees featuring Ricky Gervais in his role as David Brent (from the Office, obviously). This being the internet of course, it didn’t stay internal. I see Gervais as a somewhat modern-day Alf Garnet, but he can still be pretty damn funny in his ‘worst boss in the world’ guise. I post this mainly for the probable delight of regular reader Rami, who is not only an ardent Gervais fan but also seems familiar with the world of ‘management speak‘ and societys attitudes towards… well, geeks.

In other news; I changed hosts. Despite some teething problems, especially on pages which co-inhabit this domain, everythings good and the page should be a lot faster than my old one. This is not only due to me applying greater intelligence in remaking the site, but also because this site resides in the rather swish London docklands. Bravo!

I can do politics too, damnit.
On the border between Chile and Argentina lies the Valle de San Felix, and three glaciers supplying essential water to the local farmers; in fact, some of the purest in chile, in case you’re a Volvic wanker. Crucially, they also lie between the Barrick Gold Corporation and a massive gold vein.

Barrick proposes to dig two immense holes in the glaciers, one for drilling and one for landfill. The drilling won’t just destroy the glaciers, the extraction will permanently contaminate the waters with cyanide and sulphuric acid. All of the gold and silver will leave the already impoverished region, feeding instead the massive multinational - whose members include George Bush Sr. if you need an extra push to hate them. It’s true that the mines will bring jobs to the area, but employment is already high in the farming community that the mine will destroy. After the seventeen years - far less than one generation - of proposed drilling are over, Barrick will leave the area contaminated, unusable and unemployed. It’s as close to raping an entire community as you’re ever likely to get outside one of Ian’s Japanese Specialist Videos.

I know, appeals are made to everyone reading this blog every day, and it’s nothing that’s really ever going to affect you. The fact is, there’s very little you can do directly to affect IT. They don’t want your money, or your time. Petitions, especially the email variety, while well-meaning are counterproductive. Just knowing about it helps, and letting the real movers KNOW you know. If you’re interested and want to know more about the situation, visit the official campaign site, MiningWatch for the impartial skinny, see Barrick’s very carefully worded response to the campaign, and Snopes if you think my pants are on fire.

This is the Whining Liberal, Purveyor of Justice, signing off. And I promise the next one’ll be funny.

I try not to slag off one political party, partially because in many ways they’re all as rotten as each other. However one guy in particular is frankly taking the piss. He’s at the head of a party with disappointing recent performance. A party who for so long used to run the country but which now takes such a beating that it’s embarrassing. This man is David Cameron. He’s like a small child, running around his mothers legs, making as big a noise as possible in a desperate attempt to get attention and oh boy, does he try hard. We’ve had jaunts to Norwegian glaciers to highlight the problem of global warming, whilst quietly hoping that no one mentions how much pollution that wasteful journey caused. He’s claimed the KGB tried to recruit him (doubtful) and of course there are the famous pictures of him cycling to work. Again, he was probably hoping that no one would notice the Lexus following his bike all the way carrying his briefcase. It’s hypocritical and illogical behaviour, but I’d suggest that more importantly it’s behaviour designed to fool the British public. What got me recently is todays claim that Radio 1 glorifies knife crime. “Radio 1 glorifies bloody awful music”, “Radio 1 glorifies fat, unfunny DJs” sure, they’re headlines I can understand, but knife crime? It’s just another Cameron cry for middle-class-middle-england attention. Claiming 2 hours of weekly hip-hop programming contributes to violence on our streets isn’t courageous statesmanship, it’s arrogance. I’m pretty sure Cameron knows this, but as long as he gets the attention he so desperately cries for… it’s pathetic really.

There we go, that’s a good rant to break the recent blog silence!

I was sitting at home last night having a bit of a late-night design session for a new website and my window is wide open, as it’s a beautiful warm night. Suddenly there’s a massive bang and my curtains shook! I actually jumped (such an edgy person don’t ya know). A friend (who also lives in Hull) immediately sent me a “Did you hear that thunder” MSN message. Due to the fact I was; a - tired and b - a dumbass, I genuinley thought it was thunder. I did, however joke that it sounded like someone had fired a howitzer. I woke up this morning to find this news. There was a gas explosion in a Kebab shop which explains the volume of the ‘bang’; I live just over 2km away. The Fire brigade are still digging at the scene and unfortunately they’ve found one body. In an effort to look for small mercys, It could of been a lot worse if it had been one of the Kebab shops to the East of the university, as they are always packed with students on a Wednesday night. Still, fingers crossed the Fire Brigade find that it was a quiet night for that particular shop and this accident does not become anymore tragic.

> BBC News article on gas explosion