Coir and Libertas replaced with a small Python script

So, well, I couldn't resist. Follow Secrets of Lisbon here!

Prepare to meet your avian doom!

The failure of the Lisbon Treaty would delay EU expansion. Turkey joining the EU in the next decade is kinda-sorta possible. Big deal, says you. What's the worst that could happen?

Well, the lovely leaflet-senders at euinfo.ie will tell you what's the worst that could happen. You see, it is natural to assume that Turkey is peopled by, well, people. Didn't we go there to kill them in the Crusades, or something? So, if they join, some of them might come to work here. But that would be no big deal, surely? We have, after all, had immigration before without the sky falling. Ah, yes. Yes, we did. But that was immigration by people, and the Turks ARE NOT PEOPLE...

They are enormous, sentient turkeys, who will come here to EAT OUR FARMERS! They are also, judging by the medal, Heroes of the Soviet Union, which doesn't help any.

The stakes have risen. No longer is it just about mandatory abortions, lowering of the minimum wage to three cents and conscription into Sarkozy's Euro-Army, now we can expect to be pecked to death.

Or, you know, maybe euinfo.ie (actually the UK Independence Party, a bunch of right-wing climate deniers with links to Traditional Unionist Voice, an unpleasant bigotry-oriented Northern Irish party) are just a bunch of filthy racists.

Here's the Labour Party on whether any of this revolting leaflet is actually non-made-up.

Funnily enough, the leaflet came with an ad from an Post inset. Please, an Post, don't advertise in offensive nonsense leaflets from the UK Independence Party.

Weird advertising

The Templeton Prize is given out by the controversial Templeton Foundation, the people who paid for most of that intercessionary prayer study that Dawkins makes fun on.

I bet the Nobel committee doesn't have to place ads on BBC articles about Roman Polanski.

Dawkins on said prize:

"a very large sum of money given...usually to a scientist who is prepared to say something nice about religion."

Libertas, meet Godwin's Law

Before we begin, a pop quiz. I will give you three quotations, and the images of three famous leaders. Your job is to match the oration to the overlord.

Quote the first:
[Nation] needs to reaffirm its commitment to freedom, family, faith....

Quote the second:
[Nation] regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.

Quote the third:
...And Wales shall be given over entirely to the growing of potatoes!

Good. Now that that's done, onto the main subject.

Perhaps tiring of the whole arguing about points which might even be factual thing, Libertas appears to have decided to just insinuate that the EU is Hitler or something. That kid looks so scared because Sarkozy is about to eat her.

Funnily enough, at about the same time, the American right has apparently decided that the best thing to do about Obama would be, rather than engage him in intelligent debate ("Health care is bad because of death panels!"), just call him a Muslim Communist Hitler. I mean, how much more watered-down can references to Hitler get?

Not only is it offensive to those who were actually caught up in World War 2 and the Holocaust; it's a bit unfair on the man himself. He has a reputation to maintain! Imagine the scene; God and Hitler are lying around the living room in heaven (if you doubt that Hitler could get into heaven, well, just read the Old Testament), comparing body counts. Hitler has just conceded that while he may have managed to kill the most Semites (if only due to pre-classical population constraints), God has him beat on homosexuals, native Americans and unicorns. They switch on Fox News, to a scene of a Teabagger rally; tens of thousands of fat people waving signs about Obama being a Satanic Hitler. Hitler quickly changes the channel to Sky News, hoping for a good natural disaster, but instead hears that the EU is a Hitler. God laughs derisively; health care and energy-efficient lightbulbs make one a Hitler these days! and compares Adolf to his hippy son. As God switches to the weather forecast to find a good spot for a hurricane, Hitler sits down to write to his lawyer...

Anyway, my point is, the whole thing is just silly. Stop it, Libertas. And you too, Coir, or the gay mafia will come and get you.

Chrome, now for Internet Explorer, and the family lives of multinationals

Google, presumably frustrated by terrible old Internet Explorer, which, even in its latest version, is rather slow, has difficulties with the latest CSS, and doesn't even pretend to support most of HTML5, is releasing an IE plugin (for 6, 7 and 8) which embeds the Chrome rendering engine in IE for websites that ask for it.

Apparently, this has been prompted largely by Google Wave, which is heavily dependent on decent browser speed and modern features; the assumption is that while IE users may be unwilling to switch to a whole new browser, they may be quite happy to install a plugin to let them use a site that asks for it, especially a site from a large, trusted operator like Google.

This is very clever on Google's part, and I can see it working out quite well; I really do hope that it catches on.

It strikes me, though, at this point rather weird that Microsoft is still using their own rendering engine. They could shift to Webkit, as used by Safari and Chrome, with rather little work, offering a Trident (their current renderer) compatibility mode for old IE6 content (though, currently, IE8 does not offer IE6 compatibility; it does offer IE7 compatibility). Webkit is under a liberal open-source license and wouldn't force them to open up IE itself, or anything like that. Potential gains are even greater on the mobile, where, even in the latest not-quite-out-yet version (IE Mobile 6.5; used in modified form on Zune HD and some HTC phones) the rendering engine is that from IE6. Just about all non-Microsoft smartphones now use Webkit, which is faster and works with more websites.

I suppose it would be a minor blow to their pride, but realistically, the average user at worst would not care and at best would be happy that websites were faster and had fancy HTML5 features.

However, since they show no signs of doing this and IE9 is still up in the air and does not sound terribly promising, Google's approach seems to make a lot of sense. I wonder will they try to block it somehow? That could have an interesting outcome; if nothing else it would raise serious issues of favouritism towards Adobe.

Microsoft is predictably outraged:

This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take.

Now, I'm not an expert on the private lives of corporations, but do they strictly speaking have friends and families? Is IBM the great-aunt who signed over the house to Microsoft, then got packed off to the nursing home? Is Apple the estranged, resented cousin? Are the EU court system's attempts to split off IE from Windows analogous to those of a concerned social worker, removing the children from the unsuitable parent? Or is it just speaking on behalf of every one of its employees? Peculiar, whatever way you look at it.

Pravda branch of the BBC Office of Weird Comparisons

The BBC is well-known for its peculiar comparisons; gems like

Figures from Mintel reveal that we eat a tonne of crisps every three minutes in the UK. This would be enough to fill a telephone box every 43 seconds and an Olympic size swimming pool every 14 hours.

or how about

The CMS, along with the rival experiment Atlas, will seek to identify the elusive Higgs boson (known as the "God particle" because of its importance to the Standard Model of particle interactions), look for so-called supersymmetric particles and seek out the existence of extra dimensions.

These experiments, each about the size of a mansion, will capture and measure new particles produced in the beam collisions.

Or perhaps you'd prefer

During its lifetime, Calder Hall nuclear power plant produced enough electricity to power a two-bar electric fire for 3.8 million years.

Well, now, from NPO Energomash, the Russian manufacturer of rocket engines, which insists, against all available evidence, that it is named after Academician V.P. Glushko, comes, erm, this (in reference to the RP-171 engine used on the Zenit launcher):

1 set of turbines and pumps - Turbine produces approximately 257,000 hp (192 MW); equivalent to the power output of 3 nuclear powered icebreakers

Well, certainly, but for how many thousands of years could a whole Zenit heat a mansion full of crisps?

What sort of nuclear icebreaker, anyway? There are three classes, arguably four. This is a bizarre comparison. Are people expected to know how much power a nuclear powered icebreaker produces? Anywhere between 180 and 340MW, that's how much, so Energomash is lying. Now how am I supposed to trust the BBC on the phonebox thing?

Moral Conflict

The BBC science reporter sits before his computer, and, breathing heavily, starts to type...

Chinstrap penguins occasionally indulge in homosexual behaviour, and adelie penguins sometimes "prostitute" themselves to get stones for nest-building; while one in seven emperor penguins will change partners from one year to the next.

Filthy! Slatternly penguins! The dirty, nasty birds, with their lustrous plumage, and...

But generally, king penguins lead straightforward sex lives: males and females pair up for years on end.

Ah, yes, the King Penguin, paragon of virtue! Why can't he be more like a King Penguin?

Shuddering in self-disgust, he looks around. The coast is clear. He grabs his copy of Naughty Flightless Birds Fortnightly from underneath the newpaper, and dashed furtively to the bathroom.

Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1995

Soon, Microsoft shall be inviting the great unwashed to host Windows 7 launch parties. Yes, Windows 7 launch parties. You even get a choice of themes! You can have "PhotoPalooza, Media Mania, Setting up with Ease, and Family Friendly Fun." They will give you free stuff, including a copy of Windows 7 and balloons. Yes, really.

Verity Stob addresses the issue masterfully here.

And, well, the Google search results for 'Windows 7 party' are perhaps unfortunate:

Even Bing fails to toe the party (ahem) line:

Oh, this is all rather embarrassing.

Edit: Oh, dear. Houseparty.com, the crowd organising all this, specialise in this sort of rubbish:

Most pathetic, desperate form of marketing ever, or what?

Rudolph, the red-glowed reindeer...

Russia is currently building a new class of strategic missile (that is, long-range nuclear missile) submarine, called the Borei.

The first three are under construction, and will be called Yuriy Dolgorukiy, Aleksandr Nevskiy and Vladimir Monomakh; this naming scheme has the fringe benefit that enemy nations will be unable to spell them. Things start to get weird with the fourth, not yet under construction. It's called....

St Nicholas

Due to be laid down on the 22nd of December this year.

"Mummy, why did Santa nuke Beijing?"

Anxiety

Ever feel crippled with anxiety about nothing-in-particular for no particular reason?

Yeah, not fun. Brrr.

What hath NAMA wrought?

Okay, so the country's falling apart, we are going to be eaten by crazed anti-abortionists if we vote yes on Lisbon, and all the railways bridges have collapsed, forever.

But look! The slightly ludicrous Irish stockmarket went up! I'm assuming this is NAMA-related. Apparently the events of the last year haven't been enough to put people off buying shares in our many wonderful banks, the fools.

I apologise for the dashboard screenshot, but proper finance websites like Google and Yahoo apparently refuse to touch ISEQ (and who could blame them?), and ISEQ's own website is, well, just incomprehensible. I think it may be the most confusing interactive website I've ever used.

What do you think those little arrows do? Hahah, nothing coherent. And that 'Click to view larger graph' link? Might it. perhaps, allow one to view more than a day?

No it might not.

How anyone actually trades on ISEQ I simply don't know.

Oh, and there's this gem:

No it does not! This website does not provide information, it just provides confusing links! Also, ARGH! APOSTROPHE CRIMINALS!

Arrington-tastic

Michael Arrington is the founder of TechCrunch, a popular blog which covers the (now-deflated) Web 2.0 bubble; he tends towards the wide-eyed wonder believe anything the press release says school of tech journalism. He is also ridiculously self-important.

Here is a wonderfully insane quote.

TechCrunch is a serious thing, and needs to be treated seriously by others. We demand some respect around here.

My own personal brand has risen over the years as well to the point where I believe I can say without hubris that I am a very important person. Forbes recently named me No. 2 on their list of web celebrities, for example, and Business Week says I’m one of the 25 most influential people on the web. I’ve also appeared in numerous JibJab videos.

Number two web celebrity! Just after Julia Allison, no doubt! She's important, you know; she gets paid big money to shill for SeaWorld (by the universally-despised shilling corp. Izea, formerly PayPerPost, of the Great Google PageRank Shilling War). And JibJab videos! Imagine! This actually reads like a self-effacing joke, it's so over the top, but I assure you, it is not. He actually believes this.

I find Arrington rather fascinating; he just has such an overblown sense of his own importance. I wonder will this fade with the Web 2.0 bubble, or will he still be writing about exciting new widget companies and believing he is the most important person on the Internet in ten years, like a late-stage Byzantine emperor insisting that Constantinople rules not just a few isolated city-states under siege by the Ottomans, but half the world?

Augustine Commission timing JUST off

In August, the Augustine Commission effectively reported that there will be no American moon return without considerable extra funding, which is unlikely to be available.

July was the 40th anniversary of the first man to walk on the moon; I wonder was the commission report timed to avoid any unpleasant ironies?

Today in Absurd Weapons

Here are many, many pictures of (mostly) the interior of a Soviet/Russian Typhoon-class ballistic missile submarine; they are now decommissioned. Yes, it does have a swimming pool.

HTML'd

Warning! A markup element has escaped from its confinement in that link and is heading towards the FTSE; it intends to cause recession by introducing a vertical break!

Also, there's a news item about a Harry Potter book.

Brown condemns treatment of Alan Turing!

There's a quite nice statement here.

He does take the opportunity to blow his own trumpet a bit, about what the Labour party has done for gay rights (which is, in fairness, true), but it really is quite a nice gesture, and he acknowledges Turing's contribution to the war effort.

I await with interest the response of the Daily Mail and its readers; they historically have looked down upon apologies for the horrors of the past. Something containing the phrase 'why can't they be content with what they've got', no doubt. 

Bad Apple!

So, I upgraded to iTunes 9, in accordance with the diktats of Steve Job, and, on first run...

What is this nonsense? Why is it showing me an imaginary website?

Also, they've changed all of the icons. Eek. Oh, and the progress bars.

It's still 32bit, though, and thus presumably Carbon; I'm sure they'd have gone 64bit if it was Cocoa, if only to take full advantage of the latest Quicktime stuff.

Another subtle Snow Leopard change

Leopard:

Snow Leopard:

Same time and locale config on both machines. Odd, eh?

In Soviet America, black man fucks you

You know how it's fashionable in America to shriek about Obama the evil communist-fascist with his socialist healthcare and his death panels?

Absurd Soviet TV transmitter

Look at this ridiculous thing. It's in Latvia. I actually quite like it, but it's a bit over the top. It's the tallest freestanding structure in the EU.