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A quick web search for the origin of the phrase, “close, but no cigar” - it turns out that early slot machines gave out cigars as prizes - led me to The Phrase Finder at Sheffield Hallam University.
There you can learn such interesting nuggets as who Gordon Bennett is and where the phrase “chip on his shoulder” comes from.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Links at 11:15 PM EST
The train stations in London seem to have gone security mad. The first I sign of this was when I had to carry a banana skin around with me for forty minutes because there were no litter bins. Later I noticed a notice that explained that there were no bins, “for security reasons.”
Last night I took the tube into central London. There were announcements about every twenty seconds. Recorded ones like, please keep your personal belongings with you, or we’ll blow them up, or please tell a member of staff if you see any suspicious packages. The edgy feeling these created was backed up by announcements from the station staff about delays on the Picadilly Line caused by, you guessed it, a “security alert”.
Even the arrivals displays at mainline stations this morning were scrolling “SECURITY” messages encouraging people to, “be vigilant”.
I’m trying to figure out what this all means. Are there specific threats causing each of these symptoms? Or is this just faux preparedness: backside covering in case anything bad *does* happen? In any case, I’m fairly sure the main effect of these measures is to make people a bit nervous. Eventually we’ll get used to it. Whether we’ll actually be more vigilant, and whether or not being more vigilant for such things as unattended packages will help, I have my doubts.
Update: You can now see a photo of the no bins sign.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 7:55 PM EST
Scott Burgess links to an article by Natalie Solent on Biased-BBC about the BBC’s children’s coverage of “Fair Trade Fortnight”. It’s quite obvious what is going on:
The treatment of trade issues as a whole on the CBBC website is one long hymn of praise to the anti-globalisation movement.
This piece, “What is Fair Trade?” presents the “fair trade” initiative as an unquestioned good. Children would never guess that there are respectable arguments against the project: for instance that by disguising price signals it encourages African farmers to ride for a fall. The farmers get a false impression that coffee or chocolate is a safe bet when this isn’t true. This post from the Adam Smith Institute blog by Alex Singleton has more. Incidentally, that post is so straightforwardly written that it could be understood by a young audience. It gives an impression of the sort of pro- free trade arguments that the BBC could put on its children’s website to balance the anti-free trade arguments it does provide - if the BBC were so minded, which it isn’t.
[…]
In this page, “What are transnational corporations?” we finally had half a sentence suggesting that this trade stuff might be useful sometimes:
Such companies can provide work and enrich a country’s economy - or some say they can exploit the workers with low pay and destroy the environment.
That little whisper of praise was of course instantly quashed by an anti-globo riposte.
The anti-globalisation bias here seems particularly blatant, and it is all the more insidious for being directed at children who are still developing their critical thinking skills. Yet more reason to refuse to pay the TV license.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft, Links at 1:40 PM EST
I was in trafalgar square on Saturday, intending to sit by the fountain and maybe read a book. But I was rudely disturbed by some kind of “peace protest“. At least I think that’s what it was.
Now, we all have a kind of stereotypical image of peace protestors. As a service to my many readers, I thought I’d demonstrate pictorially the kind of thinking behind these events.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 11:01 PM EST
Cerebros kindly provides the link, and the humourous title, to a story about how EU regulations are threatening to affect mountaineers. Tory MEP Jonathan Evans says:
If this legislation is implemented as it currently stands then activity centres will be legally compelled to post signs to tell people they are up high.
But more concerning is this:
Instructors in Scotland have said they are worried that some of the ways they ensure the safety of their students would be prohibited under the regulations.
They cited the example of using abseiling techniques to descend quickly when weather conditions deteriorate.
Mr Wild said: “Abseiling off a climb is something which happens every weekend on Scottish mountains.
“This is a safety technique, a way to escape a dangerous situation, but it is not possible to abseil off a climb under these regulations.”
[…]
“There will be a spin-off,” said Mr Wild, “because the best practice of professional instructors tends to be followed by recreational climbers.”
He predicted that many instructors would risk prosecution if they believed it was necessary to maintain safety while climbing.
It doesn’t matter whether the regulations are right or wrong. What this story highlights is how utterly pointless they are. Mountaineers have been getting along just fine on their own, and they will ignore stupid people in Brussels. The moral of the story is: we don’t need these stupid parasites.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft at 9:05 PM EST
The other day I received a spam at work, telling me my credit card had been billed for some earthenware products. If I’d read to the end it would have been obvious it was a fake, but I ended up doing some research on it and came across the Australian site, Code Fish Spam Watch. It’s a very interesting site because they investigate quite deeply into the scam, and reveal technical details about how various scams work. It turned out that the spam I received was part of a turf war between carders - people who try to extract credit card details from people.
Reading more on the site, I found a particularly scary attempt at extracting passwords from people’s computers. Simply by clicking on a link, Internet Explorer can be made to download a malicious “HTML Application”, write an executable to disk, and run it. In this case the executable kills off processes that look like anti-virus software, logs keystrokes, and emails the results back to a server.
I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked that this is possible, but I am. It shows the importance of not only keeping software patched, but also being careful what you click on. Even better, run an open source browser like Mozilla: Open source software is more secure by its nature.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Open Source at 10:31 PM EST
I’m really struggling to believe this, but there is no indication so far that it’s a hoax. According to the Sunday Herald, Big Blunkett wants to charge wrongly imprisoned people £3000 per year for the privilege of staying at her majesty’s pleasure. The reasoning?
[Blunkett’s] spokesmen in the Home Office say it’s a completely “reasonable course of action” as the innocent men and women would have spent the money anyway on food and lodgings if they weren’t in prison. The government deems the claw-back ‘Saved Living Expenses’.
On White Rose, Perry De Havilland is amazed that Blunkett has managed to amaze him. In the Samizdata comments, Andy Danger gets it right:
Blunkett makes a very interesting case study for the statist whose mind is so warped that it leads him to come to ideas a six-year-old could recognize as horrible. There’s some sick moral inversion that goes on in the brain of someone like that where the people exist as grist for the government mill rather than the government being a construct of the people. Any psychology students feel like writing their thesis on Blunkett? I think the world could benefit.
Blunkett does indeed seem to be evil.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties at 12:47 PM EST
Last night I went to see an episode of Coupling being taped at Teddington Studios. I found out about it by doing a search on the web to see if another series was going to be made, and up popped audience management company Standing Room Only. One phone call later and a couple of tickets to see the third episode of the fourth series were on their way to me.
On arrival Chris and I were the first ones there. A queue quickly formed behind us, and the girl from SRO then turned up to organise everyone into “priority” and “normal” tickets groups. A couple of older women arrived and complained loudly about being made to wait outside. They were met with general derision from the assembled crowd, and no-one was surprised when they attempted to push their way in with the priority ticket holders. Amusingly, we saw them arrive in the studio some time after we got in, so presumably the studio staff saw through their game!
Much excitement ensued when, standing in the queue, a film crew arrived and started interviewing people. Apparently they were making a behind the scenes documentary for the DVD. I’m fairly sure we somehow managed to avoid being in front of the camera the whole evening, but you never know - I could yet be famous…
The first thing that struck me upon getting into the studio was how much smaller the bar set appeared in real life. Perhaps it is something to do with wide angle lenses, or perhaps it is the expert way the the bar is given life by the extras who bustle around it that makes it seem such a large room on TV.
The studio was set up with the bar set in front of us. We had a fairly good view, but there were cameras and booms and bits of the set in the way. Other sets were over to the left: Sally’s lounge, and her kitchen. We had to crane our necks quite a bit to see the lounge set, and the kitchen set was out of sight behind a wood panel. Not to worry though, there were monitors above the audience, and these were also used to play bits of pre-recorded VT to the audience, for scenes that were shot on location.
Once the audience was settled, the warm up comedian (Rob somebody - I wish I could remember his name) arrived and did an introductory routine. He was quite rude, and I could see that the two old biddies who had complained earlier were not amused. Did they really not have any idea what they were in for? Rob then introduced the cast, the boys came on first, then the girls, and everyone applauded or wolf whistled as appropriate.
The show started with a pre-recorded scene on the monitors, with Patrick and Sally in medieval costume (a hilariously impractical suit of armour in the case of Patrick). The scene went on for quite some time, and I began to wonder how much live action would be left to do, but I needn’t have worried.
The first live scene was done in the bar, with Patrick and Steve. It was quite a long scene, and they got it perfectly right the first time. I was impressed at their professionalism, and began to think that at this rate the taping would be over in no time, and there would be no amusing out-takes, but I needn’t have worried.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Rob Fisher as Reviews at 12:43 PM EST
I caught the middle of a Channel 4 documentary entitled Status Anxiety in which the filmmaker interviewed a beggar and then went on to interview a libertarian (or at least minarchist) guy who said (horror of horrors) that the state should leave people alone and not help beggars.
The interviewee said that helping people was okay as long as you didn’t steal from others to do it. “Are you saying taxation is theft?” asked the interviewer incredulously. “Yes,” said the interviewee. “Yes!” I yelled at the TV.
Of course, all this was overlayed on top of images of the poor beggar woman who was desperate to feed her children. And there were closeups of NRA posters and “Tax Is Theft” and “Socialism is just a phase you’re going through” badges on the interviewee’s wall. No obvious bias in this documentary then…
What grates me is the suggestion that those who object to the welfare system are somehow callous and heartless. I object to the welfare system and I am neither callous nor heartless.
What I object to is the idea that people need to steal from me to help other people. Where then is my opportunity to help other people of my own accord? An act is not moral if it is not committed voluntarily. Being forced to “help” other people does not make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. And there are scare quotes around the word “help” for a reason: I do not believe that the money extracted from me by force does help other people. Rather, the welfare system makes things worse by diverting money from where it would help people to where it doesn’t.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft at 12:01 AM EST
I haven’t seen the film yet (though I intend to), but it seems to me that the Raving Atheist may have the definitive review of Mel Gibson’s film.
The notion that Christ died and suffered for the sins of others is a morally worthless one. If I whipped and then shot myself because Robert Blake killed his wife, my suffering and death would not make Robert Blake a better person, excuse his crime, or bring his victim back to life.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Imaginary Friends at 11:40 PM EST