To My Darling Valentine



Perhaps not the exact sentiments that you'd like to display on your mantelpiece.

Although I suspect that's why he's marrying you.

From FAILblog - putting semen into amusement.

Things To Do When You Are Bored

There are a lot of websites in the world. Mine is just one of them. I don't read mine every day, as I tend to remember what I wrote. I do, however, read a lot of other people's websites every single day - including some that I refresh repeatedly throughout the day.

These are mostly political blogging sites and technology sites, although I have recently started to check out more and more amusing picture sites. There's the classic LOLCats and the spin-off LOLDogs. There's also the sometimes weird Picture Is Unrelated and the wonderful look at everyday life letting you down FAILblog.

And it is from that last one that I discovered Photobombing. Photobombing is basically where you hijack someone else's photograph. The person taking the photo is (usually) aware that there's some hijacking going on, but the people in it almost definitely aren't. Like this, for example.


However, with the advent of compact digital cameras, there's a pretty good chance that one of the people in the photo will actually be taking the photo, and the photobomber has a great opportunity for hijacking without anyone being the wiser until after the photo has been taken. Like this, for example.


There's also the possibility of an accidental bit of photobombing, where something going on in the background that you weren't aware of at the time, only becomes obvious once the picture is seen in a much larger format than the back of the camera. Like the following two fine examples.


So the next time you see someone taking a photo, bomb it. You know it makes sense.

Billboard Fun

H/t again to Obnoxio.

This is great. Change the wording to whatever pleases you.


Click image to embiggen

Things To Do For Free In The Easter Holidays

And I've deliberately used that title in order to garner more hits from Google. This wonderful idea comes from B3ta's sickipedia site.

With the Easter weekend approaching a lot of people will be going to the seaside and visiting amusement arcades. If you live near one of these places it's a good time to play the following prank

1. Get loads of 2p coins
2. Get some Cillit Bang
3. Use the Cillit Bang to write swear words on the coins
4. Go to your local arcade and put them in the 2p pushes machines
5. Enjoy your Easter knowing somebody is going to win a 2p coin that you've written "CUNT" on!

How To Promote An Album

Now, I'm not entirely sure how serious this is, but Josh Freese (the former drummer from Nine Inch Nails) has an interesting idea on how to raise more than the $7 per online album sale he would normally get.

For $50 you get the CD/DVD double-disc set, a T-shirt and "Thank you" phone call from Josh for buying Since 1972. You can tell him what you like about the record that you purchased, or what you thought sucked. Ask whatever you want, like "Is Maynard really THAT weird?" or "Which one of Sting’s mansions has the comfiest beds?" or "Are Devo really suburban robots that monitor reality or just a bunch of dads from Ohio?" or "Why don’t the Vandals play more stuff off the first record?" It’s your 5 minutes to yack it up. Talk about whatever you want.

For $1,000 (limited to an edition of 10) you get all of the above, minus the phone call, but with a signed cymbal, drum head and drumsticks. If that's not a good enough deal for you, Josh washes your car OR does your laundry … or you can wash his car (which doesn't seem like much fun to me) then you can have dinner with Josh aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California, followed by getting drunk and cutting each other’s hair in the parking lot of the Long Beach courthouse (filmed and posted on YouTube, of course)

There are more, but it would be rash of me to spoil the enjoyment of what $75,000 gets you.

Facebook Needs Bash.org Application

Perhaps it's just me, or the people that I know, but there seems to have been an increase in weird status updates on Facebook since they made it look more like Twitter.

This one in particular made me laugh out loud this morning, but there's normally three or four that make me giggle.And it made me wonder why there's not an application on Facebook that allows you to upload any bits of genius to a "Comments Hall of Fame". (Any coders wanting to try, please go ahead, I won't claim copyright)

Something along the lines of the bash.org, except not for the (presumably dwindling number of) IRCers.

The Present She'll Love

Cock in the box



From the wonderful Fail Blog

Apparently, These Are Real

Although I'm not entirely certain.

From The Daily WTF, Health & Safety in the workplace

Enjoy

Frankly, I'm Fucked Then

Hat-tip to Dizzy (via his Twitter feed) for this excellent piece of trawling. From the Communications Act (2003), Part 2, Chapter 21, point 127:

Improper use of public electronic communications network

(1) A person is guilty of an offence if he—

(a) sends by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character; or
(b) causes any such message or matter to be so sent.

(2) A person is guilty of an offence if, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another, he—

(a) sends by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that he knows to be false,
(b) causes such a message to be sent; or
(c) persistently makes use of a public electronic communications network.

(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable, on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or to both.

(4) Subsections (1) and (2) do not apply to anything done in the course of providing a programme service (within the meaning of the Broadcasting Act 1990 (c. 42)).

So essentially, pretty much anything that the Government finds on the internet, or on an email, they consider to be obscene, menacing or untrue can cause the poster/sender to spend up to 6 months in jail.

Which is a nice way of silencing critics, isn't it?

It's been said before, but it needs saying again: 1984 was NOT a fucking instruction manual, you bunch of cunts.

Tom Harris MP

A Labour MP at that, it should be noted at the outset, has a posting on his blog that he has labelled "political suicide". I shall leave you to determine just why it would be labelled as such after you read it.

From here

The return of morality
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

When Carolyn was in hospital, having just delivered us of wee Reggie, a very young girl in the bed opposite was also celebrating the arrival of her newborn. As was her proud father, who made great play to anyone who might have been listening (me) of how proud he was of his daughter. She was, I guess, about 16.

I don’t think he should have been ashamed. And it’s great that this youing girl had such a loving dad to support her.

But proud? Proud that his teenage daughter was not only sexually active but was now a mother? Proud that any chance of a decent education, followed by a decent job, was now remote at best? Proud that she was, in all likelihood, about to embark on a lifetime of depending on benefit handouts for her and her child?

I’m a Labour MP, so some will undoubtedly be surprised, and shocked that I’m writing this. But I can no longer pretend that the army of teenage mothers living off the state is anything other than a national catastrophe.

A previous commenter on this site got it spot on: many (though not all) teenage girls do not become pregnant accidentally because of ignorance, because of a lack of understanding of how their bodies work. They become pregnant because they have absolutely no ambition for themselves. They have been indoctrinated with the lie that they’ll never amount to anything, and have fulfilled that prophesy by making no effort to achieve any qualification. Very often they live with parents (or a parent) who have no jobs themselves, who are setting the example of benefit dependency for all their offspring.

Such young women see parenthood as one way of achieving a level of independence and self-worth. And they’re right, because that’s more or less what they get: a flat and therefore some privacy, an income for the first time in their lives. And in fact, many of them make a decent job of parenthood despite the awful circumstances. But even they are nevertheless rearing the next generation in an environment where the main adult isn’t working, but claiming.

I was lucky. I was brought up in a relatively poor household, but both my parents worked for most of the time I was growing up. When my dad was out of work in the early ’80s, he was depressed because he felt a responsibility to earn money to provide for his family. And so he started up his own business and got back on his feet. That’s the example I and my brothers and sister were lucky enough to have set for us.

A few years back I was shopping for CDs in Tower Records in Glasgow of a Saturday evening. It must have been about ten at night. Outside there were two very young girls, about 15, all dressed up for a night out. Apart from the fact that wherever they intended to go, they were clearly too young to drink, there was only one problem: one of them was pushing a pram. The child inside was a few weeks old.

This horrified me. It was wrong. There is right and wrong and it is wrong for anyone to choose to have a child without knowing what’s involved in its upbringing, without being prepared to sacrifice your own lifestyle for it.

That father in the maternity ward was telling the world about his love for his daughter and his new grandchild, and I’ve no doubt his pride was genuine. People shouldn’t be ashamed of their circumstanmces, but neither should we avoid making value judgments about others’ choices, especially when those choices result in a greater burden on the state, and lead to the continuation of the underclass.

Teenage girls shouldn’t be having underage sex. Why? Because it’s wrong.

Teenage girls shouldn’t choose to have babies as an alternative to getting an education and a career. Why? Because it’s wrong.

Parents shouldn’t teach their children that a lifetime on benefits is attractive or even acceptable. Why? Because it’s wrong.

(Please assume all the usual caveats: some people have no choice but to claim benefits, lots of single parents do a great job, etc.)

So what’s next, I hear you ask. What am I going to do about all this? What’s the government going to do?

This post isn’t about policy, yet. I’m going to take up a previous commenter’s suggestion that I have a coffee with the estimable Frank Field to discuss ideas for reform.

But policies are one thing; winning the argument about why they’re needed is another. And we have to start by making it clear what we believe is right and wrong. How can we expect parents to teach that to their kids if our political leaders aren’t prepared to say the same?

Being accused of agreeing with the Daily Mail’s agenda is not the worst thing my critics can say about me. Being accused of accepting the current appalling state of affairs, of pretending that the concepts of right and wrong are meaningless - that is far worse than being accused of pandering to the right.

And, of course, it is a complete load of bollocks to suggest that the ordinary working class people of Glasgow South and in hundreds of other constituencies throughout the country don’t agree with me. The most vociferous critics of the dependancy culture and of deliberate worklessness have always been those who live in the same communities, those who resent paying their taxes to help other people waste their lives.

Don’t interpret this as any kind of “back to basics” crusade; I’m not remotely interested in what adults do in the privacy of their own homes, and I’m not sounding the rallying cry for Christian or religious morality. But when the actions of others has such a debilitating effect on the rest of society, it’s time to stop being polite. It’s time to stop worrying about how people’s feelings might be hurt if we question the choices they’ve made.

Because very often, those choices are wrong. And it’s about time we said so.

H/t Obnoxio

The Daily Mash

TDM are in fine form at the moment. Following on from their earlier piece about Gordon Brown refusing to hand back his pension, we now have their take on Harriet Harperson's claim that the Government can change any law they like if enough people are against something.

Law of Gravity is to be repealed.

"THE government is to repeal the law of gravity because quite a lot of people don't like it anymore.

Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman said millions of ordinary people were furious that the universal force holding everything in place had been able to get away with it for so long.

She told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "Gravity might be enforceable in a court of law, or the universe, but it is not enforceable in the court of public opinion, and that is where the government steps in.

"People in this country want to know why heavy things don't just float about on the breeze like helium-filled balloons.

"Meanwhile ordinary families are dreading September and the prospect of millions of ripe, juicy apples bouncing off their hard-working skulls."

Ms Harman hinted that other universal constants may have to be reviewed, insisting the majority of taxpayers now think the speed of light is 'out of control'.

Clicking her fingers, she added: "It's that quick. In fact it might even be quicker than that. Do we really want light whizzing about the place in such a selfish and irresponsible manner?"

But British businesses have warned they may quit the country if heavy things are just going to float around in mid-air.

A spokesman for JCB, the JCB manufacturers, said: "A 20 tonne earth mover is of little use if it's suspended 40 feet above the earth it's supposed to be moving. You just can't get any purchase."

Bill McKay, professor of contractual physics at Reading University, said: "Let me try to explain this in layman's terms. Harriet Harman is an unbearably ghastly human being who will say and do anything to become leader of the Labour Party."

Flying

Having spent rather a long time on planes in the past month, I read with some interest that Ryanair are planning to install coin slots on the toilets. Not entirely sure if the bloke being interviewed was being serious, but it seems that the good folk of B3ta have gone one further.

Possibly A Bit Late

As it's already climbed back above $300 a share, but if Google drops back below that figure, then you may want to consider buying into it. There's a very good chance - IMHO, although I am not a stockbroker, thank fuck - that you could double your money within 12 months.

You can track Google's price here

A Company You Can Trust

From The Daily WTF


"I can't decide if the biggest WTF is using poster board, stencils and multiple colours of what appears to be chalk in their quest of 'moving technology forward' or the fact that they apparently made a mistake while putting the 'N' in consulting and just decided to use a bit of masking tape to correct it, rather than flip the board over and start again."

One For The Geeks

If you're not a geek, you might just want to look away now. And I recommend here if you want to amuse yourself.

If you're reading this, I'm guessing you *are* a geek. And you may well be interested in the following. There is an online tool which allows you to look up the possible serial numbers and WPA keys for SpeedTouch modems (as used by BT). Handy, if you were planning on having a back-up internet connection but didn't want to go to the expense of getting a second line fitted.

Okay, it's a hacker's delight. And it's NOT a brute force attack, all you need is the SSID.

Enjoy.

Avoiding The Elephant

You may be surprised to see that I've not mentioned the Government and the current banking fiasco/crisis. I've tried to avoid it as I think I would find it difficult to stop once I've begun*.

I've been following it, obviously - both on the BBC and in the Metro (the only newspaper I actually read now I'm a commuter) - but I've been in an unusual position for me. I just don't know what to say about it. I've read an analysis from an economist's point of view (Timmy), a stockbroker's point of view (British Dude), a Libertarian's point of view (LPUK) and from the ex-trader's more political point of view (Guido). And I'm still not entirely sure I understand what's gone on.

As far as I can tell - and anyone can point out where I've gone wrong here - the American banks were told by their Government that they had to lend money to people who they would not normally lend to (the so-called NINJA loans - No Income, No Job) in order to allow said people to buy houses. I'm guessing that the American economy isn't quite as built on house prices as the UK economy, but that by having a credit history, these people could be proper consumers.

So the banks lent the money, knowing that it was more likely these NINJAs would default. In order to avoid having the debt firmly sat on their books, the banks wrapped it up in smaller packages and sold it on. To other banks. But with a AAA rating so that it wouldn't look as toxic as it would turn out to be. Hence the amount of banks that started to get into trouble when the NINJAs started defaulting to such a major extent that the house prices in America started to fall dramatically.

As the banks couldn't trust each other (as the amount of trouble they were in was hidden or just plain unknown) they then wouldn't lend to each other. As they wouldn't lend to each other, the banks were less able to pay off any short term debts they had in trading balances. And they couldn't get any money in from anywhere apart from the Bank Of England, and going to them cap in hand made the banks look desperate & likely to collapse. Thus confidence in them eroded further.

The Government claim that they tried to save the banks, but after Robert Peston informed everyone that the Government had had a meeting with all the big four banks who were looking for cash, bank shares fell even further. Whether this was incompetence of the highest order, or a deliberate attempt by the Government to get the banks nationalised on the cheap, time will only tell. But when both the Prime Minister and the Governor of the Bank Of England come out within a day of each other saying the UK economy is going into recession (thus sparking a sell off of Sterling by any sensible trader around the world) the impression I get is that it's incompetence.

At the same time, Iceland's banking fell over quite spectacularly. UK public bodies had somewhere in the region of £1bn invested - hardly a surprise as the interest rate was unbelievably (for good reason) generous - and despite warnings being issued some months earlier. I've even seen reports here that there were warnings in July 2007 about the fragility of the Icelandic scheme. Entertainingly, the Audit Office (whose job is to ensure that £180bn of public sector spending provides "value for taxpayers" and should oversee any investment advice) had £10m tied up in the Icelandic banks, and the Audit Commission are now being investigated by the National Audit Office.

In order to "protect UK savers" the Prime Minister then used anti-terror legislation to freeze the accounts held in the Icelandic banks. Interesting that this legislation was used against a NATO ally, but such is the joy of function creep and badly worded (or not, depending if you're a conspiracy freak) legislation. More interestingly, the legislation only freezes the funds for 30 days, so in a couple of weeks we should have another announcement about Iceland.

The strange thing is, I've been through two recessions before, some bad financial times and three stock market crashes (yes, I am old). This latest one didn't wipe as much off the share prices as the last one (when the dotcom boom suddenly went bust in 2001 - mainly after everyone suddenly realised that none of the internet companies had a business model that actually made, you know, cash). This one hasn't seen interest rates go up to 15%, indeed they've just come down again. There hasn't even been a single power cut yet, let alone dead people not being buried.

I'm not saying that this isn't a financial crisis, but it seems to be based more in the financial markets than in real life. How many people (outside of bank staff) have been directly affected by this in the UK? 10,000? 50,000? 100,000? Out of a population of 62,000,000 that's not a huge amount.

Okay, so if you need to get a mortgage then it is now more difficult, but that's not necessarily a bad idea. The UK housing market was (and still is) over priced. If it falls, then more new buyers will be able to afford to get on the property ladder (having got deposits for more expensive properties). If you already have a mortgage that you can afford to repay, keep doing that and enjoy the fall in interest rates. Your house is worth less than you paid for it, probably, but you still have a roof over your head and you aren't starving to death. Chances are, if you don't move in the next 10 years it may eventually be worth more than it is now.

If you have a mortgage and can't afford to repay it, then (unless you've been made recently unemployed or had a change of circumstances) how were you planning on keeping the house anyway? Getting yourself in HUGE debt by hoping to sell your house for more money than you paid for it (so you eventually had no mortgage and a free house) is pretty much the same as the South Sea Bubble in 1720 - eventually, it will fail.

Why the Government were so insistent about nationalising the banks, rather than just letting them fail and guaranteeing savers their money back, I have no idea. Surely by propping the banks up, they're being told that no matter what stupid thing they do, the Government will always bail them out. Not going to make them take better decisions, is it?

Why the Tories didn't complain about the Government's plan and ask if there was a 'Plan B', I have no idea on that either. There was no mention in Labour's pledges to bail out banks. There was no discussion in Parliament about whether it was the right thing to do. Nothing. The Government just wade in with half a trillion pounds of taxpayer's money and do what, exactly? The FTSE is still hovering about 4000, the pound is still falling against a raft of currencies and the entire country is out of pocket.

How Gordon Brown has managed to come out of this looking like the saviour, when he was the Chancellor in charge of the country's finances for ten years prior, I similarly have no single clue. I'm still slightly surprised he hasn't called a state of emergency yet, and become a proper dictator.

Perhaps it's just a matter of time.

* - And having read the post, I think I was right. Apologies for the rather long rambling explanation of how I see the financial crisis.

Exactly How The Credit Crunch Happened

But in a slide presentation of stickmen. Best viewed in full screen (click the little icon in the bottom corner)

Hat tip to Obnoxio The Clown (and if you think I swear a lot, you may want to cover your eyes)

How Many Five Year Olds Can You Take In A Fight?

35

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

Beat that you fuckers.

Hat-tip to The Devil

TFL And Their Version Of Time



Click image to embiggen it.

Unnecessary Censorship



Just hilarious.

Hat tip to Dizzy