William S. Burroughs Hit & Miss

Have had a few days off and spent some of that time, whilst cleaning the house, listening to all those audio interviews and lectures that I had downloaded but hadn’t got around to. One of the more bizarre ones was this offering from William S. Burroughs in which he explains the cut-up writing technique that [...]

Christmas Spirit

One of my friends is a doctor and he told me that in Glasgow in the hospitals the done thing is that all the doctors who are Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Sikh volunteer to work on Christmas day so that the others can get the day off and spend the day with their families, which, [...]

One Spill At A Time

Prosecutors in Brazil are demanding $10.6bn (£6.8bn) from US oil company Chevron for environmental damage caused when one of its oil wells leaked off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. The prosecutors also asked the court to immediately suspend the operations of Chevron and its drilling contractor, Transocean, in Brazil. Brazil has already fined Chevron [...]

The Pleb’s Christmas Offering

A nice christmas cartoon from the pleb to get you all feeling festive.

Cameron’s Vague Christian Thingummy

I was all geared up to have a go at this but someone has beaten me to one part of it. I would just add that he is maybe missing some statistics to the effect that in 2005 only 31% of people who believed (not the total population) were attending services and that number has [...]

Hurricane Bawbag (International Reaction)

Guest post today from the talented (so talented that, as he says, you should buy his f*+king books) Philip Challinor, otherwise known as The Curmudgeon. This came about from an exchange we had about the mirth involved in trying to explain the name Hurricane Bawbag to non-Scots. Anyway, here goes… ————————————————————————————————————————————————– (Pompous fanfare. A logo: [...]

Oh No, Not Another Brave New World / 1984 Comparison

Actually this isn’t a comparison as such, nor is it another ‘Who was right?’ article. I was looking for a post somewhere which compared what the two had said about each others work and couldn’t find one so I decided to do it here. As you will see, whilst both taking pains to praise the [...]

Why Propaganda Works

I put together a little video last night, a little Chomsky audio with some suitable images. Disclaimer – I did not add the scary music…

Ahead Of The Game

A little clip of an interview with Aldous Huxley showing himself to be well ahead of the game. A bit of cold war concern in there, given that it was in 1958…

FIFA, Pots & Kettles

Transparency International have cut their ties with FIFA. They are angry that FIFA have appointed on overseer who won’t implement some of their recommendations such as reexamining old scandals. Sylvia Schenk, TI’s sports adviser, said Mr Pieth could not remain independent of Fifa if he was being paid by the organisation. “We believe that someone [...]