Quango fight: n. Directly contradictory campaigns run by different arms of Government.
Blog
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Quango fight! Part 1
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Privacy and rationality
Two nice quotes from this week’s New York Review. First, Clive James on Philip Larkin:
Always averse to the requirements of celebrity, he didn’t find out enough about them, and never realised that beyond a certain point of fame you not only don’t have a private life any more, you never had one.
And from the Mughal Emperor Akbar:
The pursuit of reason and rejection of traditionalism are so brilliantly obvious as to be above the need of argument. If traditionalism were proper, the prophets would merely have followed their own elders.
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Enigmo 2
A fun game just released for Mac users out there. Enigmo 2 is one of those simple-concept, difficult-execution games.
You have to use mirrors, magnetospheres (yes), guttering, etc., to get water drops, laser beams or plasma (yes) from the source to a defined finish point. Starts simple, but there are 50 levels of rapidly increasing fiendishness. Fantastic graphics, and appropriately noodly new age music.
Free demo available, and trailers, via the link above.
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Dick Bruna interview
Dick Bruna, creator of Miffy, may well be the nicest guy in the world.
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Joke’s on you
A group of Israeli cartoonists have launched a tongue-in-cheek competition to find the most anti-semitic cartoons – entry only open to Jewish cartoonists. (via MeFi)
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Anthea Turner: Woman on the verge of nervous breakdown?
The latest reality show format on BBC3 is perhaps the strangest ever. It’s called Anthea Turner: Perfect Housewife, and for the life of me I can’t work out whether the subject under the microscope is Anthea Turner or the two non-Antheas in each episode.
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The American right
The American right, and their fixation with Bush: Link.
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Guy Verhofstadt’s view on Europe
Le Monde has a short interview with Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian Prime Minister, on his new book “United States of Europe”, which presents his vision for a federation of eurozone states.
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know how interesting the contents are, but I liked this comment of his:
Les Vingt-Cinq ont décidé, en juin 2005, d’ouvrir une période de réflexion qui me fait plutôt penser à une sieste espagnole.
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Presumed guilty
The coverage of the terrible Entwistle murders has shown up the difference between US and UK reporting standards. Whereas I generally assume that the US press will be more responsible than their British cousins, I was very surprised to read the presumptions of guilt and sweeping statements in the Boston Globe’s coverage (use BugMeNot to get through registration).
Given the apparently complete absence of a “sub judice” rule, there is no hint of the British phrases “helping the police with their enquiries”, or “the trial continues”. Only a lone ‘accused’ before ‘killer’ gives any hint of the presumption of innocence, while the family of the victims are allowed to invoke the devil in their quoted comments to the press.
A different and worrying legal culture indeed.
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A catalogue of errors
The NYT has a collection of doccuments showing the collective failure of US and state governments to prevent the disaster in New Orleans.