linkmachinego.com
13 July 2007
[radio] Speechification‘A blog of Radio 4. Not about Radio 4 but of it. We point to the bits we like, the bits you might have missed, the bits that someone might have sneakily recorded.’
12 July 2007
[funny] A Google Map Plotting the many Gaffes of Prince Phillip‘You are a woman, aren’t you? – The Prince seeks clarification from a Kenyan lady in tribal dress back in 1984.’
11 July 2007
[interesting] 33 Names of Things You Never Knew had Names‘Jarns, Nittles, Grawlix and Quimp – Various squiggles used to denote cussing in comic books.’ [via Torrez]
10 July 2007
[movies] The Veidt Method — viral marketing campaign for the Watchmen movie‘Latest News: President and C.E.O. Adrian Veidt interviewed in latest edition of Nova Express – on newsstands now!’ [via plasticbag.org]
[drink] What’s inside Red Bull‘Taurine – Also known as 2-aminoethanesulfonic acid, taurine was originally isolated from bull bile in 1827.’ [via Blah Blah Flowers]
9 July 2007
8 July 2007
[science] Perpetual truths — Bad Science on Perpetual Motion … ‘I should therefore like to posit the first law of bullshit dynamics, which I suspect this invention may well obey, as follows: “there is no imaginable proposition so absurd that you cannot find at least one person, somewhere in the world, with a PhD or professional post, who is happy to endorse it.”’
7 July 2007
[comics] John Byrne in a Nutshell — analysis of a brief John Byrne comment on Grant Morrison’s introduction to Kirby’s New Gods Omnibus‘Morrison wrote the introduction not because he did time in the trenches doing alternately decent and forgettable Kirby homages like you, but because he is the obvious heir to Kirby’s weird, boundless creativity. He actually took the old man up on the challenge to fill the world with your own crazy-ass shit.’
5 July 2007
[blogs] Lowdham Book Festival Lecture Notes — Mike of Troubled Diva’s guide to Blog-to-Books… ‘There is something which has recently come to be seen (in certain quarters) as the Holy Grail to which every personal blogger must aspire. Two little words, which have an almost mystical hold over certain sections of the blogosphere… …and I’m going to say them now… BOOK DEAL!
4 July 2007
[films] Hello, come in, do have a nibble — Interesting interview with Dennis Hopper‘He certainly isn’t in the mood to discuss any of the half a dozen films he is due to appear in this year, a roster which is due to include a performance in Speed 3, even though I have plenty of questions about that. Surely his character Howard Payne died in a decapitation incident in the last reel of Speed 1? “It’s a river of shit,” he tells me pleasantly but firmly, “from which I have tried to extract some gold.”‘
3 July 2007
[uʍopǝpısdn] dı1ɟ — .sʇɹnɥ pɐǝɥ ʎɯ .uʍop ǝpısdn ʇxǝʇ dı1ɟ oʇ 1ooʇ qǝʍ :)
2 July 2007
[crime] Hans Reiser: Once a Linux Visionary, Now Accused of Murder — Wired Article on Hans Reiser and the disappearance of his Wife … ‘For the past two decades, he has struggled to create a different method of organizing data. His approach, known as ReiserFS, is a file system unlike any other. Rather than assign data a fixed location on a hard drive, it uses algorithms to frequently reposition information, including the code that makes up the file system itself. It elegantly maximizes storage space, but it can also complicate data recovery when a computer crashes. If the algorithms are corrupted, the file system will be unable to locate its own position. All the data it organizes disappears into an indistinguishable mass of 0s and 1s. The contents of that hard drive will be irretrievably lost. In Reiser’s case, a critical piece of data — the location of Nina Reiser — has gone missing…’
1 July 2007
[iphone] Wait in Line like Everyone Else, you Traitorous Bastard — Fake Steve Jobs on Steve Wozniak‘He lifts my brand name and calls his book iWoz. Then he comes sniffing around looking for a free iPhone. Forget it, Captain Segway. Look. You did some nice work — back in the seventies. To put it another way, the last time you did any real work, Styx was still selling out arenas. Bokay?’
30 June 2007
[science] Yes, the universe looks like a fix. But that doesn’t mean that a god fixed it‘The impression of design is illusory: our universe has simply hit the jackpot in a gigantic cosmic lottery. The multiverse theory certainly cuts the ground from beneath intelligent design, but it falls short of a complete explanation of existence. For a start, there has to be a physical mechanism to make all those universes and allocate bylaws to them. This process demands its own laws, or meta-laws. Where do they come from?’
29 June 2007
[iphone] 29 June 2007: The Day the World Changed — Fake Steve Jobs rallies the troops … ‘To those of you who serve under me at Apple, I say this: Yes, I have berated you, and insulted you, and exasperated you. Yes, I’ve fired your friends for no reason, and made you work harder than you ever thought you could work. Yes, I’ve taken you away from your spouses, your children, your transgendered domestic partners. In some cases your devotion to me has cost you your marriages. You’ve sacrificed a great deal for this. But has it not been worth it? For the rest of your life, you’ll be able to say that you were working at Apple when the iPhone was introduced. You were here on the day when the course of human history was changed forever. Plus, you’ll get a free 4-gigabyte iPhone, at $500 value. Not bad, right?’
28 June 2007
[politics] Ten Years of Waiting come to an End in 57 minutes at the Palace‘Telling staff to call him Gordon, he acknowledged that it had been an emotional day for them saying goodbye to a great leader and a great family. He thanked them for the welcome and said it had been an interesting day for him. “It’s not every day you meet the Queen at 1.30pm, become the prime minister at 2pm, speak to the president at 3pm, and get told by Sarah to put the kids to bed at 7pm,” he told them.’
[politics] Go to Australia or use your own Judgment‘As prime minister, with ultimate responsibility for Britain’s nuclear deterrent, Mr Brown has to write a letter, in his own hand, giving instructions detailing what the UK’s response should be in the event of a pre-emptive nuclear attack. The letter will be opened only by the commander of a British Trident submarine, who would have to assume that the prime minister was no longer in a position to take “live” command of the situation. The options are said to include the orders: “Put yourself under the command of the US, if it is still there”; “go to Australia”; “retaliate”; “or use your own judgment”. Each new prime minister writes the letter as soon as he or she takes office…’
27 June 2007
[books] Henry Raddick’s Amazon Reviews — spoof book reviews on Amazon. Raddick reviews God, Why Did Dad Lose His Job?: … ‘A truly wonderful guide which has enabled me to explain my recent sacking for vandalising company property to my children in terms of a minor act of redemption. First rate.’
25 June 2007
[music] ‘Oh good, it’s raining again’ — Charlie Brooker does Glastonbury … ‘Once you’re in, the sheer scale of it is initially overwhelming. Imagine forcing the cast of Emmerdale to hurriedly construct Las Vegas at gunpoint in the rain. Then do it again. And once more for luck. That’s Glastonbury: a cross between a medieval refugee camp and a recently detonated circus. Roads of sloppy mud and drunken civilians shivering in tents; this is what London would look like if I’d been in charge for 100 years. Not because I’m some kind of laid-back dreamer, but because I couldn’t organise a piss-up in a pissery. It’d take me six decades to assemble the most rudimentary infrastructure. There’d be no museums in my London. Maybe a bin or two, at a push.’
23 June 2007
[comics] 2001: An Adapted Odyssey — Metafilter discuss Kirby’s adaptation of 2001‘This is really neat and all, but I misread the original post and was really hoping to see 2001: A Space Odyssey as it was adapted by Jack Chick, because that would have been, you know, really really fucked up.’
22 June 2007
[wikipedia] Wikington Crescent … How to Play: ‘To start a game of Wikington Crescent, first click on the Random article link. From the article given, you then click on one of the article links to the next article. The object of the game is to reach the article on Mornington Crescent tube station, whilst clicking on as few articles as possible. The fewer the links used, the better the game. An example is that the article for Matterhorn can lead you to Mornington Crescent tube station within four links.’ [via plep]
[quotes] Grouphug.us: ‘In third grade, I cheated on my history exam. In fourth grade, I stole my uncle Max’s toupee and I glued it on my face when I was Moses in my Hebrew School play. In fifth grade, I knocked my sister Edie down the stairs and I blamed it on the dog…When my mom sent me to the summer camp for fat kids and then they served lunch I went nuts and I pigged out and they kicked me out…But the worst thing I ever done — I mixed a pot of fake puke at home and then I went to this movie theater, hid the puke in my jacket, climbed up to the balcony and then, then, I made a noise like this: hua-hua-hua-huaaaaaaa — and then I dumped it over the side, all over the people in the audience. And then, this was horrible, all the people started getting sick and throwing up all over each other. I never felt so bad in my entire life.’
21 June 2007
[comics] Scans from Jack Kirby’s Comic Adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey — spotted on scans_daily – it really looks like Kirby was having a blast with this one…

panels from Jack Kirby's comic adaptation of 2001

20 June 2007
[obit] Surplus Manning — Marcus Brigstocke sums up Bernard Manning‘For myself, I am glad Bernard Manning is dead. Good riddance. The world now has one less ignorant, hateful bigot living in it. One less racist oaf poisoning us all with his stupid, crass, playground ideas; may the many others, who shared his view of the world, soon leave us too. If you thought Bernard Manning was a harmless loveable rogue with impeccable timing and a charming yet dangerous disregard for conventions of taste and acceptability, you are wrong. He was a racist, hateful and dull, and we are better off without him.’
18 June 2007
[food] What the World Eats … facinating photo essay from Time.
[tip] Windows Tip: Copy Error Messages Text To The Clipboard — I can’t believe I’ve been using Windows for 17 years and never realised you can do this!
17 June 2007
[tv] Everything I Know About Design I Learned from The Sopranos … ‘On the unintended consequences of technology: “It sounds to me like Anthony Jr. may have stumbled onto existentialism.” “Fucking internet.”‘
16 June 2007
[science] Bad Science — a blog from the Guardian columnist Ben Goldacre.