Piecost.Net

The gauntlet appears to have been thrown down for midsize town tourism videos.  Come on Bude, fight back.  Come on Horsham, retaliate!

[via Today's Big Thing]

[Today's Big Thing]

Charlie Brooker, the UK’s own hilarious storehouse of vitriol, cynicism & spite, nicely encapsulates all that’s wrong with spoilt rich US kids through the form of his descriptive narrative on MTV’s My Super Sweet 16.

I’d vote for him to be Pope, that’s for sure.

Comedy legend (Peep Show, Would I Lie To You, That Mitchell & Webb Look, etc) David Mitchell appears to have a regular spot in The Observer (Sunday variant of The Grauniad) nowadays, and any fans of a well-assembled & eloquent bit of outrage/rant who aren’t already familiar with his work would do well to have a look at his piece from yesterday on snow, misery, and the sacking of Carol Thatcher.

Snow seems to lighten the mood. Somebody once told me it’s because its reflective qualities alleviate midwinter light deprivation. But that’s exactly the sort of neat explanation that usually turns out to be bullshit – or a ploy to sell those expensive alarm clocks that pretend to be a gently emerging dawn. Take that view to its logical conclusion and I’ll be persuaded to spend 20 minutes every day with my head in the freezer, shining a torch around.

No, people like any abnormal weather conditions because they’re something to talk about. They relieve the monotony. As our parents told us when we were little: “You wouldn’t like it if we had it all the time!” (Which, along with: “Don’t eat it all at once” and: “It’ll all end in tears”, is from a genre of wisdom for which the phrase “Fuck off!” was invented.)

[David Mitchell in The Observer]

Not happy with the word “probably” in the Atheist Bus Campaign? Victor Stenger offers this alternative suggestion.

And buses generally sit stationary in traffic.

[via RichardDawkins.net]

Awaiting first consignment of fresh mango juice

[via Dave]

Much debate has been had about the Australian Government’s recent announcement of plans to implement mandatory internet content filtering to remove access to illegal material. The plan is that there will be 2 blacklists – one which filters “adult” material (to protect the sweet innocent children) and which users can opt out of, and another blacklist to block material deemed illegal by the government.

Due to the highly technical nature of the subject matter, many participants in the debate (such as internet engineer Mark Newton) know what they are talking about, however many do not.  Many Conservative groups seem to believe that protecting us from the evils of the world is a desireable thing, and as such have popped up in whack-a-mole style professing to support the filtering measures – in spite of all expert testimony that the measures will be expensive to implement, slow internet performance by a massive factor, and above all, be almost completely ineffective.

Here is an ABC Radio interview between Mark Newton, and Jim Wallace of the Australian Christian Lobby (not traditionally considered a technical advisory body, AFAIK).  To help the untrained listener identify the factual errors made in this interview, Geordie Guy has kindly inserted an alert sound whenever one of the speakers says something inaccurate, misleading, or downright wrong.

The civilian campaign to raise awareness & protest against the Australian Government’s measures can be found at nocleanfeed.com.  Mark has written to his Member for Parliament, Kate Ellis, on the topic (PDF here).  Following an attempt by the Communications Minister to silence Mark via his employer, he has written further parliamentary correspondence on the topic (PDF).