TV Wallpaper next?

/
LG flat-screen TV gets skinny
A flat-screen TV rolled out Wednesday by LG looked barely thicker than a piece of posterboard.Think your TV is pretty slim? After seeing LG's new television, you may want to put that flat-screen of yours on a diet. The South Korean electronics manufacturer unveiled a television Wednesday that is less than 7 millimeters** thick. The product, which is so new it doesn't have a name, was brought on stage briefly during an LG press event at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. It looked to be not much thicker than a piece of posterboard. A spokeswoman said the TV should be available late this year.
** That's just a bit more than the thickness of a couple of pound coins.

Falling down

/
Enlarged ImageI wish someone would blow something up. Anything, just so long as it causes a break in this endless, tedious, news coverage about the fucking weather. It's a bit of snow and ice folks, that's all. Put on some woolies and a scarf and shut the fuck up.

I hear that casualty departments and ambulance services are being swamped by cases of people slipping over. Jeez, can't people even manage to put on some decent footware for the duration?

Regular readers will know that I am a huge fan of my cheap, industrial, non-slip, bullet-proof, bomb-proof, waterproof, acid-resistant "Slipbuster" chef's shoes. I don't know how they do it but wearing them I can walk across an oil-covered skaking rink without slipping.

They are now £15.99! Up from £12.99 the last time I bought some. I'll wait for a special offer in the summer and buy another few pairs. 

Oil? Surely not!

/
"Yemen:  Behind Al-Qaeda Scenarios, a Geopolitical Oil Chokepoint to Eurasia"    
by F. William Engdahl
A picture dated 03 August 2006 shows Yemeni and foreign oil experts working at an oil field in the remote eastern Yemeni Shabwa province, 23 June 2007. A soldier with "emotional problems" gunned down two Asian workers with a major US oil company in a shooting spree in Shabwa today, officials said.In addition to its geopolitical position as a major global oil transit chokepoint, Yemen is reported to hold some of the world’s greatest untapped oil reserves. Yemen’s Masila Basin and Shabwa Basin are reported by international oil companies to contain “world class discoveries.”

10 France’s Total and several smaller international oil companies are engaged in developing Yemen’s oil production. Some fifteen years ago I was told in a private meeting with a well-informed Washington insider that Yemen contained “enough undeveloped oil to fill the oil demand of the entire world for the next fifty years.”

What a hero!

/
PC cleared of assaulting OAP
"There is no dispute here that PC Morton (30) did use some force upon Mr Slack (90) and there is no dispute that, as a result of that, Mr Slack suffered some injury. The issue in this case was whether the prosecution could prove whether that force was unlawful."
Judge John Burgess
CUNT!  CUNT!  CUNT! CUNT!  CUNT!

Naturally there was both a traffic warden and one of those useless (female) PCSOs involved:
Judge Burgess said: "A call came over the radio firstly that assistance was required. Then there was a second call in which she (PCSO Martin) sounded fearful and panicked and was complaining of being assaulted herself. That would have been in his (PC Morton's) mind when he arrived. A police officer faced with violent situations cannot be expected to work out on the spur of the moment exactly how much force may be necessary." (emphasis mine)
Help! Help! I'm being attacked by a nonagenarian.

Useless fucking twats.

Obama drones on

/
US drone missiles slaughtered 700 Pakistani civilians in 2009
US drone missile attacks have claimed the lives of over 700 Pakistani civilians since Barack Obama took office a year ago, according to figures released this week by officials in Islamabad. The escalation of Washington’s AfPak war, now in full swing, will mean the slaughter of thousands more men, women and children in 2010.

The grim death toll was announced in the Pakistani English-language daily Dawn Monday, just as news of the latest strike by a Hellfire missile made its way from an impoverished village near the Afghanistan border.

The missile strike left dead and buried in the rubble of their home a Pakistani teacher and his nine-year-old son. According to media accounts citing unnamed US intelligence officials, the teacher’s home had been targeted for a Predator drone attack because of reports that militants had frequented the house.

Who provided these reports? How were they verified? Was there any evidence that the teacher—not to mention his child—were in any way implicated in the activities of the alleged "militants?"

Blame the victim

/
I've only just come across this appalling piece in the Guardian.

Prejudiced Danes provoke fanaticism
Why did the editors of Jyllands-Posten want to mock Islam in this way? Some of us believed it was in bad taste and also cruel. Intentional humiliation is an aggressive act. As a journalist now living in the same town as Westergaard, I thought some at Jyllands-Posten had acted like petulant adolescents. Danes fail to perceive the fact that they have developed a society deeply suspicious of religion. This is the real issue between Denmark and Muslim extremists, not freedom of speech. The free society precept is merely an attempt to give the perpetrators the moral high ground when actually it is a smokescreen for a deeply rooted prejudice, not against Muslims, but against religion per se. Muslims are in love with their faith. And many Danes are suspicious of anyone who loves religion.
So what? Why should we 'respect' religious views any more than we respect other daft, deeply irrational ones? And most certainly, why should we respect any religion who's adherents believe the appropriate response to being disrespected is murder?

Texas Straight Talk

/
Keynesianism Delivers a Decade of Zero - Ron Paul
You cannot spend your way out of a recession. You cannot regulate the economy into oblivion and expect it to function. You cannot tax people and businesses to the point of near slavery and expect them to keep producing. You cannot create an abundance of money out of thin air without making all that paper worthless. The government cannot make up for rising unemployment by just hiring all the out of work people to be bureaucrats or send them unemployment checks forever. You cannot live beyond your means indefinitely. The economy must actually produce something others are willing to buy. Government growth is the opposite of all these things...

...we cannot survive much longer if government is our only growth industry.