Midnight Music

The great Gil Scott Heron (eventually): Is That Jazz?

Hellzapoppin' Friday

"Probably the best swing dance scene ever captured on film"

Give him the clap he so richly deserves...

Via b3ta

Any bets on how many of these morons get killed eventually?

Protesters demand execution of 'blasphemy' teacher

Thousands of protesters wielding clubs and knives have gathered outside the Sudanese presidential palace calling for execution by firing squad of the British teacher who let her students name a teddy bear Muhammad. The protests began in Khartoum after the end of Friday prayers. Pick-up trucks carrying Sudanese demonstrators drove around the capital blaring out messages to Gillian Gibbons. Protesters shouted: "No tolerance: Execution" and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad". Hundreds of riot police were deployed to the protests in Martyr's Square, but they did not try to stop the rally.Some of the protesters, who an Associated Press reporter at the scene said numbered as many as 10,000, carried clubs, knives and axes.

Oh for the days when you could go all year without seeing the words Muslim or Muhammad in a newspaper or hear them on the radio.

Lord Wank of Tosspot Manor

nourishing obscurity: [vulnerability] where's the pleasure in that

I've always thought this guy was a fucking creep and this post does nothing to alter that opinion.

SLAPP-ed down

Neuwirth Loses Libel Case Against Tikun Olam

Rachel Neuwirth sued Richard Silverstein, the blogger at Tikun Olam, for calling her a "Kahanist swine". So confident were her lawyers of victory they told Silverstein that her case was a 'slam dunk' . Wrong!

The case was thrown out by LA Superior Court Judge John Reid who is no bleeding heart liberal but a law and order conservative who just happens to understand the importance of free speech in blogs.

We won the case with an anti-SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) motion under which the defendant must prove that his speech was made in a public arena and furthered a public good and that the plaintiff was a public figure. Rachel's key argument was that she is a private figure (she argued that she was merely a real estate agent) and the my blog was a private forum (because I "controlled" it), all of which are patently false since she herself calls herself an "internationally respected journalist" in her online bio. That my blog is a public forum is also patently obvious as 250,000 unique visitors each year indicate. And I no more 'control' the 6,000 comments published on my blog than I control the entire web.

One of the beauties of the SLAPP motion is that the losing plaintiff must pay defendant's reasonable court costs. This system was purposely designed to inhibit well-heeled individuals from bringing frivolous lawsuits against whistle blowers and other do-gooders. As the judge's ruling states:

These lawsuits are generally brought to chill the valid exercise of constitutional rights. A SLAPP suit lacks merit and will achieve its objective if it depletes the defendant’s resources or energy because the aim is not to win but to detract the defendant from his or her objective. [An anti-SLAPP motion] is a procedural remedy to dispose of such suits expeditiously and thereby protect defendants’ free exercise of First Amendment rights on matters of public interest

This is an interesting case, especially in the context of some recent attempts in this country to silence blogs. Read the whole thing. (Via JSF)

Lashing out

In Britain, heretics get a metaphorical lashing

Yes, there are huge cultural differences between Sudan and the UK – but the elites on both sides of the divide share one important pastime in common: the policing of morality.

Thankfully no one in Britain is given 40 lashes. Instead they’re given a metaphorical lashing. Those who offend public morality or ridicule conventional wisdom are not tied up and beaten, but they are beaten up in the press and political circles and are frequently hounded from their jobs. The difference in Britain is that the metaphorical lashers pose as the guardians of PC, liberal morality, keen to protect the public from outdated and offensive ideas, while in Sudan the literal lashers are closed-minded clerics who lose the plot over any inappropriate mention of Muhammad. Yet both have in common a deep intolerance of ‘unacceptable’ ideas and a desire to monitor and clamp down on blasphemy: whether it’s secular blasphemy against liberal conventions here, or literal blasphemy against archaic conventions over there.

Those Micks and Taffs eh?

Insult that landed an Irishman living in Wales in court for racial harassment

An IRISHMAN living in Wales was found guilty of racially aggravated disorderly behaviour, and received a ten-week suspended prison sentence for calling a WELSH woman an ENGLISH bitch.

Scientific method

BBC: UK among school science leaders

The UK is among the better performers in an international league table on school science, although there is a wide achievement gap. A study of science ability among 15-year-olds in 57 countries ranked the UK between 12th and 18th place.

Daily Mail: British schools slide down world league for sciences from 4th to 14th

Britain has tumbled down another education league table - this time in science. In six years, the UK has slumped from fourth to 14th place in a table of 15-year-olds' performance in science tests. Our schools trail major European countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, as well as smaller nations such as Estonia and Liechtenstein.

Yeah, like she might have wanted to stay on

UK teacher jailed over teddy row
 
A British teacher has been found guilty in Sudan of insulting religion after she allowed her primary school class to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, has been sentenced to 15 days in prison and will then be deported.

Skin and gristle?! Speak for yourself.

I don't do a 'Quote of the Day' but if I did this would be it. From DSquared in Jamie's comments section:

...I think the penis contains very little muscle tissue and a lot of thick-walled blood vessels, so sauteed penis is basically going to be a lump of skin and gristle. I would guess that if you're going to eat it, you would need to braise it very slowly - then maybe you could deep-fry it, like the Spanish do with pigs' ears.

Cutting edge journalism

I'm buying my granddaughter an iPod for Christmas so I did a bit of surfing and came across this  'prescient' piece by David Smith, technology correspondent of The Observer:

Why the iPod is losing its cool:

The iPod, the digital music player beloved of everyone from Coldplay's Chris Martin to President George Bush, is in danger of losing its sheen. Sales are declining at an unprecedented rate. Industry experts talk of a 'backlash' and of the iPod 'wilting away before our eyes'. Most disastrously, Apple's signature pocket device with white earphones may simply have become too common to be cool.

This piece was dated September 2006. I expect Mr Smith is still pulling a decent salary for his insightful scribblings. I'd stick to writing strictly about technology if I were him and leave marketing and business commentary to the grown -ups. The demise of Apple is predicted every year by certain tech journalist and every year Apple comes back and bites their collective arses. According to Smith the reason he was sure the iPod would fail is because it's not cool. And why was it no longer cool?  - because it's been too successful!

You've got to laugh.

You can now buy iPods in vending machines in the US. How uncool is that? Ha, ha!