Someone needs to set up an anti-eBay. Base it somewhere offshore and use it to sell all the stuff that eBay disallows or starts getting harrassed about. 

Tesco are asking eBay not to list 'Computers for Schools' vouchers. First off, anyone who's silly enough to spend money on these vouchers deserves to get screwed. Secondly, just because you print "not for resale" on something doesn't mean that I can't resell it. It's just advice for the purchaser. Of course, if the price is right, for the right person, it might be a good deal. 

The BBC ought to have an RSS feed to announce new podcasts. 

Just listened to Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins on Start the Week, a weekly Radio 4 arts/cultural review programme. Download or Subscribe to the podcast. It looks like the BBC are putting some more podcasts out there. At last. 

Oh, yes. Let's split up the science curriculum based on what the different genders find "exciting". Smart move. Better that than, you know, determining academic standards by asking the experts in the subject. 

Dave is going to quit blogging. I agree with the technological stuff in his post. It's not finished, but it's mostly done. I think that he's not right on the political front. We're not going to see bloggers in the House of Representatives. We're going to see Congressmen with blogs. That's a different thing altogether. It's hardly going to be an unedited voice of a person. It's going to be an edited voice of a composite - a political shell of a person combined with his marketing department. Politics is still tied to Reagan, but not in the way that small government people want. It's tied to Reagan because Reagan was an actor, a man who impersonates other men. That's what politics is going to be for a long time. 

If you are annoyed that you can't sign up for isolatr, there's an easy way of getting the results. When we sell this house I'm in, buy it. It has neither mobile phone coverage or TV coverage. 

Steve Rubel points to a study stating that most bloggers are not reporters. Indeed. Then again, thanks to Reuters, the Associated Press and other wire services, most of the mainstream media aren't reporters either. We're just helping to free reporters from the tyranny of overpaid hacks and press release copyists, as well as digesting the news. Digesting (and I say that as someone who hasn't been able to do it for the last two days) means amplifying the important bits and cutting away the irrelevancies. 

I've just tried to sign up for an account with MetaFilter (and paid the $5 "donation"). Can't log on. Just wanted to respond to this post with links to this article and this crazy Mormon document called "Steps in Overcoming Masturbation". 

DeadBrain: "If ten, a hundred, a thousand innocent people have to die to possibly deter just one terrorist, it's obviously worth it." 

You can buy human skulls online. How creepy, but how cool is that? 

WTF? The FEMA colouring book. Nice response to Katrina. Why didn't they put "sit tight on the roof while we fuck it up" in the colouring book? Or perhaps "don't become a fireman, because we'll take you off for some Political Correctness training rather than getting you to New Orleans"? 

I've been saying this for years. Get all that shit off your slides, and just use them for what you can't present verbally (ie. pictures and movies). 

I hope more universities would stand up against Turnitin. I had to block them a few years back since they started poking through my blog looking for content for their damn database. This is one of the reasons why I'm glad that my university still asks for paper submissions. It's a pain having to submit on paper, but it prevents the university from wasting time with this bullshit, treating me like a damn criminal. 

This weekend, I have eaten: an orange, a small slab of cheese, a couple of crackers and that's it. Even if I've been vomiting and in pain, at least I'm probably losing a bit of weight at the same time. 

Met Prove Themselves Incompetent (Again) 

Can't we get rid of this Ian Blair idiot? Not only has he been taping phone calls (which is illegal), he's also head of an organisation which has killed innocent people (which is also illegal, though it becomes less illegal if you're wearing a Police uniform for some reason), they're now banning blogging by people like this.

WWD slagged off Tony Blair, ID cards (and again, here), discussed how Hendon (the police training school) is a hotbed of theft, disagreement with "the immoral foreign policies of New Labour, and their sycophantic support of American foriegn policy", how horrible it is to have to deliver "the death message", the silliness of Charles Clarke, the Respect agenda, how CCTV isn't that useful, an entry entitled "The Death of Liberty in Britain", the failures of the IPCC in the de Menezes situation, the nutty "community leaders" and much more.

I don't agree with WWD's perspective on a number of things, especially the drug-war which is basically glossed over prohibitionism, using all the same nonsensical justifications that didn't justify the War on Alcohol back in the 1920s. But, here's what's great about WWD. He's critical of the police when he thinks they're wrong. And the blog is written by a human being.

I can be very nasty about the Police - I've called them things like "incompetents in uniform". But reading WWD makes me realise that there are coppers out there who know what they're doing and who are professional and don't buy in to all the BS that comes at them from the Higher Ups. This is good, and we need to encourage it.

The Met, who have the biggest image problem as a result of the de Menezes case, should be encouraging coppers to blog and blog openly - with their names and badge numbers. That way we can actually start a dialogue and try to understand what's going on with the Police. When there are blogs out there being written by police officers, we, the readers, can judge the Police by both their actions, by the statements of their "media people" and other Higher Ups, as well as from individual officers. Instead, if you cut out the individual officers, we can only judge the Police by their media presence and reported actions. And that's not good for the Police.