Gleeful Gecko » Canary In A Coal Mine

England Safe at Last!

Brett — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 13:47:45 +0000

England safe at last as the scourge or Dwile Flonking is finally over. I am told they were once a great Empire before the nannies got them. I bet Jeremy Clarkson was a rabid dwile flonker when he was young.

Give Me That Old Time Religion

Brett — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 02:12:34 +0000

Some fundamentalists are more fundamental than others. Not sure this is a cultural revival I am fan of.

Health and Safety and the Death of England

Brett — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:00:52 +0000

While I lived in the UK I fell in love with the many eccentric old English traditions and some modern ones as well. Bog snorkeling, cheese rolling, village to village ball games, conkers and many more fun things that make England England. The arch enemy of all these events are the sad old blue hairs that are attempting kill all fun in England, the Health and Safety folks. Well, Health and Safety has claimed another scalp as they have shut down the Cheese Rolling event. In ten years England will be safer than any Disney park and the beer will be in safe metric mugs. I will weep when the last bastion of England falls for it was once a glorious country.

Sad Story from the Guardian

Brett — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:30:44 +0000

Apparently gamblers in Africa have come to believe that if you smoke a vulture brain you will get a glimpse at the future. The result of this superstition is the likely extinction of vultures in Africa. What a lovely world. What would be nice is if people thought you could see the future from smoking the brains of dictators or gangsters, but I guess that is too much to ask.

Brutal Youth Gang Disarmed in the UK

Brett — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:41:29 +0000

A brutal youth gang has been deprived of its weapons in the UK. I say it is about time time they tackled this vicious group that has for so long terrorized old ladies at street corners.

Punt Wars Flare Up

Brett — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:24:54 +0000

English Punt Wars flare up. Best quote:

We’ve had argy bargy, touts fighting over tourists, pushing and shoving, yes. But everyone is a bit shocked because it is not something we have known before.

That is the England I love, filled with argy bargy.

The New Prisoner Show

Brett — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:47:36 +0000

I don’t watch a lot of TV, haven’t in many years, but this is first TV show I think I will make time for in a loooong time. I loved the original Prisoner show, it was frustrating, challenging, confusing and brilliant. The world around us has become ever more frustrating, challenging confusing and brilliant in the years since the show was made so if this is done well it could be very good indeed.

Via The Third Point of Singularity

Science Based Science

Brett — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:07:45 +0000

I was talking to some people yesterday about my preference for science based on science, rather than superstition or hunches. My two favorite sites on the topic are Bad Science and Science Based Medicine, but there are plenty of other good ones out there. Below the cut is a Youtube film about an emergency room running on non-science based medicine that I found to to be pretty accurate.

Circuit City Vs BH Camera, No Contest

Brett — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:25:46 +0000

A great article at Inc. about why Circuit City failed. It had nothing to do with the economy and everything to do with how they did business. When given the choice between a business that tries to sell using methods more akin to a used car sales lot and a business that treats you like a person there really is no contest. That said, BH is wise in that it keeps one location excellent. National chains always struggle to be good, and they never reach excellent on a consistent basis.

Newsflash, Reporters Should Report But First, Isn’t This Kitten Adorable

Brett — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:33:30 +0000

Ana Marie Cox, the former Wonkette, notices the White House Press Pool Reporters are useless. I find it interesting how it takes the people who make their living off off light news, like Cox and Drew Pearson at Fark to point out how useless so much of the media has become. I love my light news, don’t take me wrong here, but for the love of all that is holy some real news from real reporters would go a long way towards convincing me that the major media has not just sold us out.

Resist

Brett — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:06:55 +0000

This was a very heartening story for me, but I almost didn’t post it as at first I suspected it was an April Fools hoax. Apparently ants that are taken as slaves when their hives are destroyed actively rebel. That is very heartening to me, it means that the urge to resist tyranny must run pretty deep in our instincts and that is awesome.

What Reporters Should Do

Brett — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 12:47:11 +0000

I don’t really give a crap about Britney Spears, Madonna, or anything to do with American Idol. I am always outraged when I see junk like that in the headlines. What I want from my news is information about what those who run my community are up to. I will happily pay for news if it is worth paying for, but more and more even the big names have become less and less about real news. This editorial about the Baltimore Sun’s crime section is a great example. Real reporting is hard work, but vital to a community, it lets us little people know that those we put in power are doing our work, rather than just making themselves rich. Papers wonder how they are failing, I think it is because they have forgotten that real reporting is needed, not just the latest about some idiot celebrities.

Edit: Techdirt’s Mike Masnick has a different take on this, normally I line up with him on most stories, but I think he has missed the point here. He is saying that the author got the info inspite of not being a reporter, but I would say he only got the info because he used to be a reporter and knew the ropes via hard earned professional experience. Now do I think citizens should be looking for this kind of info and making it known? Yep. But I do think it will be a long time before some random blogger gets the kind of access a real reporter gets than has the impact when the story is published. I think it isn’t the competition from blogs that is killing the papers, it is the lack of exactly this kind of reporting. Reporters parroting predictable party lines or just quoting press releases are useless to me, but someone really digging into abuses of power are something I would pay for.

More On Burning Californians

Brett — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:10:32 +0000

Apparently there are some in California who want to be put out if they should catch on fire. I feel the original judgment was very ill advised, but thought no one would do anything about until some judge or politician was left to die because no one wanted to take a chance on saving them. It is good to see someone has some of that uncommon common sense in California.

Follow up from Here

Free Speech In the UK is Dying

Brett — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:36:17 +0000

Jeremy Clarkson by tonylanciabeta on Flickr

I will be the first to admit Jeremy Clarkson has said and done some really stupid things but criticizing the English Prime Minister isn’t one of them. Everyone should have the right to call their politicians idiots or snollygosters. Most of them seem to go out of their way to prove that they are idiots. Only despots and totalitarian states try to ban this sort of thing. Oh, and the UK. You can thank your MPs for leading you down the glorious road to Venezuela or Russia.

Annnnnd he’s already apologized. Perhaps it would be better if he simply mimed from now on.

For more on Clarkson

Unintended Consequences and Bad Laws

Brett — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:46:31 +0000

So the enforcement of the new children’s toy safety law has been put off a year. Good. This was a terrible law and was about to ensure that the only winners were the Chinese, who the law was supposed to protect us from. This was an incredibly poorly written law and was about to have massive effects ranging from banning children from libraries to stopping the sale of handicrafts in America. If you have an email address you probably got a ton of email on this one, I know I did from librarians, from crafters and from toy soldier collectors. The was poorly written and casts a huge net, far beyond any sane limits, now hopefully someone competent will rework it into what it was supposed to be in the first place. I am often annoyed when being emailed about things like this, too often it is someone overreacting, but in this case the more I looked the worse the law looked. As Overlawyered points out, this isn’t over yet but I do hope that everyone that who emailed me keeps the pressure up on Congress to get this one fixed.

Edit to Update:

So apparently the one year delay is meaningless and the new rules take effect any next week. Lets rush through crap legislation then finger point when it explodes all over the marketplace. Thank god we aren’t in a recession or this could really do some damage.