Snigger

To some people, the phrase “Oliver Kamm is a pretentious buffoon who uses long and tortuous sentences to bamboozle the opposition – much in the style of a latter-day Sophist or a mid-20th century Continental-school ‘philosopher’ – frequently smears his ideological opponents as pro-terror or antisemitic when their original words imply no such thing; and laughably poses as a man of the left except when it suits him to deny this laughable pose” is meaningless.

I envy such people. However, if you’re not among them, I recommend that you read this auto-Kamm parody.

(via Nick Barlow).

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Yes, it’s fucking political

Harry Hutton has taken a break from his normal diet of whimsy [1] to get all political about Venezuela and eVoting.

While I doubt that the voting machines were rigged, it’s certainly true that the way Hugo Chavez has handled the election count could be straight from a ‘how to screw up what should be a resounding victory’ textbook [2]. The combination of delayed recounting and not storing proper paper records is guaranteed to undermine confidence in the final result.

And as Harry says, the implications for another electoral battle between vicious ideological opponents in a country with a history of electoral fraud and growing use of hard-to-audit eVoting machines could be scary.

[1] The Diet of Whimsy was called in 1085 to adjudicate on which of the six claimants to the Papacy was genuinely ordained by God, and which were ordained merely by chancers and heretics. It was one of the only recorded uses of Trial By Novelty Sports, with each antipope in turn being knocked out (and subsequently burned alive) after failing at simple and slightly ludicrous tasks.

The most favoured candidate, Antipope Clement III, was eliminated after failing to move enough inflatable balls from place to place while tethered by a bungee cord. The eventual winner, Cardinal Desiderius, was ordained Pope Blessed Victor III in honour of his blessed victory – although sadly he died within a year of assuming the Papal throne.

The medieval church subsequently abandoned Trial By Novelty Sports on the grounds of insufficient humour and brutality, and burned its inventor – a Cardinal Jersson Fruhntiay – at the stake. While Cardinal Fruhntiay is largely forgotten, his name has lived on as a bizarre linguistic quirk.

[2] According to “reliable conservative sources” [3], this textbook was donated to Chavez by the Kerry campaign, as part of their conspiracy to spread socialist solidarity throughout the Americas, surrender to the socialist Islamofacists, and betray the countrymen of all concerned. I’m normally reluctant to lend credence to such rumours, but it does certainly appear that Kerry’s team are expert enough in the field that they no longer need textbooks.

[3] This phrase shares a common meaning with the phrase “dribbling lunatics and paid shrills”.

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Yey, I win

B3TA are looking for someone to try the “BRITISH SUPER SIZE ME – instead of only eating MaccyD’s, try living for a month on a diet of Findus Crispy Pancakes, Panda Pops and Jammy Dodgers”.

If you pick any month from January 1983 to December 1988, then I’m there – along with all my then classmates, and quite possibly everyone else who was primary-school-aged in suburban England at the time…

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Special announcement

To the Aussie who googled for “saint paul was an anti-semite” – no, he was Jewish, and so were all the people he hung out with, you stupid beer-swilling convict.

Admittedly, he was a crazy woman-hating conservative, who turned Christianity into a nasty mess of repression and patriarchy, but that’s not quite the same.

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Nr and Nrs

In the (hopefully unlikely) event that you believe Ms, their, and chairperson to be disgraceful and unnecessary perversions of the English language, I’d recommend reading this piece by Douglas Hofstadter (old but good). And then change your mind.

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Joke of the day

“[There is] absolutely no evidence of George W. Bush ever using cocaine. This is an outrageous slander. As for his military service, he did his duty. Nobody has found legitimate fault” – David Thompson, in Dan Drezner’s comments.

What’s that, Skippy? It’s not a joke? There are actually people who believe this kind of crazy nonsense? Well, bugger me. On the plus side, I think America disqualifies the criminally insane from voting.

Update: actually, I think this *is* a joke and David Thompson is a parody. Unless someone can explain how this could be *intended* to make sense (on John Kerry getting the date of his undercover mission to Cambodia wrong by a whole four weeks):

“Indeed, it is a very serious character flaw. The stated date makes all the difference in the world. It’s similar to a previous president claiming he did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky. Kerry claimed that the date was Christmas and by doing this he slandered his country and fellow soldiers.” (from later in the same comments thread)

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Jewish Nazis

No, I don’t mean ‘Israel is a Nazi state’, you wanker. Rather, Abiola Lapite has an extremely interesting and – unsurprisingly – disturbing post about Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen, a German Jew who managed to be a Nazi war criminal while a prisoner in Buchenwald.

Normally, we tend to assume that people who collaborate with horrible regimes that oppress them on the grounds of their race do so because they value their own comfort and/or survival above solidarity with their co-oppressees – and society punishes collaborators chiefly to deter others from ‘cheating’ in the same way.

Mr Katzen-Ellenbogen is a different case. Despite all evidence to the contrary (chiefly, the fact that the regime he loved sent him to a concentration camp), he belived himself to be on the side of the Nazis even beyond the end of the war. It’s almost more like Stockholm syndrome… which comes dangerously close to excusing him.

Then again, even though there’s no such empirical thing as free will, there’s a strong case that we should pretend that it exists so that the co-operative aspects of society can continue to function. So perhaps Stockholm syndrome doesn’t provide a get-out clause after all.

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The mother of all commentaries

General Theory of Rubbish has a splendid analysis of the US election campaign. Highlight: “…the majority of voters think Bush planned the 9/11 Attack with Bin Laden but most still feel he’s stronger on terrorism than Kerry. Thus: a win for Bush methinks.”.

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