I hate the US government for many things – but worst of all, for making it rational to believe things that sound like crazy tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theories.

People like me on the ‘Sensible Left’ ignored people like Scott Ritter ahead of the war, because we thought they sounded like loons. But they were right, and we were wrong. They understood that this administration is not constrained by conventional notions of sanity, whereas we assumed that there was some degree of continuity with Enlightenment values hidden under their dark, vicious exteriors.

In other words, we can safely assume that the Americans did rig the Iraqi elections, and that Iran will indeed be bombed in June. Hunter S Thompson’s decision seems more rational with every news article I read. As does Charlie Brooker’s prescription. What the fuck are we doing?

Chris Lightfoot reveals the police’s secret weapons against terror, and will doubtless consequently be interned in Belmarsh within the week [*]. Semi-relatedly, George Monbiot (yes, I know) suggests that the new crime bill contains far more insidious provisions than the non-story of the (admittedly daft) religious hatred legislation.

Elsewhere, Jon Ronson writes an extremely good eulogy to Hunter S Thompson, which also mercilessly rips the piss out of the drug-addled laddish hacks who think they’re heir to the Gonzo tradition.

Finally, it’s always suprising quite how much one’s sympathy towards people who are merely appalling rises when they run into opposition from people who are downright evil.

[*] This is an exaggeration. At the moment, we’re still at the ‘first they came for the Muslims’ stage of tyranny; it’s at least three or four years before we reach ‘then they came for me’.

"Any comparison to Scandinavian welfare states runs into trouble when we keep in mind that such European welfare states are dependent on exports to the American worker-consumer, who does not enjoy welfare state largesse.

"Should America spend as much money as Europe does on a welfare state, then the European welfare states would collapse, as the lack of discretionary consumer spending (due to higher taxes) would mean less exports from Europe’s welfare states…. That is a consequence of the freeloaderism Europeans are known for."

This may be the most gloriously wrong-headed thing I’ve ever read (and I’ve read an awful lot of gloriously wrong-headed things). From here.

Making up scandals about Oxbridge admissions is always a fun thing for newspapers to do. The latest one is even more non-story-ish than normal: apparently, Oxford’s postgrad admission guidelines used to suggest that candidates with degrees from good universities should be favoured above candidates from ‘weak’ universities.

The fact that a rigorous academic course favours people with a rigorous academic track record is not shocking. Indeed, if Oxford were *not* to take the candidate’s previous university into account, that would be staggeringly remiss of it.

I assume the problem here is that the media world features far too many people with ‘degrees’ from ‘universities’ such as Luton and Middlesex (and shoulder-mounted chip shops to match)…

Today (February 22) is Free Mojtaba and Arash Day, to raise awareness of two bloggers locked up by the dodgy maniacs who run Iran. Read more here.

It might also be a good day to reflect on the freedom of speech of people closer to home – and probably also a good day to point out your opposition to any crazy plans the dodgy maniacs who run the US have in store for the Iranian people…

Update: and also to sympathise with the poor buggers who’ve been earthquaked to death, which is even worse than being jailed for blogging.

As we’re all constantly being told, the oil price has rocketed since the whole War on Terror/bombing-the-Middle-East thing kicked off. It’s worth remembering that much of this price rise is fictional.

The red line in the chart below shows the price of oil in US$; the blue line shows the price in euros. As you can see, the difference is striking. Measured in dollars, oil prices have risen 89% since January 2000. Measured in euros, they have risen just 50%. The contrast is even sharper since the beginning of 2003: dollar oil prices are up 44%, while euro prices are up just 15%.

In other words, oil prices appear to be rising far more than they really are because of the magical collapsing dollar. This is a helpful illusion for the US administration: they can pretend to Americans that oil is more expensive at the pumps because of complicated geopolitical issues, rather than because the value of a dollar has fallen 39% since the President’s inauguration.

Ikea has a great present for the libertarian extremist in your life – the Anja Rand rug. No word on whether it comes with a matching fountainhead.

(via BoingBoing)

The world is now officially a less silly and good place. Dr Gonzo, you’ll be missed.

Fafblog has a more heartening take on the affair: [HST] said he was headed up to heaven to shoot God. "The great bastard’s in season and it’s long overdue," the Godfather of Gonzo said as he dusted off his elephant gun. "I have full reason to believe they will award me both the head and the tail. Expect me back by the apocalypse."

I *would* suggest that anyone with an interest in UK political blogging checks out the UK political blogs aggregator – except for the fact that they exclude the UK’s sixth-best weblog from their source list. Boo!

I do definitely suggest checking out libertarian Tim Worstall, with whom I also more or less entirely disagree. His weekly British Blog Roundup is a rather groovy concept.

Relatedly, someone else has set up a British Blogs Top 10 site, based on traffic figures. SBBS is unlikely to feature here until I move servers and content management systems next month (FWIW, we’re running on about 1500-2000 views per day, and I haven’t written the code to count individual visitors…)

Finally, George Orwell has much tea-related wisdom.

(an earlier version of this post was shorter, drunker, less comprehensible and more offensive)

As programmers, designers and developers, why do we go through the gratuitous cruelty of providing ‘clear’ buttons when their only purpose is for people to accidentally click instead of "OK" and destroy their work?

Until quite recently I had a post to go here, you may be surprised to learn.