This is exactly the kind of thing that Google should be advertising on the websites of demented Muslim-haters. Good work, Mountain View geeks…

I understand why the Metropolitan Police feels it’s appropriate to give the officer who shot Jean Charles de Menezes a break from duty. I also understand that the chap is probably feeling pretty dreadful and could do with a holiday. Even so, I’m not convinced that giving him a free all-expenses-paid foreign trip is the most sensitive move his bosses could have made…

"All else being equal, it is worse to be killed by one’s friends than by one’s enemies, and worse to be killed by people in authority than by people not in authority." – John Gardner, Oxford professor of jurisprudence. The rest of his article is worth reading too. (via)

Filesharing in the US: software companies are held liable for any copyright infringements committed by their users.

Guns in the US: the government is attempting to ensure that gun companies are not held liable for any crimes committed by their users.

Filesharing and guns: both used legitimately as well as by criminals. Filesharing crime: harmless. Gun crime: deadly. Priorities: fucked up. (via)

I’ve got a new article about Theo Van Gogh on the Sharpener. It’s expanded from a comment I made in The Silly Place. Give it a read, call me an idiot, etc.

A couple of other good bits on the Sharpener at the minute, too: The Future Dictionary of Great Britain (e.g. "Fascist (n). A person whose views the speaker disagrees with. Antonym: Centrist"). Also Yusuf Smith on how most people who comment on Al Qaeda know sod-all about Islamic history or theology, and therefore say entirely witless things (Nosemonkey in the comments suggests that it’s akin to someone who doesn’t understand the difference between a Catholic and a Protestant attemping to analyse the Northern Ireland troubles…)

Call me a treasonous traitor, but this sounds pretty cool. Not quite sure why the Europhobes are throwing their toys out of the pram…

I don’t like spammers, but this seems a little extreme.

We love Canada:

(via)

Apparently it’s good to go for a curry cooked by Muslims, but bad to go for a curry cooked by Muslims who voted for George Galloway. I’m not quite sure where kebabs fit in.

Sidewaysly, Melanie Phillips has written something sensible. I’m almost as amazed as Tim was yesterday.

Well, no, they haven’t. But this is a fucking lame effort on the police’s part. A suggestion: policemen should stop worrying about trainspotters taking photos of them, and focus more on not shooting innocent people in the head (as the writer says, it’s lucky she wasn’t wearing a coat or carrying a rucksack…)