We have a totally ridiculous story from Oxford, of a student being charged and fined for calling a copper’s horse gay. What a sodding waste of time, and what an utter cock of a policeman. Sadly, none of the articles published on the case reveal the bastard’s name.

Presumably, the reason the peeler took offence is that he regularly fucks his horse, but is a homophobic bigot – rather in the manner of boarding school types who’ll merrily bugger each other but would punch anyone who suggested they were queers. When a passer-by points out the animal’s true sexuality, it becomes much harder for the officer to keep up this heteronomative pretence, and therefore he lashes out.

To everyone taking the side of the US administation in the whole Amnesty/Gulag debacle: what the fuck are you smoking?

One organisation has spent the last 50 years opposing torture and brutality everywhere in the world, on an non-partisan basis and without exception. The other has spent most of the last 50 years *promoting* torture and brutality everywhere in the world.

One organisation has just published a report on how countries across the world are brutally torturing and abusing people. It decided to PR this report by pointing out that the most powerful (and therefore most interesting to media) country in the world is guilty of brutally torturing and abusing people without trial in secret prisons. The other organisation has just, err, brutally tortured and abused people without trial in secret prisons.

Really, how hard can it be to decide what fucking side you’re on? OK, so some of you have hard-ons for Yanqui dollars and think bombs and guns are cool. Fair play: they are. Even so, do you really want to be backing the torturers over the people protesting about torture?

If yes, I hope hell exists, purely so that you can go there. See also The Editors.

This is one of the most unbelievably horrible things I’ve ever read, not to mention yet another piece of evidence (should you need one) of the mindless cruelty in restricting abortion rights.

Were someone to assassinate prosecutor Art Bauereiss and legislator Frank Corte Jr (hmm, both men. Surprise fucking surprise), I’d happily contribute all my savings to their defence fund. Both deserve *every* nasty thing that could possibly happen to them.

Why do people occasionally claim the US is a civilised, first-world county? With the exception of four or five major cities, it’s Saudi Arabia with better shopping.

(on a lighter note, a good comments exchange from the same thread:

1: "If you view a fetus as a child, all abortions are murders".

2: "And if you view snot as a child, then all sneezes are murders. Sheesh.")

Can you tell from reading this piece that it was researched and written in under 25 minutes?

"The definition of a head in the sand political ideologue is someone who thinks one side is ‘right’ in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict." – ‘Cockney’ in the Biased BBC comments (of all places).

I’d go further. "The definition of a batshit crazy halfwit who deserves to be brutally eviscerated for the good of humanity is someone who thinks one side is ‘right’ in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict", perhaps.

The IOC has published its final assessment of the five Olympic bids. The summary: the London and Paris bids are both great; the Madrid and New York bids are acceptable; and Moscow would be a fiasco.

Much as I love being cynical about London, I’m rather impressed by the bid committee’s achievement over the last 12 months in moving from ‘unimaginable’ to ‘comparable to the Froggie bid’. See, we *can* do infrastructure projects after all (simultaneously, it sounds like the Dome is going to become the worthwhile and interesting venue it should have been in the first place).

So London, Paris, Madrid and New York are all in contention, with a mild bias towards London and Paris on the grounds of competence.

Paris is the odds-on favourite. I had planned some kind of Eurovision-comparison post at this point, pointing out that everyone hates the French, the British and the Americans (generally either in order 1-2-3 or 3-2-1), and therefore Madrid would probably actually win. Paris would do worst, since everyone *really* hates the French.

However, according to this ACNielsen survey, Paris is by far the most popular Olympic choice among the people of the world. Weird shit. Maybe they’re following the Samizdata line that holding the Olympics is an excellent punishment for someone you don’t like…

John Kerry’s newly-released full military records show that the Swift Boat Liars are liars (Bugmenot may be needed). The full records entirely back up Mr Kerry’s story from the campaign, while lending absolutely no credence to John O’Neill’s bullshit.

It’s just a shame that Mr Kerry was too much of an honourable man being slurred by scum, and not enough of a low-down and dirty political operator, to get these released during the campaign… Oh well. On the plus side, the Dem ’08 candidate is sure to be as low-down and dirty as a freak can be.

Pearsall of Pearsall’s Books has tagged me with a new meme, so here are some Things about me and books.

1) Total number of books I’ve owned:

~300, including the ones in boxes. Still own pretty much all of them, except the ones which have been nicked.

2) The last book I bought:

I was going to say What the Media Do to Our Politics by John Lloyd. It’s well-written, well-argued, well-researched, and I still disagree with almost every aspect the book – in some ways, an ideal read.

Then I remembered that I bought The Rise Of The Indian Rope Trick as a light read when I went on holiday. Whimsically diverting, but not exactly edifying, not that it’s supposed to be. And it’s written by a Professor of Magic Studies, which is rather an excellent job title.

3) The last book I read:

This is slightly hard to answer, since I normally read several books at once. The last book I started was White Mughals by William Dalrymple. I started it on the Tube this morning, so haven’t yet got very far… The last book I finished was How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer. Probably not a book I’d normally have chosen to read, since it consists of beautifully written, well-characterised and twisted coming-of-age stories about Jewish-American girls, but a friend lent me it and I’m glad that she did. And I’m also in the middle of rereading First Love, Last Rites, which makes much more sense now than when I was 15.

4) Five books that mean a lot to me (in no particular order):

The Rachel Papers. I know, I know; I suspect it’s mostly nostalgic value, and there’s a chance I’d find it almost as lame as Martin Amis’s recent work if I reread it now. But at the time, it was the most evocative book In The World Ever.

The Long Dark Tea-time Of The Soul by Douglas Adams. Douglas again probably partly wins out of nostalgia – but this is a book that was still brilliant on adult rereading. It’s far more imaginative and original than the H2G2 series – instead of (brilliantly) satirising English life using scifi clichés, it goes beyond parody to create something very, very strange indeed.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Do I need to say anything here? A comic novel about the horrors of love and totalitarianism, which manages to be one of the funniest, most upbeat, bleakest and most downbeat books ever written. And which actually has some explicit and non-lame sex scenes, which is unusual in anything written by a man (or a woman, come to think of it. Writing about sex is as difficult and pointless as fucking about poetry).

Christ, narrowing this down is hard. Err, how’s about The Picture Of Dorian Gray? Wilde is the pioneer and master of the whole ‘applying the plot of classical tragedy while also being entirely flippant the Terrible Moral Sins that his characters commit’ thing, which is something I like stylistically. Light comedies about suffering and death. Auschwitz The Musical. Yeah.

And A Treatise of Human Nature. Bollocks to metaphysics. Be sceptical. Humean behaviour is by far the most civilised incarnation of human behaviour. Also, go vote for him in Radio 4’s Greatest Philosophers poll. Vote for anyone else, and I’ll break your legs.

5) Tag five people and have them fill this out on their blogs:

Damn, this is getting harder as the UK blogworld expands. Err, Dsquared, Sarah, Gert, Harry Hutton & Sean Thomas.

Side note – Zoe Williams had a piece in the Guardian on Saturday about the category error of trying to Google for one’s keys. More than once while putting this post together, I’ve fired up Google with the aim of Googling my bookshelf…

Update: I’ve been re-tagged by the Pedant General. Thanks, Pedant.

Introducing a new SBBS feature: the Loon-Off – like the regular mentalist-spotting, but with an Added Interactive Element (PRESS RED BUTTON NOW).

Today, we have two easy and cheap sources of utter mentalitry: the Samizdata comments vs grouphug.us. Who’s the least sane?

Samizdatista: "I understand the Jews walked voluntarily into the gas chambers. I will not and never have used a cell phone because it enables tracking of the owner / user…"

Grouphugger: "One time i stuck my penis in a tub of my mom’s crisco in order to get off. I creamed in it and made it look undisturbed like before I had my way with it. I never told anyone and my family probably ate it many times in a batch of cookies."

Vote in comments.

This was so going to be my claim to fame. Oh well, at least I now don’t have to do it…