monkeymike blog

...I have decided to add my own existence as a cause of everything reported in nature/science web sites by the BBC.

Let me explain. Like a bubble of methane from a melting methane hydrate emerging from the ocean floor to the surface waters a thought impinged on the surface of my conscious mind. That thought was:"Heavens! Don't the BBC blame a lot of things on climate change!"

Now a lot of things are connected. For instance a lot of things can be blamed on Earth having a moon, including climate change (tides did it). The important thing is whether the cause was necessary or whether it would have happened anyway. BBC please just give it a rest.

JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING HAPPENS AFTER SOMETHING ELSE DOES NOT MEAN THE FIRST THING CAUSED THE SECOND!

Here's a solution to the second homes scandals that are rocking every political party. Have all the MPs stay in a specially built, high security dormitory. Something like Wandsworth prison. Luckily it looks like most of them have met the minimum qualification of committing a crime such as fraud. Now the MPs may argue against the single dormitory for reasons of security. They might argue that having them all in one place would enable evil terrorist nations (like Iceland) to decapitate the country by blowing up this hypothetical building leaving us poor saps rudderless and easy to invade. It's true that any innocent and well meaning politicians might end up being corrupted in the dorm, much like convicts learn new criminal tricks off the old hands. However we must balance that against the possibility of a terrorist nation (like Iceland) blowing up the building and thus raising the average moral standing by a statistically significant amount.

* Warning. This word may not mean what you think it does.

A lovely example of this sort of thing from Millets on 16/05/09.

and here in the bottom is the real 'deal' So what does everything mean? It means some things and in this case about 3% of items in the shop. I'd give everything** to stop millets going into liquidation. **In this context this word means "nothing" or no thing, nadda, zip, zero, nought,0 etc.

Have some cards printed out that say "MI5 - Returning commandeered items form YG67F" on them. Add the Secret Police's secret HQ address on the front and a space for someone's: name, address and details of the item. Place one in your hand and run up to someone talking on their mobile in the street. Grab the mobile, push the card at them and shout out "MI5 I need your phone it's a matter of national security." Give them the card..."send this off to get your phone back" and then run off in a "24" or "Spooks" kind of way. Ideally at this point you get a mate to squeal past doing a handbrake turn and shout something like "over here agent orange" Any sensible person would collapse back in shock and consider themselves honoured to be helping protect the UK from overseas terrorists and not worry about their iphone, let's face it Apple don't sell to the brightest subset of the population. Job done. Now go to a pub and find someone who wants to buy an iphone on the cheap, and is willing to deal with MI5.

If you look long enough in The Telegraph, The Telegraph will be borne in you; just as the awakened see with the eyes of the buddha.

A thought has just occured to me. What if all politicians were in fact corrupt. c.f. Massive second home corruption by just about every MP in the houses of parliament. Looking at the massive proposed (or extant) government databases, the cameras on every street and the surveillance society in general... I'm sure I don't have to spell it out. Corrupt leaders, surveillance society, police state, tyrannical overlords using the tools of the state to suppress the oversight of the government etc. etc. etc. I mean look at how honest and upright Jaqi Smith (the home secretary) has been with expenses. Such a fundamental lack of a sense of right and wrong. They are in it for themselves and they WILL USE EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER TO MAINTAIN THEIR POSITION. If we allow them the powers that is. It would be funnier if it wasn't starting to look so plausible.

thanks iTunes. You were supposed to be diligently downloading the In Our Time podcast (each episode only available 1 week after transmission) so that I could enjoy them on your derivative (take someone else's idea and try and improve on it) portable media player. But no. I finally come to transfer the IOT backlog today (having been through several hours of the Gresham College Podcast and fancied something shorter) only to find that you hadn't bothered to do the simple thing that you were supposed to do. So thanks Apple. Your software doesn't 'just work'. It's poor and shoddy workmanship. The "you haven't listened to this for a while = you don't want it" feature was ACTUALLY PROGRAMMED IN AND SET AS A DEFAULT SETTING. If you guys are running out of idea, why not pay another visit to Xerox. Once you've been around and looked at the research , you can run off and pretend to have been creative again. Does anyone let you into their research labs any more?

meh ...after greater consideration. creepy. Creepy and unpleasant. Like having a paedophile living in the street.

...knows everything, then he or she knows what I'm going to do tomorrow, the day after and the day after that etc. So I don't have free will and can't choose to follow and cannot be justly punished for transgressing. She/he knew I was going to do it from the moment of creation. What is more: he/she created Adam and Eve such that they would take the apple etc. This argument is great for tying the door step god-botherers in knots.

After listening to the dulcet tones of *whatever his name is* on the history of rome podcast I have picked up an interest in history. Of course it might be my age as I am now approaching 40 at the pace of a minute per 50 seconds (at least it seems like that). I feel I should have a rant at this point so here goes: Why don't .MOV files transfer over to play in an iPod? It is my opinion that Apple are a bit rubbish at times. Sure the new iPod nano can be used to key a Mercedes with but it no longer charges when docked to a lot of accessories (damn you apple) and the aforementioned .MOV thing is just stupid. Wasn't the apple motto "it just works"? I can tell you now that my interpretation of that motto is something like "it only just works and not very well at that". Apples motto should be "Works ever time, doesn't crash and plays nice with other OSes" of course they'd be sued up the kazoo if they did that because it wouldn't be true. In a similar vein I think 'manage'rs should have higher aspirations. Something like 'Excel'ers, 'good to have in a sh*t storm'ers or 'Actually quite good'ers. A noun that merely implies adequacy is a little flaccid.