Delicious LiveJournal Links for 4-25-2008

[matgb]

• Sky One to resurrect Blake's 7? | The Register
  It'll either be great or awful. But I do want to know who'll play Servalan.
  (tags: TV Blake's+7)
• Masturbation may prevent prostate cancer - Yahoo! News
  See, it is good for you: Studies on animals have shown that carcinogens like 3-methylchloranthrene can be harbored in the prostate. Frequent ejaculation encourages the cancer-inducing fluids to \"flush out.\"
  (tags: sex research science masturbation)
• davegodfrey: Dial \"S\" for Steampunk
  Lunatic is modding his PC. Looks quite cool though
  (tags: computers modifications steampunk)
• Brian Paddick: Hope can conquer fear | The Guardian
  I keep telling people to never read the CiF comments, but I break my own rules every so often. Mines not published yet, but even so. I see no reason at all to not give Brian first pref if you live in London, he's definitely better than the other two fro
• publicansdecoy: Kang vs Kodos (London mayoralty electoral system)
  Linking and storing because a huge chunk of it is rewrites of discussions in the comments there involving me, it's a very good post and I want to reference it.
  (tags: london election mayoralty voting+systems)
• Stop Boris blog » The psephologistâ™s guide to stopping Boris
  An excellent examination of the London voting system and how to use it to stop Boris, equally applies if you stop Ken. The \"excellent\" bit may be related to the bits they've quoted from an \"expert psephologist\". I'm an expert. Weird.
  (tags: london voting+systems mayoralty election Boris+Johnson brian+paddick)
• Vincent Cable: Don't be fooled... the banks aren't victims of bad luck
  Vince on the banks and money markets. Looks like a sound analysis to me
  (tags: Vince+Cable banks Credit+crunch economics)
• The Yorksher Gob - London Mayoral Election
  Jennie writes the post I've been meaning to for ages about Brian and the voting system
  (tags: voting+systems london mayoralty election)
• American Book Review :: 100 Best First Lines from Novels
  Some good stuff in here, alongside the incredibly predictable. Two Cities should be much higher but you can't have everything
  (tags: books funny quotes)
• timjr: A Straight Geek Male's Guide to Interaction with Females
  Annoyingly, some of this stuff still needs to be said to some people (from Debi)
  (tags: social+mores behaviour equality)

Comments

[innerbrat]

Well done!

The first lines strike me more as 100 really good novels famous for their first lines and/or opening imagery - because, for example, It was love at first sight isn't so much a noticeably fantastic line.

And where the Hell was Day of the Triffids?

[matgb]

I know not, TBH I only really scanned them and saved them to go back when more in the mood.

Also, Glue worked fine, danke—and if you edit it and remove auto formatting all the extra linebreaks go for added bonus. So now I have to go look at your CSS and figure out how I want to do mine I guess.

[davegodfrey.livejournal.com]

Why thank you...

[matgb]

You're welcome.

[pmoodie.livejournal.com]

Sky One to resurrect Blake's 7?

Oh dear. Just the fact that it's a Sky One production is setting off alarms in my brain. It should be The Beeb, if anyone.

Still, I might tune in if they get someone as hot as Jacqeline Pearce to play Serve-a-flan. :)

[matgb]

Battlestar Galactica was a Sky co-production, they're reasonably new to commissioning original shows, but make a lot of money off of genre TV imports. TBH, despite the Murdoch association, I think Sky might be better than the snobby Beeb at genre.

OTOH, the Beeb are doing their own show, not got a link to hand though, was in a Times article I read in t'pub.

[pmoodie.livejournal.com]

American Book Review :: 100 Best First Lines from Novels

Yay for there being a bit of Kurt Vonnegut, but boooo for there being no Raymond Chandler or Hunter S Thompson! :(

[misscoollinda.livejournal.com]

I heard about the masturbation/prostate link on Dan Savage's podcast this week. Has the church denied it yet? Any benefits to be found from female masturbation?

[matgb]

Any benefits to be found from female masturbation?

Great big smile on SB's face?

Oh, sorry, you mean medically? Not seen anything. And I'm the last person to ask about the opinions of any churches ;-)

[misscoollinda.livejournal.com]

Great big smile on SB's face?

Well, that's a given ;)

When I was in catholic school, I remember the teacher telling us that girls could get pregnant from masturbating - that their bodies also produced sperm in small amounts. No, I didn't believe it.

[matgb]

No, I didn't believe it.

That's good. But I've no doubt others did, and that means either the teacher was directly lying or was completely unqualified to teach.

Ouch.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Chuckle. When I scroll over the link in my Friend's List and get the annoying SnapShots' popup, the advert beside the article is asking 'Should Hillary Quit?' There's endless paths you could go down with that one...

[matgb]

If they're showing on your friends page it means your LJ settings are allowing them, you can turn them off, but also if you click on the options on the top right of a snap, you can set a cookie to stop them working, or disable them in hosts.

Hate the damn things.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

I hate them too, but the view can be added-value in that they offer a quick, non-NZ view of a page for me. For instance, the Hillary advert changed when I clicked through to that page.

Any idea how they work? As they might provide a way to look at pages without leaving any digital fingerprints. (Ignoring that SnapShot knows you rolled over the link.)

[matgb]

Snap crawl the web creating a cache similar to the way Google does, beyond that it's kinda smart technology that is really annoying as it breaks UI standards.

There are better ways of anonymising your browsing, and Snap are selling data all over the place.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

So they're maybe old pages showing up? Given you can run videos through them, I thought they may have been grabbed in real time. So probably not at all useful after all.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Nobody's going to do research into THAT! Who cares if there are any benefits to women enjoying themselves? Science is all about MEN!

...

It appears I'm in a bad mood today...

[misscoollinda.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely right. I didn't realize that it was illegal to sell sex toys in some southern states (excuse me, I thought I was living in the 21st century!) I'm sure the thought behind it was "Only a MAN can satisfy a woman!" Someone asked Dan Savage about the proper disposal of used sex toys, in which he used his response to target a "news reporter" who set up a sting operation at sex toy store in Mississippi:

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=511122


The follow up:
"Oh, and speaking of Kandiss Crone, lots of readers wrote to the Jackson, Mississippi, teeveenewz reporter about her idiotic, sex-phobic "sting" of a sex-toy shop, and many were kind enough to CC me. A sampling of Savage Love readers' letters to Crone can be found at www.thestranger.com/savage/crone. In other sex-toys news, last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled Texas's ban on sex toys was unconstitutional. (Lawrence v. Texas just keeps on giving.) Mississippi is under the Fifth Circuit's jurisdiction, so it seems that sex toys are now legal in Jackson, Mississippi. Someone alert Kandiss? Kandiss@wlbt.net." You gotta love when people unite for a common purpose :D

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

As far as I understand, up until the currect ruling, the law in Texas was that you could stick whatever you liked up your bottom as long as it wasn't a penis; but you could ONLY stick a penis up your vagina.

[misscoollinda.livejournal.com]

and people wonder why I'd never move to a southern state (I don't want to generalize, but look at these laws!) I don't care what people do in their house or what they stick where. That's their business. I'm sure the laws are based on anti-gay /pro- neanderthal-like male sentiment - Women MUST depend on a man for all needs. What would happen to the world if they didn't? *rolls eyes*
I'm trying to figure out the problem they have with what gay men do. Gay bedroom activities are not hurting the straight manly-men. Are the manly men jealous? I mean, I can see that they don't want the woman to use the vibrator. They want in on that action. But they don't want in on the gay action. I can only assume it's because they don't understand "gay" so it must be a bad thing and must be abolished.

I'm heartened to see the laws are finally changing. Then we can focus on REAL issues.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

I think the mindset is If you don't agree with me, you are wrong, and abnormal, and your opinion must be changed by any means necessary. Whereas I don't mind people making up their own minds on whatever they like, as long as they afford me the same luxury. Of course, the problem is that people who don't want to let me make up my own mind often accuse me of hypocrisy when I object to them trying to change my mind on various matters, oblivious to their own hypocrisy.

[misscoollinda.livejournal.com]

Well said! I wish more people would figure that out. I'm all for open discussion, as long people realize that the point is not to make you switch to one side. There is much to learn from hearing all sides.
In the end, be true to yourself.

[miss-s-b.livejournal.com]

Absolutely

[srk1.livejournal.com]

I think the LDs could have done better than Paddick. By comparison with Ken, and even with Boris, he just comes across as an incredible lightweight. He'd probably excel on a borough council, but that's about it.

(Not that I wouldn't vote for him if I was a Londoner, hem hem.)

[matgb]

Of the three that put themselves forward, he was by far the best, Chamali came second and was impressive but had zero experience really.

I actually think he's OK and would do well, I just don't think he's a great candidate, not assured enough, needed more media training :-(

[srk1.livejournal.com]

Definitely with the media training. But we shouldn't be in a position where our nominee for Mayor of London needs media training.

He'd be a good MPA chair, mind you.

[matgb]

Once the decision was taken to avoid running an MP they had to cast around to get someone. I believe Paddick was specifically recruited (and I think the Tories asked him as well but I can't source that).

IT's the perpetual lack-of-people-wanting-to-run problem writ large, the number of approved candidates for MP/PPC is barely over 1000 last I looked, that gives most constituencies no choice. To get someone that's able to take London, and battle through the media "two horse race" falsehood, is pretty much impossible.

Ah well.

[srk1.livejournal.com]

He confirmed on QT that the Tories had asked him. He claimed that at that point he was already a member of the LDs but did suggest he had thought about taking up the Cons' offer.

Perhaps the type of campaign that the mayoralty demands is just not something the LDs are suited to. If so, it's another good argument against having mayors in the first place...