Mat Bowles

Well, I tried setting up the deli.icio.us cross poster (again), but it keeps crashing on me, so here's my linkspam of the last day or so redone with stripped html—sorry about some of the weirdness.

New Statesman - Richard Reeves

Wrote the bio of JS Mill I'm currently reading, which means I like him already. Very interesting set of columns, well worth looking over, even if they are in Staggers.

Edible Dirt,—Easter Sunday, Jesus wakes up

Not original, probably offensive to those that care, rather funny

10 Unfortunate Facts of Life | f*cking c*nts

This amused, it's about time I cleared it from my linklog and actually posted it somewhere

theweaselking: Abortion discussion

Key quote from comments: "It's a hard enough choice without having to make it in an alley. I'll always be pro choice, period."

Why I am an abortion doctor

Read this: 'I can take a woman, in the biggest trouble she has ever experienced in her life, and by performing a five-minute operation, in comfort and dignity, I can give her back her life' Safe, legal, rare, why is there still a controversy?

How to Pack Up & Leave LiveJournal (A Tutorial) (://URLFAN)

Not a bad little how-to. Not how I'd do it specifically, I've already backed up everything including comments to a Wordpress install, but still not bad.

drjon: The LJ Strike (which is today)

Containts a nice little history of previous fusses on the site, with a balanced overview and points out that, well, we've won already

Pharyngula: EXPELLED!

Creationists premiere dodgy movie near home of famous science blogger, specifically ban him from viewing, but not his family or his guest. This is a really dumb move...

It's Just a Game... - Review: The Bible

Funny: "Summary: A confused film, half effects laden, no-brain blockbuster, half cinema-verite talking-heads, lacking a conclusion or climax to justify the budget. Poor plotting and characterisation lead the audience to sympathise with the villains rather

FT.com | The Undercover Economist | Dear Economist: How can I create an incentive scheme to keep our house clean?

Sounds familiar: "My fiancee is moving in with me. We’ve lived together before, and we hate housework. Before, we didn’t do work in retaliation for housework not done by the other." Good to know that even economics doesn't have all the answers

BBC - Radio 4 - Word of Mouth

Talking about the origins and usage of memes.

ETA:It's finished, he was on for about 5 minutes at the beginning, and it's available on listen again. He got the word from the Greek word mymeme(sp?) apparently, and seemingly approves of the usage in quiz memes—it's become a meme in its own right, but thinks it might be a misuse. He even referred to the meme pool, but not seriously.

Apparently blue tits pecking milk bottles was a meme as well, how cool is that? The whole country was covered by this memetic epidemic...

Reasons to love Boris pt xvii:

What would you do if you were God for a day? CHRIS LANDONIS, Hackney

I think I would try a bit harder to prove My existence to Richard Dawkins.

Actually, that's not why I love this article. It's this:

Are education standards slipping in Britain? RICHARD MORRIS, Luton

Slipping! How could you even suggest it? Every year, comrades, our children are getting better and better at passing exams! Every year we produce more A*-C grade tractors from the Red Star plant! This year an amazing 43.5 per cent of candidates got an A at maths A-level, and guess what the proportion was 40 years ago, when far fewer people took maths A-level? It was only 7 per cent! Now you do the maths. Oh, all right, I'll do it for you. That is a staggering 620 per cent improvement by our young geniuses. Let me enter the usual political guff about how hard everyone has worked, and let me congratulate them on their grades. But if too many CVs read like a man falling off a building then the A is useless as a tool of differentiation, and that is why some universities are calling for a pre-U exam to replace A-levels, and that is why there is increasing interest in the IB. We have all connived in the fiction that our kids are getting brighter, because that conceals the growing gulf in attainment between much of the maintained sector and the grammar schools/ independent schools. The result is that the market has, inevitably, asserted itself, and in a way that is socially regressive. Which schools, after all, are going to have the resources to prepare their pupils for these new specialised university entrance exams?

My CV does not read like a man falling off a building. This is partially because I was a lazy git at school (plus ca change), and partially because they do seem to be making things easier. Teaching to the test, rising tuition standards, lowering exam standards? Bit of all three?

David Cameron is a Whig, and Boris is a LibDem in disguise. Albeit a LibDem Capitalist on the David Laws wing, but still, I like the bloke.

Now, I had a plan for the evening. What was it? Oh yeah, install Wordpress for my replacement journal home. Write up the review of the Doctor Who DVDs involving both Andy Hamilton and Jason Connery (nope, he still couldn't act)? Nah, Trevor's World of Sport is on...

Dawkins, who coined the word, said:

Examples of memes are tunes, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.

It doesn't have to be an online quiz, it doesn't need to be a set of questions, it's an idea, a saying, that is passed on, person to person, until everyone has heard it or read it. I have a new one. Well, sort of:

"I would so love to be quoted, one day, by someone."
-kasku

Via missedith01. Pass it on ;-)

OK, in my bio, the bit that says I don't need broadband? I stand by it, I don't. But, well, staying at nadriel's does have one advantage, we've netweorked up and he has a 7.5 Mbs connection. I mean, the exchange in Paignton can only manage 2.5Mbs for our business line, he has 3 times that all to himself.

So, what do you do with sucha fast connection? Porn? Don't be silly, Mike wouldn't approve (and there's only so much I can be bothered to look for anyway). YouTube. I've heard so much about the place, now I can see it in all its glory. For example:

Paxman interviews Dawkins about The God Delusion. Dawkins namechecks the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (via)

Now, Dawkins can, at times, be difficult, obnoxious and intemperate. He says he's an agnostic not an atheist because you can't disprove God (this is also Scalzi's position). I say I'm an atheist because I believe there is no god, and assert it's as valid a belief as any other. The line between our views is semantics. But his point is sound. YouTube rocks.