A quick web search for the origin of the phrase, “close, but no cigar” – it turns out that early slot machines gave out cigars as prizes – led me to The Phrase Finder at Sheffield Hallam University.
There you can learn such interesting nuggets as who Gordon Bennett is and where the phrase “chip on his shoulder” comes from.
The train stations in London seem to have gone security mad. The first I sign of this was when I had to carry a banana skin around with me for forty minutes because there were no litter bins. Later I noticed a notice that explained that there were no bins, “for security reasons.”
Last night I took the tube into central London. There were announcements about every twenty seconds. Recorded ones like, please keep your personal belongings with you, or we’ll blow them up, or please tell a member of staff if you see any suspicious packages. The edgy feeling these created was backed up by announcements from the station staff about delays on the Picadilly Line caused by, you guessed it, a “security alert”.
Even the arrivals displays at mainline stations this morning were scrolling “SECURITY” messages encouraging people to, “be vigilant”.
I’m trying to figure out what this all means. Are there specific threats causing each of these symptoms? Or is this just faux preparedness: backside covering in case anything bad *does* happen? In any case, I’m fairly sure the main effect of these measures is to make people a bit nervous. Eventually we’ll get used to it. Whether we’ll actually be more vigilant, and whether or not being more vigilant for such things as unattended packages will help, I have my doubts.
Update: You can now see a photo of the no bins sign.
I was in trafalgar square on Saturday, intending to sit by the fountain and maybe read a book. But I was rudely disturbed by some kind of “peace protest“. At least I think that’s what it was.
Now, we all have a kind of stereotypical image of peace protestors. As a service to my many readers, I thought I’d demonstrate pictorially the kind of thinking behind these events.
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The other day I received a spam at work, telling me my credit card had been billed for some earthenware products. If I’d read to the end it would have been obvious it was a fake, but I ended up doing some research on it and came across the Australian site, Code Fish Spam Watch. It’s a very interesting site because they investigate quite deeply into the scam, and reveal technical details about how various scams work. It turned out that the spam I received was part of a turf war between carders – people who try to extract credit card details from people.
Reading more on the site, I found a particularly scary attempt at extracting passwords from people’s computers. Simply by clicking on a link, Internet Explorer can be made to download a malicious “HTML Application”, write an executable to disk, and run it. In this case the executable kills off processes that look like anti-virus software, logs keystrokes, and emails the results back to a server.
I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked that this is possible, but I am. It shows the importance of not only keeping software patched, but also being careful what you click on. Even better, run an open source browser like Mozilla: Open source software is more secure by its nature.
I’m really struggling to believe this, but there is no indication so far that it’s a hoax. According to the Sunday Herald, Big Blunkett wants to charge wrongly imprisoned people £3000 per year for the privilege of staying at her majesty’s pleasure. The reasoning?
[Blunkett's] spokesmen in the Home Office say it’s a completely “reasonable course of action” as the innocent men and women would have spent the money anyway on food and lodgings if they weren’t in prison. The government deems the claw-back ‘Saved Living Expenses’.
On White Rose, Perry De Havilland is amazed that Blunkett has managed to amaze him. In the Samizdata comments, Andy Danger gets it right:
Blunkett makes a very interesting case study for the statist whose mind is so warped that it leads him to come to ideas a six-year-old could recognize as horrible. There’s some sick moral inversion that goes on in the brain of someone like that where the people exist as grist for the government mill rather than the government being a construct of the people. Any psychology students feel like writing their thesis on Blunkett? I think the world could benefit.
Blunkett does indeed seem to be evil.
Last night I went to see an episode of Coupling being taped at Teddington Studios. I found out about it by doing a search on the web to see if another series was going to be made, and up popped audience management company Standing Room Only. One phone call later and a couple of tickets to see the third episode of the fourth series were on their way to me.
On arrival Chris and I were the first ones there. A queue quickly formed behind us, and the girl from SRO then turned up to organise everyone into “priority” and “normal” tickets groups. A couple of older women arrived and complained loudly about being made to wait outside. They were met with general derision from the assembled crowd, and no-one was surprised when they attempted to push their way in with the priority ticket holders. Amusingly, we saw them arrive in the studio some time after we got in, so presumably the studio staff saw through their game!
Much excitement ensued when, standing in the queue, a film crew arrived and started interviewing people. Apparently they were making a behind the scenes documentary for the DVD. I’m fairly sure we somehow managed to avoid being in front of the camera the whole evening, but you never know – I could yet be famous…
The first thing that struck me upon getting into the studio was how much smaller the bar set appeared in real life. Perhaps it is something to do with wide angle lenses, or perhaps it is the expert way the the bar is given life by the extras who bustle around it that makes it seem such a large room on TV.
The studio was set up with the bar set in front of us. We had a fairly good view, but there were cameras and booms and bits of the set in the way. Other sets were over to the left: Sally’s lounge, and her kitchen. We had to crane our necks quite a bit to see the lounge set, and the kitchen set was out of sight behind a wood panel. Not to worry though, there were monitors above the audience, and these were also used to play bits of pre-recorded VT to the audience, for scenes that were shot on location.
Once the audience was settled, the warm up comedian (Rob somebody – I wish I could remember his name) arrived and did an introductory routine. He was quite rude, and I could see that the two old biddies who had complained earlier were not amused. Did they really not have any idea what they were in for? Rob then introduced the cast, the boys came on first, then the girls, and everyone applauded or wolf whistled as appropriate.
The show started with a pre-recorded scene on the monitors, with Patrick and Sally in medieval costume (a hilariously impractical suit of armour in the case of Patrick). The scene went on for quite some time, and I began to wonder how much live action would be left to do, but I needn’t have worried.
The first live scene was done in the bar, with Patrick and Steve. It was quite a long scene, and they got it perfectly right the first time. I was impressed at their professionalism, and began to think that at this rate the taping would be over in no time, and there would be no amusing out-takes, but I needn’t have worried.
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I haven’t seen the film yet (though I intend to), but it seems to me that the Raving Atheist may have the definitive review of Mel Gibson’s film.
The notion that Christ died and suffered for the sins of others is a morally worthless one. If I whipped and then shot myself because Robert Blake killed his wife, my suffering and death would not make Robert Blake a better person, excuse his crime, or bring his victim back to life.