Fishy Goings On

Apparently up 25% of all fish sold is "mislabeled" according to a report that The New York times would like to bring to our attention. Actually, in the article they are slightly less euphemistic in their naming and say "fraudulently identified". You can't always trust your fishmonger, I guess.

Anyway, the report is from a non-profit organisation called Oceana and is titled "Bait and Switch", which made me smile.

David Simon - Saying What We Don't But Probably Should

Jorn Barger had an arresting quote from David Simon today:

"My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him."

David Simon, of course, being the man behind Homicide, The Corner, The Wire, Generation Kill and, though I've not seen it, Treme. So it's definitly a valid position for him to have. Anyway I found the original piece where the quote comes from it's in The Believer and is an interview Nick Hornby did with Simon somewhere around August 2007

If I start quoting it we'll be here all day, instead you should go over there and read for yourself, or read it again if you were luck to catch it back when it was published. It's still fresh today.

Go! If only to find out why Deadwood is Shakespeare, with added cocksuckery, and The Wire is a greek tragedy.

To Mark A Special Day

A joke from a previous one:

On the day of the wedding, Sophie was getting dressed, surrounded by all her family, and she suddenly realised she had forgotten to get any shoes.
Panic.
Then her sister remembered that she had a pair of white shoes from her wedding so she lent them to Sophie for the day. Unfortunately they were a bit too small and by the time the festivities were over Sophie's feet were in agony.
When she and Edward withdrew to their room the only thing she could think of was getting her shoes off.
The rest of the Family crowded round the door to the bedroom and they heard roughly what they expected, grunts, straining noises and the occasional muffled scream. Eventually they heard Edward say 'God, that was tight.'
'There,' whispered the Queen. 'I told you she was a virgin.'
Then, to their surprise, they heard Edward say. 'Right. Now for the other one.'
Followed by more grunting and straining and at last Edward said.
'My God. That was even tighter.'
'That's my boy,' said the Duke. 'Once a sailor, always a sailor.'

Anesthetic Education

An interesting look, with fine animation, at what is wrong with our "Industrial" view of education and why ADHD isn't an epidemic or, at least, one that shouldn't be treated with pills.



Via boing boing.

Still Figuring Things Out

Jorn Barger, the man behind Robot Wisdom, helpfully pointed out that his link blog had moved and I'd been pointing at the wrong place for quite sometime (a state I'm all too familiar with). Blogger, for some reason, doesn't like the URL, though, and won't let me add it to "Feeds I Read". The link above works and I recommend you click on it and bookmark what you find there.

Just Enough Cowbell

A funky little tune from Sweden.

I first heard this through Soul Sides (way back in 2005, apparently) and had to go out and buy the album. Soul sides say that it reminds them of The Roots track Seed and, you know, he's not wrong...


It's lacking the cowbell, though. Someone should release a remix of this with the Damn! cowbell on it...

That's Told You!

Closing Borders Store Tells Customers Where To Find A Restroom.

Tales Of The Obvious

40% of people did not feel Britain had benefitted from immigration in any way.

The above is from a review of YouGov poll.

The article makes it obvious that this is from a poll of more context, something to do with Cameron stirring up old Tory values, but you can't help wondering if the pollster went up to the pollee "What about them immigrants, eh? What have they ever done for us".

I also hope that at least some of the 60% replied "Made my mum/my dad/me". Though this could be true for much of that 40% as I can personally vouch for...

I wonder if those 40% somehow thought of it as a zero sum game. That immigrants from all over the world have done much to enrich British life and culture, but since a Pakistani owns the shop on the corner (denying a British citizen the chance to work hard for many hours a day for not much pay and much abuse) then maybe it's a wash.

Perhaps those Doctors recruited from India to cover an English shortfall are balanced by those muslim types who just don't want to fit in.

I does make you wonder, though, what immigrants would have to do to make the 40% feel like they had contributed?

Explaining Sort Algorhythms With Hungarian Folk Dance

Exactly what it sounds like...

PS. Just had two weeks holiday, if you were wondering why the blog briefly flared up and then died down again. Terrible timing on my part. The flaring should continue.

Spank Me Like You Mean It...

... Two times a day.



I only know this from an album called Balling The Jack which was an attempt a bringing together a lot of bluesy music that blues purists might sniff at. Its a great compilation with some terrific music whatever the genre is called.