I don’t mean to be profane, but I’m wondering about the Pope’s tracheotomy. As I understand it, the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, in which the Pope surely believes, holds that the special bread eaten during the ritual of communion actually becomes the body of Christ after it’s swallowed. But if the Pope has a hole in his neck then what if the bread falls out again? Wouldn’t that be a holy relic far more potent than the Turin shroud?
Monthly Archive for February, 2005
Oh baby, am I a nerd or what? I love this site. It asks you a series of questions about what the letters in a font look like and then tries to identify it for you. There are questions like What angle are the ends of the upper-case ‘C’ or What shape is the dot under the question mark. It didn’t manage to identify the font used in the 1997 Saatchi “Sensation” exhibition guide and it took 27 questions to wrongly identify the typeface used in the index and headings of the Department of Transport 1979 driving guide as “Brazilia Seven”. Nevertheless the questions really make one think about the countless tiny differences that make up the identity of a font. OK, I need to get out more. Just let me see how it does with my John Bull printing set and then I promise I’ll go to bed.
This idiotic story is so ironic it makes me laugh. American scientists criticising Vegan parents as unethical. Scientists have consistently used science on behalf of their big-business employers to persuade and coerce parents all over the world into feeding their children with poisonous chemicals. The examples are so numerous that one only has to look at this week’s crop of stories to see a representative sample.
“War Of Words On Cancer Food Scare” This UK story is about a cancer causing food colouring that found its way into lots of supermarkets. Nobody is quite sure how much the recall of the poisoned products will cost the supermarkets. Nobody is discussing the costs to the people who ate the contaminated food. I had a look to see if Sudan Red 1 is banned in the USA, I couldn’t work out its status from the US Food and Drug administration site.
I also saw a story in the Observer magazine which mentioned Triclosan, an antibacterial agent used in many products. “The subject of an Environment Agency investigation, Triclosan is an anti-bacterial or antimicrobial agent which kills all bacteria instantly, even the beneficial ones. Cropping up not only in chopping boards, but in dishcloths and even toothpaste, it is part of the armoury now used by consumers to tackle those dangerous germs we see on adverts for cleaning products. However, alarmingly, it has also been detected in breast milk, and there are concerns that widespread use fosters antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.”
And then of course there’s childhood obesity. A group of scientists at the Social Issues Research Centre have been sending out press releases to the media about a new report which claims that the Obesity Epidemic is not as bad as it seems. I’ve already seen several news stories that appear to be inspired by these press releases. However, if you take a closer look at the SIRC you’ll find they are a gang of scientists for hire and they are working on behalf of several multinational food companies. According to an article on lobbywatch.org SIRC are nothing more than a thinly-disguised Public Relations company who frequently work on behalf of the food, drink and drugs industries.
Of course not all scientists are as cynically immoral as the ones who work directly for big business, but I am certain that far more children have suffered and continue to suffer from the work of scientists than have suffered from the dangers of veganism.
I’ve been burning loads of DVDs in my Powerbook recently, copies of films and backups and so on. A few days ago I got this weird error message just as Toast was starting to burn a disk: Sense Key = MEDIUM ERROR Sense Code = 0×73,0×03. I couldn’t make any sense of this so I tried with another blank disk and got the same result. My heart sank; the new box of 25 blank DVDs I had just bought was performing really well until this happened.
So I had a look on the web for a solution. Roxio, who make Toast, have a support forum. The people there all seemed to agree that it was a problem with bad or incompatible disks or that maybe the drive was dying. However, with a bit more googling I found some comments elsewhere that suggested that maybe I should make sure my superdrive’s firmware was up-to-date. So I downloaded a firmware ‘flasher’ from the excellent Cynical. He has unsupported, maybe even illegal firmware for most Powerbook superdrives. After a nerve-wracking flashing process, if it goes wrong your drive could be dead forever, I tried to burn a DVD. Still the same problem.
Depressed and desperate I tried burning a DVD with Apple’s Disk Utility as an experiment. It worked fine and it occurred to me that maybe this was a problem with Toast after all, and not the drive. I deleted all the Toast preferences files I could find, nervously launched Toast again and Hey Presto! everything was working just like new. I’m tempted to say that this all proves what to55er5 Roxio are, but that would probably be unfair.
I’m just copying some DVDs that my friend Giles lent me. I can’t believe I just sat and watched the “out-takes” at the end of Toy Story 2. Really.
Question Time, a BBC programme in which a panel of politicians or other usually serious public figures answer audience questions about current political issues, went a bit off-topic this week. If you’re in the audience and you want to ask a question you hand it in when you arrive and then, if you’re lucky and your question isn’t too wacky, you get invited to ask it. Alan Jordan wanted to ask his girlfriend to marry him and the editor decided to let him. People associated with politics and current affairs are usually considered nerdy and unromantic and that makes this moment particularly poignant for me. Watch it and see if it doesn’t make you laugh with delight. Another triumph of the nerds. I hope they invite the panel to their wedding.
It’s a Real Media File I’m afraid.
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