Zen 424: History of rap by Timberlake (Justin)

Two things, ye shall learn from this video. One is that American chat shows are way better than British chat shows because the writing is usually excellent and they occasionally do way-cool stuff like this. Second, Justin Timberlake isn't a dick when everything about him (including those glasses) says he should be. The world is topsy turvy.

Zen 423: 'Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue!'

I'm starting to understand how he feels. Henceforth, today will be known as Black Thursday.

Zen 422: What words really mean: 'Spearhead'

An occasional series dedicated to officialese, bureaucrat-speak and other forms of verbal obfuscation.

spearhead (n)

In a corporate context, 'spearheading' is when a senior executive claims credit for something they haven't done, and may in fact have actively blocked until such time as it became successful enough for them to jump on its bandwagon; a descriptive term employed for the purposes of CV stuffing; a terminological inexactitude designed to create a false impression of thrusting, creative accomplishment for the dull, the workshy and the inept.

Usage: "In his time with the corporation, Simon spearheaded many successful projects, including..."

Zen 421: Mad driving skills

Seriously. Like the man says. Driving skills. But mad. Innit.

Zen 420: Once you see this, you can't unsee it...

Why, dear god, why?

Zen 419: Man dies after downing pint of vodka

A bloke from Teeside necked a pint of vodka in four seconds for a dare and subsequently died from alcohol poisoning, an inquest has heard. Other factors were recorded, like mephedrone in his bloodstream and a head wound, but it was the alcohol that killed him. He was five-and-a-half times over the drink-drive limit.

I necked a pint of vodka in roughly four seconds when I was 17. For a dare. I caused about £500 worth of damage to my mate's house and ended the evening being hosed down by my dad in the back garden, apparently to keep me conscious. They did things differently back then. The following day, I played like a zombie in a Middlesex county trial, during which I broke my nose, then blacked out 10 minutes from time and had to be stretchered off the pitch. Yet somehow I still got selected.

Sometimes I'm amazed at how monumentally fucking stupid I can be. And how lucky.

Zen 418: Japanese sub hunters live the dream

Thrill to this graphic reconstruction of the technical otherworld that is airborne submarine-hunting, as performed by pilots from the Japanese Self Defence Force.

Bit heavy on the searing realism for a kids' show isn't it?

Zen 417: What would happen if you stuck your hand in the Large Hadron Collider?

This is pure geekporn.

Eminent physicists debate what would happen if you stuck your hand in the particle beam of the Large Hadron Collider. I think the fact that they don't know and can't agree is slightly worrying, given the degree of certainty they applied to the question "will the LHC turn Switzerland into a black hole that will ultimately engulf the Earth?". I'd have thought the hand-in-the-beam poser was somewhat easier to resolve than the one involving the liberation of quantum particles at massively high speeds. But then what do I know. Jack, it seems.

Zen 416: 'At a time when fellatio is close to zero'

So says France's ex-justice minister Rachida Dati, who apparently mixed up the words 'inflation' and 'fellatio' in an interview with Canal Plus. In a bid to talk up the lamentable state of the economy she said, "I see some  looking for returns of 20 or 25% at a time when fellatio is close to zero."

She's clearly talked up something, but the economy wasn't it.

The French media has long enjoyed the idea that Ms Dati is, well, a bit dirty and this will no doubt stoke the fires. But what I really like about this story is the fact that it lays to bed the myth of the French as a chic and sexually sophisticated nation above sniggering like silly Anglo Saxons at an honest slip of the tongue.

Get this. It's been You Tubed 24 times already and there are two remixes where basically all she says is 'fellatio' over and over again like some cock-crazy Max Headroom. To Ms Dati's credit, she's taken it like a pro, sucked it up, swallowed hard and got on with the task in hand.

Ahem.


PS Full marks to whoever updated the Wikipedia pages for Dati and fellatio, presumably within seconds of the interview ending.

Zen 415: Tragic irony - man who bought the Segway company dies in Segway accident

Jimi Heselden, the man who bought the upright scooter company Segway from inventor Dean Kamen, has died after apparently driving his Segway off a cliff and into the River Wharfe near his home in Yorkshire. Police do not suspect foul play. Rather, they think the 62-year-old philanthropist overcooked it while riding his off-road Segway 2 Adventure. Not so much segway to adventure as segway to the '...and finally' column in every newspaper in the English speaking world. Poor bastard.

To mark Mr Heselden's parting, here's a compilation of Segway crashes as a warning to others.

Zen 414: The All Blacks' awesome skills are 'fake and gay'

I'm not sure why gay, but the Interweb kids can't just call something fake these days. It has to be fake and gay. This video of the All Blacks training is, apparently, fake and gay. It's definitely fake. I'll let you decide on the gay bit. Chances are you're better qualified.

Zen 413: Hot air kills

An advert for Oxfam in Metro today states: "Climate change... While we have to listen to all the hot air being spouted about climate change thousands of people are dying."

Is this actually true?

A good place to look for data on climate deaths would be the insurance market. Insurers are usually the first to explore unattributable 'act of god' type phenomena to avoid making a pay out. So how much death and loss due to climate change are insurance companies currently claiming?

Nada. Zip. Big fat zero.

In fact, only one major report has ever put a figure on the number of people 'killed' by man-made global warming, and that was the 300,000 per year claimed by Kofi Annan's gravy train - sorry think tank - the Global Humanitarian Forum.

Interestingly, even aid agencies close to the problem criticised this figure for being a) largely guesswork, and b) acting as a smokescreen for corrupt and incompetent governments that for decades have failed to provide adequate sanitation, security or healthcare for their populations.

Zen 412: Just eat the m*therf***ing cheese, OK?

Panda Cheese ads from Egypt. The guy who posted the YouChoob vids neatly summarises this ...errr... unusual campaign: "...people who say no to Panda Cheese learn that the decision comes with repercussions. Specifically, an asshole panda shows up and ruins their day."

They should get this furry little bastard down the Gaza Strip, sort some shit out.

Zen 411: Woman repels bear armed with courgette

What the bear was doing armed with a courgette remains a mystery. Badoom-ching. Thangyuverymuch, I'm here all week.

The other mystery, apart from why BBC News recently seems to have lost all sense of grammar in its headline writing, is why this non-story has made international news at all.

I'll summarise it for you. Black bear attacks dogs - woman defends dogs - bear turns on woman - woman throws courgette at bear - bear runs off.

This sort of shenanigans is pretty common in Montana, where bears and hicks with dogs are rife. The only thing that seems to have elevated this particular incident to the world stage is the use of a courgette.

Why? What is intrinsically globally newsworthy about courgettes? Does the courgette have hitherto unrealised bear repelling properties, denoting this incident as an historic turning point for backwoodsmen with ursine infestation issues?

Perhaps courgettes are powerful religious totems in Montana and the woman's failure to protect the courgette will lead to her being sentenced to death by stoning, triggering a worldwide outcry about the inhumanity of Montanese Sharia Law?

Or maybe the woman was disturbed in flagrante delicto using the courgette in a manner unnatural, revealing the strange irony of being saved by the sole virtue of indulging in a fetish so deviant she had to go and live in the middle of nowhere, thereby placing herself in danger from itinerant bears, in order to indulge it?

I think we should be told.

Zen 410: Penetrating Wagner's Ring

Yes, a genuine book for sale on Amazon, called 'Penetrating Wagner's Ring'.

Naturally enough, hoardes of cheeky wags have had a field day reviewing this one. For example: "As implied by the title, this collection probes deeply into Wagner's vast Ring piece... Accusations of anti-semitism make Wagner's Ring a sensitive area today, but it continues to offer pleasure to many ... also covered are the brass instruments that Wagner designed specifically for insertion within the Ring."

Harvey would not find this funny.

Zen 409: Army says goodbye Snatch, hello Ocelot

Not a bizarre interspecies sex triangle, but the unveiling today of the Army's new light patrol vehicle. Gone is the old Landie Snatch, which afforded about as much protection from IEDs as wrapping yourself in tinfoil. In its place comes the Ocelot - a ferocious armoured beast with a V-shaped blast proof hull and a modular construction which allows it to be quickly reassembled for a wide variety of neato roles. This is somewhere between geek porn and war porn, but you may be interested nonetheless.

Zen 408: 'He called me a slag. I'm not a slag...'

So says the fat girl sitting across from me on the train. Rather brilliantly, she's wearing a t-shirt with the word 'Salut!' emblazoned across the front, but the 'a' is obscured by the strap of her bag.

Zen 407: On a Weezer tip - Weezer does Jackass

I like Weezer. I love Jackass. Combined in the form of a music video and heavy on the guitars/dangerous behaviour, I am in some form of Big Dumb Rock Heaven.

Zen 406: Weezer's 'Pork and Beans' is a viral video masterpiece

I'm not sure how I missed this, but I did. The video for Weezer's 'Pork and Beans' is an absolute masterpiece, if for no better reason than they've managed to cram about 400 viral references, including many of the stars of some of the most deranged bits of You-Tube-ernalia, into 3 mins and 16 seconds of jaunty pop fun.

If you can't count more than 20, you've been living under a rock since 1990.

Zen 405: Scuppered by a trip to Disneyland

North Korea is gearing up for a once-in-a-lifetime event - a party conference to announce the successor to 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong-Il. It turns out the old bastard has had a stroke and won't be long for this world (as certain sources in China relate), so the time has come to announce which of his misbegotten brood will be laying the cold, dead hand of Communism on the reins of state next.

The favourite is his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, about whom very, very little is known. This nonetheless begs the question: why aren't they following the heavily ingrained Confucian tradition of male primogeniture? Is it because the Heroic Workers' Paradise of North Korea has thrown off the shackles of ancient superstition, eschewing unthinking succession in favour of a merit-based appointment, if admittedly from a tiny subset of those spawned from the Dear Leader's very own seed?

Errr, no.

Kim Jong-un has two older brothers. His only full-blooded brother is Kim Jong-chul, two years older, but apparently such a massive sissy that his dad wouldn't even consider him for the top job, saying he was "no good because he is like a little girl".

Then there's his half brother, Kim Jong-nam, 12 years his senior and at one time adored by Kim Jong-il. But it all went to rat-shit in 2001 when he was arrested trying to get into Japan on a fake Japanese passport. Rumour has it he was trying to defect, although Kim Jong-nam's line was that he just wanted to visit Disneyland Tokyo.

The two things aren't strictly speaking mutually exclusive, and his disaffection with the Workers' Paradise is leant credence by the fact that he now lives between Macau and Beijing, rarely ventures back to Pyongyang and is not infrequently seen on TV basically announcing to the world that he really doesn't give a fig who gets his dad's old job. It's all on YouChoob, so it must be true.

Zen 404: Engineer sought - head for heights an advantage

I'm actually OK with heights, but have to confess to feeling a bit sick watching this. It's the view from the helmet-mounted camera of a telecoms engineer as he free climbs (i.e. climbs without safety lines) to the top of a 1,768 ft antenna somewhere in Canadahoovia, hauling a 30lb toolbag behind him.

Says the laconic voice over: "He checks on the lightning conditions. If a storm is blowing through, there's no quick way down."

I beg to differ. There's an extremely quick way down, but you'll need a shovel at the end of it.

(With thanks to Mad Lord Jim of Piotrowice Nyskie.)

Zen 403: Crikey, that was all a bit heavy, so here's some footage of sexually ambiguous Filipino gentlemen watching a beauty pageant

Zen 402: Pope wrong on the whole Hitler thing

So the pope's weird visit to Britain is over. I say weird because, well, he came over here, hobnobbed with the Queen (head of an heretical breakaway church), beatified a dead bloke who had apparently performed, post mortem, the miracle of curing someone of a deadly spinal disorder (just hours after they had had surgery to correct it) and blamed atheism for Hitler.

It's the last one I want to take issue with. Hitler wasn't a product of atheism. More to the point, even if Hitler was an atheist, there is no logical pathway from atheism to Nazism. To suggest so is either a bit mental or horribly dishonest. Take your pick.

As the Catholic Church put it, with chuckle-inducing ambiguity, Ratzinger knows "rather well what the Nazi ideology is about" (see Zen 398: Nazi pope [LINK] for full details), which makes it all the more baffling that he has his facts so dead wrong. Unless he's just being horribly dishonest. I see a theme developing here.

Ratzinger said: "Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny."

Only problem with that is that Hitler didn't just dig god, but was also a baptised Catholic. In fact, he was known to make rather a thing about god, Christ and faith.

Now, there is no doubting Richard Dawkins makes a better evolutionary biologist than he does an anti-religion polemicist. He's far too shrill and clumsy to be any good at the latter. But these things aside, he did deliver rather a good rebuttal of Ratzinger's allegations. Skip to 1 min 25 secs to bypass the predictable references to priests buggering choirboys.

Zen 401: Gay ninja slain by vagina bubbles from hell

You heard it here first.

Zen 400: 'No fatties, no hamsters' - an 80s video dating montage

And to think some of these people may have reproduced. Everyone except the fashion photographer guy.

Zen 399: Crikey, that was all a bit heavy, so here's a video of a philosophical cat sitting in a sink full of water

He may look resigned now, but Russian Tiddles will have blood...

Zen 398: Nazi pope

So the pope, Joseph Ratzinger, is paying us a visit, which is nice. (For those of you who missed it, Dara O'Briain's impromptu pope-versus-popemobile skit on the Mock the Week last night was pretty funny - I hope Joe had time to catch it.)

I'm not really interested in the pope, viewing him as a sort of superannuated Harry Potter for people who still believe in fairies, but I am interested in his past. Pope John Paul II was apparently a pretty handy goalkeeper before he took up poping. Joe Ratzinger was a member of the Hitler Youth.

Now, I know what you're going to say. It was compulsory from 1939 to belong to the Hitler Youth. Fair point. He was too young to make a meaningful moral stand against the forces of Nazism. Right again. In the prevailing climate of fear, everyone just kept their heads down and tried to keep out of trouble. Correctomundo.

What I do have a problem with is the revisionist version of Ratzinger's past that paints him and his family as 'conscientious objectors' who openly opposed the Nazi regime and 'did what they could'. For this, my friends, is bollocks.

Ratzinger's old man was a copper and, sure, he didn't like the Nazis. He was properly old school Catholic and didn't have any truck with this Austrian upstart and his turbo-charged, homicidal prejudices. Ratzinger Senior had his gentler, more well-worn prejudices, and those were good enough for him, thank you very much.

Now the official hagiography has it that the Ratzinger family had to move four times due to Ratzinger Senior's opposition to the Nazis. OK, so he was clearly not 'on message' - he gets demoted a couple of times, a pretty common occurence - but he was never ejected from the police, he was never interviewed by the Gestapo and he was never imprisoned, or his family reduced to penury. They all survived the war living as comfortably as any middle class German family of the day could expect to. And he clearly still had  influence enough right through the war to pull a few strings and ensure that his boys never got in the way of any Russky bullets.

So what about this Hitler Youth membership? Records suggest that Joe successfully avoided joining the Deutsche Jungvolk, another organisation with compulsory membership for kids too young to be in the Hitler Youth. But in 1941, the minute he turns 14, Joe signs up to the big boys' club. Why?

Easy. Tuition fees. Membership of the Hitler Youth ensured a sizeable discount. It's not like you couldn't go to school if you didn't belong, but it certainly made it a whole lot pricier. Like Putney parents who find God on the way to the cashpoint, Ratzinger Senior clearly put his principles on hold to make sure Joe got into the right school.

What about the rest of Joe's war? Well, he was conscripted and served on a gun battery protecting the BMW aircraft works (where slave labour from Dachau was the primary constituent of the workforce) and then went to Hungary to work on tank traps (and watch Jews being rounded up for the 'holocaust within the holocaust'). Then in April 1945 he deserted. Hurrah, the moral stand at last. Errr, no. Everyone was deserting by then. Even so, he was nearly rumbled when his father gave shelter to two SS officers. Yeah. You heard right.

Fair to say, nonetheless, that Ratzinger clearly wasn't a Nazi and he and his family didn't do anything during the Hitler years to suggest that they held Nazi views - quite the opposite. That said, they also didn't do anything in particular to resist the Nazis, and to claim, as Ratzinger does, that it was 'impossible' is to do a huge disservice to those who did actively resist Hitler at the risk - and forfeit - of their lives.

So if Ratzinger is guilty of anything, it's dishonesty. The honest thing would be to admit that his family muddled through the war like everyone else and that their opposition to Hitler lasted only up to the point they had to dip into the college fund. Instead, he persistently shades his past and tries to dress up in clothing more virtuous than his record shows he deserves. But then popes of the past ran whorehouses, dabbled in money lending and had people killed, so I guess he represents some sort of progress.

Zen 397: Intriguing list of 473 nearly extinct languages

Just happened upon this intriguing list of 473 languages that have fewer than 100 speakers. Intriguing, because who'd have thought that the US would have 74, or Australia 93, or tiny Vanuatu a massive nine languages on the brink of shuffling off this mortal coil? I, for one, did not know that.

There are no UK languages on the critical list, with Cornish, Cumbric and Breton already having died out and the various sub-dialects of Chavspeak (like Fosterslust, which is specifically spoken round the back of KFC in Woking after kicking out time on a Saturday night) yet to be recognised by the UN.

Ethnologue list of endangered languages [LINK]

Zen 396: The luckiest bastards on earth

Otter Zen's featured a few of these before, but here is a maxi-compilation of people who should be dead but aren't, but often only by a matter of inches. From hot-stepping traffic cops to boarders outrunning avalanches, it's eye-popping stuff from start to finish. Check the levitating guy a 5 mins 20 who escapes death by train not once but twice. Double lucky bastard.

Zen 395: Bollock naked man saves car from thief

When Russell Stewart heard a car thief trying to nick his Peugeot, he scrambled out of bed, ran outside and jumped - bollock naked - into the passenger seat, whereupon he announced to the startled thief "All right mate? Where are we going then?"

At this point, the thief fled. Props to Mr Stewart, who not only had the balls, but wasn't afraid to show them.

Zen 394: 'Successful beyond anybody's imagination'

Brilliant editorial in the Boston Globe about the American cash-for-clunkers car scrappage scheme that saw car owners paid $4,500 to trade in their old bangers for new low-emission vehicles.

Everyone in the States has indulged in much mutual ball- cupping over the 'success' of the scheme, but as the Globe points out, it actually resulted in the destruction of thousands of perfectly serviceable cars, saved less CO2 than the US emits in a day and cost the US taxpayer $24,000 per car scrapped.

As the Globe puts it, the scheme was "a deplorable exercise in budgetary wastefulness, asset destruction, environmental irrelevance and economic idiocy. Other than that, it was a screaming success."

Zen 393: Booby Moore

Rafa Nadal has just completed a Grand Slam of the Grand Slams - Wimbledon and the French, Aussie and US Opens - a triumph only ever achieved by the true greats of men's tennis, and one that defeated the likes of Sampras, McEnroe and Borg.

Naturally enough, this prompted the 606 website to pose the question: What makes a great sportsman? Tell us whose achievements you admire and why.

Oh boy.

Damien a.k.a. the fat kid who always got picked last for footie: "To be honest no sports person is great, they are just big kids who never grew up doing what they liked to do at school."

 Dpstl: "It's quite appealing how nearly all footballers these days pull shirts & fall on the floor in deep pain when touched. Good thing they don't play rugby or especially box."

I think he means appalling.

billyhano: "The greatest living British sportsman has to be Tony McCoy. Champion National Hunt jockey for the past 15 years. McCoy has rode a record number of winners that is unlikely to ever be bettered. Unlike some of our other "prima donna" sportsmen, McCoy will participate in 1000+ competitions every year, and everytime he is on the racecourse, he is followed around the course by an ambulance."

To be fair, I think you'll find it's the horse doing all the work. And the paramedics.

BluesBerry: "So Rafael Nadal joined the ranks of the all-time greats of tennis by beating Novak Djokovic to win the US Open and complete his set of Grand Slam titles. So, did this save humanity, invent a cure for cancer, solve climate change?"

I'm not sure that was in the question...

Confuciousfred: "Find a football team that loses every game year in year out, ridiculed by fans and other teams but the players turn out come rain come hail come shine and leave the pitch thinking positively about the next game. These enthusiasts are true sportsmen"


Yeah! What?

And of course:

Sepenenre: "Booby Moore"

Zen 392: Crikey, that was all a bit heavy, so here's some footage of a guy tickling a camel to lighten things up a bit

Take your mind out of the gutter. It's just a guy. Tickling a camel.What could be more natural.

Zen 391: Burn the Koran Day - getting your priorities in order

OK, so nutty US pastor Terry Jones (not a Python, hilarious James Hetfield 'tache) has recanted and says he will not "now or ever" burn the Koran. Hurray. Big cheer. Once again the world is safe from religious renegades with crazy ideas. At least in downtown Florida they are.

His actions had earlier inspired thousands of muslims to gather at the Baitul Futuh Mosque, in Morden, south west London, to condemn Jones's actions. That's a great show of solidarity in the face of fairly witless intolerance (the witless intolerance of a gun-toting, self-proclaimed priest with a congregation of fewer than 50 people) but it did rather beg the question - where were the gatherings of thousands of muslims to condemn, say, Islamist terrorism, or violent extremism, or the stoning to death of women in the name of sharia, or even massive religious intolerance as practised across large parts of North Africa, the Middle East and the Subcontinent?

I did some research. Actually, I just Googled the phrase "thousands of muslims gather to condemn...". It threw up some interesting results. Thousands of muslims have apparently gathered in Second Life to condemn the Israeli treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. Thousands of muslims have gathered in France to condemn the ban on veil wearing. So it's pretty easy to find massed muslims decrying all the really bad things being done to their religion, but they are arguably a lot thinner on the ground when it comes to condemning all the really bad things that are being done in the name of their religion.

Except for this lot in Morden, who have previously gathered in their thousands to condemn terrorist outrages in Pakistan. But the Morden muslims belong to the Ahmadi minority sect and are considered heretics. In Pakistan, their activities are criminalised. In fact, the terrorist act they were gathering to condemn was an attack by gunmen on two Ahmadi mosques in Pakistan that killed 93 worshippers.

Maybe it's the Western media simply preferring to focus on the blokes with hooks for hands while ignoring the frequent popular outpourings of rage against the loony fringe of Islam? Nope. There are lone bloggers. And small groups of activists. And dutiful expressions of shock and horror from muslim leaders in Western nations, but it's fair to say that other than these small voices, it's either not happening or it has somehow failed to make it onto the web. And as we already know, nothing that anyone really cares about ever fails to make it onto the web.

So when muslims decry the depiction of Islam in Western media, saying things like "...the West has many stereotypes and misconceptions about Islam that are due to the media, prejudice, and ignorance. Islam is often looked upon as a "extremist", "terrorist", or "fundamental" religion..." you have to ask, is it any surprise?

Here's a thought. Perhaps Islam is viewed that way because the extremist, terrorist, fundamentalist end of the spectrum is, well, just a teensy bit more visible? It's almost like they really want it. Maybe if the moderate, non-violent, inclusive muslims decided that it was they who were going to set the agenda for their faith - you know, make a concerted effort to reclaim Islam from the foaming-at-the-mouth medievalist stoners and bombers - then perhaps those negative perceptions might begin to change.

After all, it wasn't changing attitudes in the Western media that reclaimed the reputation of Germany from the horrors of Auschwitz. It was the dogged persistence of the German people to make amends for acts carried out in their name and the repeated presentation of proof positive that while some Germans were undeniable and unutterable bastards (and we've all got those) on the whole they weren't a bad bunch

Zen 390: Being a dickhead's cool!

It's funny because it's true. I actually work with people like this.

Zen 389: First champagne, then free-running, now sex - are the French actually good at anything?

In recent weeks, we've seen the French lose out to the Brits in producing the best sparkling white wine, found out that it was a West Country entrepreneur, not a French monk who invented the process for making champagne and we've discovered that free-running was in fact invented by a German, not by the French as previously claimed.

Now a survey of French adults has revealed that they are also rubbish at sex. According to the study, three-quarters of our Gallic cousins have unsatisfying sex lives and as many as a third of women and one in six men will fall back on excuses to get out of making slippy-slide. Not that anybody but the French ever thought they were the greatest lovers in the first place.

So a bad week for the French all round, and undoubtedly a massive blow to their national pride. Still, at least they have their undisputed military prowess to fall back on.

Zen 388: Tom Lehrer's elements song, set to Google

Brilliant. Especially the Harvard rhyme.

Zen 387: Innovative road safety campaign begs entirely the wrong question

All over the world, kids are back to school this week. In Canada, a road safety campaign group has marked the occasion by placing this enormous print of a little girl on a suburban road. The print works like one of those sports ads that is painted flat on the pitch but looks like it is standing up when viewed from the camera gantry.

I think the effect they were looking for is "Oh, my gosh, this little kid just popped up without any warning infront of my car!", but the effect they achieved was "How fucking fast was that steamroller going?"

Don't shoot the messenger.

Zen 386: Cache rules everything around me - animated gif video will mess with your head

This is strangely compelling. Evan Roth of Graffiti Research Lab has thrown together a 10 minute collection of animated gifs - those funny little looped things beloved of the deviants on B3TA and people who've just discovered email (you know, the ones whose unnecessary multicolour email signatures come bouncing in accompanied by a host of smilies).

I defy you not to a) laugh quite a lot and b) watch to the end. You didn't? What the hell is the matter with you? Honestly, you put yourself out for people and where's the goddam reward...



Supplementary question: How many of these do you remember? Gay spiderman? Dancing baby? Sumo is better than karate? Yes? Geek.

Zen 385: Florida church, stop barking of your pop (Terry Jones)

OK, so there's this evangelist pastor called Terry Jones (who isn't a former Python) who is planning to burn copies of the Koran (which everyone is suddenly spelling Quran) on 11 September (because it will stop radical Islam from taking over America). Of course.

Now, normally, anyone sporting a moustache like Terry is either a variety of gay man typically known as a 'bear', James Hetfield from Metallica, or some manner of hyper-rural hick who has to hit the moonshine from sun-up to sun-down to keep Satan from possessing his thoughts when he's around his cattle or his sisters. In that order.

In any event, we should know not to take him too seriously. Predictably, however, incessant media exposure has turned Terry into the international face of fascism-expressed-as-religion. Intellectually subnormal rednecks the world over now have an image in their heads of who they'd like to be when they grow up. Or who they can beat off to when they run out of livestock and siblings.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a miraculously speedily convened 'spontaneous' renta-mob in Afghanistan burns an effigy of Terry, while brandishing neatly printed slogans. Only, the slogans have been through Google Translator, which doesn't really do Pashtun to English.

And what if Terry Jones doesn't stop barking of his pop?

Well, I'm guessing that evangelist shitheads from Florida will continue to be evangelist shitheads, and renta-mobs in Afghanistan will continue to whip up instant effigies as long as there's some dodgy geezer there to organise it with a fistful of dollars and a printer. And the rest of the world will continue to turn in merciful ignorance of their existence.

Zen 384: Wanted: cryogenic gases

Sandwiched between Laboratory Support Assistant and Trainee Sous Chef in the window of a local recruitment agency is this mouth-watering employment opportunity. But what does it mean?

Zen 383: Correction, parkour NOT invented by mentalist Frenchies

Have just discovered this video, from the 1930s, of GERMAN stuntman Arnim Dahl doing something that is indisputably parkour (or free-running as the less garlic-tinged prefer to call it). Dahl was something of a legend, having been hospitalised more than 40 times with 100+ fractures due to stunts going awry. Miraculously, he lived to be 76.

Anyway, it clearly demonstrates that the French are Johnny Come Latelys to this leaping about business. First champagne, now this. Is there anything the French did first?

Zen 382: Cat Parkour

If you buttered a cat and dropped it from a height not less than 12 inches from the ground, which way up would it land?



In case you were wondering what parkour is, it's a wholesome activity invented by mentalist Frenchies with an aversion to escalators. Or something.

Zen 381: Why I will never smell like a bijillionaire playboy

Zen 380: Al Gore, please return your Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Committee has a long track record of giving the Peace Price to some weird people. Take US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for example. He launched an undeclared war on Cambodia and Laos, dropping more bombs on those two countries that the United States dropped on Japan and Germany combined during the whole of the Second World War. For many, Kissinger remains one of the great unconvincted war criminals of all time, but he nonetheless won the Nobel in 1973 for making peace with Vietnam, a country he singularly failed to bludgeon into submission during a war lasting nearly twenty years, the most intense phase of which transformed it from a civil war to a regional holocaust, and for which he must bear the greater responsibility.

Then there is the decision to give it to Barack Obama last year for ... for what precisely? The jury may still be out on that one, but there's a compelling argument  to say that he got it for not being George W Bush, in which case I'd like one for not being Tony Blair please. I could just do with $1.5 million dollars about now.

But at least these guys had something to do with peace, even if in both cases it was the hope, present and future, that they wouldn't be starting any more wars anytime soon. Which is more than you can say for that fatuous, self-aggrandising woodentop Al Gore, who won it in 2007, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for their work to raise awareness of climate change. The logic was that climate change (which Al ceaselessly jets around the world to talk about) causes war by increasing 'environmental stress' and water scarcity.

Whereas Kissinger's decision to sign the treaty undeniably stopped the slaughter, the problem with Gore's prize was that there is no compelling evidence either way that people in Sub-Saharan Africa ever think "Gosh it's clammy today. Fetch my AK47 and my horse, wife, I'm off to murder some toddlers." Until now.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that "Climate variability in Africa does not seem to have a significant impact on the risk of civil war". As the report's author Halvard Buhaug, senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo's (Prio) Centre for the Study of Civil War, says, "If you apply a number of different definitions of conflict and various different ways to measure climate variability, most of these measurements will turn out not to be associated with each other."

What he actually found was that it's not the weather, but poverty, ethnic tensions, traditional rivalries, a lack of robust state institutions and a massive surplus of gun-toting bastards that are primarily to blame for conflict. So on that basis alone, Henry can keep his, but Al should do the decent thing and give his back. Then fuck off somewhere warm and retire.

Zen 379: Hai Karate - better than Sex Panther?

It may have smelled like WD40 mixed with cat piss, but it could drive women into a sexual frenzy so profound that you would literally have to beat them off. And not in a good way. Observe this shocking documentary footage.

Zen 378: This sauce will fuck up your kids

Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Zen 377: Meringue dancing dog champion - it's either really clever or really weird, I can't decide

OK, I accept that there is no doubt that what this guy has trained his dog to do is very, very clever indeed, and it all looks like a lot of lighthearted fun, but I also can't escape the feeling that something really fucked up is going on here.

Exhibit A. Why is the dance-off taking place in what looks like a dimly lit underground car park? Three things happen in dimly lit underground car parks: 1) car parking; 2) meetings with people who are trying to leak top secret government documents; 3) bestial snuff porn. Or could it be that this isn't a car park at all, but a specially constructed underground meringue dungeon? The dog is smiling now, but what about when the cameras are off?

Exhibit B. The dog is wearing a dress. Only it's not a fun, brightly coloured pom-pom dress befitting the average hound of jaunty terpsichorean disposition, but a floaty gossamer thing that someone - someone not too far away from the dog - has clearly thought about far too much. Involuntary shuddering may commence now.

Exhibit C. You can dance with your dog. If that's what you like to do, go for it. You can do the hustle, the cha-cha, the samba, the chattanooga choo-choo for all I care. But the bump and grind? Dear god, man, have you no shame?

Zen 376: Ha ha! Take that, Frenchy

Any nation that wraps up its identity with something as poncey as sparkling wine gets everything it deserves. Which is why it's especially hilarious that an English wine has just beaten 700 varieties of fizzy plonk from around the world, including the most famous varieties from Champagne, France, to win the 2010 Decanter International Trophy.

Legend has it that French monk Dom Perignon created the process for making wine sparkle, but we now know that that's just a self-indulgent Gallic myth. (He also never said "Come quickly, I am drinking the stars!" - that was a strapline from an ad campaign.) Research has shown that the process was almost certainly developed in 17th Century England, by a man called Christopher Merrett, before being ripped off by that snail-munching Benedictine god-botherer.

So not only did the French not invent Champagne, they're apparently not even that great at making it anymore. Shame.

(FYI, the English wine in question is the 2006 Ridgeview Grosvenor Blanc de Blancs, retailing at a very reasonable £21.99.)

Zen 375: This generation sucks

Caution: Doug Stanhope.

Zen 374: 'Tonight on Dragons' Den, James Khan has some ambitious plans for penetration...'

Cassette Boy. Can't top him.

Zen 373: Terraforming by Darwin

Charles Darwin was arguably one of the greatest geniuses of all time. Not only did he elucidate a theory of evolution that was brilliantly observed, holistically complete and supremely elegant, but he was right. He wasn't just a little bit right, or mostly right. He was almost entirely right*, to the extent that we are even now carrying out genetic research that proves stuff that Darwin basically just had a really good hunch about. As Nigel Tufnell might have put it, the guy went all the way up to 11.

Such was his vision that when he dropped into the volcanic mid-Atlantic rock known as Ascension Island in 1836, he saw a unique opportunity to conduct a long-range experiment in 'terraforming' - the first ever attempt to create a "self-sustaining and self-reproducing ecosystem" from barren land. Conspiring with his chum Joseph Hooker, whose father ran Kew Gardens, he arranged for the Royal Navy to start planting on the island, bringing in new plants from all over the world in dribs and drabs.

Today, Ascension Island has its own "self-sustaining and self-reproducing ecosystem" and is home to, among other things, a 'cloud forest' of trees and plants that has no parallel anywhere else on Earth. Partly by design and partly by accident, they created a lush and habitable place, short circuiting a process that normally takes millions of years of co-evolution by essentially trucking a bunch of stuff in and letting it either thrive or die.

For the full skinny, have a look at the BBC News article wot I blagged all this off: Charles Darwin's evolution experiment on Ascension isle [LINK]

* Advocates of intelligent design please note - you are morons. Not a little bit moron, or mostly moron. You are almost entirely moron.

Zen 372: Polite notice to thieves