Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway

I recently finished reading this book. I don't usually read self-help books but it seemed to be well recommended. It brings together many ideas I've heard before and explains a good way to think your way through any fears you may have. Worth reading. I've written up a summary of the whole book.

Guardian: 'Shoot-to-kill' demand by US

Great. If I go to the protest on Thursday, I may get shot by a trigger happy American or maybe blown up by a terrorist. London is going to be a mess.

10,000 Pet Tigers!?

This story caught my eye. There's only about 5,000 Bengal Tigers in the wild but "up to 10,000 tigers are currently being kept as pets in basements and backyards across the US." One fellow was found with a 350 pound tiger in his New York flat! Well, maybe that's a bit of good news for conservationists. Once we can't find a species in the wild, we just have to start checking peoples backyards. Pet rhino anyone?

The Matrix Revolutions: Two Thumbs Down

I went and saw this this afternoon (yeah - seems weird to go to a movie in the afternoon!). It's quite a big let down. Sure, it's got lots of effects and style but substance is missing. Much of it is just a 3rd rate Hollywood lets-fight-the-bad-guys-with-big-guns type of movie with shlock dialogue glorifying human foibles. What a waste!

The first movie was excellent with ground-breaking cinematography and innovative adaption of the wire-flying martial art film techniques. I also thought it was pretty brave using such a hardcore sci-fi plot in a mainstream movie. The whole issue of reality could have been such a rich plot device.

No, it's just a stylish war movie with an incoherent cosmology and an uninteresting script.

Download your Dancing Stick Figure

Superb visualization for Windows Media Player or Winamp. You can download lots of different dancing stick figures or even make your own. The coolest part is you can make your own from a photograph. I ought to do one of the kids. I love the political ones. Check out the dancing President Bush.

Guardian: Fear of trade war after US steel tariffs ruled illegal

Just more evidence that the US doesn't believe in free trade for itself; only for others. Looks like I have to postpone buying that Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Michael Moore at the London Palladium

We went and listened to a talk by Michael Moore at the London Palladium last night. It was excellent. The talk was much less structured than I expected. He essentially came on stage and rambled in a very entertaining way: sometimes very serious; sometimes very funny. He was certainly very disparaging of Tony Blair for supporting George Bush and in some ways, blames him more as the more intelligent of the two. Without Blair, Bush may never had been able to rally enough support for the war. His next movie is about Bush and his connections with the Saudi royal family. No doubt it will be out just in time for the presidential election.

The main takeaway from the talk was not to be afraid of kicking out Tony Blair due to lack of an alternative and to please PLEASE attend the anti-Bush rally on November 20th in London. America needs to see the lack of support Bush has.

Chomsky and Globalisation

Just finished reading this book. It's full of many interesting points and arguments but at only eighty pages it isn't able to back up it's allegations very well. For that, you would have to follow-up with the numerous references to original sources. Nevertheless, it is damning of globalisation and the doctrine of neo-liberalism. It's well worth reading as an introduction.

I used to believe that globalisation was a good thing. How naive! I've slowly changed my mind after a lot of reading from various points of view. Unfortunately, it's a very complex topic and well beyond the interest of the vast majority. Globalisation might work if there were proper world institutions (legitimate, transparent and with effective authority) to oversee it but in it's current form, it's a disaster.

New Travelogue: Diving In Jordan

I've finally published our travelogue of our trip to Jordan. Sorry for the wait. I know a few of you have been looking forward to it. I should warn you that it contains over 500K of photo's. No doubt it's full of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes too. Please forgive me for them.

I've started to put more photo's in this blog and particularly in the travelogues as I think it makes it quite a bit more interesting. However, this makes the page load much slower for those of you on dial-up. I'm assuming that most of you have either a cable modem or broadband. Let me know if this causes you troubles. You can still read the text while waiting for the photo's to render.

Top 50 Things To Do/See

Interesting compilation of 50 places you should see within your lifetime along with 50 things you should do. Its inspired Jenny and I to draw up our own lists. I think it's a great exercise for anyone to really think through what experiences you want to have in this lifetime. Luckily Jenny and I have a lot of overlap! Then it's just a matter of picking one and going for it.

Guardian: Israel outraged as EU poll names it a threat to peace

Well, the United States is probably the worst threat to world peace but I would absolutely agree that Israel is a major threat. I don't see how that could be surprising and find this reaction amazing:

"Reacting to the poll, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which claims 400,000 members in the US alone, has begun ordering a petition to condemn the European Commission and demand the EU no longer be represented in the so-called Quartet group trying to mediate an end to violence between Israel and Palestine."

I'd say the EU is pro-Human Rights rather than pro-Arab. Maybe that's why they don't want the EU at the table. The article gets more interesting:

"Israeli Ministers and spokesman have also been at pains recently to insist that a definition of modern 'anti-semitism' should include criticism of the way the state of Israel chooses to protect itself, defining that criticism as an overt attack on Israel's survival."

That's outrageous. Israel wants to label all policy criticism as anti-semitism? There's a difference between racism and criticising blatant oppression.

October Stats

It's always quite interesting to visit the website stats at the end of the month. This website had 1001 unique visitors in October which is a small increase from August and September. Top country is always the Netherlands but I assume that's due to indexing servers being hosted there. Next comes the UK and Australia. The Writing Code Is Stupid article is still popular with 207 viewings making it the most read article on the site.

Somebody nicked my pumpkin!

I left a carved pumpkin outside our front door and tonight some kids stole it and kicked it down the street. It was the one I did; the kids' pumpkins are safe inside. A few years back, someone stole a very nice Christmas wreath off our front door that Jenny had spent a lot of time making.

We live in a pretty good neighbourhood but you often get groups of kids walking along the street. There's plenty of pranksters. It's quite sad that these things happen and makes you think twice about putting up decorations.

Extreme Ironing

If you haven't heard of Extreme Ironing, you really should check out these pictures. Amazing what people get up to just for the challenge of it.