Ed Dowding

Attention-hungry child makes up song about immigration

You know a group of children are playing, then some new kid comes along behaving badly, but getting all the attention? And then when the other children start behaving even more badly than the new kid so they can get attention again? “I respect Nigel Farage,” says George Osborne on BBC News

I believe in dog. And other correlations.

No matter their gender or orientation, beer-lovers are 60% more likely to be okay with sleeping with someone they’ve just met. Do my date and I have long-term potential? Ask your date (and yourself!)… Do you like horror movies? Have you ever traveled around another country alone? Wouldn’t it be fun to chuck it all ...

Police ask UK Muslim women to keep men at home

A tyrant is in power killing hundreds of thousands of people. The only morally right thing for anyone who is not otherwise more productively occupied is to rush to their assistance. If I were a UK Muslim woman (or any woman, or any man) I’d find it damned hard to make the case that the willing should ...

Remove lead from fuel and violence declines dramatically. Imagine how much more peaceful and healthy the planet would be if we removed fossil fuels from society?

Turkeys will vote for Christmas if it’s advertised to them enough.

Disrupt manifesto

http://disruptmgzn.com/manifesto/

90% ape, 9% human, 1% angel.

We are 90% ape, 9% human, 1% enlightened being. Maybe. If we’re lucky. Our 1% angel conceives the wonder; our 90% monkey wonders how to make it happen. “This is no place to stop, halfway between an ape and an angel” — Benjamin Disraeli.

This is a peaceful blue planet.

This 2 minute history of the world has been doing the rounds recently. There’s an awful lot of attention paid to recent events and big wars there. HG Wells, somewhat upset by WW1, and then WW2, wrote his history of the world not to identify an record periods of way, but to identify and champion ...

A few choice quotes found of late

“Religion and choice of religions is unimportant. The wise will always find wisdom and solace in theirs, and fools will be fools no matter what they believe.” The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John ...

What is social enterprise?

It’s about playing a smarter game, and changing the rules of existing games so that they’re more fun for more people. How about creating and trying new games? We could play “Mostly Football” where you’re allowed to use your hands as much as would allow you to do supercool moves and throw the ball at ...

two silver fishes on round white ceramic plate

First rule of Corporate Club

First rule of Corporate Club: If you teach a man to fish, you’ve lost a customer.

Historical re-imagining

I’ve always loved a Knight’s Tale. It’s fun and real, telling human stories. Which is where it’s at, really. And this is similarly awesome. So here’s a great video of men with cellos. Then the Knight’s Tale scene. Then a link to a post which far better articulates that which I wanted to write here ...

The challenge of staying positive

Here’s Stevie Wonder on the tremendous challenge of articulating a succinct and positive vision. Jump to 2m21. Epic fail. Waaaay too much to say and too little time to say it. Did you hear that bit at 2m46?! Neither did I. Anyway this morning someone said, “I don’t know how you stay so positive.” Here’s ...

The dark side of poetics.

“Eternal is the life of the warrior who finds beauty in their own wounds.” (apparently) Either that, or short but blissfully lacerated.

The Facts In The Case Of Dr. Andrew Wakefield

http://tallguywrites.livejournal.com/148012.html

Clear message to the police

Which side of history would you like to be on? See also this tweet from the Greater Manchester Police which seems to boast about breaking into houses and stealing things on social media.. which is rather against a) what they tell us to do, and b) the spirit of policing. We've kicked in a door ...

EU sort of forces companies to report on social and environmental impact

Something is better than nothing. Discuss. The EU is to force large companies to report on environmental and social impacts, but “opposition from some member states, particularly Germany, Poland and the UK, mean the requirements will not apply to the majority of large companies – according to estimates just one in seven large companies will ...

Life is too important for obvious news

How is the opinion of a massively biased party headline news? HS2 chair Sir David Higgins urges project speed-up  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26604074 Someone is up to something today (see previous post). NB if reading this in the future, this is as Crimea votes to join Russia, Malaysia’s jet is still missing in strange circumstances, flooding is still ...

MH370

I might as well get this down for the record since my blog is working again. 1. Russia is behind the missing flight, MH370. It’s there to distract people so that it can continue doing more domestic hardening without international headlines. If there were no plane it would be items one and two, whereas now ...

Somewhere, aliens are wincing

A tiny handful of peaceful happy aliens are watching on and wincing as yet another civilisation stumbles at the penultimate hurdle. Every time the same story: they either fail to adapt to a post-scarcity economic model, or they use up all of the nuclear fuel before they can use it to leave their solar system ...