From the BBC:

A group of rich Germans has launched a petition calling for the government to make wealthy people pay higher taxes.
The group say they have more money than they need, and the extra revenue could fund economic and social programmes to aid Germany's economic recovery.

How cool is that.

As Charlie Stross points out, this story of the missing cargo vessel is getting more and more like a Ken Follett novel. To recap - a Russian cargo ship has gone missing, presumably hijacked by pirates. The Russians - and everyone else - are looking for it with warships, submarines, planes and satellites. And now there's a theory going around that it was carrying a 'secret cargo', something 'expensive and dangerous' which it picked up at the shipyard in Kaliningrad...

An Irish cinema has been warning customers off seeing Bruno because "it's particularly vile." If you phoned their showtimes answerphone, you get a message saying

Bruno is particularly vile. It leads to a hell of a lot of complaints from people who say 'we didn't think it was going to be that bad'. It is that bad - it will offend every prejudice in the book, believe me, so don't come on after the film and tell us how horrible it was... One or two people have enjoyed it though.

The message has now changed, but you can hear the old one on Youtube.

Choice quote : "The Moynalty Virgins Club were in last night and they say it's unmissable."

Intriguing stuff, especially for me - I'm on immunosupressants anyway, so a change in prescription might not be a bad thing. It does sound familar though - a drug from the ground, which has geriatric properties...

The spice must flow!

A lot of people - including the BBC - are touting Google's Chrome OS as a competitor to Windows and Linux:

The news could also be a blow to the open source Linux operating system, which had taken an early lead on netbooks, but then lost out to Microsoft's elderly Windows XP. (BBC link)

Of course, this isn't the case. Chrome OS is just another distro, albeit one backed by an enormous amount of dosh:

The software architecture is simple - Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. (Google blog)

UPDATE: I note that the BBC has removed the paragraph quoted above.

It's an interesting idea - a distro where the only app is the browser - but it's not really anything new; it's just another iteration of the thin client idea. Of course, it might be the right iteration this time.

It also rather goes against a lot of the ideas people like Alec and Adriana are coming up with - ideas of owning one's own data are rather scuppered by every application running on some anonymous server somewhere. Maybe, after a while, users of Chrome OS will start to buy UI-less home servers to run their apps on and store their data.

Maybe we need a UI-less distribution of Linux, running Apache (or whatever) and a whole bunch of open source webapps - word processing, spreadsheets - and, of course, a Mine! server.

A statue of Buddha built for a musical turned out to be so big that a partition wall had to be taken down to get it out of the door.

The 5m (16ft) gold-coloured figure could not be freed from the Drill Hall in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion.

Apparently, Medway Council want to erect an enormous sign saying "MEDWAY" (a la the Hollywood Sign) overlooking the M2 Medway crossing. Blimey. Apparently they're having trouble getting people to invest in the area because nobody knows where Medway is, although they may have heard of the five towns which make it up (from West to East: Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham, Rainham).

It's their own damn fault for trying to plug Medway as a big brand when the idea of "Medway" didn't exist when I lived there 20 years ago. At most you had the idea of the "Medway Towns." Medway is an ugly name that turns a disparate bunch of towns into a characterless and historyless urban conglomeration as I may have mentioned before.

From the Department of Homeland Security:

We're also actively monitoring travelers at our land, sea, and air ports. We're watching them for signs of illness, and we have appropriate protocols in place to deal with those who are sick. Precautions are being taken to protect travelers and border personnel. Anyone exhibiting symptoms is being referred to an isolation room where they can be evaluated by a public health official before proceeding to their destruction.

(Cheers, Nick)

UPDATE: They've fixed it now, but there's a note at the bottom detailing the change if you don't believe me!

Completely missed this, by the way, since I haven't even looked at the news since Friday. This is a good thing, by the way - I'm normally an information addict, and it's a good thing that a whole news item has happened since I last looked. As for me, no swine flu here, but I do think I have cad and bounder cold.

XKCD is bang on today.

There's a story over at the BBC about the incredibly good Easter the tourism industry has had here in Wales: "huge upsurge" in late bookings, 40% increase in caravan bookings, etc.

Typically, the BBC focus on one slightly downbeat report:

Operators are reasonably happy. It's the start of the season in north Wales and we have benefitted from good weather - much better than the weather forecasted," said Mr Jackson.

"There has been some last minute bookings and the visitor attractions have done rather well."

But Mr Jackson said his members were "not throwing their hats in the air" just yet.

He said many were hoping that the recession would see more people looking to holiday closer to home, and that the industry was "looking ahead cautiously".

and run with the headline 'Cautious' outlook for tourism. Annoys me, this sort of thing. What's wrong with reporting good news as good news?

An Australian airliner was grounded after four pythons escaped from their container in the aircraft's hold. Samuel L. Jackson not required - they were only six inches long. They fumigated the plane instead, which would have made for a very dull film.

It finds lost treasure! Wards off evil spirits! Mobile phones can detect it! You can get it from old sewing machines! You can also, apparently, make nukes from it!

(It's an entirely synthetic substance, completely made up...)

According to the BBC, a robot developed in Aberystwyth 'is the first machine to have independently "discovered new scientific knowledge"'.

Is it me, or is the Fat Duck 'food poisoning' story starting to sound like mass hysteria? Hell, I'd still go.

Some news about Catrin (which I tweeted on the right a little while ago):

Dr Catrin Fflûr Huws has been appointed Director of the Centre for Welsh Legal Affairs (CWLA) at Aberystwyth University. Dr Huws succeeds Ann Sherlock, whose work has been so important in establishing this important and innovative body, the only one of its kind.
Dr Huws is a lecturer and co-ordinator for Welsh-medium teaching at the Department of Law and Criminology. Her research focuses on the Welsh dimension to the law, including the effectiveness of legislation in promoting minority languages, the use of the Welsh language in the courts and the effects of unaffordable housing in rural Wales. Her current research considers the interrelationship of law and language in Welsh and English literature.

No, we don't want half the decent shops in this town demolished to make way for a shiny new chain store, thanks very much. Bloody hell. They seem determined to make this place like every other high street in the UK.

Think I'm exaggerating? They want to demolish everything from Woolies down to the corner of Chalybeate St., and round the corner as far as the old sorting office entrance. That's 15 shops.

Still, there's a facebook group. That'll show 'em.

'Radioactive' paedophile suspect on the run after skipping court.

Stealing links from popbitch today!

UPDATE: More on Paedoman - he's on the BBC now:

Judge John Price, who issued a warrant for his arrest, said: "Please warn officers that when he is arrested he might be radioactive. This is not a joke."

Hooray for Prawo Jazdy, the most dangerous driver in Ireland!

arf!

Anti-Alzheimer's helmet my foot - they're uploading him!

That's just excellent for a piece for real science, isn't it?

Sad now. Here's a quote from the man (from this essay):

Finally, let me offer you the following serious thought. Suppose, if you will, that I am part of a silent Martian invasion and that my intention is slowly to destroy the whole culture of the human race. Where would I start?

I would naturally start where thought first grows. I would start with children's television. My policy would be to give the children only the sort of thing that they 'already know they enjoy' like a fizzing diet of manic jelly-babies. This would no doubt be exciting, but their hearts and their minds would receive no nourishment, they would come to know nothing of the richness of human life, love and knowledge, and slowly whole generations would grow up knowing nothing about anything but violence and personal supremacy.

Is that a fairy-tale? Look around you.

In the news today - part of the M42 is shut after a six-vehicle crash sent marshmallows and beer spilling out onto the carriageway thus replicating a thousand drunken student experiments, on a large scale.

Also - an award-winning piemaker's wife who police said was the most pie-eyed drink-driver they had ever seen downed two bottles of wine after getting frustrated when she couldn't find her way to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. As you do.

According to this story linked by Warren Ellis, men in Singapore have been developing severe brain damage after taking a Viagra-spiked-with-diabetes-meds sex drug called Power 1 Walnut. Apparently, the glibenclamide adulterant causes hypoglycaemia, which is bad.

This is what I love about the real world. This sort of thing happens all the time in early cyberpunk scifi, but there the drug would have a painfully cool street name. Never Power 1 Walnut.

It's all over the place, Nick. All over the place.

Jacqui Smith says people "can't wait" for ID cards! Really? Is there anyone out there who can't wait? Go and tell Alec, he'd like to have a word with you.

An election tweet from this page:

"Officially just played the worst video game ever. You mark people with an 'x' and then wait for almost forever for the country to be reborn into a new and beautiful age and then nothing fucking happens."

Woot! Of course, we all thought that when Blair got in here, but woot anyway! As Warren Ellis has said, "Nice work, America. You got your country back. And just imagine: now, when you travel to Europe, you won't have to tell people you're from Canada."

Let's hope he hasn't inherited such a fucked economy that people hate him in four years no matter what he does.