The Civil Service - a definition

The civil service, the cockroaches of government.

One civil sevice lifer to another civil sevice lifer in Torchwood S03E01

The Indignity of Performing in "Bear Face"

Don't Let This Happen to Your Brain

Would You Like To Buy A Monkey - Explanation of a Joke

Today I confused some people with the reference to a 15 year old comedy bit. I saw a sock monkey and repeated the immortal, if misremembered phrase, "do you wanna buy a monkey?" Here below is the clip of David Letterman in the Chris Elliot movie Cabin Boy. Below is a clip supposedly of other people auditioning for the same cameo part.

China - Canada Uranium Deal

China seeking supply deal with Cameco


And Japan was buying scrap metal from the US until they attacked Pearl Harbor.

Band of Brothers (Pacific)

In the wikipedia entry for With The Old Breed there is a reference that the same crew/production team that created the miniseries Band Of Brothers has been filming a new series, The Pacific, partially based on this book. I haven't finished reading it, With the Old Breed, beyond knowing the author survived WWII, thank you Atom Bomb, I don't how it turns out.

Free DNA

Today at Mininova one of the featured torrents is human DNA, Homo.sapiens.DNA.NCBI36.53.Fasta.Gzip-Ensembl-OpenSci. Download and be the first on your block with human DNA. It is quite amusing that what is now available for free right now a generation ago or so was out of reach of evil geniuses, James Bond villians and the KGB. It was only possible for ET, Dr Who and the Federation to mess around with genetics.

Those Devilish Canadian Sheet Music Pirates

slashdot has a story, originally from BestActEver, originally from a New York Times report from 1897, about Canadian sheet music pirates. The current concern that Americans have about IP is ironic since for much of the 19th it was place that observed no foreign, no non-American, copyright. The slashdot commentators outdo themselves in making comments as if this was contemporary news report.

mangu points out the damage that Canadian pirates have already done to the music industry.

• The more things change, the more they stay the same. Did these "evil pirates" kill the music industry, as was proclaimed they would?

They sure did! In the 1890s there was a great market for piano rolls [wikipedia.org]. Where can you buy piano rolls today? Conclusion: pirates killed the music industry.

sakdoctor complains about the marketing tactics of printer makers.

I hate the way they sell those Gutenberg presses as a loss leader, then gouge you on printing plates and ink refills.

Finally HungryHobo gets to problem that improved communication technologies pose to existing media companies.

I think these PaperSharing M2M(Mailbox2Mailbox) systems which allow just anyone to swap files, folders and even whole books should be banned immediately before they destroy all that is good and pure with our country!

Mediocre But Arrogant - The MBA

ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has a new documentary about the uselessness of the MBA, MBA: Mostly Bloody Awful.