Charon QC points out the new robes for judges in England, which are currently being compared with Star Trek uniforms.
One minor point on this. There’s a lot of talk of the red bands which form part of the new robes. Weren’t the “redshirts” in Star Trek the anonymous characters who seemed to always get killed..?
Just downloaded the new Death Cab for Cutie album “Narrow Stairs”*, the album from which they have chosen to release a new eight minute single (that is not a typo) “I Will Possess Your Heart”.
And they’ve done it again… sort of. It is a superb album. I know I’m prone to hyping songs, but this album just makes you smile as soon as you listen to it. Despite the lonely lyrics (”Your new twin size bed / with your single pillow / beneath your single head”) the music is generally fairly upbeat.
There seems to be a trend amongst “indie” bands to produce a stunning opening track. The Shins came up with “Caring is Creepy”, “Kissing the Lipless” and “Sleeping Lessons”. Meanwhile, Death Cab have opened their latest three albums with “The New Year”, “Marching Bands of Manhattan” and now “Bixby Canyon Bridge”. All of these are fantastic opening tracks, but “Bixby Canyon Bridge” is just superb, and sets the tone for the whole album.
Speaking of the term “indie”, Death Cab have just switched to their new mainstream label. Fortunately, they haven’t exactly sold out. The release of an eight minute single probably signaled their intentions, and although the album perhaps feels slightly more pop-esque than “Plans”, it works incredibly well.
*7digital, you are music gods. They have the whole album for £5, in high-quality DRM-free MP3 format (no excuse not to get it now), and I could download it at ten minutes past midnight on the day of release.
This case is a bit of a mess. The Times rightly points out that it is an illustration of the chaos over legal aid fees. Getting £175 in a day might seem plenty, but the comments are worth reading - there’s a huge amount of work that goes on outside court.
If something like this has happened already, it makes you wonder how often this is going to happen.
The Sole Arbiter of Good Taste: Get ‘Kermodian’ into the OED
Very good plan. The proposed word has so many uses…
Originally uploaded by miskan
I just have to ask. Which muppet decided to put this here?
Coldplay have released their new single “Violet Hill” for free for a week (as a DRM-free MP3 file too).
I’ve never been an avid Coldplay fan, but I still quite like some of their music in moderation, particularly since Don’t Panic was used to brilliant effect in Garden State.
I’m just listening to it now, and I suspect it will follow the same formula as previous Coldplay songs: really good until it’s played to death on the radio. I have always maintained that the best Coldplay song is Moses, which was only ever played live. As soon as a Coldplay song becomes a single, it gets over-played and becomes boring.
The new single seems to be someting of a break from previous albums - much more bass and generally more plodding, which works reasonably well. The only problem is, I suspect this means it will become tedious very quickly. It’ll be interesting to see how well it’s received.
Facebook adverts have never been great (with the possible exception of the Gene Hunt T-shirt), but this is just terrible.
Update: As usual, there’s an XKCD comic for everything: http://xkcd.com/279/
I would normally use the term “phishing”, but there’s no impersonation involved here.
The website mycoolfriends.info asks you to “Login” with your MSN details so they can inform you about “this 100% real and upcomming [sic] service”. For the love of God, don’t. Funnily enough, reading a bit more will give the full details.
We may temporarily access your MSN account to do a combination of the following:
- Send Instant Messages to your friends promoting this site.
- Introduce new entertaining sites to your friends via Instant Messages.
In other words, we’ll take your username and password, login to your MSN when you’re not signed-in, and then proceed to spam your contacts with ringtone “offers” (quotation marks because they are the usual subscription services that charge stupid amounts for a crumby ringtone you could get by putting an MP3 on your phone).
Whatever you do people, never ever enter your password onto a site that isn’t meant to have it and without reading the full terms and conditions. This is a cruel tactic by a bunch of morons who are hijacking MSN accounts to try and make money. Don’t help them.
It’s like a trojan horse has wheeled into Downing Street, and the hatch is stuck
Rory Bremner on the general consensus that nobody knows the cabinet
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