Tom does another Google hates me, although I think he’s just done it to show off to the world he’s listening to Franz Ferdinand (and on MS Media Player, tsk tsk).

Not that I’d ever do anything like that, of course…

Random link (which doesn’t quite deserve a full entry to itself): Headvertise™ - spoof or no? I can’t be bothered to find out.

Had a long bastard day today. Had to get up early, well, 7ish, which is early for me (as I am a lazy shite), then go to Nottingham for a day’s work at a school there. The work was OK (once I put aside my loathing of children, a trait not generally considered good for someone working in the education sector) and the teachers very friendly to us, but we had to make a long journey, and I managed to lose my phone in the cab from the station. Luckily the very nice people at the cab firm (Bells Taxis of Hucknall, Nottingham, highly recommended) kept hold of it and I managed to get it back on the way home, but it was still a major stress, especially as it was brand new. I’ve had to block and then unblock the phone, and Orange keep on sending me dozens of SIM updates via SMS which is annoying and possibly not right.

The train journey home was hellish, missing the 1740 train home by a couple of minutes and the one an hour later got delayed further and further, we ended up detouring to Leicester to get a train from there, and didn’t get back to Cambridge until half nine.

Now chilling, having enjoyed the new Black Books (missed the first one last week), warding off the stress demons with a Staropramen, and listening to a Warp remix CD that Andy lent me - first track’s the catchy tune to those VW Polo ads, which is nice.

Damn. You wait ages for a cleverly worked piece of home-made video of someone duplicating himself, and then two come along at once.

Mildly amusing diversion by the Guardian, though they’re outshone as usual by b3ta.

The ultimate in New Labour’s middle-of-the-road focus-group oriented politics - Your Party. It’s a political party with no initial policies or manifesto and directed entirely with the will of its members, seeking to “try a non-adversarial approach to politics”.

But surely politics is, at heart, adversarial. To set up a party with no founding principles at all renders it completely ineffective, it has no base position from which to make its decisions on any issue. Parties are (well, usually are, despite Blair’s best efforts) collections of like-minded individuals. By allowing anyone to join and hoping for some sort of consensus across the board, will result in a lack of internal agreement and produce neutered, timid policies. Either that or it will get taken over by extremists. It could well just turn people off the political process even further.

The site’s FAQ says that it will answer questions like whether it’s possible for the Internet to promote greater engagement in the political process, but that’s a very big, multi-faceted issue and this venture is not the only way of using the Internet for political participation - there are plenty of other ways out there, either involving the electoral process directly like these guys or providing alternative means - Fax Your MP, the Howard Dean campaign, the BBC’s iCan are all good examples.

But despite my opinion that this will be ineffective, at least it is a response to declining political participation, something the mainstream parties have been slow to pick up on. One of the most common reasons cited for apathy is “all the parties are the same, all they do is talk”, so new political movements (not necessarily parties) that break this mindset are part of the solution (like the Stop the War coalition and the Countryside Alliance) but they still have to based around the specific interests of the people they represent, not just try and mash them all together, otherwise we would just end up with the “same old” politics again.

Another major advance in scientific knowledge - scientists have proved that Guinness bubbles sink rather than go up. Just in time for St Patrick’s Day - like millions around the world I’ve not got a drop of Irish blood in me but what the hell, I’ll still sink a few tonight.

Genius. You can now get an appropriately coloured dancing banana that automatically illustrates the US Department of Homeland Security’s Current Threat Level.

(via Ben Hammersley)

Ever wondered who keeps the spammers in business? Well, it might be this guy - who “spends hundreds of dollars a week buying via spam”.

Is this guy for real? The goods he says he buys via spam include aromatherapy oils, an air conditioner, a metal detector - none of the spam I get is anything like that - it’s all either 419 scams, Viagra and porn (one recent Inbox highlight was the enticing subject line: “h.o.t. g1rls aged :: 188″)

On closer inspection this looks more like a spammer pushing his own industry, he admits he was a spammer himself and (found via this /. thread) he owns a dodgy software selling site with such amazingly innovative programs such as “Instant Unzip” and “Password Generator” as well as the more blatantly misleading ones such as “HTML Encrypter” and “IP Blocker” (”Protect yourself against IP Ads!” - what?). My favourite one is the “Amazing Popup Blocker”, which is followed in the list by a “Secret Popup Maker”. Anyway, for $25 this guy seems to be selling nothing, except what is out there already on the net for free (and it would be interesting to see whether the software is his firm’s original work…)