Happy (palindromic) birthday, man. We love you....   (read more)

So my latest fabulous (weapons-themed) Xmas gift from Alex was a day at a shooting range which will rent you various high-powered fully-automatic firearms to play with. I brought my camera. The rockn', Zombie Apocalypse-themed, heavily annotated, music-video bullet festival results are below....   (read more)

So here's a meme you may have missed. It all started here with Shit Girls Say... and spiralled well out of control from there....   (read more)

The IDF is on the very front-lines of the struggle against terrorism, extremism, and indiscriminate violence. They are also the valiant defenders of history's most comprehensively kicked-around, assailed, and dispossessed folks: the Jewish people. Aside from warming your heart, I hope this 3-minute video will increase your appreciation for what these wonderful young people of Israel struggle with everyday and what they contribute to the world....   (read more)

This four-minute TED talk is totally lovely (plus funny and wise). Everyone likes firefighters....   (read more)

Schneier's newsletter, Crypto-gram, recently-ish had a special on the absurdity of security questions that one sets and is asked on the phone to authenticate one's identity. The resulting piss-takes were classic....   (read more)

Not one to give you a moment's rest from news of the Egyptian Revolution, nor to pass up an opportunity to trumpet the Egyptians' awesomeness, here are a few new awesome things... Here are Egyptian folks self-organising to clean up Tahrir Square (not to mention provide medical care, and feed people). These guys make me proud just to be a human being....   (read more)

I was privileged to be able to turn out on Saturday to stand with the incredibly brave Egyptian people in their struggle for freedom. It was a wonderful, inspiring day....   (read more)

The Photoshop Rap from CollegeHumor.com is nothing short of sublime. It's so good you can actually pick up useful Photoshop tips from it....   (read more)

Here's a little something to get you through the Great Monday of 2011. Michael Macintyre is our - not to mention Britain's - consensus favourite funnyman. He rocks....   (read more)

Awoke Saturday morning to snow chucking it down outside the window... So we did what any self-respecting Brits would do: repaired to our very cosiest local pub and proceeded to get slowly pissed....   (read more)

It's over; it's official. I have identified the coolest thing ever. The floor is closed for nominations. Here it is. Hang on to yourself....   (read more)

I love trailers - all that emotion compressed and distilled down into a roller coaster two-minutes. A great story well and successfully told, out there in the world now, waiting for you to come into its world....   (read more)

Anna and I made what's sort of turning into maybe our quad-annual sortie out of Kensington & Chelsea - this time to check the Christmas lights, the Christmas window displays, and the general Christmas vibe of central London....   (read more)

Pandora's Sisters Kindle edition, Rockn' music from Damone, running like a maniac out in the snow, and fun-making military videos - all in today's entertainment-packed dispatch. (Warning!: music auto-start.)...   (read more)

It's like the Battle of Algiers out there. I counted no fewer than 41 police vans on, or just off of, Parliament Square....   (read more)

No. Natalie Portman is still an Israeli-American Ivy League graduate who speaks four (and a bit) languages (including Hebrew and Japanese)...   (read more)

I happened to catch some bits of the last Prime Minister's Questions. This man is a total knob - a muppet of the first rank. And Mr Cameron gives him a well-deserved, and well-executed, spanking....   (read more)

Sometimes it takes a friend to remind you of who you really are....   (read more)

So, as mentioned, I think we've probably got bigger problems than perverted priests... But damned if I didn't go anyway...   (read more)

So I generally take a pretty live-and-let-live attitude toward religious people and clerics. As regards the Pope's current state visit to Britain, my position is probably that he should be allowed to visit Britain like pretty much anyone else...   (read more)

"The city brings everyone up a notch. Or down ten notches. Or up a hundred notches. It sorts them out....   (read more)

Today marks the 70th anniversary of Churchill's Battle of Britain speech. When all of Europe was engulfed by a horrendous evil, Churchill stood at the head of the British people and swore eternal resistance....   (read more)

You will have read that the inimitable - I might say, as I have said of Orwell, the indispensible - Christopher Hitchens has been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus....   (read more)

Today is the fifth anniversary of the 7/7 attacks. As is now customary, here's a brief list of things I did to commemorate it:...   (read more)

So when we last left our heroes, they were hiding out from the marauding solar death ray beneath the canopy of the 20-mile checkpoint, lapping up Lucozade and choking on trail mix, reaching down deep for the necessary sack to tackle the final 6.2 miles....   (read more)

Right, so at the 17-mile checkpoint, major themes were shade, and foot maintenance. We both topped up with water - going dry out here could be a serious problem...   (read more)

Finally, Tim and I pick ourselves up, gear up, and head out. Me: Well . . . it's not going to suck itself. Tim: I've been waiting for that. Me: I've been letting the tension build....   (read more)

So having topped up water and touched in with the team at the first checkpoint, I've once again taken off at speed to try and catch up the leaders....   (read more)

It's 6AM and I'm woken by my phone alarm - direct from a vivid dream where I'm manning a WWI machine gun emplacement. I don't think that can be a good omen for the day....   (read more)

I'm sitting in the back of a parked Discover Adventures mini-bus. My head is lolling. My back hurts whichever way I array it; but I haven't the energy to keep wriggling around. I'm covered in salt. Plus dust....   (read more)

In case you haven't been keeping up, or if you have, here's a rundown of the video evidence of the Zionist storm troopers' brutal and unprovoked attack on the pro-Palestinian peace activists....   (read more)

We wandered into a warren of barricades and ranks of police officers, some of them visibly equipped for heavy weather. My onboard radar for such things perked up and I declared: "Gotta be the Israeli Embassy....   (read more)

Watching the "international community" rush to pour condemnation upon Israel once again, for having the temerity to defend itself, is deeply depressing....   (read more)

"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you." - David Foster Wallace (1962 - 2008)...   (read more)

I'm very pleased to say, and feel obliged to say (after my spew of vitriol about Brown), a few quick, heart-felt, gushing things about the new PM, Deputy PM - and 'our Liberal Conservative government' (to borrow Cameron's phrase)....   (read more)

So after my various long-distance walks around the UK, undertaken for no better purpose than to amuse myself, I'm now doing my first sponsored walk for charity: the Help for Heroes Hero Walk - Avebury to Stonehenge....   (read more)

So Tag Zwei opened with the traditional free hotel buffet breakfast....   (read more)

And so Alex rang up and said, Dude - I'm going to be in Munich for a few days if you want to cruise over, and I thought, Hey - Random jaunts to the Continent are precisely what Americans living on this side of the Atlantic are supposed to do...   (read more)

So those of you who have already seen Iron Man 2 will not need me to explain which sequence of Scarlett Johansson's I'm talking about here....   (read more)

Yesterday our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, out on the campaign trail, had a very pleasant, smiling chat with a local woman, then jumped in his limo with his wireless mic still attached, and proceeded to completely slag her off....   (read more)

Following our theme of reasons for optimism, here's the estimable Robert Wright with 19 outstanding minutes on "non-zero-sumness" - a concept that may explain all of our human accomplishments to date; and which gives us very good reasons to hope that things will continue to get better....   (read more)

Well, you finally get around to booking a big holiday - and on the exact same day here comes the worst disruption of commercial air travel since WWII....   (read more)

I was just outside - and I did not see speck one of volcanic ash. Nonetheless, UK airspace is closed....   (read more)

Okay, sorry, but I'm pretty convinced this version of the 300 trailer remains just about one of the most completely kick-ass trailers of all time....   (read more)

So what better cutesty animal video to kick off Good Friday with than Christian the Lion! (No, he didn't get the name from eating Christians.)...   (read more)

With a hat tip to Andrew Sullivan, here are Christopher Hitchens's Ten Commandments Reimagined....   (read more)

So I recently had occasion to re-read Steve Pinker's How the Mind Works. It is, I genuinely believe, the most important book of the 20th century....   (read more)

So this is what is widely known on the Interwebs as The Amazing Predator Rap. Maybe you've already seen it, or perhaps not, but in any case for once the hype is fully justified....   (read more)

"Bliss - a second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom." - David Foster Wallace...   (read more)

This, right here, just a few minutes ago, was - not only the only household in the world - but almost certainly the only household in history in which Democracy in America (unabridged) was being read aloud while Sir Mix-A-Lot played in the background....   (read more)

...   (read more)

Regular readers won't soon have forgotten my fawning tribute to military memoirs - and, not at all incidentally, to the service members whose stunning stories inspired the stories....   (read more)

George will know, though Noel probably doesn't, that I probably played more Rolling Thunder than God. And I was good. I seem to recall that I got to the point where I could get through all ten screens on a single quarter. However - I never beat the motherfraker....   (read more)

"I understand why war is not popular, but I also know this: The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Evil does exist in the world." - Barack Obama...   (read more)

So today I ran with the sun on my face. This was my first run in, oh, probably three months. Which is the longest I've gone without running in, oh, probably about 15 years. ...   (read more)

The Howling Fantods - your source for all things David Foster Wallace - reports that Wallace's final novel, The Pale King, may be delayed until autumn 2010....   (read more)

"You will never know how complete you have made me. You saved me from loneliness and taught me how to think beyond myself. You taught me how to live and to love. You opened my eyes to a world I never dreamed existed." - Army Pfc. Jesse A. Givens, in his last letter home...   (read more)

"Dogs are important." - Joe Laltrello...   (read more)

The world - or, rather, the U.N. and the "international community" - are now so far through the looking glass that the leader of the Jewish State had last month to stand up in front of the U.N. and wave the Nazi minutes planning the extermination of the Jews, and the plans for the Auschwitz-Berkenau camp, to demonstrate that one third of the Jewish race was actually exterminated. ...   (read more)

"This is really interesting, Brad. You know, Iraqis don't really seem good at fighting, but then they never really completely surrender either." ...   (read more)

A few days from now, Fourth of July celebrations will be held in small towns and big cities all across America. At the same time, halfway around the world, 170,000 brave young men and women will demonstrate their patriotism in another way: by putting their lives at risk to defend everything America stands for....   (read more)

Another year in London, another fracking Tube strike....   (read more)

I've read kind of an enormous volume of military memoirs. Ditto military history and nonfiction and tech. Many of these books are nothing short of stunning....   (read more)

If you're just dragging yourself back from the May bank holiday - or if, perhaps, you're celebrating Cinco de Mayo - you may need these....   (read more)

Daniel Hannan, whom I've extolled previously, has a tongue like a serpent's tooth, an indominitable protectiveness over liberty - and a seriously mean streak towards Gordon Brown....   (read more)

Here are two extremely energizing political commentators upon whom I've stumbled in my various trawlings of the rightward edges of the InterWebs. Both are young, both are hip, both are right-wing nutjobs, both have beef, and - perhaps most importantly - both are funny as all heck. Seriously....   (read more)

Add in the F&^%ing Royal Mail to the equation - as the only way to get your irreplaceable documents to, or back from, the F&^%ing Home Office....   (read more)

Anyone who knows anything about the European Parliament - and you're really better off not - will know that one of the few non-horrifying things about it is that British guys who are totally opposed to the European project can get elected as Ministers to the European Parliament (MEPs) and then turn up and rubbish the place anytime they are allowed to speak....   (read more)

"The world has agreed to shuffle papers between 9:00AM and 5:00PM, and since you're trapped in the office for that period of servitude, you are compelled to create activities to fill that time....   (read more)

"Britain comes to standstill after 1ft of snow" - The Daily Telegraph...   (read more)

And so you're probably back at work now and probably really have some time to kill. And if you're like me you've probably got a bit of the New Years post-holiday blues and could use a cheer-me-up. And so here are some videos to watch....   (read more)

Statistics often fail to impact. So here's some multimedia - video, audio, and a few images (even a PDF) - which underscore the risks you impose on yourself, other drivers, and loved ones, by talking on the phone while driving....   (read more)

The fact that McCain lost me has now freed me to vote my conscience: to vote Libertarian - the Party of Principle....   (read more)

Well, my notes from the last day of the walk are pretty damned scanty. Suffice it to say we got up at a leisurely hour, showered - at the beginning of the day! - packed our bags one final time, and moseyed on down that last stretch of road....   (read more)

So when we last left our heroes, I was banged up with a bum leg, nursing pints in the Glen Nevis Inn, counting curios; Tim had hiked off alone to Ft. William, just by way of something to do; and we were both locked in a death struggle with boredom and unaccustomed idleness - and wondering if the jewel in the crown of our hundred-mile Highland hike, Ben Nevis, was going to be forever out of reach....   (read more)

Well, it was the last walking day, and all we had to do was climb out of this strangely industrial Shangri-La. That of course meant Up....   (read more)

Awoke from a series of long, vivid, detailed dreams (probably something to do with being in a real bed!); and Tim and I went down to the dining room (a dining room!) for a leisurely continental breakfast (breakfast!)....   (read more)

We enjoyed a lovely breakfast in the well-appointed, if slim, West Highland Way Sleeper dining room. The morning train went by outside....   (read more)

Well, the Large Hadron Collider had gone online. And we were still there. That was a nice start to the day - not having been sucked into a small black hole, nor woken up to find that stranglets had devoured the entire planet, leaving only an inert hyperdense sphere 100 meters across....   (read more)

We bid farewell to the Crap YHA, and its lovely lochside backyard, on what was already starting to look like a nice day... I realised something today that was already probably obvious to anyone with a head: photography is all about light....   (read more)

At 3295 feet, glowering over the eastern shore of Loch Lomond, Ben Lomond is Scotland's southern-most Munro. Today was the day we would pause our northerly march to climb it. ...   (read more)

During our breakfast at the big table in the big kitchen of the bunkhouse-y B&B, we were joined by a man leading a tour... So then it pretty much a matter of getting ourselves down off of Conic Hill, and onto the shores of Loch Lomond - the bonny banks of which we'd be walking along for the next two days....   (read more)

Morning, breakfast in an amazing upstairs room with, reassuringly (to, you know, me) several guns on the wall. Rather less reassuringly, there was this countour map of the West Highlands, which our hosts thought they were being helpful in pointing out to us....   (read more)

Morning, breakfast in an amazing upstairs room with, reassuringly (to, you know, me) several guns on the wall. Rather less reassuringly, there was this countour map of the West Highlands, which our hosts thought they were being helpful in pointing out to us....   (read more)

Morning, breakfast in an amazing upstairs room with, reassuringly (to, you know, me) several guns on the wall. Rather less reassuringly, there was this countour map of the West Highlands, which our hosts thought they were being helpful in pointing out to us....   (read more)

Morning, tea in our room, and Tim happily moblogging from his bed. Me: This feels like redemption. I can't tell you how much time on how many trips I've kept people hanging about while I typed, or edited images, or battled net-cafes....   (read more)

So once again I wasn't doing all that much and also good old Master Tim Corrigan was once again both free and keen - so off we went for a third long-distance walk along one of Britain's National Trails....   (read more)

Everyone likes Joe Lieberman. Well, some people, like Erin, are disappointed in Joe Lieberman. But everyone likes (and respects) him. He's like your favourite, goofy, Jewish uncle. Uncle Joe....   (read more)

I've been sort of making a conscious decision not to weigh in too much, or at all really, on the U.S. presidential election. This for a few reasons:...   (read more)

I got such a good reaction to the GI Joe PSAs - well, if you can consider comments in the form of "about to get fired due to laughing my ass off at work" to be good - that I'm providing two addenda....   (read more)

...   (read more)

I'm finally going to fulfill my pledge of publishing nothing but Non-Stop Fun! for five days, perhaps in a row....   (read more)

It will not have passed the notice of regular readers that I have taken up boxing. I've mentioned that the weekday sessions are fairly light-hearted (if not painless); but that the Saturday sparring sessions can be pretty brutal. Here are some results from my latest sparring session....   (read more)

I grew up listening to George Carlin's Class Clown album in secret. (I seem to recall my aunt buying it, not having a good sense of what she was getting into, and then needing to get it out of my grandmother's house - and into my mother's, and mine.)...   (read more)

...   (read more)

I really love the sound of the London rain. On a Sunday morning, warm in bed, after just coming back from a trip, it's pretty much the greatest....   (read more)

So, Danielle, in her inimitable way, suggested "you should take off your sunglasses for at least one damn photo." I've scoured the entire set - and this is it. A tiny, silly photo taken in a mirror at the back of a restaurant. That's the one photo of me from the entire trip not wearing sunglasses. Oops....   (read more)

Morning took us by the street Anna always stayed on as a girl. And then, naturellement, for coffee, on the Boulevard Saint Germain....   (read more)

"Bon voyage, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys." - Homer Simpson ... I'm going to hell for opening with that quotation. The French, even (in particular) the Parisians, have hardly ever been anything but nice to me. But, hey - who can resist?...   (read more)

Today, May 14th, is Israeli Independence Day. On this day, 60 years ago, the founders of Israel proclaimed a national homeland for Jews, a sanctuary from the slaughter in Europe, and an end to two millennia of wandering. So happy birthday, Israel - and here's to you...   (read more)

Saturday picnic in Kensington Gardens, beer and olives and blackberries, sun and breeze, perfect day, video goofiness....   (read more)

I know I've been a little hot and heavy with the political, and also the pro-military, stuff. I've had one or two unsubscriptions from dispatch lately, presumably as a result. I confess these give me pause (and, okay, sting a little, too) - though of course A) I have no expectation that people will always read my stuff, and B) if I weren't annoying anyone, I probably wouldn't be saying anything very interesting...   (read more)

Forty-two year old Pat Dollard is hurtling through the air in the exploding Iraqi night. An IED has just blown up at the back bumper of a Humvee he's riding in - killing the Marine sitting next to him, and sending him shooting 30 feet out of the vehicle, with a broken leg and shrapnel wounds....   (read more)

I actually have no idea how much coverage in the U.S. has been given to Dutch politician Geert Wilders - and his new short film, Fitna ("Strife" in Arabic). Wilders is a self-proclaimed defender of free speech and harsh critic of Islam, who has sought to restrict immigration into the Netherlands from non-Western countries. ...   (read more)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the Somali-born feminist, writer, and politician who has been living under 24-hour guard since a promise to kill her was found pinned to the body of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gough...   (read more)

So if you haven't been following along, Prince Harry - third in line to the throne - joined the Army....   (read more)

My hipster Ben Sherman shirt and extravagantly ripped Versace jeans are soaked through - and by "soaked through" I mean soaked through - with fragrant sweat. The outsides of my little toes are raw and, conceivably, bleeding. I don't know. I'm shaking too much to get my boots off....   (read more)

Lying in my tent in the Lizard, near to the pigs, I dreamt long, vivid, grand, yet frustrating dreams. Really long and involved. I wonder how time compression works in dreams. Are we like Data, reviewing video at impossible speeds?...   (read more)

Morning now, and I am standing on the stairs to the slide of the camp site playground, soaking up the first sunlight. I am not sitting here, nor anywhere, due to the dew, which is just a monster. The surface of the world couldn't be any more drenched if a thunderstorm had stopped five seconds ago....   (read more)

In nomadic camp life, you really do just get into the rhythm of waking at dawn. Badger! badger! badger! What I took to be a badger ran by, along the opposite edge of the field, with a crust of something in her jaws....   (read more)

Upon checkout, the nice innkeeper man, Terry (*) , gave me a replacement pen, gratis. Hard to argue with that. The least I can offer in return is some free, and much-deserved, publicity: http://porthcurnohotel.co.uk/....   (read more)

Awoke rather dreamy and refreshed - especially after an extra, post-rollover hour of sleep. The new sun and fresh breeze were both blasting in the window - ah, another glorious day, imagine that. Perhaps I am God. How would you know for sure, really?...   (read more)

I was up early again (camping!), right on time for a truly fab cooked breakfast - and cooked by a really lovely old whiskered gentleman. I felt like calling him "Cookie" and asking if I could carry the tin mugs over from the wagon for him...   (read more)

Yes, of course, I know, it's always the Michael Show here. However, it is about to become All Michael, All the Time / Too Much Michael Is Never Enough / I Want My M(ichael)TV Channel. Walking alone, the dispatches inevitably become more or less the Story of Me....   (read more)

Another absolutely enormous breakfast - a pleasingly recurring theme - and then we walked out into a cool, slightly overcast, and windy day. Lovely walking weather....   (read more)

Morning breaks on the overpriced Perranporth hotel grey and misty with a moving sky. Tim and I score breakfast in the dining room (unlimited muesli! muahahaha!), then spend a few minutes chatting with "sweet old Doreen". She'd seen a lot of coast walkers come through....   (read more)

Morning in Newquay, early and misty and still, and I was up and out for a pre-departure run by Somerfields for provisions - and also the Kodak shop to burn CDs, and reclaim all of my camera memory. This was the self-same Kodak shop, actually, manned by the encephalitic clowns who lost all my Day 2 pictures. Heigh ho....   (read more)

Right, okay, so what was that bit about, ah, let me go back and quote myself, that stuff about 'relaxed attitude', and 'short days' and 'lie on beaches' and 'stroll on clifftops'? Bwahahaha!...   (read more)

And so Alex had to be in Paris for a week, and happily managed to carve out another week on the backside for us to kick around somewhere. I talked him into Belgium....   (read more)

realised in a flash that I could conceivably take the narcissism, self-absorption, and exhibitionism that are so startlingly inherent in vanity web sites in general, and blogs in particular, to great new uncharted depths . . . a brave new nadir of self-promotion and life minutiae documentation. I realised I could photo- (and/or video-)document virtually every moment of an average day of my life....   (read more)

...   (read more)