Hey, it’s the goddam crazy little girl who let the love out of Coney Island!

From a few years back, graphic demonstration that things don’t always run entirely smoothly in the magnificently well-appointed SOS rehearsal room. In hindsight Mr. Wilson’s question, which tellingly went unanswered, was a good one: “Are we going from the top?.. Or the toptop?..”

One motif, lightly killed..

Inspirational quote of the day

“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man to create an artificial shortage of fish and he will eat steak.”

Jay Leno.

Illegitimi non carborundum

 I’m indebted to Louise for furnishing me with the following snippet from the letters page in yesterday’s Times..

Trying times

Sir,
As one of a rare breed, a teacher of Latin in a state comprehensive, I feel that the rendition of Kirkcaldy High School’s motto ‘Usque conabor’ as ‘always strive hard’ takes unnecessary liberties (report, May 19).
The motto is an affirmation rather than an order; a translation more faithful to the Latin, and perhaps to Gordon Brown too, is ‘I will try to the end.’

Andy Connell,
Appleby,
Cumbria

… As anyone who’s familiar with me can attest, this is clearly not the work of my hand. I never strive hard, and absolutely do not ‘try to the end’. I may have occasionally stumbled to the beginning, only to wander off and have a good sit down …

- — -.. .- -.– .—-. … / .-. . .- … — -. / – — / -.. .-. .. -. -.-

Sorry, haven’t been keeping up with things recently..

What the papers say

Ah, ‘Yes Prime Minister’ how we miss you. Paul Eddington, Nigel Hawthorne and Derek Fowlds – another holy trinity..

Happy Burt Day once again..

.. and I’m hugely reassured by the fact that a chair is, even now, still a chair..

(Actually, when it comes to musical birthdays, this weekend takes some beating – Burt today, Gil Evans tomorrow, and Stevie Wonder on Monday.)

Quote of the day

“The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.”
- Fyodor Dostoevsky

.. true, dat..

Just about had enough of this shit

Iraq: Kurdish girl stoned to death, mob films it on cameraphones: “Xeni Jardin:
Cellphone videos that depict a teenage girl being stoned to death by a crowd surfaced online last week. Statements on the Kurdish website jebar.info claim the incident took place in Mosul, Iraq, and that the girl was Du’a Khalil Aswad, a 17-year old Kurd who was being killed for having had a relationship with a Sunni Muslim boy in a nearby town. These same online accounts indicate that some of the same members of the crowd who were stoning her to death were simultaneously documenting the act on their mobile phones:

In a short mobile video clip which appears to have been taken by locals at seen of the murder, the girl is seen being ambushed on her way home by a group of up to 1000 men who were waiting for her to return; the men killed her in the most brutal way possible, by throwing large stones on her head. The following clips show that while she is alive and crying for help she is taunted and kicked in her stomach until someone finishes her off by throwing a large stone on her face.

From the clips it appears that the girl was first stripped naked to symbolize that she had dishonored her family and her Yezidi religion. She is lying on the road naked while her smashed face is covered with blood and still breathing.

.3gp video files (warning: contains extremely graphic violence) and account at kurdishaspect.com. I see related reports at Daily Mail and Foxnews.com, but there’s nothing online at sources I’d consider more reputable — so I don’t know how reliable the reported details of this incident are.

According to the online reports that do exist, these phonecam videos were uploaded to YouTube also. But a quick search on YouTube now shows: ‘This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.’

Related: 30 Iraqis died in a car bomb attack in Iraq today, and more than 600 civilians are reported to have died in the week prior.

UPDATE: BoingBoing reader Derek says,

AP mentions a similar story of the incident, so what happened seems to be established. As a bit of an update, the article is mainly about how a gunman executed a bus full of Yazidis in response to the stoning of the girl. Vicious circle.

At least 23 have been killed in retaliatory violence: Link to Amnesty International statement. Peaceful protest rallies against the violence took place in Erbil: Link to blog account.

“

(Via Boing Boing.)

And if one green bottle..

Beer bottle cellular automata movie: “Mark Frauenfelder:

Emma says:

Artist Lozano Hemmer presented ‘Synaptic Caguamas’ a large motorized Mexican ‘cantina’ table with 30 ‘Caguama’-sized beer bottles (1-litre each). The bottles spin on the table with patterns generated by cellular automata algorithms that simulate the neuronal connections in the brain.

Every few minutes the bottles are reset and seeded with new initial conditions for the algorithm so that the movement patterns are never repeated.

Link

(Via Boing Boing.)