An eclectic collection of trivia, observation, cynicism, wit....
and the occasional rant.
Enjoy!

I'm Mark. Older than you imagine, pescetarian, husband, father, professional parent & pedant.

I post some original stuff and a bunch of other things that I like. If you own the rights to something you see here and you're not happy about me sharing it, let me know.

Chocolate may help keep you slim

Probably the best news ever. Better stock up before the Government taxes it and tells everyone not to panic buy….

Get me a croc and make it snappy!

Burglars stole a five foot crocodile during a pet shop raid in Stockport, Cheshire, UK on Monday night. Staff describe the fully grown Cuviers Dwarf Caiman as “aggressive” and said it was one of around 100 animals stolen during the raid. Among the haul were forty lizards and fifty snakes, including a seven foot Yellow Anaconda. The most distressing losses were two exotic birds that the store was looking after for some customers.

The police are investigating. Things don’t look promising. A spokesman for the Greater Manchester Police said nothing else had been stolen. As if the shopping list isn’t long enough already. The Detective Sergeant leading the case said the thieves “must have used implements to force their way in”. No kidding, Sherlock!

Maybe they should keep an eye open for chicken thefts and sudden spikes in heating bills.

Harsh penalty. A car crushed by a chimney collapse in South Street, Bo’ness, Scotland.  I bet the driver will think twice about parking on double yellow lines in future… Photo: Robert Jardine, via BBC Scotland

Harsh penalty.

A car crushed by a chimney collapse in South Street, Bo’ness, Scotland. 

I bet the driver will think twice about parking on double yellow lines in future…

Photo: Robert Jardine, via BBC Scotland

psydoctor8:

jtotheizzoe:

Smartphone brain scanner.

Did you hear that?  A FREAKING SMARTPHONE BRAIN SCANNER.

Wow.

(by jakobeglarsen)

SOCIAL BRAIN!

I find this slightly terrifying, but given the nature of children we look after, it could be a boon.

"With the complicit support of the government, the banks looted the nation’s wealth while destroying countless small businesses and brought the whole economy to its knees in a covert, clean manner, rather like organized crime. Our reaction was to bail them out. These kids would have to riot and steal every night for a year to run up a bill equivilent to the value of non-paid tax big business has ‘avoided’ out of the economy this year alone. They may not articulate their grievences like the politicians that condemn them but this is absolutely political. […] It’s mad, sad, and scary when we have to take to the streets to defend our homes and businesses from angry theiving kids, but where are the police and what justice is ever done when the mob is dressed in pin stripes?"
Massive Attack on the London riots (via maxistentialist)

Why the Hacking Scandal Has Outraged Britons

nostrich:

One anomalous feature of British journalism is its long history of scurrilous, muckraking weekly scandal-sheets, the tabloids or “gutter press,” which since the Victorian era have delighted blue-collar readers with stories of murders and sexual misconduct.

Mr. Murdoch’s achievement was to take the tabloid press from the gutter into the sewer, widening its range from coverage of celebrity scandals to the performance of criminal acts. Some of the latter, such as hacking into the phones of crime victims and their families, were appalling.

There is no redeeming feature in the scandal that has engulfed Mr. Murdoch’s British fief, News International, other than that it has now killed his biggest-selling newspaper, The News of the World. This tabloid made its money by regularly crossing the line of decency; the revelation that it also regularly crossed the line of legality surprises no one, for no one expected any better. What has horrified the British public is the nature of the illegalities. Murdoch journalists not only hacked into the phones of child murder victims and their parents, but of the families of victims of terrorist attacks and of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A.C. Grayling piling on in a New York Times op-ed.

This was one of the primary reasons I stopped buying the Sunday Times several years ago. The Sun hardly qualifies as a newspaper and has never featured in my buying list. The News of the World fell into the same ‘joke’ category. Only now it’s clear that it was anything but a joke. Personally, I’ll stick with the Telegraph, which venerable title also blew the whistle on the MP’s expenses scandal, despite its political orientation. IMHO the staff there stand as proof that there remains at least some decency in the press.

(Source: nostrich)