On November 11, Paul Chambers, an accountant from UK, lost an appeal against a conviction and £1000 fine for a flippant comment made on Twitter that the judge thought was a “menace” and a realistic threat.
Taking up against what is definitely a dangerous legal precedent in the exercising of the freedom of speech and expression – heck, even humour or ill-tempered grumbling – online, thousands of Internet users, responded to the “#twitterjoketrial” with, what else, but more flippancy and wit.
A tweet (pictured above) by @christt, one of the many who thought the official decision was more than a little ridiculous, started a tongue-in-cheek movement that was a comment against the state of affairs. Then,
Under the hashtag #IAmSpartacus – a reference to the film in which Spartacus's fellow gladiators show their solidarity with him by each proclaiming "I am Spartacus" – thousands of people have copied Chambers's original message. (The Guardian)
via Mashable
Everyone who was using the hashtag was courting censure by the authorities, but in their shared indignation, the Internet community was also actively fashioning witty social commentary.
#IAmSpartacus became the latest story of satire on the Internet.
(There's more coming, when I get around to writing it, which will be later tonight!)
Oh I give up on Day 7, which must be day 17 by now.
Day 8 however, brings back memories of a diary I kept for song lyrics. (No need to go looking, I burnt it once I stopped getting high on scented markers.)
There were four songs in there, which remain the songs I know all the words to. The ignominy of naming said songs would be too much, and hence, I decline to do so except under duress.
What is, however, in both our interests, is this alternate for Day 8. A song I'd LIKE to know all the words to.
Chart music, unfortunately, is not one to experiment with lyrics. Conventional ideas and subjects - love, loss, sex, hot girls, partying, giving-peace-a-chance - and worse, conventional treatments and metaphors are only expected.
Then occasionally, you have a Tom Lehrer or Jonathan Coulton turn up to talk about real stuff:
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics - PLAGIARIZE / Let no one else's work evade your eyes/ Remember why the good Lord made your eyes - Lobachevsky
Hey Tom, it's Bob from the office down the hall...Things have been okay for me, except that I'm a zombie now...I don't want to nitpick Tom, but is this really your plan/ Spend your whole life locked in a mall - re: your brains
Yes, those are real songs, and brilliantly smart ones at that.
Because a great song is entertaining - and that's not something you can do simply with "virtuosic playing" or "being loud".
It was crazy for a few days. I was humming this song, D was humming this song, this dude Jude was playing in the city, D was sitting in a concert a couple of seats away from music-boy Jude, the radio was playing Hey Jude way too often, Media Player pulled out Jude on shuffle at the precise moment D popped up online, at least twice, it was FREAKY, it was official - Paul Was Dead and he was haunting us, well not 'us' but D, because she was born on the VERY SAME DAY as the song released, but about a couple of decades later.
Spooky.
Love ya D.
Also, I am not fully sure where that fabulous flowchart is from, but it seems to go back to that link there.
More from the how-do-you-write-this-with-a-straight-face department.
This from the science correspondent of the BBC. Brilliantly done. I'm sceptical here, but I commend these researchers for brightening up my dull day. This is how the story starts:
If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.
If. Well no harm in being prepared, I reckon.
That is the conclusion of a mathematical exercise carried out by researchers in Canada.
So whose childhood dream to be a comic book artist was crushed by highest levels of education?
They say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures.
I'm sure the President of the United States of America as portrayed by a Martin Sheen look-alike in Day of the Zombies (The Undead Walk the Heart of Manhatten. Coming soon) would be happy to have that on a memo on his desk. Did one of those researchers take a moment to stop to hear themselves?
The scientific paper is published in a book - Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress.
In books, films, video games and folklore, zombies are undead creatures, able to turn the living into other zombies with a bite.
But there is a serious side to the work.
Oh is there? Who'd have thunk it. Glad to see Science doing its bit to save the world.
In some respects, a zombie "plague" resembles a lethal rapidly-spreading infection.
I'm sure there's a strip somewhere in PhD comics about trying too hard to make research seem relevant.
In their study, the researchers from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University (also in Ottawa) posed a question: If there was to be a battle between zombies and the living, who would win?
Good question. Let's ask Buffy.
Oh and here's the best part:
Professor Robert Smith? (the question mark is part of his surname and not a typographical mistake) and colleagues wrote: "We model a zombie attack using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies.
"The question mark is part of his surname and not a typographical mistake." Brilliant!! I knew this needed a man with imagination! Like Russell Peter's !xobile with a click in his name!! And his explanation:
On his university web page, the mathematics professor at Ottawa University says the question mark distinguishes him from Robert Smith, lead singer of rock band The Cure.
And just when you were being amused by all this comes the inevitable prophesies (this time backed by Science) of doom and gloom.
To give the living a fighting chance, the researchers chose "classic" slow-moving zombies as our opponents rather than the nimble, intelligent creatures portrayed in some recent films.
Even so, their analysis revealed that a strategy of capturing or curing the zombies would only put off the inevitable.
A fighting chance. That's the best thing about humanity, isn't it? Aliens, vampires, Godzilla, killer tomatoes - they may rip out the heart and guts of the hero's left-hand-man and leave his right-hand-man crippled (but with his sense of humour intact), but we'll always squish them.
In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity's only hope is to "hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often".
They added: "It's imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else... we are all in a great deal of trouble."
According to the researchers, the key difference between the zombies and the spread of real infections is that "zombies can come back to life"
Which genius did it take to figure that one out.
But they say that their work has parallels with, for example, the spread of ideas.
Ideas come back to life as well??
The study has been welcomed by one of the world's leading disease specialists, Professor Neil Ferguson, who is one of the UK government's chief advisors on controlling the spread of swine flu.
Is someone calling the zombies pigs? Way to make them annoyed.
"The paper considers something that many of us have worried about - particularly in our younger days - of what would be a feasible way of tackling an outbreak of a rapidly spreading zombie infection," said Professor Ferguson, from Imperial College London.
I'm not afraid. Buffy will save me. And on her day off I call the Ghostbusters.
However he thinks that some of the assumptions made in the paper might be unduly alarmist.
"My understanding of zombie biology is that if you manage to decapitate a zombie then it's dead forever. So perhaps they are being a little over-pessimistic when they conclude that zombies might take over a city in three or four days," he said.
Today I should feel safe in the knowledge that there are smart men who Understand zombie behaviour. I'll demand to have a 'Break this in case of zombie attack' installed in my building.
Till then, I aim to Know My Enemy, and Be Prepared.
The sports journalist has the best job in the world after the Swiss chocolate taster.
QPR were playing Sheffield United in London and my first assignment as fancy-shmacy sports hack was to cover this. (Read my report here.) Work at a football match was definitely in itself the benefit of a lifetime of accumulated good karma. But it only got better.
I was at a Championship game having paid 22 quid less than the cheapest ticket, with the added invitation to "enjoy the Cipriani's catering." (I did. Whoever Cipriani is.) My vantage viewing point was as good as it could get in the stadium, letting me keep an eye on the TV screen showing matches I was missing while I was at Work as well.
I was offered a press sweatshirt to keep me warm and allow me to turn my full concentration to the game. The bright blue thing was arguably fashioned for a strapping ex rugby player turned sports columnist, but it was cosy nonetheless.
Us sports types don't hang around with the common folks. We with our ubiquitous press passes and memorised stats reels collect in the press rooms to write match reports of a game where the most interesting thing to happen was that I went to watch.
Of course there were challenges. Like concentrating on hastily improvised shorthand while a rather easy-on-the-eye Portugese coach was talking at the post match press meet. And understanding that it might not be highly professional to ask the players to sign my press pack, however star struck I may be.
I could get used to such pampering. Of course, I'll be working for my supper.
Like when I visit the dog-racing track next week. On Work.
I am the Little Green Mango and I am Not an Alcoholic.
The night starts with a glass of fruit juice. And another. Then I think I can handle a glass of tap water. On the rocks. Just one more.
But it always ends the same - drama, drunk friends and someone else's dinner on my dress.
It's quite a challenge being a non-drinker at any party or night out.
Of course I'm automatically the designated driver - and it's no mean feat driving around with either extremely high-spitrited or temporarily-lost-to-the-world friends. When I'm not driving, I'm making sure we're on the right side of the road to catch the bus or cab. After a head-count obviously.
But I'm also the non-designated chaperone. There's the responsibility of frequent supervised visits to smelly loos that always leave me with toilet tissue stubbornly sticking to pointy heels. There's making sure that nobody steps on the glass that's always on the dance floor. There's magically producing tissue for when half a glass of something lands on someone (not me if I'm lucky). And remembering to check if their passport is in their bag as they head to the airport to catch the first flight out.
I've to deal with the crushed spirit when after wading through crowds by the bar and screaming over the music, to the extremely cute bartender for some water - Yea, just some tap water please - for a friend that could definitely use some, only to be greeting by, "Yuk! This tastes like water."
I've to tread carefully as I assure friends putting on quite a show that I'm laughing with them and not at them.
Sometimes, the party ends before I've even ordered my first lemonade. Which turns out to not be such a bad thing after all when the paramedics at the scene play a guessing game about what exactly a friend who's passed out has been having to eat all day. ("Definitely cheese. And tomatoes.")
But if I find myself cleaning said regurgitated dinner, it probably means there's a long night (or day) still ahead of me.
Despite the evident martyr-like suffering and the seeming prudishness, it really has do do with having more fun.
It's hard to give up on non-drinking when it's always the sobre one that has the wildest night. With the added advantage of fully functioning mental faculties to remember every single delectable detail the next morning. (Except details of puke. That should be blocked out of memory.)
I'm probably one of the few people with a hand steady enough to document the evening with the promise of enough material for two facebook albums and some more saved for special blackmail. I doubt I can ever give up the pleasure of saying to a mildly embarrassed friend just out of a 24 hour hangover: "I know what you did last Saturday night." Or better still, in mock righteousness: "Well if you can't remember if you danced on tables then there's no point in me telling you, is there?"
It's not easy being the non-drinker. But it does help collect a whole lot of stories. Stories that one day shall be retold over fruit juice and tap water, and laughed about.
New media journalist with a fondness for H2G2, sports and most things geeky, music-ish and chocolatesque.
Just a little green behind the ears now.
More on my website and Tumblr
Posts
