“On this day in 1965, Winston Churchill died at the ripe old age of 90. He drank a bottle of champagne at lunch every day, took a proper nap in the afternoon, smoked huge cigars incessantly, ate a hearty dinner with wine every evening and finished off each day with copious quantities of brandy. Truly, an example to us all.” Indeed. Hat-tip to Memex 1.1.
Fiction is not reality
“Heath Ledger is notable for being two things at the moment. They are: 1. Not gay. 2. Dead,” notes Eric TF Bat. “This hasn’t stopped our good friends at the Westboro Baptist ‘Church’ announcing plans to picket his memorial because he played a gay cowboy in some movie a while back.” Eric’s rant says what needs to be said.
Heath Ledger spikes my website, Day 2
OK, I clearly know nothing about the Internet. Website traffic has actually gone up since yesterday!
Don’t worry about that number in the corner of the graph. That’s “hits” which includes all the images and little bits of JavaScript in each page.
Using another analysis tool, the number of unique visitors to the site each day (once search robots and hack attempts are filtered out) has risen from around 500 a day before Corey Worthington Delaney to more than 900 after Mr Socialite graced the world with his presence, to 1402 on Heath Ledger Day 1, to 1807 yesterday.
So what’s going on here?
Afghanistan: death for downloading and discussing
Over at TechCrunch, Australian journalist Duncan Riley tells the story of a 23-year-old Afghani who’s been sentenced to death in a secret trial for discussing a document he found on the Internet.
Sayad Parwez Kambaksh’s crime was printing a document… that allegedly “violated the tenets of Islam.†Kambaksh then allegedly took the printout to Balkh University, where he discussed the contents with his teacher and classmates, resulting in a complaint to the US-backed Government.
Duncan asks:
What exactly are Americans and coalition forces (including British and Australian troops) fighting for in Afghanistan again? Feel free to remind me in the comments.
And the comments have gone beserk, even for TechCrunch. I’ll share some of it with you ‘cos someone who read my own comment emailed me privately to call me a genius and say that following the link to my website, i.e. here, was the best decision he ever made! Poor chap.
Continue reading “Afghanistan: death for downloading and discussing”
“Recent comments” needs fixing
The volume of comments this week has meant the “Recent Comments” list at the bottom of each page changes far faster than most readers can track. I’ll see if I can fix that over the long weekend. Suggestions welcome.
Whaling discussion continues
My piece about Japanese whaling chief Hideki Moronuki is generating some interesting discussion. I’ve just posted a long comment. Worth a read, even if it’s not about Heath Ledger. Oh, and you can always subscribe to the comments feed to ensure you don’t miss any of the action.