Daily links: 12th August 2009

Round up of a few links. Few homeless pictures too – flying ants swarming from the ground, inside the Royal Alex in Brighton, and one of Jon, Clif Hanger, Toby and Mr. Chi Pig.

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Guardian – Internet at 40 – The Guardian lists a few notable Internet moments, such as the first spam, the first emoticon, etc, etc.

MySociety – Call For Proposals – MySociety are looking for ideas on what their next project should be.

CutThroat Capitalism – Wired have a game where you can see how you’d do as a pirate in the Gulf of Aden.

Jack Of Kent fails the UK Citizenship Test – turns out not many people are passing it, and the questions are… esoteric to say the least.

The UK Citizenship Test – as above, try it for yourself. I got 43%.

Latest on Simon Singh’s libel trial – being sued by chiropractors for an article on the basis behind the practice.  More details here, and the article here. One of the great stories of unintended consequence though, given the Trading Standards cases and the like against the profession (see here).

Perseids peak tonight – try and get out to see them if it’s clear.

One journalist decides ‘off the record’ goes both ways – Paul Carr got lied to by two sources in the last week. Paul Carr now says that ‘off the record’ means the truth, and lying means that you are then on the record.

Fox News – fair, balanced, and absolutely no idea where Egypt is.

Calvin Harris’s Humanthesizer – I’m linking this purely for the use of conductive paint in an interesting way.

4 thoughts on “Daily links: 12th August 2009

  1. that pirate game off of the wired website is an absolute boon; much more satisfying that recent slate.com ‘how will america end?’ dealio. this is probably down to the funs of beating imaginary hostages.

  2. Yup. Also, there’s different levels involved, which aren’t overly spelt out – the way that you need more pirates to get something like a cruise ship.

  3. yup yup. when i first played it i was trying to nab a series of oil tankers who always outdid me, took a moment to right myself.

    it’s not as hard as a unicef ‘keep this family alive’ flash game i played back yonder. that thing’s like farmville, only with dysentery. badass.

    i look forward to the maersk insurance and petrol management game – to swing around the cape or not to swing around the cape?

  4. Think I remember that UNICEF one. Pretty sure it was one where the message was “THEY’RE ALL GOING TO DIE”. At least that’s the one I got. Kind of put me off donating any money if they’re all going to die anyway.

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