Knitting dog hair

Is your pup continually shedding? Well, why not make use of all that fibre. Scoop it up and post it over to Etsy, and have it knitted into a hat or scarf:

Great!

Brought to you by the ever-hilarious and ever-so-slightly mean Regretsy.

If your skin’s not white, you can’t come in

More BNP shenanigans.

Nick Griffin

Bloomin’ tosspot is now laying claim to the political legacy of Winston Churchill. Despite BNP Director of Publicity Mark Collett once describing Churchill as “a fucking cunt who led us into a pointless war with other whites standing up for their race.”

Teddy with vagina

There are some things that shouldn’t be allowed. Like this, for example:

Handmade horrors collected on Regretsy.

The Wedinator

Trashing your special day is their prime directive.

Terrorism as auto-immune war

The Yorkshire Ranter has a review of David Kilcullen’s The Accidental Guerrilla, and suggests that the goal of terrorism is to provoke something analogous to an auto-immune response: “Specifically, auto-immune war is a strategy, but its tactical implementation is the creation of false positive responses. Security obsession gums up the economy with inefficiencies. Terrorism terrorises the public; security theatre keeps them that way. As Kilcullen points out, every day, millions of travellers are systematically reminded of terrorism by government security precautions. Profiling measures subject entire communities to indignity and waste endless hours of police time. Vast sums of money are spent on counterproductive equipment programs and unlikely techno-fixes. National identity cards and monster databases are the specific symptoms of this pathology in the UK, just as idiotic militarism is in the US.”

Via Boing Boing.

The Garden

Long-time readers of this blog may remember the fateful day two years ago, when I shovelled slate chips into bin bags and planted a lawn. Or, to be more precise, a lawn-ette, roughly the size of a double bed. Well, I’m happy to report that the grass is still putting up a valiant fight with Weston’s emissions, and I spent a happy few hours yesterday afternoon, drinking beer with L and E, whilst lounging on it. The other plants who share my little world are also doing well, or at least not too badly. The raspberry patch is bigger and better than ever this year, and slowly encroaching on the lawn-ette. I’ve had to draw a line (approximately level with the compost bin), to stop their squabbling. Plants north of the boundary can grow as they please. But any errant cane that strays beyond it gets acquainted with Mr. Lawnmower. The Jerusalem artichokes have gone to a new home on P’s allotment. The rogue potatoes that emerged from the compost bin and into the compost have started growing. One of my tasks today is to try and remove some of them to a new home in another bucket, and pretend I intended to grow them all along. I’m having another go with the cherokee beans this year too. Although I’m not overly optimistic, since efforts so far have been feeble. I also acquired some flowers for the bees – lobelia, marigold and daisy – but so far they’ve completely ignored them and spent their time buzzing round the raspberries. I had decided not to bother growing squash this year, as my last two attempts both failed to produce any fruit, and I don’t even like squash that much anyway. But the bees love the flowers so much that I might change my mind.

Served and Protected

Power corrupts.

Gail Porter on the Gadget Show!

Yes it’s true! And she’s cool as fuck! And why are we not seeing more of her on the telly??

Internet threat

There is a Telecoms Bill being debated in the European Parliament right now, its second hearing is on Wednesday 6th May. In its present form, it allows providers to limit the content, services, and applications that users can access. The Bill originally contained clauses to safeguard our access to the internet, but these have now been removed. The wiki campaign page has a lot more information.

UPDATE: The relevant clauses were reinstated, and the Bill has now gone through. Hurray! More info here.