Heard about new Britpop sensation The Arctic Monkeys?
Have you read how they are taking America by storm?
Does it start to sound like you've heard it all before?
Did it leave an unpleasant aftertaste like the chemically laden empty calories of fast food?

To find out if there is any substance to the Arctic Monkeys or if it is all just hype visit Boggart Blog, probably the funniest blog on the web

Beloved Succubus (poem with audio track) - Gothic Horror

hot Vampire (Image source)

There seems to be quite a fad for Vampires, Werewolves, ghosts and monsters at the moment no wonder beloved Succubus is my most popular poem at AD. Its just a love story about an undead girl seeking a willing blood donor (not!) Check out the spooky audio track with the poem performed as a dialogue for two voices accompanied by the music of Camille Saint Saens' Danse Macabre.

Though I spend the long day seeking
in crowded streets where memories teem
she only comes while I am sleeping,
in the stillness of my dreams.
"Come to me my one true lover,
bravely walk beyond the dark divide;
take my cold hands or I must rest here,
There is no way back but by your side."
At dawn the image stays; repeating

"Please my love, please do not desert me,
endless darkness fills my heart with fear.
But the shadows can never hurt me
if I could only feel you near.
Find me in this love - forsaken desert,
caught between the living and the lost,
kiss once more these cold pale lips, caress
cheeks death's insubstantial hand has blessed
Hold me, warm me and reclaim me."

I feel her here in children's laughter,
soft wind; her kiss upon my cheek.
A movement at the edge of vision,
hint of perfume; her Mystique.
But she is gone, her light extinguished,
dead; without goodbye or parting kiss.
Fate has aborted all we wished
and now she cries for my catharsis
Should I cling on or follow after.

Shadow words like sharp little knife cuts;
her message fading on silver screen;
"I need your love to quell my hunger,
sacrifice your blood for me.
Come warm me with your vital body,
let new life flow in these dry veins.
else reject me, cast off your ennui.
One tiny drop love, will sustain,
Life cannot end where love survives."

Her photograph's changing expression,
(foreknowledge clouds bright, laughing eyes.)
Brushes shifted on her dresser,
curtains moving without a breeze.
A spot of blood staining my pillow
an addict's trackmarks on my neck.
These dark ringed eyes say I must follow,
discover some way to bring her back.
Is love beyond death a transgression?

The months of yearning have fatigued me,
I grow more pale, my soul is weak.
I cannot turn from her completely
One embrace is all I seek.
In darkest hours she waxes stronger,
her compelling pleas never desist.
Every night she feeds my hunger,
The darkness calls, I cannot resist.........
Instinct protests but will cannot resist.

Her photograph's changing expression,
(foreknowledge clouds bright, laughing eyes.)
Brushes shifted on her dresser,
curtains moving without a breeze.
A spot of blood staining my pillow
trackmarks, bruising purple on my neck.
These dark ringed eyes say I must follow,
discover some way to bring her back.
Is love beyond death a transgression?

The months of yearning have fatigued me,
I grow more pale, my soul is weak.
I cannot turn from her completely
One embrace is all I seek.
In darkest hours she waxes stronger,
her compelling pleas never desist.
Every night she feeds my hunger,
The darkness calls, I cannot resist....
Instinct protests but will cannot resist.


Copyright (c) Ian Thorpe, 2004


Beloved Succubus
To hear audio version CLICK HERE

The Boggart Wades In To The Abortion Debate

Equitiquas by h R Geiger. Geigers nightmarish images at time convey perfectly the conveyor belt womb of poor women down the ages as they fell pregnant every year, most of their pregnancies not going to full term, and of those that did the new life ended in infant death as many times as the child survived to adulthood. Herbal contraceptives, not as efficient as modern methods, but much better than nothing, were always available to those wealthy enough to buy indulgences against the strictures of the church.

Expect a headbutt of an article when you visit Abortion - Pro Life equals Pro Death . Boggart Blogger Ian does not mince words in his attack on moves in the US to make all abortion illegal.
Strong stuff here, arguing for an enlightened approach to the difficult question of abortion and steering a course between the extreme views of both the pro - life and the pro - choice factions.

While the position of no terminations at all, even in the case of medical emergencies is clearly untenable, those advocation that termination of a pregnancy should be available on demand right up until the mother goes into labour is just insane but even that does not go far enough for some liberals who have campaigned for post - birth abortions.

While parents of teenagers might be tempted sometimes to say that terminations should be available up to 974 weeks after conception [work it out :-) ] I think most resonable people would agree terminations should only be available in the case of medical emergency after the point at which the foetus would normally become viable.



A Brief History Of Contraception And Abortion (Part 1)

A Brief History Of Contraception And Abortion (Part 2)

A Brief History Of Contraception And Abortion (Part 3)

A Brief History Of Contraception And Abortion (Part 4)

Father's Away Day

Should the father be present at the birth of a child or should we go back to the traditional approach of dispatching him to the pub where he can't get in the way. Get a new perspective at Boggart Blog

Return of the Boggart

Wow, is it really that long since I was here.

Been having a lot of fun working on audio poems for a CD release, its very time consuming sitting around in a studio for days.

Take a look at what we have been doing by checking out Beloved Succubus and watch this blog for more audio coming online.

And visit Boggart Blog my regularly updated blog site full of whacky British humour

 Back Soon - meanwhile here's a scene that expresses a mood of tranquillity

"Don't Be Evil" - Unless There's Money In It For Google

One problem with geeks is their tendency to leap in the air and clap their hands when any new technology is announced. Another problem is that given the slightest scent of power they go off on a world domination trip. The guys at Apple have tried it as have the Microsoft people, Adobe, Oracle and Cisco all tried it in their own modest way and many others have tried too. “Hey, the world will be a much better place if everybody abandons independent though and buys one of my widgets,” goes the pitch. But a computer, a web browser, an i-Pod and a web-cam are no substitute for a life.

This does not discourage the nerds of course and now we have the inventors of Google trying to jackboot their technology into every aspect of our lives. OK the metaphor might be distasteful but don’t forget, Hitler was a nerd.
With “Don’t Be Evil” as their slogan from day one Google managed to ooze into the public consciousness as nice chaps who only wanted to help us get better results from our web searches. It was so easy to miss the fact that they were totally focused on the aim of making technology in general and their technology in particular our master and so they are not capable of being anything but evil. And addiction to the web is causing us to help them every step of the way. You should pay more attention when you watch Austin Powers movies.

The first question we should all ask ourselves is “how good is this technology really?”

Back in 2001, just as Google was attracting effusive praise from industry pundits for the way it was elbowing aside other search engines that used different criteria for rating pages by relevance rather than the number of other pages linking in to them, I recall one maverick, an Information Technology veteran of twenty – five years experience saying in his weekly radio slot “Google is the worst search engine possible – except for all the others. The obvious problem was that people were being impressed by sheer numbers of search results and forgetting quality. To reaffirm this for the current article I ran a search on P.C. Plus, a well known UK mag. Google gave me 900,000 search results; one of its rivals that uses similar technology gave 950,000 (figures rounded).

Because on the Google search the PC Plus homepage came at the top of the list Google might use that as proof of their efficiency. But on Google the top link was trying to sell me PC Plus, the next twenty were advertisers in PC Plus trying to sell me other stuff. One way or another the owners of these pages had paid money for their high position in the listing. On the rival search engine I found information telling me what kind of readers might choose PC Plus and what other mags covered the same ground. I do not consider an advert can ever be as relevant as an impartial review. Google is therefore not about “not being evil” but making money. And the company is making money – sort of. Ad-words mini adverts that appear alongside search results and ad-wise targeted ads that appear on web pages are pulling in a very respectable revenue stream.

Most business ventures that depended on the web for revenue generation have so far been abject failures (Amazon being the most outstanding exception) and yet the slightest hint of possible future success is enough to ignite the same kind of hysteria as fuelled the dotcom bubble.

Google went to the stock market and was rejected because their figures did not add up. They then decided to directly market their own shares and despite warnings from banks and experienced dealers, since their launch stock in the big G has gone through the roof. The financial warnings were based on the fact that Google’s initial share offer was overpriced. Even the most optimistic projections showed the shares would take around two hundred years to repay the capital investment. At the present trading price that is closer to a thousand years. The “don’t be evil” boys didn’t pay a penny for their shares of course and are currently worth around $10 billion each. “Don’t be evil” unless there is serious money in it perhaps?

Another problem is emerging for Google through its method of gathering revenue. This is “click fraud.” At its most basic click fraud involves people visiting their own sites and clicking on the Google ads, so that they and Google earn a few cents for the referral. The flaw in the Ad-wise business strategy then is that it provides an easy way for the greedy to render it totally ineffective as an advertising medium as there is no chance of a sale resulting from the vast majority of referrals. When the simplicity of automating these fraudulent clicks is considered it quickly becomes clear that advertisers are not getting much for their money.

Like the lead character in a Shakespearean tragedy, the seeds of Google’s downfall are sown in the flaws in its own character. The people behind the company have built much on the fact that Google is cool. Now the idea that technology can be cool may have some currency among the nerdier students in the world of further education but “cool” is a quality always in thrall to fads. And a new generation of nerds may easily latch on to a new fad.

At the heart of the Google technology is the Page Rank algorithm which as already mentioned is determined by links. When, sometime in the next month, Google gets round to indexing this article it will pick up on the phrase “Shakespearean Tragedy” because a lot of pages already contain that phrase, even though my article is of no interest to fans of Shakespearean Tragedy. Thus Shakespeare readers, irritated by the bizarre results their Google searches throw up (!!!) will start looking around for a way to search the web that is relevant to their interests. Such search technology is already well along the development path.

The continuing success of Google really depends on our willingness to delegate all our personal decision making to a piece of computer software. If we can be persuaded to do that however, current development projects which would put Google in a position to destroy the publishing, newspaper, T.V., movie and music industries and replacing their products with an infinite stream of dross. Anyone in doubt about this only needs to take a look at Google Video. Can one company be allowed to weild so much power?

Finally there are the privacy issues some of Google’s business methods raise. Side-stepping those extremist lobby groups who praise the heroism of resisting the U.S. Government’s reasonable requests for access to databases we ought to be questioning why Google think they have a right to gather and store information on all of us who use the search engine. While the United States Government (and European Governments on this side of the Atlantic pond) only desire to identify web users whose use is connected with pornography that involves criminal atcs (child abuse, violent sex, torture, rape etc.); fraud and terrorism and not the pattern of web use by individuals (Governments can already track us as individuals without our knowledge) Google is busy building a profile on each one of us in order that they may better target us with advertising material. That in itself poses a far greater threat to the privacy of anybody who is not a sex criminal, fraudster or terrorist.

The whole business model is built on unproven and very inefficient forms of advertising and the only way to make those ads more cost effective is to identify the users who are likely to respond. So if you use G-mail, your messages are scanned, keywords extracted from what you say to your friends and the information added to both your Google profiles. Thus you can be targeted for a constant stream of unsolicited ads.

For similar reasons your searches are stored and may be kept indefinitely. It is known also that systems are being created to search your desktop and suck up information to the great database.

And people think this organisation is cool.

Web addicts of course are always ready to believe the latest Geek Mythology. The business community is more hard headed however and last week’s near 10% drop in Google share prices should have sent warnings around the world. The Google people may still say “don’t be evil” but in the cloud – cuckoo land they inhabit how can evil be defined in a way relevant to any kind of reality.

Little Nicky Machiavelli thinks they do. Check out what he has to say on the subject at Machiavelli: Don't Be Evil - unless its for money

Lots of Stuff

Plenty to read today from Ed and his friends

If you are into scientific demolition jobs you will enjoy:

Intelligent Design or Incredible Dumbness

but if Intelligent Design advocates make you laugh this site will make you piss yourself
God's Blog
The original God - Dagda (his name means Good in ancient Irish and in medieval English and modern Scandinavian languages God simple merans good) talks about INTELLIGENT DESIGN - STUPID LOGIC

or you can take a look at The Boggart's p.o.v. on the latest sex scandal in British politics here:

Lib Dems shot themselves in the dog

How Very Dare They?

Artificial Intelligence? Still Science Fiction (Image source)

People often ask me how I can say that Google is the worst search engine on the web (except for all the others) and that Google's raison d'etre is to help governments spy on their citizens, while filtering out of search results any information that challenges official propaganda.

Well I just looked at my blog and saw that on Greenteeth, probably one of the most irreverent and anti religion blog on the web I am featuring two adverts for fundie "give us your money to help us do God's work" type websites. In my view, if God is as good as his fsns rate him, he should be able to do his own work.

So when Google make such big claims about contextual links and targeted ads, and Google adsense uses "artificial intelligence" to target ads at particular users based on a web page's content and the users interestes divined from their browsing habits, why do I get so many ads for beautiful Russian girls who want to marry me whenever I've been looking at Russia Today if Russia Today is a news site and I never look at dating sites or sex sites.

Artificial intelligence my arse, the spam I get is more discerning in targeting its confidence tricks at my interests.

RELATED POSTS:

Google algorithm cheating
Is Google governing the USA
Google Ministry of Truth?
Artificial Intelligence and Google
More on GoogleDon't Be Evil, That's Our Job
Latest Posts

Elsewhere: [Boggart Blog]...[Little Nicky Machiavelli]... [ Ian's Authorsden Pages ]... [Scribd]...[Wikinut] ... [ Boggart Abroad] ... [ Grenteeth Bites ] ... Ian Thorpe at Flickr ] ... [ Tumblr ] ... [Ian at Minds ] ... [ The Original Boggart Blog]

Welcome Back Osama

Nice to see old OBL back on our screens. But is it a coincidence that the old pantomime villain has reappeared just as the 2005 panto season winds down in theatres all over Britain.

Check out a typically British take on Osama's reappearance at
Boggart Blog

And for those of you unfortunate enough to be foreigners here are a couple of sites that may explain the uniquely British form of theatre that is PANTOMIME:

It's Behind You dot.com - the magic of pantomime

What makes the British so British

Do You Need A Life Coach

Miley Cyrus' Life Coach

Since the great manufacturing industries, engineering, shipbuilding, electricals, textiles etc. went into terminal decline in the 1970s the surplus labour has been sucked up by various means, Government sponsored Business Start-up Schemes created an army of self - employed service providers, re-training which is a polite words for sending people back to school in order to make the statistics look better, created an army of mature students, in some cases mature studenthood turned into a career for life, and the job creation program kept thousands occupied digging holes and filling them in again.

Government fiddles cannot go on forever of course and eventually instead of the activities that had provided meaningful work we developed the candy - floss industries, computer games, mobile phone ring tones and all the other stuff no-one really needs but media hype convinces us we must have. But even further along the road to extinction of human intelligence come the bullshit industries. My favourites among the providers of status enhancing bullshit are the life coaches, the people you pay vast sums of money so they will tell you that you are not such a total losers as you imagine (and everybody else knows) you are.

Leaders among Britain's growing legion of life coaches are husband and wife team are the positively scary Speakmans from Rochdale. These two will gladly relieve you of a grand a session and in return put you on a diet of grass, and I mean grass - the stuff sheep eat - smoothies and convince you that you cannot fail to be successful (or seriously deluded perhaps) if only you are always positive.

On planet Speakman this empowering positivity is achieved by being nerve janglingly cheerful and enthusiastic and by wearing constant insane grins that could only have been created under anaesthetic.

Sceptics may think that plastic surgery is the last resort of the terminally insecure but Nik and Eve seem to believe that "reinventing yourself" by simply having someone chop off the bits you don't like is the way to true happiness. It is hard to say whether the therapy works for them, both believe they look incredibly good for their ages (respectively 42 & 36 allegedly) as both have faces that do not quite seem to fit their skulls. But they are almost evangelical about their venture, in fact Nik, a former financial products salesman ('nuff said?) displays an Evangelists knack of deflecting awkward questions as they both grin on enthusiastically. It starts to seem quite sinister after a while.
Thanks to their persistence the pair have now landed their own T.V. show in which they will provide "life coaching" to a number of volunteers. Unfortunately the show is on an obscure digital channel so only about three people will be watching even at peak time.

One wonders what ever was going on in the mind of the Producer who decided to let these two self - anointed therapists and their crackpot theories loose on people who might have genuine problems. But then perhaps I am being unkind, the day may be about to dawn when that nice Mr. Blair gives us all life coaches paid for by the National Health Service.
Should that day come, its sad I am too late to hire Oliver Reed or Keith Moon as mine.

RELATED POSTS:

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Latest Posts

Elsewhere: [Boggart Blog]...[Little Nicky Machiavelli]... [ Ian's Authorsden Pages ]... [Scribd]...[Wikinut] ... [ Boggart Abroad] ... [ Grenteeth Bites ] ... Ian Thorpe at Flickr ] ... [ Tumblr ] ... [Ian at Minds ] ... [ The Original Boggart Blog]government, business