how to play the air guitar

"All of which means that the player can reserve most of his (or perhaps her, though this seems to be a largely male pursuit) energies for the important part of air guitar.

That is, leaping around and gurning in to your crotch as if suddenly seized with acute appendicitis, the pain of which can only be assuaged by pretending to hold on to a particularly lively invisible ferret.

Strangely this is a skill millions of teenagers once possessed, but it is now an art more likely to be practiced by middle-aged men with extensive video libraries of old episodes of Top Gear."

from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4694482.stm

curious

By now everyone has probably seen this:

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has accidentally shot and injured a man during a quail hunting trip.

Two odd things struck me about the BBC news story

Ranch owner Katharine Armstrong said Mr Cheney had turned round to shoot at a bird, unaware that Mr Whittington was behind him. He sprayed Mr Whittington with shotgun pellets.

"The covey flushed and the vice-president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by God, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good," she said.

"By God"? No, by the presidential equivalent of Baldrick, apparently.

He didn't know the guy was there? What was Whittington doing, sneaking up on him ninja-style? Surely the first principle of safe hunting (let alone hunting management, hem, hem, Ms Armstrong) is to make sure you know where the other hunters are SO THAT YOU DON'T SHOOT THEM! Even an Edwardian country house party managed these things a little better...

"By God" seems an odd thing to say in these circumstances. It's postively Islamic. "Yes, he shot and hit this other guy. Eh, Inshallah."

Ms Armstrong said that Mr Cheney was a "very safe sportsman".

"This is something that happens from time to time. You know, I've been peppered pretty well myself," she said.

WTF??? Are these people insane? This is the result of SAFE hunting? Sorry, but where I come from, safety does not include shooting people.*



*OK, Chris, Peter, Bryan, let's just leave Dennis out of this, OK?

No jokes, please, we're Muslim Puritans

Excellent piece in the WSJ; many thanks to redactrice for pointing it out to me.

Bonfire of the Pieties
Islam prohibits neither images of Muhammad nor jokes about religion.

lovely

Let's recapitulate briefly. According to the US Department of Defense, only 8% of the prisoners at Guantanamo were al-Qaeda fighters, and only 5% of them were captured by the Americans themselves.

The overwhelming majority of the others were handed over to the Americans by people who could reasonably be called bounty hunters.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4708946.stm

editing in the UK

I think I've probably asked this before, but I would be grateful if any of my UK readers who are involved in the publishing industry (or work as proofreaders, editors, or technical authors in whatever field) and wouldn't mind my picking their brains could give me a shout, I would be most grateful.