All yours.

I finally emerged from the bunker today, blizzardous snow having piled up around my door, and walked down into town with my trusty ice-grip boots (and other clothing).

K is in Stockholm delivering the last of next summer's TV spots for a Swedish client, and I've just received an external white paper describing a smartphone concept that I've been trying to pitch to Nokia and a mobile carrier. This is a good news, bad news situation.

You can't be me, I'm taken

So, in an interview with the Huffington Post, Goldman Sachs' chief economist (sic) Huw Pill advised France to cut all its salaries by 30%

What should I add? Discuss, maybe. Or facepalm. Or they don't even bother to pretend anymore. I don't even know.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi

Oh, actually it was 33%

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi

Oh dear.

Someone has been making art again.

Another day, another hack.

Chinese Hackers Attacked New York Times Computers for Four Months:

The New York Times had been on guard against cyber attacks after the Chinese government told them there would be "consequences" for reporting on the Wen family. But while the company was informed by AT&T of suspicious activity over its network connection on October 25--the day the Wen story was published--the attack had begun weeks earlier and appears to have been focused on getting into the e-mail accounts of Times Shanghai Bureau Chief David Barboza and South Asia Bureau Chief Jim Yardley. The attack used 45 different pieces of custom malware code, including remote access tools that gave Chinese hackers the run of the Times' network.

The attackers used a botnet of computers compromised at US universities to obscure the source of the attack.

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

German Federal Government is struggling with its own austerity goals- Handelsblatt

The first round of austerity negotiations is over. Deputy ministers were supposed to agree where 5-6 billion Euros are to be saved. But a decision is far away.

... Numbers are to be decided till the cabinet meeting on March 20. The detailled budget is to be ready by summer.

In short, to meet the new constitutional requirements, more than 5 billion Euros are to be cut from the budget till 2014. New rule: ministries can make suggestions where to cut in other ministries. Plan B: The 'Afghanistan formula' redistributes the financial burden of the war on the investment budget of the ministries. Funnily enough, the ministry of defense will have to cut the most (billions!) because of its large investment budget. Then the ministry of transport (yes, the dreams of European transport integration, TEN projects, ... gone, gone) and the ministry of research and education. Of course no one is going down without a fight:

But at the same time it has been said that the ministries of research, transport, and development have actually demanded budget increases. As "Handelsblatt" reported, the ministry of transport is planning with additional 1.25 billion Euros for each year till 2017 and justifies that by invoking coalition decisions.

Not a snowballs chance in hell. That particular ministry is reaping some its just rewards for supporting every bullshit project in Germany.

Independent: It's floating gold! Dog walker finds 'horrible smelling' lump of sperm whale vomit worth £100,000

It's stories like this that make one ponder the kind of human ingenuity that could transition from whale vomit to perfume stabiliser. I can hear in my mind one of those Bob Newhart phone monologues:

"Pierre? Pierre - can you hear....? Bunjaw bunjaw. Pierre, it's night here. I'm in Nuuk. It's in Greenland. Terry Verdi. Look, Pierre - I found some puke that might be useful to ya..."

Bob would never have said 'puke', my imagination is faulty.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Beyonce sings the national anthem live.

There's a big foo-rah going on about whether she lip-synced it last time around, which is ridiculous.

Interesting point #1: If you're going to sing this song, it is critical to get the third note as low as you possibly can get it, because in a minute your'e going to be up an octave and a half higher which is a long way away.

Interesting point #2: "Everybody knows" that this is "an olde English drinking song," but nobody knows what olde English drinking song. At least not that I have heard...