> jim rossignol

I woke up missing John Peel. The fact that current and future generations have to face living where radio does not feature his eclecticism depresses me unduly.

Just deleted a load of people’s comments. Sorry about that. Spam filter should be fixed now so comments are freed up again.

New Scientist:

On a misty mountaintop on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, scientists have observed a living pygmy tarsier – one of the planet’s smallest and rarest primates – for the first time in more than 80 years.

“I’m the only person in the world to ever be bitten by a pygmy tarsier,” says Gursky-Doyen.

Now all we need is a giant sloth to be found chewing on a woodsman in the Black Forest and a few mammoths to plod their way out of Siberia and crush a Moscovite.

Via Coming Anarchy:

Somali piracy has become a major news item, and most are blaming Somalia’s chronic anarchy. In truth, the pirates have become a highly organized business that originates in the stable civic society of Puntland in the north, not the chaos of the warring south.

Also: The Live Piracy Map.

Is this the point at which Somali Piracy becomes a reality gameshow involving a decommissioned aircraft carrier, helicopter-riding celebrities and televised battle-horror?

German killer evokes mystery:

Most galling of all for the investigators, her DNA signature has continued to turn up at new crime sites since Heilbronn – most bizarrely, perhaps, a few months ago when the corpses of three Georgian car dealers were trawled from a river near Heppenheim, south of Frankfurt. Two men were jailed for the killing, an Iraqi and a Somali. In the Iraqi suspect’s battered old Ford, forensic officers found traces of the same DNA found in the police car in Heilbronn. But how did it get there? Who is the woman whose genetic calling card has been found at more than 20 scenes of theft, assault and murder hundreds of miles and more than a dozen years apart? If their Iraqi suspect can help, police say, he’s not telling.

Via Clayton Cubbitt. Original here.

So my my game audio feature was translated into French:

Le maître de conférences Tom Betts est plutôt découragé par le comportement de ses étudiants vis-à-vis de la musique de jeux vidéo. « Je fais des cours magistraux sur le sujet mais la plupart du temps, cela se résume au fait que l’on peut jouer avec le son coupé mais pas avec l’écran éteint. Si vous étudiez les choses qui font qu’un jeu vidéo marchera, l’aspect sonore n’arrive pas en haut de la liste. » Pourquoi les étudiants de Tom Betts devraient s’intéresser à ce qu’il a à dire au sujet de la musique de jeu alors qu’il y a tellement d’autres choses à considérer comme les graphismes, la conception des niveaux ou des énigmes ? « C’est le parent pauvre depuis des années » déplore Betts.

We’re all getting biometric identity cards. It’s a fun time.

The cards will be available for all from 2012 but she said: “I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don’t want to wait that long.” (Home Secretary Jacqui Smith)

and…

The Home Office is talking to retailers and the Post Office about setting up booths to gather biometric data.

Sure. We’re all just clamouring to fill out forms and get tagged and bagged by a bored Post Office clerk. This mandatory identity tracking system is gonna be awesome!

Full story here.