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Via MetaFilter, this Yahoo news item made me laugh on the floor: A terrorist group who claims links with Al-Qaida said it was calling a truce in its operations, to see if the new Spanish government would withdraw its troops.

Apparently terrorists aren’t the smartest ones either:

   The group said its cells were ready for another attack and time was running out for allies of the United States.

“Whose turn is it next? Will it be Japan or America, or Italy, Britain or Oslo or Australia?” the statement said, adding Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were also targets.

No wonder the group’s claims have met skeptisism.

A painting in the National Gallery of Washington appears to depict a couple of Dutch people playing a game of hockey. So, who have invented hockey? The Canadians or Americans? Was it Windsor, Montreal, Great Bear Lake, Halifax or Houghton.

I blame the Dutch for all this confusion. After all it was them, who brought the art of skating (cough) to the New World.

I decided to try the Freelancer demo (Digital Anvil / Microsoft). I wasn’t really impressed. It’s a 2003 game, yes. And although it looks and feels like Elite, Freelancer is not exciting. Rumours has it that the game designer (Chris “Wing Commander” Roberts) was forced out of his Digital Anvil company after Microsoft bought it out.

Which (once again) led to the search for ‘enfant terrible’ Roberts. Apparently he founded PNR (Point Of No Return) Entertainment, which indeed appears to have a website. Naturally, it’s full of Wing Commander references too..

As noted earlier (see ‘Elsewhere links’), the current Spanish government lost the elections and this has been noted in specific circles of ‘warbloggers’. Says the most famous of them (Instapundit):

   “Eric Olsen has more thoughts on what is, I’m afraid, a bad day for the forces of civilization.”

And once again it’s the perfect display of utter ignorance on foreign politics. Here’s what a Spanish expert says:

   “The government has paid the price for its involvement in the war in Iraq, for Aznar’s relationship with (U.S. President George) W. Bush and (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair. The vote has been a reaction to this”

Bad day for civilization? Not a chance: It’s a good day for democracy. Also: don’t forget that Spain has a proportional electoral system, which means that, as it looks like right now, the winning party has to find a partner to rule with. This is where most people like Reynolds go wrong: Spain is not a ‘two party’ democracy. There is no ‘good’. There is no bad, left or right as we so regularly see in American politics: in a democracy like Spain’s, it’s the consensus that drives a nation. Check the polls.

Via Marshall Brain’s, ‘Keyboards are dirtier than toilets’, an article from the Australian ABC.

   “When someone is infected with a cold or flu bug, the surfaces they touch during the day become germ transfer points because some cold and flu viruses can survive on surfaces for up to 72 hours – an office can become an incubator.”

Now it’s a good time to print out a couple of those biohazard icons and glue them on your laptops.

Brace yourself for tomorrow’s announcement of the 10th planet circulation our Sun. But, is it really a planet?

And of course the planet needs a name too: it has been given the name Sedna, the Innuit Goddess of the Sea, but this is a provisional name. I wonder what might be the most appropriate name for that little rock. The first thing that shoots up is Nemesis, but I’ve been playing too many games in my previous life. And think of all the chaos on Earth if there’s going to be a tenth planet. The changes we have to make to books, expositions at museums and observatories and the Internet.

So, for the sake of humanity, I urge scientists and astronomers to forego the announcement. Nine Planets should be plenty for all of us.

Alfons’ computer, the computer running this blog, made it into Google’s image database. That is, prominently, between pretty images of Doubtful Sound, New Zealand.

I wonder what that means (via Alfons).