Links for those of an enquiring mind (or with 30 minutes at work)

I admit this isn't a proper post but my excuse is that in the past 36 hours I've worked for 23 and only slept for 7.

Anyway here are few interesting links that I've found today:

First up with 'the wire' being my primary source of entertainment for the last few weeks this piece from the BMJ on "An alternative to the war on drugs" rings very true and seems to talk a lot of sense: in essence no matter what a government does people will still take illegal drugs, in turn this will stress the system as a) there is no tax on drugs money and b) police investigations in to drug dealing cost a lot more than treating the drug users. No matter whether you agree with the piece or not it's well worth a read as a very pragmatic view on the continuing "war on drugs".

Second up is a wonderful list of science policy blogs in the UK. If you're not a scientist this will probably be of limited interest but as I'm fairly sure this is mainly read by my friends and you're all of a sciencey-bent I figure that you'll find something of interest in there.

Finally is my latest favourite comic: scenes from a multiverse a series of daily 4 panel comics from various facets of our multiverse.

Anyway I'm off to finish watching 'the wire' which is my penultimate recommendation (yes a piece of old media) if you haven't watched it get a copy and watch it: it is one of the most thought provoking bits of TV I've seen in a while. Excellent depth and "ohhh that's what that was about" moments.  Maybe not the happiest series in the world and certainly doesn't pull any punches on the realism but well worth a watch.

Before I scoot this is my final recommendation: "Accelerando" by Charles Stross (another bit of old media I know but available as an e-book) if any of my mentions of 'transhumanism' or 'the singularity' confuse you: read this it will at least help explain what they mean. An excellent book about the near future and the possible affect of AI.

New Comic

Hey Guys,

I'm back again (briefly) to post a link to this a comic a friend of mine is drawing. Should be a good read once a week so take a look - only one up at the moment though so not too much to worry about.

In other news I'm still fighting with VHDL and my lazyness in trying to get my JAVA-fu going again. Will be posting up some more games reviews soon as well (mainly once I've got some second games down), I'm hoping to put up reviews for 'Race for the Galaxy' and 'Crunch' I've had a single game of RftG and a few of crunch and both are very good. As I'm off to a games club tomorrow I should hopefully have a few more games down to pass judgement on.

Why I shouldn't breed.....

To anyone who knows me in real-life (ie no one because I'm pretty sure no one reads this) this is a(nother) reason I shouldn't have kids...

xkcd rocks....

and if you don't already READ XKCD

Procrastination (book of biff)

Found another comic to read - I'm too good at this.

Either way It's very good - just a series of one panel picture + caption types. Simple, surreal and just a little gruesome. The only down side is that it has been updated almost daily since 2006.... I'm up to 18th June 2007.

Ah well its this or stats.

I've aquired a new comic... DAMN!

'Hark A Vagrant' is nice line drawn comic with historical references - I get some of them and the nonsense ones are good fun :)

Freakangles

This is my latest addition to my comics list

Warren Ellis is win

Paul Duffields art is also win

Lots of cool steam punk and a flooded london - could you want more?

highly worth a read. Anyway back to revising pah.