Rackin' frackin' local anaesthetic.

By the standards of other activities which involve somebody drilling holes in your mouth for 45 minutes, it was reasonably good: he didn't pull my jaw open, or bruise my lips, or start drilling before the anaesthetic took effect, all of which have happened at other dentists. And the nurse was atypically good at suction -- usually they can't be fucked, so you end up swallowing a pint of gross dentist-water and bits of tooth, but she got it all out of the way.

He got 2 of the 4 fillings done, including one which he was expecting to be small but I was expecting to be enormous, and it was -- another more-filling-than-tooth jobbie. Next time he'll do the other two fillings and then the bionic super-crown thingy, which is not going to be gold, thank you very much.

Until then, my face remains paralysed. I got a lot of funny looks on the tube this morning; according to my coworkers I look like a stroke victim.

It's a blog, right? So I can talk about politics and anything else that I'm not qualified to talk about with impunity, as long as everybody keeps in mind that obviously my employer accepts no responsibility for, and indeed does not give two hoots about, the opinions expressed.

From the Ed via email:

...I take it we've all heard that Castro is mad sick, and that his brother Raul (who, btw, is rumoured to be gay -- scandalous!) is currently in charge of the shop. Said brother is 75, so it's not like this is much of a solution. Anyway, my question is -- what do people think will happen if Castro dies in the next couple of months? Bay of Pigs II: Totally Competent This Time, We Swear? A big triumph for the opposition? I expect a slow crawl toward reform, myself. Give Cuba like 10 years, and it'll be like the DR but with better hospitals.

And here's my response:

There will definitely not be an invasion funded by the US. We* don't have the political will, and frankly we haven't got the resources to go invading a third country, or we'd already have invaded Iran. I don't expect the opposition will be allowed to triumph either, at least not immediately. I think a good model will probably be the USSR under Gorbachev -- there will be a transitional period of 5 years or so as the old guard gradually loosen things up, and then it'll hit a tipping point and there will be a bloodless transition to democracy of a sort, but probably a typical island democracy with lots of corruption and incompetence and, as it's Cuba, a lot of heavy-handed US intervention.

As for your 10 year prediction: by DR you mean the Dominican Republic? I think that's a pretty low bar to aim for, given how many more natural resources Cuba has to draw upon. In 10 years a democratic Cuba has the potential to be a very interesting power in Caribbean politics -- it'll be interesting to see if they decide to face the island republics and establish some kind of regional power. But it's more likely that they'll do what DR and a bunch of the other northern Caribbean states have done, and essentially become a US satellite.

* For some reason I use "we" when talking about all three of the US, the UK and Trinidad. Colour me schizophrenic.

Update: added "utterly redundant" credit and footnote.

Okay, so I've had a few discussions about this nightmarish situation recently, and essentially my take on it is this:

Technically speaking, Israel is a democracy being threatened by a terrorist organization being hosted within a weak/failed state. We in the west have already decided (twice) that these are appropriate conditions under which to invade, producing massive civilian casualties in the name of providing greater security (or "fighting them over there" if it's not going so well, or "humanitarian reasons" if you're the kind of government that admits when it can't find WMDs).

Hezbollah are firing indiscriminately into Israel's civilian population with a large number of (inaccurate, not terribly destructive, but obviously very scary) missiles supplied by Iran. Israel is firing back with overwhelming force and -- and this is very debateable -- not noticeably greater accuracy.

So morally, Israel should have some kind of advantage on the basis that they are responding to terror, and their intention is not to cause civilian casualties -- they are aiming at "military targets", like, er, apartment blocks, because the terrorists are in the apartment blocks. However, two things combine to rob them of this tenuous advantage:

1. The ridiculous imbalance in levels of power and levels of casualties. If you dropped a nuke on a civilian population in order to kill a terrorist, you would be tried for genocide. One you accept that, you acknowledge that the difference between acceptable casualties and war crimes is just a line in the sand, and nobody is ever going to agree on a number of dead bodies that's "ok".
2. And this is more important: there is a moral difference between shooting a gun at a terrorist and accidentally hitting the civilian next to him, and lobbing a grenade at a terrorist who is hiding in a crowd of civilians. There is a difference between accidentally killing civilians on one hand, and on the other hand killing civilians on purpose, in the certain knowledge that they will die, because you believe their deaths are worth you achieving your goals.

All of this is not to say that I think Hezbollah have some kind of moral advantage. This is to say that both sides are being morally reprehensible and I can summon no sympathy for either one as a result. It's horribly depressing, and I'm tempted to just let these fuckers drown in their own bloodbath until they get sick of pointlessly killing each other.

...but it doesn't seem like that's going to happen, so it seems like somebody has to wade in their and separate them, and it can't be the US or the UK -- knowledgeable friends have suggested Turkey and France with an option on Russia. I don't care who it is as long as they do it quickly. But standing idly by while Israel commits war crimes in the name of security is just further blackening our already heavily tarnished names.

"Emergency root canal" are not good words to hear at 9am on a Wednesday morning.

...so I guess on July 9th, 2011 I should be very, very careful about where I go?

So, as everybody and his dog has already related, a plot to blow up multiple transatlantic flights has been foiled by UK police. The presumed terrorists were evidently planning to use liquid explosives, composed of ordinary materials and mixed on board and detonated with small electronic devices disguised as everyday items. Britain's airports have gone into massive security alerts, and hand baggage and all liquids have been banned from flying.

Of course, when an attack is foiled, it's all very well for everybody who's been not-bombed, but what of the poor news networks? Deprived of scenes of carnage and heartbreak, they're stuck with only hastily-arranged interviews with "experts" of dubious provenance and endless retelling of the only actual victims of the attack, those of the massive delays to flights -- "Oh god, there's nearly been a terror attack! It's made me 90 minutes late for work!" doesn't really have the same emotional gravitas. Mind you, when there actually was a terrorist bombing last July I was only an hour late.

The British media have so far been admirably careful with their use of language and admirably restrained about speculating, but there is a certain depressing inevitability to the news that all 24 of the suspects are so far apparently young British Muslims. We* as a nation have done nothing since July 7th to lessen the disillusionment and alienation felt by this segment of society, and since September 11th have actually been actively making things worse.

And what exactly is it that young British Muslims are so angry about? Let's remind ourselves, paraphrasing from an interview last year with a friend of mine who also happens to be young, British and Muslim:

1. Palestine vs. Israel - the US is funding Israel. It doesn't matter whether you think it's justified or not, this is primarily what is making them angry.
2. Kashmir - this is especially true of those who've been to Pakistan.
3. Iraq - the loss of civilian life
4. Bosnia - indifference to the massacre
5. Terminology: "what's the difference between a US/Israel army officer killing a 10 year old muslim boy point blank range and a suicide bomber killing a innocent 10 year old Israeli boy? Nothing, but one of them is called a 'terrorist' while the other isn't."
6. Hypocrisy: the US can kill whoever it likes in the name of freedom, but other people who do so are terrorists

We've not done anything about any of this. We've not even tried. So we shouldn't be surprised that people are still trying to blow us up.

* Again the schizophrenic use of "we". This time I mean the UK.

Incidentally, I'd just like to point out that I heard my first Christmas carol of the year on the 10th of August. Words can barely express my levels of horror and disgust at the continuing encroachment of this fucking day on our lives. Now that the barrier of Halloween has been breached, and with no US-style Thanksgiving to act as a secondary brake, there's nothing stopping Christmas in this country from extending all the way back to the end of Easter.

Well, not tonight, actually, as I went out to an impromptu dinner to celebrate the wonderful Mikey getting a wonderful job! Yes, folks, everybody's favourite unemployed Ukrainian is now a mere signature away from being a trainee lawyer, with a salary to bitch about and colleagues to complain about and everything. Just like a grown up! The transition will be hard for all of us, I'm sure.

I personally am celebrating finishing work at 6pm two days in a row, after what in retrospect has been more than a month of working at breakneck speed. Say hello to the new Yahoo! Tones, also in the UK and Germany. If -- for some god forsaken reason -- you do want a new ringtone, we've got every tune under the sun, it's £3, and we don't lock you into an evil subscription or anything*. Okay, I'll stop plugging now.

Tomorrow is yet another trip to the dentist, this time hopefully for stage one of creating The Bionic Molar™.

* Unless you're in the US and you really want to be in one. But it's clearly marked in text bigger than this.

Google's latest labs project is Google Music Trends, a service which tracks the listening habits of users of Google talk and produces aggregate statistics about their listening habits. This is taking pretty firm aim at last.fm and LaunchCast Radio which already provide this feature.

It's interesting, but like a lot of Google's more recent efforts, I don't think this is going to change the market much. GMT has the same failing of launchcast, which is that it provides lots of aggregate and whole-universe stats, which are useful and interesting to owners of the site, but provides end-users with little or nothing in the way of personal statistics. The users of last.fm use the service because it suggests music for them and it generates detailed weekly and monthly listenings charts for them (and easily lets them post these to their websites).

This gives people a very clear personal reason to sign up, and then later they catch on to the social aspects and global aspects. What's the incentive to sign up to GMT, other than to lose a little bit more of your privacy to Google?

It's here! It opens today! Sadly, I have commitments that mean I won't be able to see it until tomorrow at the earliest, but oh well. Snakes on a Plaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaane!

For 5 long months I have been hyping this movie, and now the movie is out and the reviews are in, and it's official: Snakes on a Plane is a huge pile of awesome.

There are snakes, there's a plane, there's Samuel L. Motherfuckin' Jackson, there's an endless, hilarious rollercoaster of camped-up B-movie clichés, and there's a bodycount to rival Rambo 3.

Go see. You will not be disappointed.

From Already Over by Orson:

So go ahead and hate me now
For breaking up on the phone
But I know that I'd crack if I saw your face
I deserve to be alone

And I hate that I still love you, girl
And I only wish you well
But I'll never be man enough for you
And you're a psycho bitch from hell

These lyrics are not, repeat NOT directed at anybody, nor do they have any meaning. I just think they're hilarious, though a lot is in the tone of his voice. I recommend this album, obviously.

If the dentist mis-judges how long his work is going to take, and the anaesthetic wears off while he's still drilling around, causing you intense pain, and you yell about this, but he says he'll just finish up quickly, causing you further intense pain, can you sue him for malpractice? This is not a hypothetical.

Answers from actual lawyers or people who've done research will be given extra credit.

P.S. They weren't terrorists, they were just Asian. Is anyone surprised? I feel like the other passengers on the plane should all have to pay these two compensation or something, hysterical racist fucks that they are.

Sorry to be boring, but I'm gonna talk about my teeth again, if only because for that much money, I should at least be getting some blog-fodder.

Okay, so it's official, my dentist is incompetent. For the second time in 3 weeks he has performed a filling and I've had it go wrong and require a root canal -- last time during his normal working hours, but this time the pain woke me up at 4 in the morning and had me scurrying across London on early Sunday morning buses to get emergency, private, horribly expensive treatment from a different dentist. So the NHS is going to get a letter from me, along roughly these lines:

• Initial consulatation: 4 fillings required, 2 being replacements for older fillings that seemed to be undermined by decay, plus rebuilding and capping of a tooth that had had a root canal several years previously and had broken.
• First filling: okay
• Second filling, left upper premolar: white filling, very deep. Took much longer than estimated. Became sensitive as soon as anaesthetic wore off. 5 days later, when I returned for a different treatment, the dentist examined the tooth and decided it need to be treated with emergency root canal. Dentist claimed there was "always" a "20% chance of failure" for "this type of filling" -- which I assumed to mean very large fillings. However, this failure rate had not been mentioned at the initial treatment.
• Third filling, right upper molar, furthest back: okay
• Rebuilding and capping, right lower molar: temporary filling applied on first visit was removed, posts inserted, and a new tooth built up. As soon as anaesthetic wore off, noticed a sharp point poking into gum. Over 3 days this gradually became looser during normal chewing, eventually rear portion of new filling broke off.
• Fourth filling, right upper molar, second from back: described as a "straightforward", "minor" filling, was given "short-acting" anaesthetic. Anaesthetic "wore off" (dentist's own explanation) after about half an hour, towards the end of the procedure, leaving final stages of procedure extremely painful -- no further anaesthetic was administered despite loud protests. Dentist claimed anaesthetic lasted only a short time and we had "missed it by just a minute". Tooth remained very painful, and by 4th day had become extremely sensitive, accompanied by swelling.
• Visited another dentist, emergency root canal was recommended on fourth filling, plus antibiotics for swelling. Second dentist claimed not to know of any "short acting" anaesthetic. X-rays looking at this tooth also seem to show that tooth behind it (i.e. third filling mentioned previously) also shows signs of infection.

So, just to make it clear: I'm not an idiot. When the second filling went wrong I was worried. However, it had been a very big cavity, so it was quite possible that it would have failed no matter what happened. So I gave my dentist the benefit of the doubt. However, fool me twice, shame on me, so I will not be going back to the first dentist. Nevertheless, I am left with a bunch of very fucked, dead teeth and a huge bill. I am therefore very, very grumpy.

And to my teeth I say: I'm sorry! I apologize for not brushing often enough! Just stop already! Haven't I suffered sufficiently yet?

If you're not just sitting around waiting for your face to stop hurting, you should probably only do one or two of these.

Firstly, the 2-Variable Intuition Test claims that not only am I not exceptionally smart, I'm a fuzzy-feeling hippie. Stupid test! What does it know? Just 'cause I can pick out the dumb suicide girl.

More Emotional You have: 55% SCIENTIFIC INTUITION and 70% EMOTIONAL INTUITION

The graph on the right represents your place in Intuition 2-Space. As you can see, you scored above average on emotional intuition and about average on scientific intuition.Keep in mind that very few people score high on both! In effect, you can compare your two intuition scores with each other to learn what kind of intuition you're best at. Your emotional intuition is stronger than your scientific intuition. Your Emotional Intuition score is a measure of how well you understand people, especially their unspoken needs and sympathies. A high score score usually indicates social grace and persuasiveness. A low score usually means you're good at Quake. Your Scientific Intuition score tells you how in tune you are with the world around you; how well you understand your physical and intellectual environment. People with high scores here are apt to succeed in business and, of course, the sciences.

The What type of man turns you on test is entirely unsurprising.

Pretty boy You scored 35% masculine, 47% athletic, 36% exotic, and 62% refined!

You like a man that looks like you can bring him home to mama. Clean, toned (but not over the top) and not the macho type. A genuine nice guy.....like Orlando Bloom. But let's face it, the whole point of this was to look at a bunch of hot guys. If you liked what you saw, please rate my test!

Apparently I also talk really pretty, according to the Commonly Confused Words Test, which did something to rebuild my self esteem after finding out I'm a hippie two test earlier.

And according to the The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test I am not a geek but a nerd, but at least I'm the "modern, cool" kind.

The Quick & Painless Enneagram Test claims that I'm a "Type Three", and has lots to say about that...

That's all for now...

So, just to be clear: in an exclusive deal made earlier this year, Yahoo! will be handling all the branded advertising on eBay in the United States. Outside the United States, in a deal announced today, exactly that same function will be handled by Google.

In other news, I managed to chew something on the right-hand side of my mouth today. This is progress.

New favourite story intro, ever:

Ah, yes, we've never heard of that sort of thing before...

So, back in October 2002, I blogged about Jeremiah Cohick, a rather tasty geek who was featured in Apple's series of "Switch" ad campaigns. I was pretty sure he was gay. But when I emailed him to hit on him mention I'd blogged him (really, what possesses me to do these things?) he cheerfully denied it.

Turns out, 4 years later, I was right, and Jeremiah came out -- actually, nearly a year ago, I just missed it because I'm not actually stalking him, it just seems that way. And not only has he switched teams, but he's found a teammate.

It's so sweet! And nice to know my gaydar isn't totally broken. I'm just really sorry that I was one of the "creepy gay guys" who "flocked" to his blog after his Switch commercial, right in the middle of the period when he was struggling with his sexuality. Oops. Really sorry about that.