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Live at the Bucklebury Beer Festival, The Mini band, with Zoe Thomson and Harry Jackson on lead guitars, Kieran Fell on Rhythm, Harrison Read on lead vocals, Archie Zolotuhin on Bass and Charlie Emmons on drums.

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Scientific research has firmly dismissed the “porn causes harm” myths, with the publication Scientific American recently reporting on a number of studies that seemed to show the opposite – that porn use is correlated with positive outcomes. In the UK, researcher Clarissa Smith has studied the effects of porn over 20 years and has come to similar conclusions (her research is soon to be published).

So, game over for the puritans? Of course not; freeing sexuality means less money for religions that reap the benefits of sexual guilt; there’s also money in selling “cures” to the (probably imaginary) ailment of porn addiction and writingbooks about the evils of pornography.

With the election of a Conservative government in the UK in May 2010, the New Puritans saw new opportunities. Claire Perry, a right-wing MP, began a parliamentary enquiry into “protecting children online”. Simultaneously, a Christian lobby group known as the Mothers’ Union began a media campaign to convince people that children were being “sexualised”. This was a good, old-fashioned attack on “permissive media”, packaged into a fancy new term. Pretty soon, even level-headed people were believing that children were being “sexualised”, without any clear idea of what that meant. So far, so predictable.

Then it gets weird; David Cameron appoints an “expert” to carry out a review into sexualisation; this expert is none other than Reg Bailey, Chief Executive of the Mothers’ Union. So without public consultation, representatives of the religious right are writing policy proposals at the request of the British Government. In response to this absurd coup, the media outcry was… non-existent.

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The latest measure was announced this week when the government came to an agreement with large ISPs that consumers would be asked whether they want the ability to see porn when they sign up for a home Internet connection. This is done in the name of “protecting children”, although filtering solutions for children already exist (and have done for many years), and the effect of blocking an entire household can only be to prevent adults from watching porn. Although the measure is voluntary, there have already been attempts to stigmatise parents who are too “permissive” with their children; Clarissa Smith (mentioned above) says that parliamentary committees are already talking about “bad parents” who choose not to block porn to their household. Undoubtedly the next step will come when religious lobbyists report to MPs that parents are (shock, horror) choosing to remove the ISP block and watch porn in their own homes. Homes that have children in them!!!

To be fair, if would-be parents refrained from all forms of sexual activity, the danger of children being exposed to unsuitable sexuality would almost entirely be erased.

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Technology codes our minds, changes our OS. Apple products have done this extensively. The video shows how magazines are now useless and impossible to understand, for digital natives.

On the bright side, think of the good ignorance: She is too young to regard Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo as famous because they are Ninja Turtles.

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The tributes to Dennis Ritchie won’t match the river of praise that spilled out over the web after the death of Steve Jobs. But they should.

And then some.

“When Steve Jobs died last week, there was a huge outcry, and that was very moving and justified. But Dennis had a bigger effect, and the public doesn’t even know who he is,” says Rob Pike, the programming legend and current Googler who spent 20 years working across the hall from Ritchie at the famed Bell Labs.

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Work IDs are required to walk down Wall Street. Apparently the street is now private. #OccupyWallStreet

pick up that can!

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It’s now been three weeks since the extraordinary news that neutrinos travelling between France and Italy had been clocked moving faster than light. The experiment, known as OPERA, found that the particles produced at CERN near Geneva arrived at the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy some 60 nanoseconds earlier than the speed of light allows.

The result has sent a ripple of excitement through the physics community. Since then, more than 80 papers have appeared on the arXiv attempting to debunk or explain the effect. It’s fair to say, however, that the general feeling is that the OPERA team must have overlooked something.

Today, Ronald van Elburg at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands makes a convincing argument that he has found the error.

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From the above screen shot, dear Microsoft, I can safely assume that you haven’t got a clue.

Best quote: “Search engines should be replaced with answering engines”….

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One of the wives of polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, who is currently serving a life sentence for child sexual assault, has escaped the confines of the isolated Arizona community where his 85 other wives live.

Arizona authorities have said that the 25-year-old woman who fled the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which was led by Jeffs, is now undergoing counseling and psychiatric care at a women’s shelter. She was reportedly barefoot when she was found.

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Los Gatos, California (CNN) — A line began to form at the Apple Store here on the eve of the iPhone 4S release, as is often the case around the world during the company’s product launches.

At the front of this particular line Thursday, Steve Wozniak sits in a Pico armchair, sipping Diet Dr Pepper and scanning e-mails from his white iPad.

The Apple co-founder, who gets a paycheck of “a couple hundred dollars every two weeks” and still maintains his status as employee No. 1 in company records, hasn’t been able to stay put for long. Crowds of Apple fans, family friends and people who have seen him riding his Segway around the neighborhood stop to say hi, take pictures and ask for his autograph.

“I’ll be taking a thousand pictures,” Wozniak whispered with a smile. “I’m going to sit down and see if I can get a little e-mail done, because there’s no way I’m going to get it all done today.”

Seconds later, an enthusiastic man in a yellow polo shirt positioned his two kids near the computer legend and pleaded for him to pose. Wozniak immediately sprang to his feet with a grin on his face.

People brought iPhones, iPods and iPads for Wozniak to sign with a marker. “Now your phone is not going to be worth as much when you sell it,” Wozniak said to one woman before signing her iPhone 4.

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A series of corruption scandals revealing the close ties between politics and business has shaken Austria. Entrepreneurs have allegedly received multi-million commissions for non-existent services, and there are reports of cash-stuffed plastic bags changing hands in Vienna’s back alleys. The population is losing faith in the political establishment.

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A hearing Thursday in California in front of U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh addressed a request from Apple to ban the sale of Samsung products, including the Galaxy S 4G and Galaxy Tab 10.1, in the U.S. Koh’s comments at the hearing bring both good and bad news for Apple’s position in the case.

First, Koh said that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets do infringe on Apple’s patents related to the iPad, according to Reuters. It seems like a damning statement, but Koh also said that Apple might have trouble establishing the validity of the patents in question. In order for an injunction to be granted, Samsung’s products must both infringe on Apple’s patents, and said patents must be found to be valid.

Koh said she would tentatively be denying Apple’s request for an injunction based on claims related to one of Apple’s “utility” patents, but did not state at the hearing what her determination would be regarding three other patents at issue related to tablet “design,” so an injunction could still be on the table.

In a tweet from the proceedings, Reuters’ Dan Levine said that Koh “held both tablets above her head, one in each hand,” and “asked Samsung lawyers to identify which was which.” Levine said it took Samsung’s legal team “a while to do so.” This, and repeated references made by Koh about how “similar” the Apple and Samsung tablets appear could indicate that she feels Apple’s “design” patents have more validity than those related to “utility”.