From Dead Air by Iain Banks:

'I believe in truth,' I told her. She was smiling a little now. I was making a complete idiot of myself but I didn't care any more. 'There; I said it. I believe there is something pretty damn close to objective truth more or less all the time and I'm not accepting this shite about everybody having their own truths or respecting somebody else's opinions just because they're sincerely held. The Nazis sincerely hated the Jews; they weren't just kidding. I'm not respecting their fucking ideas just because they were deeply held. I believe in science, in the scientific method, in doubt, in questioning, in facing truths, not hiding from them. I don't believe in God but I admit I could be wrong. I don't believe in faith at all because faith is belief without reason, and reason is the only thing we have, the only thing I do believe in. I think people have every right to believe in anything they want, no matter how ridiculous it might be, but I don't accept their right to coerce others into the same views. And I certainly don't accept any right they might think they have not to have their views challenged just because they're going to feel peeved in the process.

Comedy Tour!

The Comedy Estonia tour is back!

Come see me (and a bunch of other funny guys) perform at Vilde in Tartu on the 6th and 7th of September, at Drink Baar in Tallinn on the 8th, and at Manala in Helsinki on the 9th!

Feel free to come up to me after the show and say hi. I'll be the one in the awesome hat.

Click-to-summon

Don't you just love "experts" who are not just consistently wrong, but remain wilfully ignorant?

Forgive me for feeding a troll, but I understand that my readers rather enjoy this kind of thing. Was pointed to an article by someone purporting to be an economist.

Well, as I told John at the time, the Estonian case is a complex one, since in a country with only just over a million people a myriad of special case factors can be at work, confounding results.

Well fuck me sideways with a chainsaw, Edward, but wouldn't it just be swell if an analyst publishing long-winded treatises full of graphs actually took the time and effort to investigate these special factors, and contemplate their effect on the model he's trying to apply? All the more so after admitting his previous predictions have been wrong?

Yes it's a... wait, what?

Can you tell what it started life as?

Latvian junkies + custom bodywork = annoying insurance claim. (I'm told that it is almost impossible for BMW owners in Riga to keep their mirrors, even in secure parking lots.)






Couple more old submissions, these were right next to the car registration agency's office in Tallinn.