brand new capybara

Two or three things randomly collected together:

* The Amazon Fire is out and has been thoroughly reviewed. Andy Ihnatko always does a good job on these matters and his review is chatty but thorough. (The Fire is a lot more open than I predicted. You can indeed load the Hulu+ and NetFlix apps on it, plus other apps to let you play content not natively supported. It also offers the 'Mantano' app that will let you read EPUBs. Good news if you want a tablet for half the price of an iPad - and you're not planning to use it as a laptop replacement.) review.

* I know everyone in Britain has had something to say about Jeremy Clarkson's recent remarks and the furore they've caused but I wanted to add my 2d's worth. First off, my favourite quote about the whole thing was from the brilliant Ben Goldacre who said, "Complaining about Clarkson expressing an offensive view is like complaining that the wheels just fell off your clown taxi." (source). Despite my politics being at the other end of the spectrum from Clarkson, his comments didn't bother me at all - in fact I think he's an appalling, but extremely funny man. But I experienced severe embarrassment listening to union leaders and other left-wing stalwarts calling for punishment, legal suits, sacking, etc; Left vs Right is not supposed to be two random teams scrapping. It's supposed to be about principles. The left is supposed to remember that free speech is vital to their view of the world and that the only reason that strikes aren't banned by the state is because enough people stood up for the right of union members to express their views and grievances in the form of protest. You don't get to call a strike and then demand someone else be dragged into court for making a joke you don't like. Locking people up for inappropriate humour is the sort of thing I'd hope unions campaigned against not for.

* Interesting newspaper article: "Publishers and designers have reacted to the rise of ebooks with exquisite new releases and revamps." source

* And finally, does anyone need to look at pictures of new-born zoo animals? Here's the place: zooborns.