This must be the most ridiculous excuse for an act of brazen cowardice ever concocted:

The cruise liner captain accused of abandoning ship after he struck rocks off the Tuscan coast last Friday has reportedly claimed he was unable to lead the evacuation because he slipped and tripped into a lifeboat while helping passengers leave the stricken vessel.

During a three-hour hearing on Tuesday, captain Francesco Schettino said it was an accident that he left the Costa Concordia, according to La Repubblica [...]

"I tripped and I ended up in one of the boats. That's how I found myself in the lifeboat," said Schettino. "Suspended there, I was unable to lower the boat into the sea, because the space was blocked by other boats in the water."

The Guardian's take on the story (from which the above quotation is taken) is here.

I finished Mr Barnes' Man Booker Prize winning novella last night and have a couple of questions that I thought I might get answered sensibly here.

I'll stick them in the first post so that there are no spoilers on the main blog page. Please avoid the thread if you don't want to know any more about the book.

Is it just me or has the level of swearing increased markedly on the site recently?

I'm no prude, and swear quite a bit when I'm out and about with mates, but a number of times recently I've winced on reading a thread and stumbling across, in particular, the c-word. It just seems so unnecessary and, to be honest, it makes me feel uncomfortable.

The first point in the posting guidelines on the website FAQs says:

we're a community of many types of people, who all have the right to feel comfortable and who may not think what you think, believe what you believe or see what you see. So keep things clean (like Brian Clough said: no swearing, gentlemen, please), friendly, and polite.

Do others agree? Or am I on my own with this? If the latter is the case, I guess I'll just have to carry on wincing.

It would seem that Primal Scream aren't happy at Home Secretary Theresa May's walking off stage to the sound of their track Rocks at the Tory Conference yesterday.

Here's their statement:

Primal Scream are totally disgusted that The Home Secretary Theresa May ended her speech at the Tory party conference with our song Rocks.

How inappropriate. Didn't they research the political history of our band?

Hasn't she listened to the words? Does she even know what getting your rocks off means? No. She is a Tory; how could she?

Primal Scream are totally opposed to the coalition government, Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Howard, Clegg etc. They are legalised bullies passing new laws to ensure the wealthy stay wealthy, taking the side of big business while eradicating workers rights and continuing their attacks on young people, single parents and OAP's by slashing education and social security budgets, and persecuting the poor for being poor.

We would like to distance ourselves from this sick association.

The Tories are waging a war on the disenfranchised, They are the enemy.

Primal Scream

Whatever their view, it does seem a bizarre song for May - or more likely her 'people' - to have chosen: "Dealers keep dealin', thieves keep thievin'", and all that.

Sigur Ros are currently giving away a free MP3 of Festival from their soon-to-be-released Inni live DVD/CD/download.

Available here, I think...

Bloody England middle order collapses. Honestly, they're hopeless.

From 596-3 to 613-6 in five overs...

I realise that I'm on a hiding to nothing here posting a black and white picture of an Arsenal squad with some actual trophies, but either these boys are tiny, or those are bloody big shields!

Blimey.

If the jailing of Charlie Gilmour seemed a tad harsh to one or two of the massive, what will they make of this:

A man who threw a plate of shaving foam at News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch has been jailed for six weeks.

Jonathan May-Bowles [...] was sentenced at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court. [He] was ordered to serve three weeks in prison and pay a £15 victim surcharge and £250 costs [...]

Sentencing May-Bowles, district judge Daphne Wickham said the aim of the attack was to disrupt proceedings, which were "of huge importance" [...] Mr Murdoch would also have experienced a fear of injury as he did not know what was in the pie, she added.

"This is a parliamentary process, which - as you know - conducts itself with dignity and in a civilised fashion," said the judge. "Everybody else in the room expected that, with one exception - you. You attended those proceedings with only one intention, to disrupt them."

Let's just hope that the judicial system is equally harsh on those who sanctioned, conducted and paid for the hacking of people's voice mails.

Domino Records are currently giving away a free sampler album as an MP3 download via Amazon. The tracks included are:

1. My Girls - Animal Collective
2. Silver Spell - Sons And Daughters
3. DNA - The Kills
4. Blackout - Anna Calvi
5. Stillness Is The Move - Dirty Projectors
6. Love Cry - Four Tet
7. Becoming A Jackal - Villagers
8. My Propeller - Arctic Monkeys
9. County Line - Cass McCombs
10. Albatross - Wild Beasts
11. All Come Down - Steve Mason
12. Bubble (single edit) - King Creosote & Jon Hopkins

I've got a bit of an oddity with my iPod. A quick Google has revealed that I'm not alone, but I haven't yet resolved the problem. So I thought I'd turn to you guys to see if any of you have a solution.

I'm running iTunes 10.4, on a Mac, and using an iPod Classic 120GB. Every time I sync the iPod I get a message saying 'The iPod "[iPod name]" cannot be synced. An unknown error occurred (13014).'

I've looked through the various support communities and done as they've suggested: switched off Genius, restarted my Mac, done a "soft re-start" on the iPod, changed the USB cable, but the message still appears. The bizarre thing is that the iPod clearly is syncing (track counts are being updated, newly downloaded tracks on the Mac are being added to the iPod, etc.), so it's more of annoyance than anything else. However, I'm a little concerned that it's symptomatic of a bigger issue.

So... does anyone have a tried and tested solution to this problem?

Thanks in advance.

Adele - 21
Anna Calvi - Anna Calvi
Elbow - Build a Rocket Boys!
Everything Everything - Man Alive
Ghostpoet - Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam
Gwilym Simcock - Good Days at Schloss Elmau
James Blake - James Blake
Katy B - On a Mission
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - Diamond Mine
Metronomy - The English Riviera
PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
Tinie Tempah - Disc-Overy

Apparently Michael McIntyre likes Adele and Stewart Lee's a Gwilym Simcock fan...

It's PJ for me.

"The Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has resigned over the phone hacking scandal."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14180043

Where's it all going to end?

That's what The Guardian is suggesting.

[Clears throat nervously and shuffles feet]

Ahem.

I know we've been here before, several times in fact; and I know it's kind of rude to come on here and criticise the magazine; but...

...the cover to Issue 101: it's really not very good is it? An illustration that requires a note to explain who it is? Oh dear.

There's yet another bloody Joy Division / New Order compilation out in a week or so. Has a cash cow ever been milked so completely dry?

This one's called Total: From Joy Division to New Order and the tracks included are all the usual suspects, with one exception. The album's USP is the inclusion of an unreleased New Order track, Hellbent, from the Waiting for the Sirens' Call sessions in 2005. The track has been posted to New Order's Facebook page and is also out there for not entirely legal download, or so I've been told...