Year: 2003

  • Andrew Graham at The Oxford Media Convention

    Andrew Graham is an economist and Master of Balliol College. His trenchant and entertaining views on media regulation are well known. He famously said that “if you could measure quality…

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  • Pants on Fire

    Simon Hoggart is a treasure and if he ever actually leaves The Guardian the paper will turn to dust immediately. Today’s sketch on Blair’s performance in The Commons yesterday is…

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  • More Hammersley action

    I’m pretty sure that if I ever actually meet Ben Hammersley he’ll be a kind of wild-haired, pop-eyed genius type with a pencil behind each ear and a short attention…

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  • Blockbuster blogged

    Listen, I don’t know much about Cory Doctorow and I haven’t read his book (although I have downloaded it for nothing) but I know for certain that Down and Out…

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  • New Scientist on 2003

    New Scientist’s twelve expected scientific milestones for 2003. The list is behind a log-in but you can get a free trial and, if you subscribe to the print edition, the…

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  • A convention… How grand…

    I’m off to the Oxford Media Convention tomorrow. The theme of the event is ‘Public Service Communications’. If my luvvie credentials were up to date I could probably tell you…

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  • Gibson on Manguel on books

    William Gibson talked to Alberto Manguel about books: I was in a bar in Barcelona, on the Rambla, with Alberto Manguel, just before Christmas, talking, as it happened, about why…

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  • New word of the day

    If you’ve ever used a warm, comfortable, expensively-stocked book shop as a showroom for books you’ll later buy more cheaply online and felt slightly dirty about it, you’ll recognise Mike…

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  • Constitutional vandalism

    Neither side of the row over Universal ID cards is free of contradiction, neither has a monopoly on logic or morality. The pros are (depressingly) allowing narrow political contingency to…

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  • Didion’s lament

    Joan Didion has been the unassailed Queen of the New York liberal elite for decades – essayist, novelist, political commentator. Her latest NYRB piece is hard-hitting but reads like a…

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