Year: 2004
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Kids love stories more than they love toys
A copy of Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar is sold every 57 seconds. That makes it the best selling kids’ book of all time. Who knew? We like it…
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Outstanding
Measuring value-for-money on a scale of 1-10, this Neal Stephenson interview (conducted by the Slashdot groupmind) approaches infinity. A generous, clever and funny man. Thanks to practically everyone for the…
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Seeking smokers…
This sad-looking (and slightly out-of-focus) TV crew were standing in Carnaby Street lunchtime today and – I kid you not – as I passed them I heard the reporter say…
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Dandy lives
It definitely cheers me up to learn that The Dandy has not only survived for seven decades (longer than any other comic) but has now emerged confidently into the glossy…
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Weird American politics and technology standards
In the current NYRB Joan Didion mixes bile and incision beautifully in a long and detailed analysis of the simultaneously etiolated and hyped-up language of ‘the new normal’ in post-Iraq…
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What’s the opposite of sustainable software?
Government IT projects are out of control. That’s a given. 30 billion quid is a lot of money (for something visible from space it would be a lot of money…
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Britain’s only PHP celebrity
A productive day in town – meeting with interesting people: lunch at Blacks with my lawyer, top secret discussions with a Guardian journo in Farringdon, a chance meeting with a…
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Jacques the clown
Wild guess: Jacques Derrida, demon of empiricists and humanists (and newspaper editors) everywhere, will, now that he’s gone, quite soon be reduced to a cuddly, French caricature – a sort…
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Brands brought low
Crass television advertising is not dead. In fact we seem to be enjoying a renaissance. To begin with, there are the braindead sponsorship ‘bumpers‘ (I think that’s what they’re called)…
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Murphy and Pope
A week ago, Paul Murphy took Ivan and myself on a tour of his favourite East End art galleries. Of course, this involved walking past quite a lot of my…