Year: 2007

  • More twitter notes

    UPDATE: This post recently passed its FIFTH BIRTHDAY! Twitter is a simple application with one real function: notification. Twitter posts are called ‘updates’ (or sometimes ‘tweets’). People use Twitter to…

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  • Widows

    Three weeks ago my Mum lost her husband. That makes her a widow. She’s joined the universal club of the widows. The thing about widows, once you notice, is that…

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  • The inevitable Twitter post

    I’ve been twittering for a couple of months now. I’m not actually addicted (I could give it up any time) but I’m up to a couple of hundred updates and…

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  • A dictionary of my Dad

    Last Wednesday my dad, George Bowbrick, died. He died in a hospital in Dublin a week after we learnt he had a bone tumor and a secondary lung cancer. He’d…

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  • Those dictionaries

    A list of the 55 dictionaries that I found amongst my dad’s books when he died. Back to my blog post about him. Dictionary of Gastronomy Collins Cobuild Dictionary of…

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  • Radio twittering

    Be my Twitter friend if you want to know what I’m listening to on the radio. I know I’m always going on about BBC Radio 4 here: ‘jewel in the…

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  • Playing in the road

    Yesterday the suburban street outside our house was closed all day. It’s a busy road so the contrast with an ordinary day was pronounced – the silence lovely. We all…

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  • What I have learnt about Iran lately

    Iran is not monolothic. The country is (weakly) democratic, has a (partially) independent press and a (moderately) autonomous judiciary. Dissent and criticism exist. Iran is not entirely Shia. Nor even…

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  • Better than reading the menu

    You mean your club doesn’t have a dirty great, broadsheet- sized, full-colour intellectual quarterly? Really? Mine does. Clever Giuseppe Mascoli, who’s been sprucing up Blacks in Dean Street a bit…

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  • Think before you sign that petition

    I like road pricing but it’s a big, important policy and – inevitably – it’s a proper curate’s egg. To start with we need to understand what’s good and what’s…

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