Highlights
Count Binface and electoral theatre
Don’t be a costumed loon — It’s trivially easy to stand for Parliament in the UK. Any loon can do so. You need ten electors to nominate you and £500 for a deposit – and it’s actually been getting easier. The deposit was introduced in 1918 (£150 – quite a lot of money then). Before […]
I hate this
But does it matter? — I don’t usually say that sort of thing here. I try to be more measured, less personal. I’m talking about the police face recognition vans obviously. This might not surprise you: I mean that I don’t like them. I’m an old git after all, a man who’s written here before […]
Where is my patriotism?
Come, love of country, fill my heart… — I do love Britain. I guess I love England more. London most of all. I hope that in my life I’ve honoured the place I live and not disgraced it or undermined it (I support England and GB in sporting events – I fly a little flag […]
Browse by year
Latest
-
HTML help!
Can anyone vaguely HTML-literate view source and tell me why the GIF at top right doesn’t display in Mac OS X Mozilla 1.2? It works in Explorer. Apologies in advance…
-
Blogging from my camphone
I wondered if I could ‘blog real life’ from my new camphone. Cynical Matt Jones says ‘don’t hold your breath’, optimistic Azeem Azhar says ‘watch this space’, clever James Cronin…
-
DIY Coffee Table Book
Which brings the number of links on the left of this page to a frightening twenty, if you take into account the two external ones. It is way too much.…
-
Docherty repulsed!
I can’t help but warm to David Docherty’s image of greedy Cookie Monsters spoiling the broadband party for the unfortunate content creators. The geeks, in particular, never warmed to David…
-
Bragg snooze
What winds me up about Melvyn Bragg’s appeal for Ofcom’s scope to be extended to include the BBC is not the sentiment itself, which is unexceptionable. It’s the fact that…
-
dot.com lunacy
During the dot.com boom, some crazy people blew upwards of £5,000 of their precious VC funding on – believe it or not – deluxe Swiss-made professional espresso machines! Click here…
-
Blogging real life
Matt Jones likes hiptop nation. I like it too and, now that I’ve got my MMS camphone, I want to know if I can blog real life. Is this possible…
-
Nocturnal logic
Four O’Clock this morning. Olly, our 4 year-old, wakes for a half hour tantrum. Nothing will quieten him, nothing make him happy. Everything is wrong. Nothing can make it right.…
-
‘Bible codes’ recycled
The very human desire to find pattern in random data – meaning in a cold, unmeaning world – is alive and well. The pop media have decided it’s time to…
-
Essential broadband reading
The clever people at The Work Foundation have done some ethnographic research (the first in Britain, they think) into the use of broadband. Their conclusions are fascinating. In summary, pretty…
-
Wi-Fi in the park
Steve Johnson’s excellent weblog links to a great story in the NY Times about the free Wi-Fi network in Bryant Park. I remember the park as a gorgeous place to…
-
Resource wars
John Gray in the New Statesman says we’re entering the era of ‘resource wars’ and that our starry-eyed faith in technology or in central planning has blinded us to the…