Highlights
Nearly half a bicycle
The atomic theory in Kilburn — This place (on Kilburn High Road) has been morphing steadily from dry cleaner’s to bike shop over the last few years. I remember being surprised one morning to see a few kids’ bikes lined up for sale outside but I’d say the shop is now approaching 50% bike shop. […]
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 […]
Some bullet-points about regulation
In case you’d got the wrong idea about how the ’regulatory state‘ is supposed to work — UPDATED 23 May 2025. I could update this thing daily. Regulation is always a news story in the UK (Search any news service for ‘regulation‘ right now and you’ll get a long list of current news stories about […]
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I think I invented Reality TV
At the end of 1996 I made a presentation to a TV conference and I filled it with screenshots from a new webcam site that everyone was talking about called…
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Pop culture gewgaws
Over in Hackney (London’s Brooklyn), at the trendy Transition Gallery they’re developing a nice line in twenty-first-century wise-ass barrow-boy pop culture irony. In fact, I think Transition is likely to…
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Borrowed beliefs
So it turns out that Michael Howard’s ‘beliefs’ weren’t borrowed from a tea-towel or a greetings card motto or the dreadful ‘desiderata‘ at all, but from the grimly pompous words…
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Howard’s desiderata
Michael Howard’s sixteen beliefs, published today, read like a National Trust tea-towel with an unsavoury, neo-liberal edge – Max Ehrmann’s syrupy, ubiquitous desiderata rewritten by Keith Joseph – the kind…
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Should have gone to Spec Savers
I was looking for the CAF web site, which is at http://www.caf.org.uk and came across this handsome page at http://www.caf.org.
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Bam, World Heritage Site
Heartbreaking photographs of beautiful, pre-quake Bam (link from Bruce Sterling). Two-thirds of these buildings have been flattened by the earthquake. As I write the apparently well-organised Iranian authorities are announcing…
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New York City and all-you-can-eat
I wanted to write about eMusic six weeks ago, when they switched off their all-you-can-eat subscription package ($9.99 per month for unlimited downloads) but I waited for some press coverage…
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High Street Showbiz
The Economist on the future of retail – playing out in a mall near you if you live in the United States, ever the over-heated laboratory for this kind of…
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Go on. Buy my old stuff
You’ll be wanting one of these – a bargain-priced super-compact, Nikon APS SLR. Ideal Xmas gift. I still think APS (Advanced Photo System) is pretty neat and this camera is…
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Archiving Al-Qaeda
Speaking of hijacking license payer-funded audio, I learnt a huge amount from this 13 minute, middle-of-the-night gem at the weekend. It’s one of the World Service’s ‘Instant Guides‘. This one’s…