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 […]
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Mars please…
Oliver Morton, who wrote the excellent Mapping Mars, says in Wired that we should scrap the shuttle and head straight for Mars. I’m in.
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Google hacksI blogged Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest’s Google Hacks at the weekend and decided it was important enough to write up properly for ‘Bowbrick at Large‘ at Guardian Unlimited.
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Innovation in weird snacks
The ingenuity of British manufacturing industry continues to impress, even if its timing doesn’t. The FT reports on an upmarket extension to the defiantly trashy Pot Noodle range from Unilever…
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Shelter brands?
Leica offers hope for stick-in-the-mud analogue brands. The gorgeous MP rangefinder camera is packaged explicitly as a device for digital refuseniks – ‘100% mechanical’ boasts the brochure. Jean-Jacques Viau, marketing…
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False alarm
Friday we spent some time at the lovely Watford General Hospital mentally preparing ourselves to meet our (third) baby about six weeks early. In the end we were sent home,…
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refrigeration figures
From a feature about low-tech refrigeration for rural Africa in The Ecologist I learn that “refrigerators and freezers account for 25% of the UK’s average household electricity bill” and that…
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Tangled web
Andy Rowell and Jonathan Matthews in The Ecologist have done some forensic Googling to uncover an unsavoury and potentially deceptive (but not surprising) pact between the former Living Marxism entryists…