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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Following the wrong leader
Peter Preston in The Observer on the ‘
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Tivo has landed
We’ve adopted a second-hand Tivo (why don’t the cable companies launch their own PVR? What’s wrong with them? Do they like being kicked around by Sky?). PVRs are supposed to…
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Lovely money
Lots of handsome Bulgarian paper money from a huge private collection of old bank notes, bonds and so on. Bank note design is a fascinating collision of authenticity (not a…
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A grim kind of hope
Is it perverse to hope, as I do, that the Madrid attrocity is ETA and not Al-Qaeda? If it’s the former, we can expect electoral collapse for the separatists (the…
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Dyson, Diamond, Didion
Two very good reviews from the New York Review. Cheeky polymath Freeman Dyson on the paranormal and trendy geographer Jared Diamond on Easter Island. Two beautifully-written excerpts (first, second) from…
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Transport issues in post oil-crisis urban policing in the United States
Important journalism from Miranda Sawyer in The Guardian (the paper that reliably tackles the big issues). I hate to quibble but, even when I was a kid, everybody knew that…
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Warm white wine, peanuts, outer space, celebrities… Marvelous
The highlight of the week was on Wednesday. First, fantastic French Vietnamese lunch with parent and wife Juliet, baby Rosa, sarcastic artist Paul Murphy and noted author Yolanda Zappaterra (they…
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Pictures to set a small boy’s pulse racing
Lovely 360 degree QTVRs of aeroplanes (and rockets, of course) from the Smithsonian’s collection and a gallery of equally lovely photos of old tractors and trucks from Antique Power and…
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Colour photographs from a B&W world
These colour photographs from pre-revolutionary Russia are beautiful and strange. The Library of Congress has made handsome digital images from the three-part glass negatives left by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, photographer…
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Thank you Faruk!
Andrew Murray at PCM – sponsors of this weblog – delivered my new Mac the other day – my third G4 Powerbook and probably my tenth Powerbook in all. This…
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Elstein on the Beeb
If David Elstein was a standard issue public service bootboy (like Gerald Kaufman) or a free market storm trooper (like Tony Ball) it might be possible to dismiss his report…