- Blog
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Why I’m getting lots of extra traffic (and still won’t be buying any Google shares)
Bowblog’s site traffic has nearly doubled in the last few weeks. I’d like to think this has something to do with the sustained wit and verve of my writing but I’m afraid it’s almost all to do with this entry, in which I dole out free worthless investment advice to people thinking of buying Google…
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The return of Shock and Awe
I remain (queasily) supportive of the overall aims of the invasion of Iraq and even (implausibly) optimistic about the likely outcome but I’m certain that AC130 gunships, first used to terrorise civilians in Vietnam, subsequently improved upon in Grenada, Panama and GW1, are not the kind of weapon an occupying power should be using anywhere,…
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Management lessons from Ramsay and Blair
I always had Gordon Ramsay down as a superannuated Sunday Supplement wanker. Tonight I saw the first of his Kitchen Nightmares on Channel 4, in which he was parachuted into Silsdon in Yorkshire to fix the unfixable – a diabolical restaurant/bar called Bonaparte’s. Inevitably, he failed, and Bonaparte’s was shuttered by the end of the…
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Sharing recipes
Foodster is a lovely idea but shouldn’t it be a Wiki?
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On two wheels
If you’re a parent (or if you’ve ever been a small child), you’ll understand the significance of this picture. Olly, 5, learned how to ride his bike without stabilisers. We missed out on our soft-focus moment of parental joy, though (“You won’t let go will you Daddy?”) because Olly somehow figured out how to do…
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Misguided spam warrior
If you’re the Northern gentleman who calls me on my mobile at all hours of the day and night (01:15, Saturday morning, for instance), withholds his phone number and then asks me “how’s the spam business, Steve?”, I’d like you to know the following (I figure you’re clever enough to find my mobile phone number…
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Big journalism
Vintage Vanity Fair this month (May). Great pity you can’t get this stuff online (can you?) – you’ll have to buy a copy. Dominick Dunne forgives Martha Stewart (he’s a friend of hers and attended the whole trial); Bryan Burrough, Evgenia Peretz, David Rose and David Wise closely examine the gruesome Bush administration’s rush to…
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The New Localism
Alan Milburn, proper Blairite (retired), has got the faith (you’ll need to have a FT.com subscription). He thinks Labour’s third term goal should be ‘subsidiarity‘. He wants Labour to embrace decentralisation, devolution, community-level decision making and law enforcement and all things modishly grass-roots – ‘the new localism’ he calls it. Of course, I think he’s…
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Do me a favour, Ms Figueroa!
The sainted geeks at Google want to read your email and embed relevant ads in return for 1GB of free storage. News at 11. Sounds like a pretty good trade. We planned to do exactly this at another.com (which was, as I’m sure you’ll remember, the UK’s number one email service for a heady year…