- Blog
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What was that about a free lunch?
The bad news about hydrogen is coming in. Alex Farrell at UC Berkeley and David Keith at Carnegie Mellon University conclude that the switch to hydrogen will quite likely just displace the production of carbon dioxide, creating as many problems as it solves. Meanwhile, researchers at Caltech reckon the hydrogen itself could produce global warming…
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Is it just because I’m a boy?
Yesterday, somewhere in Kent, a train reached 200 miles per hour. When I was a kid – long before the tunnel – I used to find it exciting to stand on the concourse at Victoria Station and see the exotic destinations on the big board – Moscow, Paris, Vienna, sometimes Istanbul (I had a sheltered…
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Telly events
Are you planning to go to either the Edinburgh TV Festival 22–24 August or to the RTS’s Cambridge Convention 18–20 September? If you are, drop me a line.
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Spoiler shame? Not really.
David Liddiment knows his stuff (and his column is one of the several very good reasons to buy Media Guardian Mondays) but he’s reading the BBC’s mission through the distorting lens of a career in commercial TV. Liddiment says that the BBC shouldn’t run spoilers to obviously commercial programmes on ITV (his example is Fame…
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The wonders of capitalism – or something
I don’t pretend to understand the food manufacturing business at all but this invention – “the first media technology that is put into the mouth” according to its promoters (at the SIGGRAPH 03 conference in San diego) – seems so unlikely and so unsavoury all at once that it must be a pretty good case study…
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Deflation – don’t sweat it…
Brad DeLong (who is, like, you know, the Dickens of economists or something – at least in terms of output – and, as far as I know, is also the only economist who links to this weblog so is obviously all right by me) has a reassuring, post-Moore’s Law take on the ‘deflation anxiety’ afflicting…
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Brands have been wiped out for less
Nike is a big firm and golf is a teeny tiny part of its portfolio but the economic fallout from Tiger Woods’ decision to dump his custom-engineered Nike clubs in favour of some old ones he’s pretty sure are still in the loft somewhere (if his mum didn’t put them on ebay or something) could…
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Holiday diversions, part 1
The Royal Airforce Museum at Hendon is a top day out with the kids – especially now that, like all national museums and galleries – it’s free. It’s a pretty sobering experience too – war is not glorified here (although the ejector seat display is pretty exciting). The most striking thing is how flimsy these aeroplanes…
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Biotech overload
Glenn Crocker in New Scientist says that too many biotech firms are started and too few allowed to go bust when it becomes evident that they’re not going to work. This unproductive layer of dodgy firms with poor products blocks the creation of the next generation of potentially more successful businesses by soaking up scarce…
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No. I do not have a Nectar card
Rachel Shabi in The Guardian’s Saturday magazine has got herself all worked up about loyalty cards and RFID tags. She’s probably right to worry. In the advanced economies we’re consumers first, citizens second. We interact with retailers more than with any other institution. What they do with our data is important but they’re unaccountable and…