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Laws
30 May 2010
Was it the Labour thugocracy using right wing fall guys? Was it the far right shooting itself in the foot? I don’t know but I find it inexpressibly sad. It makes me wonder if politics is possible in the present state if our country.
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iPad 2
28 May 2010
Wow, you’ve got to hand it to the Daily Mail, they can find somebody to be incandescent with rage about anything. Today it’s the iPad. It is odd they missed the angles about this lethal gizmo causing house prices to fall, cancer, waves of illegal immigration and hydrangea blight.
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News of the Future: Coalition Wiped out at Polls
28 May 2010
I am told that a rebellion of eighty Tory rightist MPs against the 55 per cent rule will bring down Cameron-Clegg and trigger an election at which there will be a Labour landslide. Labour, it was said, chose the right election to lose. Hmmm.
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Showdown: iPad Versus the Kiev 4A
28 May 2010
Brand expert – how many of these do we really need?- Simon Middleton says the iPad is ‘a culturally significant piece of kit’. I was going to ask Steve about that when he responded to my email. But I suppose he is busy. There is something Zen about the iPad. What is it for? I mean I want one, but I am an Apple sucker and a martyr to dopamine shopping rushes. But … More
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Oxford Poets
28 May 2010
As for the Oxford Professor of Poetry thing, it is worth glancing through the candidates’ statements. Even if you have not read a word of Geoffrey Hill, I think these would be enough to justify sending a few fire punts down the Isis if he does not win.
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Superstition and Evolutionary Psychology
27 May 2010
There is a fine example of contemporary superstition in a letter in the FT from Maxime Boonen of Pembroke College, Oxford. Boonen says: ‘Evolutionary psychologists in particular have exposed hard-wired differences between men and women and it is not impossible to imagine how those would translate into fewer woman being attracted into banking or finance.’ Evolutionary psychologists have exposed nothing of the kind. Differences between men and women have been exposed for a million years or so. EP has … More
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Canned Crying
26 May 2010
I just came across the suggestion of A.J.Jacobs that sad TV shows should have canned crying just as comedies have canned laughter. It would work for me, but then I cry a lot.
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But in what, exactly, are we supposed to wrap our chips?
26 May 2010
Print, they say, is in its death agonies. In its present form, probably. I suspect – I have long suspected – that it will survive as very upmarket publications full of long reads. I cannot see the survival of either the middle- or downmarket press on newsprint. That is done better online. It is all happening much quicker than anybody expected. Who continues to print will be determined by which brands are best protected. If people like … More
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Chip-Virus-Thingy
26 May 2010
This is a remarkable story because it keeps changing direction. It starts out with scientist being infected by a computer virus, but then, it turns out, he is not infected, an implanted chip is and this can, in turn, infect other computers. Then it drifts into human enhancement – I’m not sure about this leap – then there is possible online access to the implant – eeek! – then it’s back to enhancement of memory and IQ. … More
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Solsbury Hill
25 May 2010
I was not going to blog this morning – too much to do – but, idly caffeinating myself, I stumbled on this. I was struck dumb. This is very odd because Peter Gabriel was never the ‘soundtrack of my life’. I did spend some time with him once in Africa on an Amnesty International world tour and he seemed to be a fine man, but I did not go back and buy the albums. I knew Solsbury … More
- ‘The Markets’
- Dumb Things Said By Philosophers 2
- Andrew Sullivan and Death
- I Am a Camera
- 2689%
- Mick Jagger
- Margaret Thatcher
- For Adam Boulton
- John Gray is Happy about C-C
- The Pause of Ideology
- Jacobean Blood
- The Soul of Ron Mueck
- Extremophiles: Life on the Edge
- The Opposite of Faith is not Doubt, it is Certainty
- David Hare’s Rattigan
- Planet Hunting
- The Once and Future Tee-Mo
- The Truth of Islam
- Soul Searching
- Overthrowing Chomsky
