February 2004

Traditional Bloggy Self-Pity

I have a cold coming on so this link is a prediction as well as a survey result. By the way: send me some real email, tight-lipped ones. I haven’t had a proper message since Friday. Don’t you people love me any more? I can’t find all this time-wasting content on my own, you know.

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Another Cat In A Hat

Judith will like this one for two reasons: it’s about Lyle Lovett, in typical New Yorker style the article uses the word “début” and retains the e-acute. The New Yorker is probably the last popular magazine in the English-speaking world where the editors insist on the diaeresis (not umlaut) in “cöoperate”. The Lovett article comes […]

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The Price is Right

I was chatting with Leasey over lunch about house prices yesterday (as the English do, just after they’ve finished discussing the weather). They are in the news again. What does this mean “on the ground”? Well, I found this bargain for a start. A quarter of million quid for a converted garage in Peckham? I’ll […]

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Hound Dog

At work today, Wiqqi and I had a chat today about the ongoing Goodhart debate. (Is there a reasonable Left liberal case for arguing that multi-ethnic societies are inherently divided?) Then we pondered the question of exactly how mad Muammar Gaddafi, the Michael Jackson of World heads of state, is. (Does this mean Kim Chong-il […]

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Spies Like Us

Claire‘ll have a thing or two to say about this one. Katharine Gun, formerly of UK snooping centre GCHQ (direct descendant of Bletchley Park), has been acquitted of charges under the Official Secrets Act, having told the World that the US had asked the British to tap the phones of representatives of anti-Iraq war countries. […]

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Artistic Licence

You have probably found it difficult to avoid some knowledge of the Paris Hilton affair, even if all you’ve heard about it is from spam offering you the “full, uncut version”. You only need a superficial idea of what she got up to with her boyfriend and a video camera to find this one of […]

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Conspicuous Contempt

Murph comments on the “Conspicuous Compassion” question over at Oliver Kamm’s place. I think he’s Australian. He’s probably not English because he is so in touch with his feelings. According to Murph, Diana Spencer was “a selfish simpleton and a tart”—and as for anti-war protestors: “[M]orons. Never have I seen such a sorrier pack of […]

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Spring Is Early This Year

It’s a certain person’s birthday today, but in the fortnight leading up to it everyone I know has been giving birth. Congratulations to Matthew and Jenny for Douglas, Nicholas and Hind on Adam and Patrick and Catherine for Joshua—the last two within 48 hours of each other this weekend. I have a feeling there will […]

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Boo Hoo

Never mind testing children for the use of recreational drugs. How about testing them for the use of recreational grief? “Ooh evil BushHitler is going to kill all the little Iraqi children so he can steal their oil. We have to bunk off school to stop him!”

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Made-Up News?

The Sunday Express has been claiming that Osama bin Laden and his sidekick, Mini-Me, are trapped in an area of 100 square miles by UK and US special forces. No one else seems to have picked up the story, except to hold it at arm’s length.

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Oz-fest

I went to an excellent farewell do yesterday evening to say goodbye to J-FK before she flies off to run Australia. Our foursome took a corner of the huge table of guests at a Korean restaurant on the Holloway Road, just a stagger from Highbury and Islington Station. Airport has a lot of friends who […]

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Modern Pop Is Rubbish

Things are so bad with British popular music that even my dad has noticed. He watched The Brits and actually took the time on the phone to point it out to me. This article in The Times [sorry, you foreigners will need a subscription] points it out too, ironically by harking back to the days […]

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“Next!”

If Drudge is finally telling the truth about the affair Kerry didn’t have and this profile is a fair summary of the candidate, then George W. Bush’s presidency is so over. Here’s the first retrospective: “GWB: bad for the U.S.; good for the World”.

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Just Like Us

Ultimately, the goal of the work I contributed to in my Master’s thesis (1996) was to find a new computational technique for examining 3-D images. With it, psychiatrists would be able to detect variations in in the structure of human brains (in something called their “torsion”) and identify schizophrenics without having to dissect their heads […]

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Holy Fucking Hell. What Next?

I should introduce this one by pointing out that, a couple of years ago, having read an excellent article of Prof. Jardine’s about a piece of science history that interested me, I contacted her to ask if she would be interested in working with me on something related. She might not have received my email, […]

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The Undoing of Dean

Claire joins in Judith in the Democrat-bashing by pointing me at this Christopher Hitchens piece in Opinion Journal about Howard Dean. From the quotes and reports I’ve read so far I have to admit I don’t feel any wish to defend the faltering ex-frontrunner in the race for the Democratic nomination.

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