August 2004

Glad We’ve Got That Sorted Out

Globe-trotting teacher of English as a foreign language and funnyman ‘Blogger Harry Hutton puts me right over at Chase Me Ladies. It isn’t the Jooos who are to blame for the World’s ills; it’s the Joes. UPDATE: Ever alert, US Homeland Security bans Joes from flying. UPDATE UPDATED: Ted Kennedy is one of the main […]

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Olympics Round-Up

White Russian wins 100m; Black Americans demand recount. South Korean feels similarly as World notes gymnastics judges can’t do sums. To balance the pictures of attractive women around here lately, here’s a link to the BBC’s gallery of Britain’s “oarsome” gold-medal winning rowing crew. And, for all persuasions, there’s always Yahoo’s slideshow of toned, tanned […]

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Questions About Language

Firstly, for the benefit of Jon and other non-English readers, here‘s a definition of “oik” oik n. member of the lower classes of the UK—especially anyone not English—e.g. one who tends to pronounce an (i) sound as (oi) UK Secondly, Norm is both a professor of political thought and a very clear thinker—a dying breed. Today he demonstrates […]

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You May Now Turn Over Your Papers

Advanced Level Broadsheet Columnism: Section 1 Choose any one question. You have 45 minutes to complete and file your answer for sub-editing. How arrogant exactly is George W. Bush? Support your answer with half-remembered things you heard at a dinner party earlier in the week, stereotypes of American people, and two of the following clichés: […]

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Overdue Plug

I should have got round to saying this sooner, but Mick Hartley’s ‘Blog has been even more excellent than usual lately. If you’d like to read some more serious stuff than usually appears around here have a browse.

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Not That Tony

Someone called “Tony” has been posting on Stephen Pollard‘s ‘Blog lately. By his own admission, he is a Leftie, recently turned to the Right by the various mad outpourings of the Left since 9/11. His own opinions also scare me somewhat. I enjoyed this exchange: “Tony”: “It’s reckoned that a stupid proportion (90%?) of crime […]

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John’s On Again

In a time of dying ‘Blogs, it’s good to see that “Dear John“, the ‘Blog of a twentysomething assistant and self-proclaimed “newsletter bitch” to a Labour MP, has returned after a long absence. The proprietor claims he has only one reader—another MP’s lackey—but how could I resist a ‘Blog that has had Geek and Kamm […]

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Chance Would Be A Fine Thing

Today’s main link at the top of the front page of christianity.com says: “Don’t Miss… ‘The Wickedness Of Our Sinful Flesh‘” They are also offering a tape called “Sin In The Camp” for sale, which I think undermines some of those stereotypes of intolerant fundamentalists.

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Retro-Blogging

One day in the nineties, my friend Hind, woke up and left her student house to go for a walk in Oxford. She threw on a sloppy sweater, pushed her hair into something like a do, and strolled up the Cowley Road towards the city centre. Some French schoolkids walked past her. One saw her, […]

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Finally The Vietnam Analogy Comes Into Its Own

A couple of weeks ago Italy beat the USA Olympic basketball team 95–78 in an exhibition match. On Sunday the USA lost 92–73 to Puerto Rico. Click here for an image of seven-foot beige people trying to make sense of the scoreboard [free New York Times registration]. Harry, of Chase Me Ladies, claimed that he […]

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Coming Out

Golan Cipel, the man at the centre of the sex scandal engulfing former New Jersey Governor James E. McGreevey declared to the press today, “I am a straight Israeli.” He continued, “Many people in the World today believe that there is something unnatural about my nationality; some even refuse to believe that citizens like me […]

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Straight Outta Pangbourne

Listening to Vibe in the shower today, I was stunned when Aretha’s “Respect” failed to shame completely the current single that followed it. Cherie’s “Number 1” is sung so well, pumps along so brightly, and is produced so smartly that you’d never guess she was from, er, Berkshire. As is sadly so often the lot […]

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Babies And Bathwater

Bit of a ruckus breaking out in the comments of my jokey “Staff Shortage” post about the cloning of human embryos. I think the two Davids are both right. Yes, I should be cautious about speculation and yes, as a scientist I ought to try to share my understanding of the technology with others so […]

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Bourne Again

I met up with the Anonymous Economist for the first time in ages yesterday when we nipped out for a post-work cinema trip. We agreed that what we saw was excellent, but we disagreed about the title. I think “The Bourne Supremacy” is a terrible name for a novel or a film or even a […]

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Staff Shortage

Bizarrely, someone at the conference I was working at last week walked up to me and invited me to apply for a job here, despite my having told him to be quiet during a seminar that I later discovered he was co-chairing. He’s Australian; they have a different attitude to that kind of thing—and he […]

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Hopelessly Behind

People—especially Adam, Claire and Jon—have been sending me lots of fascinating material and I haven’t had the time to read, comment on, or link to it. I slipped behind on PooterGeek during my ‘Net-less weekend just gone and I haven’t caught up since. Here‘s one from Adam on possibly the nerdiest gathering since the Albert […]

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Leave Me Alone, You Fat Bastard

On Monday evening I took a brief and long-planned break at a busy time to have dinner with friends in a good local French restaurant, Bruno’s Brasserie. The food was excellent. The company was lovely. The only flaw in an almost perfect evening was the nightmare that followed. In it, Michael Moore was firing a […]

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The End Of Days

Dame Edna Everage has a running joke about her having installed her mother in a “maximum-security rest home”. From its external aspect, the second Google hit for the phrase “rest home” could be such a place.

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The B-Team

My life is very dull indeed. This is one reason why PooterGeek is mostly about other people—or just made up. Robert Harris once wrote an article about how the absence of world war had “deprived” his generation of Englishmen of a real heroic purpose in their lives. His father’s peers would tell their children tales […]

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Beebwatch!

Adam proposes a vigil. He asks how long will it take for this Ha’aretz story about Arafat’s latest shenanigans to appear here, where the BBC covers “the Middle East”.

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