October 2006

Another Positive Review

A month or so back I was in the farthest darkest reaches of Hove, Actually (practically in Portslade, for the locals reading) having a repair done to my car. While I waited I wandered into a new café called “Intenso”. It’s an unlikely outpost of another Intenso in Ibiza—though not so unlikely with the weather we’ve […]

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Weirdy

Over the past week or so I have grown a beard. I’m going to chop it off today, but it’s not bad as beards go: short, thick, dark, and slightly curly, with flecks of grey in it. It’s grown while I’ve been locked indoors doing Web design on my Sepial site. The design isn’t even […]

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Revealing

Today, unique visits to PooterGeek have been cruising at the elevated level of 50-plus an hour. Why? Because this site has just entered the top ten on Arabic Google for the search term “boobs“.

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PM at EM

Today, Tony Blair, or “The Tonester” as I call him at our weekend soft rock jam sessions, writes for the Euston Manifesto Website. As an experiment I’ve opened a Euston Manifesto forum where you can tell him what you think of what he has to say about public service reform—on a day when the biggest […]

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The Age Of Beige

Thanks to my dad for telling me about this article in yesterday’s Observer sports section about mixed race sportsmen. There’s lots of pointless hand-wringing about the phrase “half-caste”, but it’s interesting otherwise. During the rise of Tiger Woods and around the time this hit the headlines I used to joke with a colleague who was […]

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Heeling Power

Also thanks to Brian, I read this amusing post about “dressing for success” by the Bellocianly named Penelope Trunk. If that’s the kind of stuff she can’t fit into her upcoming book then it might be one of those rare business publications I might choose to read for pleasure. (The Economist doesn’t count.)

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The Motherland

Brian Micklethwait has a post up about Sierra Leone. It’s opposite of the sort of thing many of journalists would write about the place, being politically incorrect, interesting to the casual reader, and crude but accurate—as opposed to sensitive but misleading. It’s the sort of summary of the place you might get from a mate […]

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My Kind Of PR Professional

I don’t believe that depicting Steve Irwin as a two-dimensional cartoon figure wandering around Hell with a stingray barb sticking out of his chest is admirable (or particularly funny or insightful satire), but I admire South Park‘s spokesman for his response to those who feel it to be disrespectful to the recently deceased TV wildlife-taunter […]

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Penis Size: A Scientific Study

Further to this, this. METHOD: To study the effect of penis width vs. length on female sexual satisfaction, 50 sexually active female undergraduate students were asked which felt better, i. e., was penis width or length more important for their sexual satisfaction. RESULTS: None reported they did not know, or that width and length were […]

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Consulting Intelligence

Thanks to the Anonymous Economist for sending me a copy of a New York Times article that highlights some of the monumental point-missing of the current debates about (for example) Iraq and the War on Terror simply by asking a dumb question. CAN YOU TELL A SUNNI FROM A SHIITE? By JEFF STEIN FOR the […]

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In Our Defence

Shuggy is complaining about Norm’s and my spelling of “defence” as “defense” and Christopher Hitchens’ spelling of “labour” as “labor”: Lenin does it. So does Pootergeek. As does Norm. Politically different, yet the same problem; they all spell ‘defence’ with an ‘s’. Which is an Americanism. I’m happy for the Yanks to do this but […]

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Indenture

Norm writes: Defoe appears to bite Mascherano, and Martin Jol says it’s only a nibble. And that’s a defence? Surely a man of Prof Geras’s erudition has heard of “the Chew-backer defense“?

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Pre-Numptial

Close friends of multi-hundred selling music legend Pete McDoherty expressed their concern today at his plans to wed one-nostrilled supermodel and charity campaigner Heather Moss. “I’ve nothing against her personally,” claimed a member of McDoherty’s inner circle, “but Moss has a reputation for marrying a certain kind of man and you can see why a […]

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Advertisement I Saw In A Post Office Window Today

GOT A TINY SPARE ROOM? EARLY-RETIRED TEACHER (MUSIC AND ENGLISH) WOULD LIKE TO LIVE IN IT IN RETURN FOR ANY COMBINATION OF THE FOLLOWING: CLEANING, SHOPPING, DOG-WALKING, COMPANIONSHIP, LIFE COACHING, LIFE COACHING FOR VEGANS, LIFE COACHING FOR CRICKETERS, PIANO OR ORGAN TUITION, ENGLISH TEACHING, HELP WITH DYSLEXIA, ETC, ETC. [FOLLOWED BY CONTACT DETAILS]

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Personal Messages

A warm “welcome back” to Amsa, Gravesend’s best-looking resident. Paulie, your blog ate my Collymore comment. I would love to visit Portsmouth, but I’ll have to be invited first. Trevor in Sheffield, a man in a long coat will bring you good news of a distant relative.

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…Then There’s Mike Selvey…

…who is usually as reliable as that bloke in the green polo shirt down your local in providing some lazy assessment of the day’s most widely discussed sporting matter. Today he manages to cram ten clichés (two, possibly three, of them misapplied) and three uses of the phrase “in terms of” into a half-page article […]

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But Someone’s Got To Do It

I couldn’t be bothered to fisk that nonsense about the “future evolution” of humankind that was all over the media this week, merely dropping it into my “Pseudoscience” and “Tin Foil Hat Wearers” blog categories in passing instead. Luckily we have P Z Myers to do the job properly.

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New Feature

Up there ↑ you should now be able to see a tab labelled “comments”. Click on it and you will visit a funky new page of the latest discussions on this site. Each link from that page to a given comment becomes paler grey the more time has elapsed since that comment was made. This […]

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Good Apples

It would be so much easier to dismiss The Guardian if it didn’t employ some excellent writers. Its television critics, for example, are usually more entertaining than the programmes they review. The reason I still buy the paper on Fridays is because the “music” part of the film and music supplement actually covers popular music […]

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Gissa Job!

Wondering why I’m blogging regularly again these days? I have gone from two months solid with photography assignments to two months of none at all. If you want to book a bargain shoot then now is your chance. I took these photos on Saturday at my last gig, a naming ceremony in the Scented Garden […]

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Bugs In The Attic

Via Hak I learn that Madeleine Bunting is resigning as Director of Demos because “her vision for Demos is incompatible with that of the trustees”. Apparently “[Bunting] has decided to focus on her interests as a writer and a thinker”. Since my vision for the Rosalind Franklin Centre for Genomics Research proved incompatible with that […]

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Ungentlemanly English

A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the accordion but doesn’t. Gentlemanly English is when you can read Martin Amis without resorting to a dictionary, but people are unaware of this fact when they read your own writing. Gentlemanly English is when you have a knighthood and a seat in the Lords, but […]

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Proprietary

I’ve met and had a couple of interesting conversations with the Director of the Oxford Internet Institute so I’m sure he’s sharp enough to appreciate the irony of his compiling a list of Internet research centres, along with links to them, and then posting this collection to his blog as a Word document. Perhaps the […]

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Another Career Change

Do you think it’s too late for me to hang out in an African children’s home in the hope of being adopted by a superstar? Despite his best efforts Derek was unable to get all of Damian’s hair in frame. For some reason I am reminded to tell you that Our House gallery in Brighton […]

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The Beige Shall Inherit The Earth

I was going to dismiss this article as cobblers until I read this bit: Within a thousand years, humans will evolve into coffee-coloured giants between six and seven feet tall, [Oliver Curry] predicts. Improved nutrition and medical science will see people growing taller and fitter, while life-spans are extended to 120 years. Women … will […]

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A Combination of Biblical Awfulness

I do like it when I find an interesting discarded section of a newspaper that I haven’t read: the Friday film and music supplement or the Saturday review from the Guardian for example. I didn’t notice it at the time, but last Saturday The Guardian printed a review by Douglas Hurd of a book about […]

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Hollywood Boobs

During our Keira-frenzy, I forgot to draw attention to the photoshoppery that accompanied one of her earlier “historical” movie romps. Check out her amazing inflating chest [safe for work]. Also on Defamer you can watch Mel Gibson’s TV confession. What he did was wrong and he doesn’t pretend otherwise. It’s toe-curling stuff, but you can’t […]

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