September 2008

How I Became A Blogger

My getting into this game had nothing to do with some kind of 9/11 epiphany. No, it was the insanity of the property bubble that started me writing spoofs and screeds on the Web, originally at the excellent, skeptical, principled, and free Motley Fool UK site. I retired from posting on its “Property: Markets and […]

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Palin Derangement Syndrome—PalinDrome?

You could argue that Mick Hartley won this game when he collected Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal. from The Huffington Post, but I think quoting Naomi Wolf is cheating. Here’s a good one from yesterday’s International Herald Tribune. Roger Cohen writes: From an inspirational notion, however […]

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How iRoll

Some time back, I raved about the freedom my fat, ugly iRiver gives me compared to an iPod. Now you can make your iRiver free-er or liberate your Apple MP3 player with the marvellous new version 3.0 of Rockbox, the open source firmware replacement. It works with lots of other models of portable music jukeboxes […]

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Bloke-tastic!

And now a post combining football and science: Imagine a robotic David Beckham six times smaller than an amoeba playing with a ‘soccer ball’ no wider than a human hair … with all of the action happening on a field the size of single grain of rice. Yes, it’s “Nanosoccer“: [S]occer nanobots, operated by human […]

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“That they may see your good works”

I like that one of the authors of this US paper describing gene therapy to restore sight in sufferers from a rare form of blindness, itself a refinement of a treatment first given in the UK, is called “Elizabeth Windsor”: “One of the patients said that the dim red light from his alarm clock had […]

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If Only They Could Both Lose

I have been known to have fun at the expense of Chelsea and Manchester United on this site, but following their meeting yesterday, it’s time for me to invite my reader to extend some sympathy to the latter at least. Watchers of Premiership football who value the contribution to the league of Manchester United’s modest […]

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Timing

This afternoon, I walked through my door and picked up this week’s local free newspaper, The Brighton and Hove Leader. Amongst the insert spam included today was a glossy advert for Forbes TV rentals, inviting me to hire a flatscreen TV in time for the Beijing Olympics 2008 and a brochure inviting me to come […]

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Special End-Of-The-World Science Edition

Years ago, PooterGeek featured the “Exxxtreme Mini-Bears”, tiny, hardy, beautiful living creatures called tardigrades. Turns out they are even hardier than thought. Some of them can survive being sent into space. The “TARDigrades in Space project is, of course, going by the acronym “TARDIS”. How long before the BBC sues? This is also a lovely […]

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Temper Temper / Pro Tempore

I keep meaning to write something about the response of the liberal Left media to the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States—there are parallels with the way parts of the Right responded to Bill Clinton’s sexual incontinence—but, as I bring my fingers to the keys, I […]

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Question Time

I’ve just had an email from Yvette Cooper. My first thought was: “Bloody hell, after all these years!” Then I remembered that, since leaving college, I have become a washed-up nobody and she has become a member of the Cabinet with two houses—both of which I am paying for. Not that I’m bitter. Coincidentally, property […]

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He Came From Planet Bathos

Some might question my claim to geekhood on the grounds that I have never read Tolkein or Herbert. Frank Herbert’s Dune is frequently described as the best science fiction novel ever. Over the past few weeks I have been reading a little bit more of it every evening before going to sleep. Whatever else it […]

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