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Parliamentary language (again)
Another Wednesday, yet another Prime Minister's Questions. P.M. Blair's favoured word today was absolutely, featuring a total of 11 times:1 x absolutely vital2 x absolutely right1 x absolutely...
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Going nucular
Someone once told me (in the days before it became possible to easily check whether this might be an urban legend) that the Spanish pronounce the letter 'c' as a 'th' sound because there was once a...
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The N-word
Whoops, what happened there, then? Seem to have nodded off during the last PMQs, and woken up in the midst of another Big Brother racism row. And in the meantime, it looks like the Cold War is making a...
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Are we not mammals?
There's been a lot of interest in the Government's proposed legislation to give women the right to breast-feed in public. It's quite astonishing that such a law is necessary. I heard a mother, on the...
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Technical note
In case anyone has noticed that my profile photo disappeared for a while, I've been having problems with my ISP (Demon), who decided to carry out a homepages enhancement program which resulted in my...
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Technical note (again)
Oh what a tangled web... I just realised that my homepages problem also broke the links in the side panel Song For The Day. This is now fixed and, looking on the bright side, I've now got the space for...
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Another week...
...and nearly time for another Prime Minister. I nearly missed it, what with my homepages problem, and trying to make sense of the news (to me) that the closest living relative of the hippopotamus...
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Here comes the flood
For those of you who've still got electricity as the flood waters rise, have a look at this video on YouTube.
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The Politics of Gravity
Not a classic helping of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue last night, but worth it if only for Jeremy Hardy singing the words from Radiohead's Creep to the tune of Grandma We Love You, and Tim...
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Black and white
The saddest thing I read last week was an article in New Scientist about the environmental damage being caused by AIDS in Africa, particularly in Malawi. I spent several very happy years in Malawi;...
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This and that
Sad to hear the news of Tony Wilson's death the other day. I'm sure other people are paying due tribute to him, so I'll just put a track by one of my favourite Factory bands in the sidebar. It's...
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Not this, not that
Good old New Scientist magazine. I've read almost every issue since my school days, and it's one of the joys of my life. It does occasionally veer towards the somewhat loopy (see this criticism by SF...
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Flogging a dead horse
No, not the latest Ebay scam, just me banging on about the sensational reporting of science again. I wasn't the only person blogging about so-called Boltzman Brains (see, for example, John Ratcliff's...
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That's Life
I've never had particularly strong feelings either way about Esther Ranzen, harmlessly entertaining us of a Sunday evening, exposing the dodgy double-glazing salesmen, and Cyril Fletcher with his...
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Can you keep a secret?
An interesting article by Henry Porter in Sunday's Observer. He writes about how, hidden in all the froth of electioneering and policy stealing, the government has quietly introduced the extended...
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Universal disasters
Poor old blog's been a bit neglected of late, so it's about time for some more witty and incisive posts. I've been busy converting my website to deliver its media content with Microsoft's new...
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Review Of The Year
A mixed year, I'd say, 2007. Ups and downs in unequal measure. Here are some of my annual awards.Political Coup Of The Year: a closely fought contest that should have been won by elegant French...
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Lost and found
Here's a little story with a happy ending, for a change. I lost my car keys yesterday. Well, to be accurate, it wasn't me who lost them, the real culprit knows who she is, but anyway, the keys were...
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Lost in France
Occasional will be even more occasional for a while. I'm off to sling my hammock between a couple of trees in a French forest; I may be some time. Contact with the outside world will be courtesy of the...
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Online again
Sitting in La France Cafe, downtown F'bleau, marvelling at the wonders of WIFI. On the other hand, it's costing several Euros per hour for parking, plus 3 Euros per coffee while I'm writing this. I...
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Chapeau!
After many years of visiting France, and living here for two years, probably the most important advice I'd offer to prospective travellers in this fair land would be to avoid at all costs any...
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Things fall apart, the Centrino cannot hold
Catastrophe in the forest. My laptop's frites. Well, almost. I can run it in emergency mode, with Windows operating at the very end of the autistic spectrum. Like an autistic Spectrum in fact.This is...
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Catastrophic numbers
Interesting, then, to be in at the end of Capitalism. If I'd been asked, I'd have guessed it might have staggered on for another decade or so, but... what do I know?A few months before he died, in...
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Figures of authority
Today's figure of authority is 500,000,000,000. The UK authorities tell us that this is the number of pounds required to rescue our banks from meltdown. The authorities in America decided that their...
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Blackadder lives
So, we're going to spend our way out of recession by commissioning lots of new nuclear weapons and battleships. Or, rather, the Government is, using our money. Brilliant, Darling! Even more cunning...
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