Category Archives: Blather

But my ignorance of vegetables is unbounded. A friend gave my wife a chili bush of some sort, which was planted in the garden. It has small white star-shaped flowers, and bears these fruits: They are surprisingly hot. But does … Continue reading → Continue reading →

It’s that time of year: this winter’s colours come from a summer evening on the Vindelälv. It’s the first time I have managed to do a light-on-dark design that looks good to me1 and, as always, the trick is to … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This is a test, probably of very little interest to anyone but me, of a blogging button for Openoffice, that will send the current document up to an MT blog, using Textile formatting, and making the headline automatically from the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

James Surowiecki reports that there is a serious movement in some American states to suspend all “gas” taxes until — well, I don’t know, because things are never going to go back to what was normal in 1999. There used … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I have a sort of review of John Battelle’s Google book up at the First Post, which is an interesting shot at a commercial site run by two real journalists (and old colleagues) Mark Law and David Jenkins. I’ve also … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Yesterday was Uttlesford Council’s diversity day, with a fete in the grounds of Audley End house. There was a fair cord and I did see one black person there. Though there are four or five whom one sometimes sees shopping … Continue reading → Continue reading →

via John Naughton, I see that there’s a very lucid piece by Geoffrey Hodgson on OpenDemocracy.net arguing, as I did a couple of entries down, that we should blame the system for the failure of government, not just the Bushies. Continue reading →

P. Smirnovsky’s A Textbook of Russian Grammar is obviously a book that should be written, even if P. Smirnovsky is unable to undertake the task because he is dead, or possibly never lived. This week’s “Author, Author” competition in the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Marlborough College is trying to expel a boy merely for being thick and unpleasant. Perhaps you had to have been there to understand how absurd this is. It’s like being thrown out of Big Brother for being a shallow exhibitionist. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I was in the middle of a post this morning about the man who sells accordions from his post office when the Internet vomited me out like an unclean thing. Then the electricity failed for ten minutes; and after NTL … Continue reading → Continue reading →