Monthly Archives: July 2004

Cheese dispatcher?

One mysterious detail in a recent local court case. A Londoner was caught at the security in Stansted airport with a cosh, a knife, and teargas spray. The cosh and the teargas, he said, were left over from his evening … Continue reading Continue reading

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Surplus energy detected

Charles Arthur has a blog now. Continue reading

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The government inspector

It’s about 20 to 1 in the morning. I just got back from the Rada production of The Governent Inspector, and it is wonderful. Anyone in London this week really ought to try to get tickets. It’s a student production, … Continue reading Continue reading

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Who needs more?

The discussion about text editors made me wonder what more one needs. What should a writer’s word processor do? Never crash or lose work. Move and delete words, sentences, and paragraphs. Transpose letters. Count words. File plain ascii copy without … Continue reading Continue reading

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Geek test

Do you use Notepad in windows? This one question will establish anyone’s geek factor almost at once. 80% of the computer using population won’t even understand the question. These people are not geeks at all. In fact it may be … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Software | 14 Comments

suicide and comments

Here’s the Worm’s Eye for this week, since I had two really thoughtful letters, published as comments. Walking the largely deserted streets of Jerusalem you have plenty of time to reflect that suicide bombing is an extraordinarily effective weapon. It’s … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in War | 1 Comment

This isn’t true

Adair Turner, criticising John Gray’s Straw Dogs, wrote in Prospect: mankind’s development of larger brains several hundred thousand years ago was a product of natural selection, pure and simple. But once the accident occurred, man was blessed or cursed with … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Science without worms | 4 Comments

A universe of pedantry

I was enchanted by the obituary of Robert Burchfield in the Times, which contained one paragraph that let you peek through the keyhole into worlds of unimaginable drudgery. The parentheses surrounding it were the visual equivalent of a pleasurable sniff. … Continue reading Continue reading

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I will be serious

Just not now … Having written two Very Serious Leading Articles with only a column on the morality of suicide bombing to go to today I found myself on metafilter, where a story about a mechanical circumcision device was accompanied … Continue reading Continue reading

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five minutes’ hate

On May 29 2003 I found a bug in OpenOffice, and submitted it in proper form: if you are moving through text by sentences — and the ability to do this was the first thing I liked about the program … Continue reading Continue reading

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