Monthly Archives: May 2007

A cultural injunction

The Lives of Others is not only a very good film, though I think it would have been better had it ended with the car accident, but it has inspired a remarkable piece of film criticism from Timothy Garton Ash. … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Blather, Journalism | Comments Off on A cultural injunction

It had (haved?) to come

LOLCODE is a much better language than Ruby, and so we need to work hard to make LOLCODE ON MONORAIL the standard web development language! For a stunning example of what can be done with this almost completely natural language, … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Net stories, nördig, Software | 1 Comment

Sodding lolcats

I hate these things, but they are infesting the internet at the moment. Rupert sent me the atheists’ version. Ponder Stibbins has a link to some physics lolcat slogans, I am disappointed that no one there had done the obvious … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Net stories | 5 Comments

Vain echoes, desisting.

I have devoured Zachary Leader’s biography of Kingsley Amis, whom I hugely admire, and I wish in some ways that the book had been twice as long. But any life of Amis must have elements of a temperance tract, and … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Literature | Comments Off on Vain echoes, desisting.

Low thieves

My sister discovered last week she had had her Switch card cloned; at least her details had been used to buy £1500’s worth of goods in a week, none of which she had ordered. We know quite a lot about … Continue reading Continue reading

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You can’t sacrifice a taxi driver

This is what I have decided that the programme I have been working on this week should be called. It is about brain plasticity; in particular the mysterious phenomenon of adult human neurogenesis. For obvious reasons, this is easier to … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Journalism | 8 Comments

Some notes on American capitalism

I wanted a pay-as-you-go sim card. A Radio shack in Greenwich Village offered me the sim on its own for $35 or the sim in a motorola phone for $20. The sheer lunatic profligacy is what strikes one first: that … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Travel notes | Comments Off on Some notes on American capitalism

Why I buy thinkpads

I never know why people buy any laptop that isn’t an ultralight thinkpad. The mixture of light weight, robustness, and service seems to me unbeatable. Until, yesterday, on an aeroplane somewhere south of Nova Scotia, I flipped the thing over … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in nördig | 2 Comments

The blessings of freedom

The Wall Street Journal of all places, has an article about mercenaries which suggests to me that we have made no progress since the Middle Ages at all. Here are the two meatiest paragraphs: Only two contractors out of the … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in War | Comments Off on The blessings of freedom

Another hack at a dead horse

Oh for fuck’s sake Dawkins! “If, as one self-consciously intellectual critic wished, I had expounded the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus, Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope (as he vainly hoped I would), my … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in God | 4 Comments