Monthly Archives: May 2008

Some weeks the bullets come thudding in

And this has been one of them. I just heard from one friend that she has been diagnosed with MS in her very early thirties; another writes this afternoon to say that his ex, with whom he shares the custody … Continue reading

Posted in Blather | Comments Off on Some weeks the bullets come thudding in

The things that Telegraph readers say

Perhaps by coincidence, Damian Thompson was very quiet for a couple of months after I wrote about him reproducing a neo-nazi propaganda story on his Daily Telegraph blog, though he did ring up to say he would never speak to … Continue reading

Posted in British politics, Journalism, War | 6 Comments

Against Eric Hobsbawm

It is a dangerous thing to disagree with Steven Poole, but I think his defence of Hobsbawm’s Stalinist account of Eastern European history is just plain wrong. Hobsbawm wrote, in a lecture for Amnesty, Since the life-and-death struggle of the … Continue reading

Posted in British politics | 6 Comments

Random notes

Everything seems to be running fine to judge from the error logs: a few robots complaining that they find themselves hors texte, a place that structuralists believed could not exist; I have meanwhile been running around when not writing nonsense … Continue reading

Posted in Blather, Net stories, Software | 2 Comments

Robert Harris’s “Ghost”

I read this last night in one gulp, which shows the essential virtue of his writing. The story, for American readers, concerns Adam Lang, a Labour ex-prime minister who is holed up in Martha’s Vineyard with his wife and dwindling … Continue reading

Posted in British politics, Literature | 3 Comments

Your data is safer than you think

In a story at once grotesque and astonishing, it turns out that one of the hard drives on the Columbia shuttle which blew up with the loss of the whole crew in 2003 has been treated by a data recovery … Continue reading

Posted in Net stories, nördig | 2 Comments

The Telegraph brings news

I hope it’s not going to be another summer when the Daily Telegraph is the paper that knows what’s going on. I don’t mean that its reports are true, but that they are uniquely informative because they tell us what … Continue reading

Posted in War | 2 Comments

Raptor ready

I’m pretty certain I saw a peregrine falcon yesterday, even though we are on the limits of their range as reported by the RSPB: in any case, a fairly large falcon with pointed, scimitar-shaped wings and a long, largely straight … Continue reading

Posted in Blather | 2 Comments

Oh Frabjuous Day!

Susan McCarthy, sumac on the Well, has started a blog. She is a wonderfully shrewd and witty observer of animal behaviour, not least when the animal in question is H. Sapiens sapiens though in her hands the second sapiens is … Continue reading

Posted in Journalism | Comments Off on Oh Frabjuous Day!

more feedback needed

I think I have changed the feed links over. If you get this in an rss reader, then your transfer to the new blogging system has worked. Please drop something in the comments to say so: obviously I can’t ask … Continue reading

Posted in Housekeeping, nördig | 12 Comments