Society

Collaborators And Fighters

Internet old-timers are not necessarily more polite than newcomers. They do, however, tend to know the rules, sometimes as a result of having been slapped down more than once by even-older-timers. Beginners in online communication often don’t even realise there are any rules at all. Hardcore open source geeks, for example, that is people who […]

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Retroactive

I’m in Dixons Currys.digital, buying a new computer keyboard. What sounds like a competent cover version of Starship’s We Built This City is playing. For a moment I wonder if it’s the start of one of those godawful trance retreads of 80s guitar hits. You know the sort of thing: Owner Of A Lonely Heart/Max […]

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Yes, It’s Bloody Safe

It’s the sound of ball bearings grinding against fragments of broken glass on a wet pavement. It’s being wired straight into my jaw in full-frequency Dolby surround. Yes it hurts, but if I didn’t have a face full of lidocaine I’d be squealing like a pig in a combine harvester. There’s a man with his […]

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The Future Of Darfur And The Future Of The Left

Because of a couple of gremlins over at the Euston Manifesto site we’ve accidentally been turning people away from applying for tickets to our meeting next Tuesday evening in London. It’s free and there will be three speakers on the subject: “Darfur: An Urgent Case for Humanitarian Intervention”. Follow the link to email us for […]

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A Missionary Writes Of The Savages

“I also have a problem with the discourse of planned/unplanned pregnancy in this context. Planned/unplanned assumes young women have agency, that they can choose what happens to them, that pregnancies are either accidents or overtly desired. In fact, for these young women, pregnancy will be one more in a string of things that just happens […]

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The Euston Manifesto

Today, 13Apr06, we—bloggers, academics, campaigners, writers, scientists, journalists, citizens—launch the Euston Manifesto. With this document we hope to publicly assert our progressive, democratic, egalitarian, internationalist principles in the face of recent attacks upon them from the Right and, to our dismay, the Left. Many of us are of the Left, but we come from across […]

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Not To Be Provocative Or Anything…

…but, having read three different people write recently that British ‘Bloggers are united in their opposition to ID cards, I’d just say that I think they will be rather handy actually. I’d like my medical data stored on mine too, if that’s okay with everyone. Not only can I see no sound principled case against […]

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Scroungers!

BLAIR HAS HOSPITAL TREATMENT AFTER PUTTING BACK INTO NO 10 WORKOUT Michael White, political editor Friday May 20, 2005 The Guardian Tony Blair was taken to hospital last night to receive treatment for a slipped disc suffered while working out in the gym in his Downing Street flat. That’s very convenient for a typical bloody […]

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Good Sit-Com Shocker

Clare In The Community is a radio adaptation of a Guardian comic strip about social workers. Given that description, you’ll probably be amazed to read that it’s also very entertaining. Listening to the fifth of six episodes I laughed out loud several times.

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Catching

Scientific American writes about EpiSims, a program that simulates the spread of an infectious disease throughout a population, taking into account the social interactions of the people within it. [via Slashdot] This is a good time to point out that I conflated a couple of different issues when I rambled about the spread of HIV […]

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Bang

I bought a copy of Kate Fox’s Watching The English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour a few weeks back. I’ve not really had time to read it of course. So far I’ve managed three chapters: “The Weather” (which, appropriately, opens the book), “Linguistic Class Codes”, and “Rules of Sex”. It’s pretty accurate so far—so […]

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Starving Children

Because I wanted to experiment with the Amazon developer interface and because I want people I’ve never met before to buy me stuff, I have integrated my US Amazon wishlist into PooterGeek (over to the right and down a bit). A random entry from it should appear each time you reload this page. I also […]

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Big And Dumb

Never go to the supermarket on an empty stomach. As your blood glucose falls, the bright colours and bleeping will disorient you, the myriad choices will overwhelm you, and, worst of all, you will hear the carbs calling, calling. You will leave with enough noodles to start your own Thai restaurant and three family packs […]

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