Good ‘Blog arguments are interesting because the participants are sophisticated enough to spare each other the usual faulty reasoning and informed enough not to quibble too much about the premises. Because of this, and because the ‘Blogoholics are less likely to be as simply tribal and cautious as politicians, debates on ‘Blog comments pages can, […]
Read MoreAs a follow-up to this, right now I am listening to BBC Radio 4. They are broadcasting a documentary about Switzerland. The narrator has just told me that one third of the Swiss (that’s one third of the 80 percent of residents who have citizenship) voted for a party that produced a poster showing the […]
Read MoreA running theme here is my depression at the state of British sexual mores. (Or it might be my depression at not getting more sex in Britain.) I’m told that sex can be extraordinarily pleasurable and life-enhancing. Unfortunately, having acquired a professional interest in surveys of sexual habits in the early 90s, I can tell […]
Read MoreSomeone on a Gillingham FC discussion board is claiming to be me. He/she linked to this site. Presumably because PooterGeek is less popular than Gillingham I am recording a spike in visitors. For the benefit of puzzled newcomers, I have no idea who “bomber_007” is and no interest in the Gills—and I bet most of […]
Read MoreRelated to my own essay, this week’s Lancet also has an editorial about terrorists and the advantages of keeping genome data free. As you’ll discover if you follow that link from outside a subscribing institution, you can’t read the article, entitled “Keep Genome Data Free”, unless you hand over $30.00.
Read MoreVisits by PooterGeek’s Paris and Manila correspondents to town and my own visits to members of my family and elsewhere over the next few days will intermittently interfere with ‘Blogging. The lesson is: if you want my company, dropping by in person is more reliable than coming to my ‘Blog.
Read MoreEven if you, your father, and your grandfather spent their entire lives in Switzerland you do not automatically qualify for Swiss citizenship. The Swiss voted any change in this and their other naturalization laws down this week. This report on the vote is graced by a poster used in the referendum campaign. The poster shows […]
Read MoreSaturday’s Telegraph magazine’s weekly Social Stereotype invented a media-friendly academic called “Damian”*, so it’s perhaps not the best time to tell you that I’ve been commissioned [dahling!] to do the cover story for an upcoming edition of geek glossy Linux User. It will be an update of this piece about the human genome project(s) that […]
Read MoreLocation, location, location: not living in an area of the World currently suffering under UN monitoring means that these are the two most frightening things that happened to me yesterday… 1. My guitar teacher wants me to learn the off-beat strumming of Supertramp’s Give A Little Bit. To do this I have ripped the song […]
Read MoreTen years ago when I was in a funk metal band called Tick Tick Boom, screaming about terrorists (as opposed to now, making jokes about them on the Web), our terrifyingly loud, half-Indian drummer Neil Kumar cultivated a running gag about how, one day, Frank Sinatra would cover some of our angrier numbers in a […]
Read MoreThe British don’t do dating. They get pissed and shag. Americans do do dating. Here are some pages of advice for women, explaining the elaborate formulae men use to help them decide when to call a woman after the first date. I realise this is of purely academic interest to readers, but here’s how I […]
Read MoreIt was for real. Britney is indeed married. I loved this quote from the songstress: “I believe you can marry in your heart and that means much more than a piece of paper. You can write anything down on paper, but the real truth is love. We know we have that. I’m really upset that […]
Read MoreHollywood nymphets cower in the jungle, vainly trying to hide their voluptuousness from James Brown as he looms in the background, poised for another brush with the law. Is this the best pulp book cover ever? (via the comments of Harry’s Place) UPDATE: Damn! As Dave points out, we’ve been rumbled and they’re blocking our […]
Read MoreI ache to do a Boris Johnson parody, but it is impossible. There is no second-form-at-Greyfriars phrase I could write, no bonkers opinion I could put forward that wouldn’t leave people thinking “that’s probably just a quote from the man himself”. I bet even Craig Brown thumps his head against his writing desk in torment […]
Read MoreTalking of Catholics and movies, Maoi recommends Imelda at “Firecracker Philippines“, the UK’s first Filipino film festival, which runs from tomorrow, Fri 24Sep04, until Sun 26Sept04. The promoters promise “Six of the best recent film [sic] from the Philippines—five of them UK Premieres!”
Read MoreJust back from Leasey’s where she didn’t have to strap me into the harness to watch a chick flick starring Cher. With my psychosexual make-up, the incantation “Winona Ryder plays a Jewish girl who desperately wants to be Catholic” is more effective in overwhelming artistic judgement than “Halle Berry runs around wearing a leather catsuit […]
Read MoreClaire recommended this book to Judith and me today. From the review she pointed us at it sounds fascinating and, as Judith pointed out, one of its themes is one of my long-time obsessions, namely that the the pursuit of happiness is not a right.
Read MoreThe other shocking Today Programme interview this morning was with the normally gelatinous Charles Kennedy, who somehow managed to take a harder line than the BBC on the apparent release of the scientific head of Iraq’s biological weapons programme in an effort to placate murdering terrorists. He even used the words “murder” and “terrorism”. Perhaps […]
Read MoreI used to have a Sega Game Gear.I bought it from an affluent, young family who begged me to take it away from them before it destroyed their lives. They’d got it for their son, who turned out to be more interested in catching toads and sitting in cardboard boxes. Mummy and daddy then became […]
Read MoreThis is a fun, skeptical report on the various genome projects. I didn’t catch it when it first appeared in Ha’aretz: ” The circumstances which led to a visit by the head of the U.S. National Human Genome Institute astonished scientists in Israel. Collins has received many invitations to participate in scientific conferences in Israel, […]
Read MoreOne of the nice things about writing this ‘Blog is that, even on the quietest days, there’s a fair chance that my dad will drop by, so that PooterGeek will get one hit at least. Some of you probably know that he has had radiotherapy this year. Yesterday he was told that he now seems […]
Read MoreListening to Radio 4 this morning I heard Humphrys ask Ehud Barak, “Would it be right for Israel to kill Yasser Arafat?” I almost fell over at the reply, “Arafat is toast.” What Barak actually said was , “Arafat is a terrorist”. Let’s hope anyone who has to translate his words into Arabic has sharper […]
Read MoreMy Palm Pilot doesn’t have enough memory for me to say that every friend of Auriol‘s is a friend of mine, but I’ve added a couple of her family members to the “Friends of PooterGeek” over there → and down a bit ↓ .
Read MoreAnd now long overdue thank-yous to a couple of Tories. Thanks to Anthony Wells, who, I think, is political secretary to Michael Howard. He linked to my post asking Labour voters what it would take to get them to put a cross in the Conservative box. Thanks are also overdue to Backword Dave who drew […]
Read MoreNorm rightly links to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s report on Kofi Annan’s speech to the UN. He might have been prompted to do so by Annan’s elegant rhetoric; he might have been prompted to do so by Annan’s breathtaking hypocrisy. Either way, Norm, doesn’t link to another ABC Website story from that page, headlined “Australia […]
Read MoreI’ve reviewed this book about Google for the UK UNIX Users’ Group. I can’t link to the review because they don’t release the stuff from their magazine until months after it appears in print. In summary, it’s good enough that I would have paid for it if they hadn’t given me a free copy.
Read MoreBackword Dave links to Boris Johnson’s ‘Blog which, like so much else about him, I’m not sure isn’t a pisstake. The real issue is of course his coif. It is not so much that it is silly (though the arrangement of the strands is at odds with reality): it is rather that all the wigmaker’s […]
Read MoreI’d like to read this article, or a xerox of it, at least.
Read MoreOh, Britney! Even The Sun is horrified. Are these pictures of your wedding genuine? Scroll down for the worst of it. [Thanks to Leasey.]
Read MoreAdam spotted this one.
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