A little while back, someone linked me to the Geostationary Banana Over Texas. I thought it was just a Web meme / bit of conceptual art fun. It turns out it’s both of these, but it’s also a real project to launch a gigantic inflatable banana into orbit. It’s worth reading that article right to […]
Read MoreThe previous post included my first paid link to Amazon. In future, when I recommend a book or CD or DVD here I’ll link to its Amazon page. I always used to do this anyway because it was convenient. It also happens that I am a frequent Amazon customer and that their service has always […]
Read MoreUnder the headline COME ON, LET’S GET IT RIGHT ABOUT THE LEFT yesterday’s Observer prints letters both pro and anti the thesis advanced by Nick Cohen’s What’s Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way (excerpted at length in last week’s edition of the paper). One letter in particular made me smile: [Cohen]’s caricature of the ‘liberal-left’ […]
Read MoreI’m taking a few days off from blogging because I’m busy so I will leave you, as always on such occasions, with one of PooterGeek’s famously hilarious repackaged jokes. But first, this is perhaps a good time to link to one man’s account of his attempt to go without the Net for a week: Day […]
Read MoreEarlier today I linked to a picture of a cat in a box before linking to a picture of a cat on a man’s hat. That was before I discovered this animated image of a cat clinging to Jeremy Paxman’s hair.
Read MoreVia things magazine, I discovered an article in the Archinect about how when the people of the virtual community Second Life are given freedom to build whatever they want they recreate suburbia.The author of the piece broadcasts his own prejudices. I hate shopping as well, but I winced at this: [L]ike most utopias, [Second Life] […]
Read MoreI’m not going to reproduce it here, even as a thumbnail, because (as you can see from the discussion underneath) the creator of the image wouldn’t like that, but at the end of the following link is a lovely photograph. I like it and I am not a cat lover. Do read the photographer’s description […]
Read MoreToday, via Photo Matt, I discovered a phrase that I wish I had known about years ago: “The adage, “Why should I care what color the bikeshed is?“, means: just because you are capable of building a bikeshed does not mean you should stop others from building one just because you do not like the […]
Read MoreYou can download a series of Glasgow University lectures about Kant on MP3.
Read MoreRemember this place? Yesterday I’m in there and a middle-aged white bloke in a cravat is sounding off at the (Gujarati) proprietor as the nearest consultable expert on the question of contemporary Indian pulchritude. “Everybody says that one on Big Brother is beautiful, but I’ve seen better. She’s very pale skinned. I wonder if she […]
Read MoreWhen I used to work for the Medical Research Council, I did my best not to bore people with it on this site. I took up the name “PooterGeek”—ironically, the suggestion of a summer student—so that when people searched for my name on the Web they would find biomedical publications to download rather than movie […]
Read More[A New England meadow. A delicately beautiful Indian woman in a simple smock dress picks daisies with which to decorate her hair.] INDIAN WOMAN [singing to herself as she gazes into the forest beyond]: “बिछड़े अà¤à¥€ तो हम, बस कल परसों,” “जियूà¤à¤—ी मैं कैसे, इस हाल में बरसों?” “मौत न आई, तेरी याद कयों आई?” […]
Read MoreFriends have told me that my obsession with freewill and my belief that there is such a thing as evil are products of my Catholic upbringing. They are, in fact, products of personal experience and of a long, dull training in human biology. I know people who simply do not believe in evil. They are […]
Read More[Brace yourself, dad.] I’m shopping around for a colocation service—crudely, a secure shed with a big pipe to the Net where I can install a server. As you’d expect I’ve been checking out local companies. One I won’t be using is Intramedia. The front page of their Website is dominated by what I suppose I […]
Read MoreBarack Obama has registered to form a presidential exploratory committee.
Read MoreGo away. I have a cold.
Read MoreJeremy Paxman gets hate mail from BBC viewers who incorrectly believe him to be Jewish. Christopher Hitchens claims to be Jewish, but his brother Peter claims not to be. Most people assume Nick Cohen is Jewish, but he says he isn’t. Several of my best friends are Jewish. If I keep fixing their computers for […]
Read MoreTalking of recycling, it looks like producer Timbaland has some explaining to do to a Finnish computer musician about a backing track that Mr Land laid down for Nelly Furtado. [The previous link goes to YouTube, but you can follow these links to MP3s of the tunes.] There’s something amusing about a deep-voiced multimillionaire hip-hop […]
Read MoreI’m busy so, instead of writing my own stuff, I’ll just point at the efforts of some other bloggers. This at Fisking Central is a point worth making over and over again: Utopia doesn’t refer to a better world; it’s used to describe a perfect world. Belief in human perfectability—and its accompanying rejection of all […]
Read More…what about the shocking behaviour of Australian cricket fans?
Read MoreMy niece spent most of the holiday either (briefly) naked or (for the vast majority of the time) dressed in one of her hideous Disney-licensed “Princess™” costumes. For the family photographer this was deeply, deeply frustrating. Here’s the best I could do under the circumstances. I took these on black-and-white film of course. You’d scratch […]
Read MoreiPHONE: Hi, Steve. Who do you want to talk to today? STEVE: I’ve told you before not to say that. iPHONE: Sorry. My little joke. Who should I ring? STEVE: I’d like to speak to my broker. iPHONE: Are you sure you want to do that? STEVE: Of course I’m sure. Don’t get sma… Just […]
Read More[Warning: This post is slightly geeky.] I have to clean up and transfer all my mobile phone contacts from my old to my new phone before I move to a new provider tomorrow—thereby saving about two-thirds on my mobile bill. For Friends of the Geek (and clients) reading this, my mobile number will remain unchanged, […]
Read MorePart of my exercise warm-up is my brief run from my flat to the gym. A short distance from the front door of the club I begin walking cautiously to avoid being run over by a Mercedes or Jaguar whizzing down the drive. We are currently in the season of the resolutionists so, even during […]
Read MoreGermany has the lowest birthrate in Europe. Luckily, help is at hand.
Read MoreIt hasn’t been publicised, but there’s a new Euston Manifesto blog running alongside the existing site. The blog collects items of interest to signatories and supporters of the manifesto and invites civil debate about them. So far posts have been contributed by Jeremy Brown of Who Knew?, Alan Johnson of Labour Friends of Iraq, Jeff […]
Read MoreOver at my other blog I’ve been writing about touching up women, and summarising what I learned about photographing weddings from watching Armageddon. The latter has proved to be popular with outsiders so I am linking it from here for those who aren’t regulars at The Wedding Photography Blog. I don’t mention it there and […]
Read MoreI used to tithe a proportion of my earnings to Oxfam. At least three friends of mine have worked for them. One of them wrote the organisation’s first official monograph on the genocide in Rwanda. I stopped giving Oxfam my money when they sent me junk mail inviting me to invest in a so-called ethical […]
Read More
Recent Comments