A. N. Wilson has been writting cobblers for years. What disturbs me now is that The New York Times seems to be willing to pay him to write cobblers in its pages. Over at Tom Hamilton’s place there’s some more nonsense from Wilson.

While you’re at Davos Newbies, I also recommend that you read the proprietor’s extensive quoting of Matt Mullenweg, one of the creators of the wonderful WordPress software that I currently run most of my blogs on. Like using his software, reading his words is rewarding and won’t cost you a penny.

Social networking technologies have become useful and successful. As I’ve pointed out before, now that the money has arrived and something else geeky has become fashionable, ignorant people are popping up everywhere in the media to dismiss or hype those technologies. The bubblers pollute the debate with the sort of “leveraging your mindshare for global customer buy-in” gibberspeak of bullshitters who can’t set up a deckchair, never mind a Webserver, but who charge thousands to talk the same crap in glass-walled corporate meeting rooms.

In other news: I noticed that there’s an ad in this week’s Economist inviting applications for the position of Chair of the Treasury Statistics Board—three-days-a-week: £150K—it states: “You need not be a professional statistician”—and, if you can watch Flash video, then this clip about “The Human Cost of Immigration” should make you laugh too.