Spam—email spam, link spam, splogs, social media spam—is evil. I waste too much of my time dealing with it. It was inevitable that this Wired article about a new search engine would intrigue me: [T]here’s a new search engine in town that’s got a fresh approach to weed out the ever-proliferating junk and spam sites […]
Read MoreThe first is at Freemania: The really important thing about Iraq: us Today Gordon Brown gives evidence to the Chilcot inquiry. This weekend, amid violent attacks on polling stations, Iraq holds an election. I wonder which will get the most coverage? The rest of the world exists primarily as a mirror for us. The second […]
Read MoreMillions of Britons are refreshing PooterGeek every other minute in the hope of reading my views on the issue of the moment. I am pleased to bring your wait to an end: it’s “Damian” with an ‘A’, not “Damien” with an ‘E’. Get it right.
Read MoreI’ve been reading “a blog from the back room” and “Conor’s Commentary” for a few months. Now I’ve added them both to the roll here.
Read MoreHere are two I enjoyed: Hopi Sen’s “What would Bertie Wooster do?” and The Daily Mash’s “Government takes 60% stake in Al-Qaeda”: The prime minister said : “We must ensure that, as an institution, it continues to provide a useful, ongoing threat without actually blowing things up.” The Daily Mash is a free online site. […]
Read MoreMy getting into this game had nothing to do with some kind of 9/11 epiphany. No, it was the insanity of the property bubble that started me writing spoofs and screeds on the Web, originally at the excellent, skeptical, principled, and free Motley Fool UK site. I retired from posting on its “Property: Markets and […]
Read MoreHarry’s Place is down because of a threat of libel action. The Ministry of Truth has the details. This will turn out to be a good thing, because the University and College Union, an organisation whose representatives seem unfamiliar with the way the Internet works, will soon learn the meaning of “The Streisand Effect“.
Read MoreRecently, I was listening to a Marvin Gaye track via last.fm—is it just me or has their sound quality improved lately?—and I noticed this at the top of its user comments: white person wearing chinos on cruise ship LOVES THE BLACK MUSIC Which immediately made me think of Stuff White People Like, a blog that’s […]
Read MoreOne of the nicest things about blogging is being able to congratulate other bloggers on (what you believe to be) good blogging, so it’s unfortunate in a way when you are seen as part of a gang because, if you congratulate another supposed gang member, then doing so looks like cliquey back-slapping. Worse, if the […]
Read MoreI have to accept that the fine blogs “Let’s Be Sensible” and “The British Bullshit Foundation” are never coming back. In their respective market niches, PooterGeek now links to “Right Next Time” and “Sadie’s Tavern“. Don’t let me down, people. I’ve also made the following long-overdue additions: Paul Anderson’s blog Gauche, David Thompson’s, er, David […]
Read MoreIn the space of a few days, My Scarlett Johansson post has become the subject of a round of Bloggese Whispers. First, Clive Davis linked to my “review” on his Spectator blog. One of God’s little jokes is that Clive Davis, London Times music critic, shares his name with Clive Davis, US record producer, executive, […]
Read MoreI’ve converted the archives of Jonathan Derbyshire’s old Typepad blog and built a new WordPress site for him at jonathanderbyshire.com. Update your bookmarks and blogrolls accordingly. (You can email him at that new domain as well.)
Read MorePooterGeek is now running version 2.5.1 of WordPress and has a new theme, officially “PooterGeek 4.0”. (I’d planned this makeover long before the Harry’s Place mob moved into their nice new place and the redesign of their site was not my work, but I congratulate them on their choice of blogging software.) Most of my […]
Read MoreTom Hamilton complains about being spammed by Naomi Klein’s people, looking for publicity for her latest volume of designer politics. (Exactly as I didn’t with Peter Cook’s book back here, I am going to divine without reading it that Klein’s book will be rubbish.) From Tom’s comments, it seems, they also pestered Tim Worstall, Mr Eugenides, and […]
Read MoreWhile I’m away, you might want to read Let’s Be Sensible‘s “science” round-up and a couple of posts at Mr E’s place. This one is about a news story that highlights the absurdities of religious schools in England and Wales and this one is about the latest Conservative Party screw-up. When they do get rid of Cameron as […]
Read MoreLast week I discovered JasonHare.com, a blog full of trivia about the sort of music that only kids in high street electrical shops will admit to liking. Hare is obsessed with 80s cheese and soft rock. There are eleven mulleted musos visible on the current front page alone. It’s brilliant.
Read MoreEver found yourself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with something on career Conservative Iain Dale’s blog? Under a photo of Sierra Leoneans queuing to vote he writes: This is the picture that should shame 39% of British adults … Why is it that 39% of people in this country at the last general election […]
Read MoreOver the past few days I’ve been busy. I’ll continue to be so over the next few days. Here are quick links to some of the things that have caught my eye lately. Following up my recent post about David Cameron, not only were the voting slips in yesterday’s Ealing Southall by-election labelled “David Cameron’s […]
Read MoreI write short posts. Much goes unsaid. I often write ironically. Some subjects are better approached that way; or it’s just more fun for me to tackle them sideways. What I do say, I say in plain English in the hope that my words at least are clear to everyone who reads them. Reading Norm […]
Read MoreI left The Observer on the shelf at the supermarket yesterday because it had another load of bollocks about MMR and autism on the front cover. Around the blogosphere, people who A) know some science and/or B) can be arsed to use Google show the newspaper’s science editor how to do his job: lizardoid Eustonian […]
Read MoreSome new blogs on the roll here: Vic, Brighton & Hove resident and occasional PooterGeek commenter, has her own place now, called The Stopping Service. On the political side of things, I’ve mentioned Conservative Home here before and both Political Betting and Polling Report are also well worth dipping into. Lastly, I have added Martin […]
Read MoreLast Friday I found myself stuck in a room in a Cambridge college waiting to do a photo job so I took Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations down from a shelf and, as an intellectual dwarf perched on Hindsight the Giant, sneered at it. Certain things he said appear absurd in the light of certain experimental […]
Read MoreAfter this, Hamer Shawcross goes onto the ‘roll.
Read MoreDave lives in Brighton and has a blog and I think I’ve been out for a drink with him—or rather his posse—on a couple of occasions. The only reason I know he has a blog is that he recently commented on Andrew’s. When I found Dave’s site I had a browse and found that he […]
Read MoreDespite my general slackness, the Wedding Photography Blog is now in the UK top ten for the search terms “photography blog“. Thank you to everyone who helped to put it where it is. People are therefore now offering me stuff (including hard cash) in return for my linking to them, but I am, for the […]
Read MoreI’ve added Olly’s Onions to my blogroll. Recently I enjoyed these posts from the site.
Read MoreYESTERDAY EVENING: I’m outside the House of Commons with Bloggers4Labour supremo Andrew Regan, his sister, and another friend. We’re on our way to Andrew’s [very successful as it happened] Labour blogging meeting in one of the Commons committee rooms. As you’d expect in these Times Of Terror, every visitor gets scanned and searched. Naturally, I […]
Read MoreTom Hamilton’s blogging has been particularly good lately, ranging from the Devil’s Chaplain to the Devil’s Kitchen. I recommend his excellent posts about Richard Dawkins—oldie and goodie—and his fine, if less taxing, fisking of the most superfluous blog in existence not written by someone called Brittany: hoisting out the middle wicket and scooping up an […]
Read MoreHaving enjoyed “Guido Fawkes’s” (dis)appearance yesterday evening on Newsnight over my lunch today, there’s only one thing I’d change about my post on political blogging from last week: I’d call it “Squeaky Man”. I recommend this Google Blogsearch as well. In particular, whilst ranting about Tories, “Hamer Shawcross”, another anonymous watcher-of-parliament, captures something of Fawkes’s […]
Read MoreTo date, most of the political blogs that employees of the old media have paid attention to have been noisy, gossipy, and abusive ones. This makes sense: the people in the media who read them also tend to be noisy, gossipy, and abusive. Such sites don’t threaten the old order and the blogs’ proprietors are […]
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