Claire sent me this one. I’m not going to tell you what to think. If you find something familar about the text, you do; if you don’t, you don’t. Either way, it’s chilling history.
Read More12Jan05 — 3
History
16Dec04 — 0
Random Jottings
I am pulling out of the Genome Campus when I notice the car in front of me has a registration which is just a couple of characters away from spelling out “deontic”. First I think, “A near miss like that’s a bit of a shame.” Then I think, “Yeah, but what is the size of […]
Read More01Dec04 — 2
Six Degrees Of Time-Wasting
I suspect that, “beta” release or not, I am late to the wonderfully odd resource that is NNDB. If you have not already been there yourself I must warn you now that, if you follow the link, you may be some time. “NNDB is an intelligence aggregator that tracks the activities of people we have […]
Read More01Dec04 — 0
Self-Oppression
Gosh! Wow! According to the Beeb, women eighty years ago were writing diaries similar to Bridget’s! It’s like they were ahead of their time! Or, or…
Read More04Oct04 — 1
SaintWatch
PooterGeek’s Catholic Affairs correspondent texted me from the beatification ceremony in Rome yesterday. Apparently it was very hot.
Read More16Sep04 — 9
Underestimating My Audience
I’ve been far too easy on you lot. Yesterday, in his eponymous and epurating ‘Blog, Oliver Kamm wrote of Johann Hari’s (silly) attack on Opus Dei*: “[His] term Catholofascism is not accurate. There was in the 1920s a group known as clerico fascisti in Rome and Northern Italy, which aimed at a synthesis between Catholicism […]
Read More14Sep04 — 3
Putting A Bit About
Today’s featured Wikipedia article is about Jesus’s foreskin, or rather his foreskins because quite a few people claim to have had it/them. When I worked in a hospital lab I discovered that discarded foreskins were an excellent source of a particular class of cell called a fibroblast. This is one of only a couple of […]
Read More14Sep04 — 0
Everything’s Better In Widescreen
When I went a-hunting for that image of the BBC testcard this morning, I sort of suspected that the Web would be full of Aspies collecting TV transmission-testing arcana. Interested in the soundtrack? Try “The Girl—The Doll—The Music“. Want to see the card’s evolution? Check out the Carol Hersee photo album. Carol was the star […]
Read More11Sep04 — 3
No Such Thing As A Free Dinner
Last week I was invited to the swankiest academic dinner offered to me since I graduated from my first place of higher education. And, for the first time since then, it seemed to be free-of-charge. Naturally, I filled out the faxback form straight away and, er, faxed it back. Having achieved fuck-all since I left, […]
Read More11Sep04 — 6
To The Point
Hak Mao pleads a lack of eloquence, but she says all that needs to be said today. I’m with her all the way—though obviously I’ll need to learn a bit of Cantonese and find some undiscriminating women first.
Read More10Sep04 — 4
Behind Bars
It’s amazing that critics of the application genetic fingerprinting have made so little rhetorical use of the year of the technique’s original discovery.
Read More09Sep04 — 2
Autumn Fever
Backword Dave has been writing about P G Wodehouse and Jonathan Derbyshire is doing so too.
Read More06Sep04 — 0
“I Didn’t Spend Six Years At Evil Medical School To Be Called ‘Mr Evil'”
Everything else had failed. Ken Starr gathered together his life savings, remortgated his house, and hired the professionals to get mediaeval on Clinton’s ass: “AFTER ‘harvesting’ bypass vessels from their former president’s arms and legs, US surgeons will cut into Bill Clinton’s sternum with a circular saw. His ribs will be eased to the side […]
Read More06Sep04 — 0
A Genuinely Funny Man
I was just going to pop this one in an email to Judith, fan of all things Wodehouse (and an American Jew in Israel, so yah boo sucks), but it’s too good for that: Stephen Fry on Robert McCrum on the other PG. (Why can’t Fry write like that all the time?)
Read More04Sep04 — 1
Churchill’s Record As Orator Safe From US Vice-President
ABC News brings us the wit and wisdom of Dick Cheney: “It’s not only wildfires that shift with the wind,” Cheney told supporters Friday. “As westerners, the president and I understand the challenges that we face here in Nevada, especially when it comes to protecting residents from wildfires,” Cheney said here during his first post-convention […]
Read More31Aug04 — 0
A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats
George W. Bush: one group of proud Americans can at last reveal the truth about his record.
Read More29Aug04 — 0
Thanks, Dad
As the World’s feeblest Aston Villa supporter it’s always some kind of comfort that my dad’s football team—although it also has an illustrious history—somehow manages to do consistently worse. Admittedly, given the relative smallness of the hometown population, Preston North End have more of an excuse for being footballing under-achievers.
Read More27Aug04 — 4
Make Your Own Entertainment!
Right. My sister‘s coming to stay with me today, so you lot can spend the weekend reading other ‘Blogs or dead trees or just talking amongst yourselves. How about this? “The so-called ‘Iron Lady’ of the international stage, Margaret Thatcher was, for the most part, a pragmatist in domestic matters, who disguised the timidity of […]
Read More25Aug04 — 0
The Magazine For Bonkers Old Colonels
Non-Brits must understand: Victoria Beckham is not in any way “posh”. At the time she was given her showbiz nickname she was relatively well-off; now she is simply rich. She could buy and sell many genuinely posh—that is titled rather than monied—people, but they probably wouldn’t let her. Even if they had a financial crisis […]
Read More22Aug04 — 0
Glad We’ve Got That Sorted Out
Globe-trotting teacher of English as a foreign language and funnyman ‘Blogger Harry Hutton puts me right over at Chase Me Ladies. It isn’t the Jooos who are to blame for the World’s ills; it’s the Joes. UPDATE: Ever alert, US Homeland Security bans Joes from flying. UPDATE UPDATED: Ted Kennedy is one of the main […]
Read More10Aug04 — 0
What Can You Say?
Claire emailed me this entry for the anti-Semitism Olympics. If you can only stomach an abbreviated version, Norm picked it up too.
Read More06Aug04 — 3
That Question Again
Yesterday at noon I was packing my bag in a hotel room, booked in advance over the Web, when the television turned itself on and told me that it was time for me to check out. A taxi with GPS picked me up and took me to Glasgow airport. There I waited for a ticketless […]
Read More01Aug04 — 0
The Great British Public
It is a fitting memorial to the spirit of that time.
Read More21Jul04 — 0
Celebrate!
Today, 21Jul04, is the national day of Belgium.
Read More04Jul04 — 4
On The Beneficial Effects Of Tea Upon The Constitution
Hi. Tony here. My friend and colleague Damian has kindly let me onto his Interblog to say a few words to you, our allies and friends in America, on this special day. [Blokey twist of head. Adjusts tie. About-to-tell-joke half-smile.] Y'know, it seems only yesterday that I was practising the chords of Steppenwolf's “Born To […]
Read More23Jun04 — 0
Hard Sell
In the latest Spectator, Jonathan Keates reviews Adam McQueen's new biography of William Lever, the philanthropic founder of what became the Unilever empire. Apparently one of the earliest marketing slogans for Sunlight soap was: “Buy our soap or your husband will divorce you” Lever can't have been all bad; he "survived a dirty-tricks campaign by […]
Read More06Jun04 — 0
Long Live Brenda
God Save The Queen is an excellent, thoughtful, new 'Blog. In contrast to PooterGeek, I doubt its author will ever storm out of the bathroom mid-shower to denounce something he's just heard on BBC Radio 4. The latest two posts there are insightful about the successful exercise of state power through history. Claire [the llama […]
Read More27May04 — 0
Eurotrash
As one of those interestingly pigmented colonials myself, I can’t help remembering that, one afternoon in the late 90s, when I was being taken for an interview lunch by a representative of a drug company, Princess Michael of Kent was at the same excellent restaurant in Kensington too, eating at a nearby table. She wasn’t […]
Read More04May04 — 0
Young Men In Spikes
My dad warned me—and I hope Auriol isn’t offended if I write this—but the BBC documentary about the four-minute mile that I ‘Blogged about last week (and my dad kindly recorded for me) sounded in places like a P G Wodehouse spoof. Apparently, after the race in Oxford, the leading runners were driven at top […]
Read More
Recent Comments