Over at Samizdata, California is becoming a “totalitarian” state because an overwhelming majority of the residents of the city of Berkeley voted for comprehensive regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and because San Francisco can fine pet owners who don’t feed their pets properly and fortune-tellers who don’t have a licence to practise. Britain is […]
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04Jun07 — 0
Netherlands
To my immense amusement, I am quoted in a national Dutch free daily newspaper today, saying (of the Euston Manifesto): “We had no idea it would get so big”.
Read More29Apr07 — 3
Blog Bait
Please tell me this article is a parody, aimed at luring bloggers into making mocking fools of themselves. The suspiciously named “Sebastian Cresswell-Turner” complains at length that his middle-class peers aren’t as rich as members of their parents’ generation and have to do shocking things like live in Battersea or send their children to state schools. […]
Read More10Apr07 — 2
If This Is The Answer…
They call themselves “Paramount Vehicle Solutions“, perhaps because the vehicles they sell are seen by some as a solution to the problem of having a small penis, but would you hand over seventy thousand pounds to someone who thinks the plural of “Aston Martin” is “Aston Martin’s”?
Read More23Mar07 — 14
“Racism is still very, very vibrant”
Last week I mentioned celebrity “people of colour” talking “po-faced rubbish” about slavery. I don’t have the time to wade through it now, but please do skim the drivelling of “Ms Dynamite” on the subject over at the BBC News Website. I’m proud to say I didn’t pay the BBC to pay this woman to […]
Read More08Mar07 — 24
Say It Loud: I’m Chippy And Proud
“Chippy!” is the cry of a winner in the lottery of birth losing an argument. There’s a scene near the beginning of Casino Royale in which Vesper Lynd practises some amateur psychology on 007 as they sit opposite each other on the Eurostar. She says something like: You’re Oxford, but not from money, hence that […]
Read More17Jan07 — 4
Grammar Horror
[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 More04Jan07 — 1
Dust-Up At The Coffee Bar
I 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 More22Dec06 — 2
Demos Appoints New Director. English Language Surrenders.
Following the Madeleine Bunting farce, Demos is keen to emphasise the academic credentials of her replacement. Accordingly Demos’s press release announcing the appointment of Catherine Fieschi makes more references to her PhD than if it had been written by the cover designer of a self-help book. It also quotes her reaction to getting the job. […]
Read More17Dec06 — 3
Mantel Piece
Hilary Mantel is a novelist. I haven’t read any of her books. I have read her review of magician Derren Brown’s Tricks Of The Mind in yesterday’s Guardian. Near the end of her mostly negative assessment she tries to set up a weak joke: she “hopes” that “no intellectual snobbery” will prevent Richard Dawkins from […]
Read More11Dec06 — 8
Fighting Sexism
It appears that there is a serial killer murdering prostitutes in Suffolk. Jeremy Vine has just been interviewing Frances Curran, Scottish Socialist Party Member of the Scottish Parliament for the West of Scotland on BBC Radio 2. She argued that the victims should not be referred to in the media as “prostitutes” because this “invites a judgment” […]
Read More08Dec06 — 4
Tri-band Mobile
If you are familiar with the official French attitude* to the use of English in academic (and other cultural) settings, the appearance of a state-funded TV station, “France 24”, with an English-language feed might surprise you. It did me when I watched one of their online English-language video ads a few days ago. They also broadcast […]
Read More06Dec06 — 40
HOW CAN PPL BE SO CRUEL TO BLOGGERS? :-(
Justin of Chicken Yoghurt is wearyingly obtuse in the comments at Never Trust A Hippy. In response to this from Paulie: The prize for the most telling response to the Tim Toulmin /Alistair Campbell dialogue and call for a ‘blogger code of conduct’ surely goes to Chicken Yoghurt. His response is that the blogosphere…. “…hasn’t […]
Read More09Nov06 — 6
The Ludlum Retirement
Best-selling thriller writer Robert Ludlum, author of The Bourne Identity, The Acquitane Progression, and The Moscow Vector, announced the end of his blockbuster career yesterday. Speaking to a packed meeting at the American Publishing Society conference in Florida, Ludlum said, “There comes a time when a man has to accept that he has run out […]
Read More09Nov06 — 1
Registering Complaints
I hadn’t noticed this until I read Tom Hamilton’s post at Let’s Be Sensible, but the Devil’s Kitchen calls the Mr Eugenides essay that I blogged about “one of the finest posts ever written“. Does Eton College do refunds? Also, having read the latest post at Never Trust A Hippy, I must revise my slur […]
Read More29Oct06 — 1
The Motherland
Brian Micklethwait has a post up about Sierra Leone. It’s opposite of the sort of thing many of journalists would write about the place, being politically incorrect, interesting to the casual reader, and crude but accurate—as opposed to sensitive but misleading. It’s the sort of summary of the place you might get from a mate […]
Read More26Oct06 — 21
In Our Defence
Shuggy is complaining about Norm’s and my spelling of “defence” as “defense” and Christopher Hitchens’ spelling of “labour” as “labor”: Lenin does it. So does Pootergeek. As does Norm. Politically different, yet the same problem; they all spell ‘defence’ with an ‘s’. Which is an Americanism. I’m happy for the Yanks to do this but […]
Read More18Oct06 — 22
Ungentlemanly English
A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the accordion but doesn’t. Gentlemanly English is when you can read Martin Amis without resorting to a dictionary, but people are unaware of this fact when they read your own writing. Gentlemanly English is when you have a knighthood and a seat in the Lords, but […]
Read More13Oct06 — 1
Homophonic Assault
via Slashdot: One place where YouTube’s success isn’t being celebrated is in the offices of Universal Tube and Rollerform Equipment Corp. near Toledo, Ohio. The company, which sells used machinery for making tubes to clients worldwide, has seen its site utube.com knocked off line by millions of online searchers looking for video site. “It’s killing […]
Read More18Sep06 — 0
Testy Aliens
If I’d thought about it for a second before, I’d have guessed that there were blogs written in Klingon, but I do like that the first one I’ve actually “read” is called “bo logh“.
Read More09Sep06 — 1
Fishmaster!
Those of you who didn’t know it already will not be surprised to learn that there is a Finnish symphonic rock outfit called Nightwish. They have recently sacked their soprano lead, so, if that’s your bag, now’s your chance to put on your horned helmet and boob-armour and record a demo for them. This YouTube […]
Read More08Sep06 — 4
Indispensable
Wikipedia will eventually triumph over all other existing encyclopedias. Does any edition of Britannica or Encarta have a “List of films ordered by the use of the word ‘fuck’“? Yesterday’s featured article was about philosopher and socialist Hilary Putnam, who is the Putnam in the “Quine-Putnam indispensability thesis” and definitely my kind of thinker. (By […]
Read More08Aug06 — 8
Po-Mo Pomes
I’m planning a technical how-to about writing lyrics so I’ve been doing some background research. During meals I’ve been swotting up on my villanelles and my anadiplosis and my recurrence from a copy of Jeffrey Wainwright‘s Poetry: The Basics that I picked up at the library. It’s informative and an excellent read. At the start […]
Read More05Aug06 — 7
Advanced Level Grocer’s Apostrophe
I saw this handwritten notice outside a shop selling solid wood furniture this morning: TABLE AND TWO BENCH’S £295 Can two wrongs make a technical right?
Read More21Jul06 — 6
Test Drive The New Volkswagen Pantheon
One of PooterGeek’s current side projects is The New Uxbridge Encyclopedia Of The Classical World, a vital and relevant guide to what has often been dismissed as a dead discipline, specifically designed to appeal to comprehensive school pupils. Just like the compilers of the OED, the staff of the NUECW welcome submissions from the general […]
Read More19Jun06 — 0
Not Araucaria
I’m not very good at crossword puzzles. My dad, however, was schooled by Jesuits, did classics at university, taught English for decades, and collects useless information. If you wanted to build an elite special forces crossword-solving unit then that is probably how you would train its members. Since he is a connoisseur of the biggest […]
Read More14Jun06 — 9
“Here Come The Boys From Brazil, Terry”
They start an international football competition looking horribly over-rated. They lead by a goal from one impressive long shot in the first half, but are made to seem pedestrian in the second as they do their best to defend the slim advantage. Some of their passing is shockingly inaccurate. At least one of their star […]
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