This is the Internet culture archive
October 14, 2007
'bring on the iPhone killers...'
Who’d have thought the author of a rant like this:
‘AND THERE’S NO OFFLINE MODE!!!! A SmartPhone that insists you have a SIM card in at all times? Just bugger off Sony Ericsson, you’ve lost my respect. You’ve had thousands of pounds out of me in the past. But stick to student mobile phones called Kxxx with crap silly little jukeboxes on them, SmartPhones are out of your league. If you’re going to use UIQ, then take a leaf out of Motorola’s book and apply it (in a newer version, Symbian 9.2, UIQ 3.1) to a teen phone, like the excellent new Z8. Either that or do the real design work and make a proper SmartPhone, not this insulting halfway house. As it stands, the P990i is a better phone that this P1i - it has all the same faults, but at least its double action transformer style flip makes it more usable.’
would be Stephen Fry aka the omnigenius who wrote the book I’m enjoying right now:
Stephen Fry - The Ode Less Travelled
which, by the way, is an excellent introduction to poetry (hate the title, though ;-)
B-)
Posted by Billy at 4:47 PM | Comments (0)
May 30, 2007
a bit of a blur
Alex James is talking in London next week. The Lecture List is giving away free tickets
B-)
Tags: 
alex james, 
alexjames, 
blur
Posted by Billy at 2:33 PM | Comments (0)
March 27, 2007
champions
Well guys, it’s been 40 years, but I can confirm that Scotland are now, once again, officially, the Unofficial Football World Champions
B-))
Posted by Billy at 9:13 AM | Comments (0)
February 28, 2007
ohna falby
Ohna Falby is one of several ex-linkees whose links I broke recently. Let me know if happened to you and I’ll get you back.
Meanwhile, she’s uploaded another lovely image from the shoot she worked on last weekend.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:03 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2007
would you lecture blog?
We don’t get as many people commenting on The Lecture List as we’d hoped for and have wondered whether we should have a Lecture List blog (we did have one before the actual site was launched). Maybe it’s time to start it up again. I’m sure people have interesting things to talk about. Two experiences I’d have reported involve Noam Chomsky One was the slightly surreal experience of sitting in a room in Oxford with a crowd of people listening to a large Wharfedale speaker as Chomsky spoke in the lecture theatre next door. The hall was full so we were in the ‘overspill room’. The other was the time at UCL when there were too many people in the room. Chomsky had been formally, and elegantly, introduced by Neil Smith and had got around two sentences out when a security man walked up to him and asked him to stop. There followed a stand-off as Neil explained that either some of us had to leave or the talk would be cancelled. Interesting though the Tarantinoesque standoff was, I decided I could think of more fun things to do and left. Enough people did leave in the end for the talk to carry on and I read the written up version later.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:04 PM | Comments (0)
The Lecture List
I’m very chuffed with how The Lecture List has been getting on. We just had a contact from an organiser who has found that, since he started listing the site with us (as well as a few other places), they have been getting 170 people showing up to their 136-seater lecture theatre. He’d accidentally indicated that the next talk was at his home and was a little bit worried about having that number of people showing up at his place.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:00 PM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2007
acceptance speeches
A while ago I wondered whether I could find a corpus of oscar acceptance speeches and was disappointed how few have been uploaded. The numbers are increasing now although there are still some classics I can’t find, like Sally Field (‘you like me!’) or Sasheen Littlefeather/Marlon Brando and tragically the Academy have realised the value of Billy Crystal’s introduction in 2002 so that’s been taken down.
But for a real contrast, have a look at Halle Berry’s acceptance in 2002 (I don’t know what exactly this says about me but it makes me cry every time and I get a bit upset whenever people make fun of her):
and then compare it to Robert Bresson and Andrei Tarkovsky at Cannes in 1983:
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:21 PM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2007
thanks a lot guys
Some amazing stuff here
B-}
Posted by Billy at 11:26 PM | Comments (0)
January 21, 2007
'I'm in'
I don’t have time to blog today as I’m trying to finish my pile of marking.
I’m impressed by the way Hillary Clinton announced her presidential campaign yesterday. ‘I’m in’ is a great soundbite.
I’m less impressed with ‘Let’s chat’ and the not quite so dynamic notion of a ‘presidential exploratory committee’.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2006
scattered showers of...
healthmap - global disease alert mapping system
merry christmas, hypochondriacs
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:01 AM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2006
more movies
The web is alive with movies at the moment. My three other current faves are:
flashmobbers at Liverpool Street
(We’re talking a flashmob of ipodders, organised by mobile-clubbing.com
London to Brighton in 2 minutes
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:18 PM | Comments (0)
changes
I say, I seem to be blogging again! Life has been pretty intense recently but I seem to have survived it. This changes video is my favourite of the recent flurry of Cameron-related youtube/blogging activity.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:11 PM | Comments (0)
September 11, 2006
the lecture list
Another academic year is about to begin. Time to tell the lecture list about those talks…
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)
July 24, 2006
history of winston
No time to blog these days B-(
But Winston Churchill’s quote of the day amused me:
‘History will be kind to me for I intend to write it’
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2006
fabio who?
For those who didn’t recognise him, the guy with Ohna is Fabio Cannavaro, the captain of Italy who lifted the world cup on Sunday. Jon Snow just said this in his daily snowmail
Could Zidane’s infamous ‘coup de boule’ end up being the most lucrative head butt in history? As he goes on French TV to explain why he did it, we’ll examine what that moment of madness may cost him - or make him. He might have thought he would lose commercial contracts as a result.
But his current sponsors, Adidas and Danone, say they are still behind him. www.mercizidane.fr will be launched by Adidas this week. And other firms may soon be queueing to buy a piece of the world’s most famous footballer.
He’d never get this much attention if he had just quietly won the world cup - what is the Italian captain called anyway?
B-)
Posted by Billy at 7:25 PM | Comments (0)
June 9, 2006
mistletoe and whine
Now that I’m back to work and some of our members are a bit p’ed off** I don’t have any time to blog as I’m marking like crazy internally and externally, but I couldn’t not tell you about this which I read in the Guardian’s Wrap this morning:
MISTLETOE AND WHINE
Gordon Ramsay is back in the papers - but this time, he’s not the one doing the swearing. The chef tricked Sir Cliff Richard into criticising one of his own wines at a blind tasting for a Channel 4 show. Sir Cliff was not amused, using a phrase the Wrap will not repeat in a filtered email.
However, we can report the singer’s verdict on a bottle of Portuguese red from his vineyard, Vida Nova. ‘That’s rubbish. I wouldn’t pay for that, it’s tainted, it’s insipid. It tastes like vinaigrette. I’d never buy that.’
Ramsay is now using Vida Nova as vinaigrette at his restaurant at Claridge’s, where he claims it ‘goes down tremendously well with the tuna’.
B-)
**I can see their point since we’ve just accepted a deal worse than those breakers away at Ulster got and the same as the one that was out of the question a week ago, but I think they’re being a bit hard on our leadership. Personally, I’d have had the stomach to carry on a bit longer, though.
Posted by Billy at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)
May 14, 2006
waste your life
While we’re on the subject of http://youtube.com if you ever fancy wasting the rest of your life just type William Shatner into the search box when you’re there.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)
May 9, 2006
sold
It went for 620 squid in the end.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 2:38 PM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2006
selling like hot rowies...
Quick, folks, only 22 hours and 14 minutes left to get your hands on a genuine Aitken’s rowie
Current asking price is a bargain 340 pounds and 78p
B-))
Posted by Billy at 2:49 PM | Comments (0)
January 2, 2006
relativity
I’ve just been listening to Albert Einstein telling me about the equivalence of energy and matter.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2005
'randy as a drug-crazed goat'
You can’t miss this tragic tale recited by the simple peasant dog Labradore (available on listen again until Tuesday).
An early theme of this blog was the dodginess of some of the things David Blunkett was saying. Who knew how the tale was destined to unfold?
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2005
movie preview
Well, I enjoyed it.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:29 PM | Comments (0)
November 8, 2005
i can't buy a new iPod with a 'highly commended'
Poor Robbie
He goes through an emotional rollercoaster at the Chichester Open and all I can think about is the literary quality of one utterance in his post (not really, of course ;-)
He might not get his iPod, but he did paint some bloody good pictures.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
mike's stem cell diary
Independent - Pioneering cancer treatment
Mike is a parent at Kiloh’s school who’s been going through a new kind of treatment for leukemia. He’s in the Independent today. His blog tells the story of his treatment so far.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2005
if I could just get to Sidcup...
Guardian - Pinter wins nobel prize
Ignoring all the questions about prizes like this, other candidates, etc. etc. I’d say:
about time!
Posted by Billy at 1:23 PM | Comments (1)
October 3, 2005
'Judas!'
This is very long, but I feel it needs to be passed on. Andrew Brown in The Guardian’s Wrap:
The Wrap: A worm’s eye view
03 October 2005
Andrew Brown on the lessons one ageing guitarist can learn from another
Last week was a pretty low point for British democracy: an 82-year-old man who had fled Hitler as a child was expelled from the Labour party conference for shouting “liar” at Jack Straw. When another delegate objected to this treatment, he was himself threatened with terrorism charges. You can blame this kind of behaviour on all sorts of nasty and authoritarian tendencies in Blair’s government, but I think a fair part of the blame rests with Bob Dylan.
In the same week, the BBC showed Martin Scorsese’s film about the singer, which culminates in footage of his famous British tour in 1965, when he was repeatedly booed for playing with electric instruments, and on one occasion taunted with a cry of “Judas”. The story has been known to anyone literate in the last 20 years, because rock criticism seeps into the consciousness of anyone under the age of about 50 much as pesticides seep into the groundwater, and the story of Dylan and his electric instruments is one of its founding narratives. Here is the misunderstood genius making some of the greatest music of the 20th century, and being booed for it by a retarded English audience.
Obviously, this is how Mr Blair thinks of his own performances in front of the Labour party: these snivelling loser folkies with their horrible traditions just can’t understand the excitement and power of his new songs. It’s quite likely that in his Oxford days he even owned a bootleg of the concert. It’s something that anyone who pretended to a serious interest in the subject had to do. Admittedly, the sound quality was pretty awful, but that hardly mattered: if you read Rolling Stone, or NME, you knew what to think and feel when you heard it.
The first crack in this story came towards the end of the 20th century, when the recordings of the tour were finally released officially, and on high quality CDs. One disc was acoustic, and the other - the famous one - was electric. You only had to hear them once to realise the folkies had been entirely right. The acoustic stuff was infinitely better. Although the electric songs would later be recorded beautifully in the studio, and the backing musicians would themselves go on to make some wonderful records, what they played on stage in Britain was mostly just raucous and soulless. No one then knew how to make electric instruments sound good outside the studio, as Dylan himself says in the Scorsese documentary. In the general atmosphere of grovelling reverence, no one points out that this means they did not in fact sound good.
However, you can hear, very clearly, Dylan’s response when someone shouts out “Judas!” from the crowd. “I don’t believe you,” he says, and then, as if he’d hit on something really clever, “You’re a liar!”. Finally, he turns to the band and mutters something only audible on the official recording: “Play [gerund omitted] loud!”
Those three words hold the seeds of a radical inequality. No wonder idealistic folkies hated them. Once the man on stage has an amplifier, he cannot be shouted down. Even within the audience, the voices of the audience cannot be heard. It’s quite impossible to attend a concert at normal, acceptable levels of amplification without some shield for the ears, usually made from drink and drugs.
But when you can’t be heard three feet away, even wanting to heckle comes to seem a breach of the natural order. The audience’s wordless belonging, crushed together beneath an avalanche of noise, can actually be a very great pleasure. But it’s nothing like a reasoned or even democratic dialogue. No wonder politicians want to be the men on stage.
This isn’t the only link between the decadence of our democracies and the flowering of Dylan’s songs. I love Blonde on Blonde, and I love Highway 61. But it would take a very great fool (or a professor of English literature) to pretend that their lyrics are poetry, or even that they make much sense. What gives them their undeniable power is the impression of naked sincerity. They seem to be part of a conversation conducted in bed.
The voice that says “Up on Housing Project Hill, it’s either fortune or fame/ you must pick one or the other, though neither of them are to be what they claim,” carries such urgency that it takes years, even decades, before you notice that it’s talking nonsense. Yet take away all the verbs, and these lyrics might come from any speech to any party conference.
Dylan is even responsible for the original of all the apologies supplied by modern politicians - what Tony Blair might say to the hecklers, and even the Iraqis: “I didn’t mean to treat you so bad/ You shouldn’t take it so personal/ I didn’t mean, to make you so sad/ You just happened to be there, that’s all.”
It just doesn’t sound so sincere without the arrangement.
- Andrew Brown maintains a weblog, the Helmintholog (http://www.thewormbook.com/helmintholog).
All comments and suggestions are welcome. Please send them to unlimited@guardianunlimited.co.uk.
If you have a query about your Wrap subscription, email subshelp@guardian.co.uk.
The Wrap is one of Guardian Unlimited’s paid-for services. If you were forwarded this email and would like to subscribe, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/wrap
Guardian Unlimited copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005. Registered in England and Wales. No. 908396. Registered office: 164 Deansgate, Manchester M60 2RR
Posted by Billy at 5:00 PM | Comments (0)
September 30, 2005
sorrygottago
This will save you some time. (Wish they did a version for people who are there in person ;-)
B-)
Posted by Billy at 6:33 PM | Comments (1)
September 8, 2005
'run by alcoholics for alcoholics'
Something about this story makes me feel really good, at the same time as being deeply horrified.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 7:28 PM | Comments (0)
September 7, 2005
major cricket excitement
Oh Lord, if I must die today,/Please make it after close of play,/For this I know, if nothing more,/I will not go, without the score.
According to the Guardian, these lines were written by John Major, according to the Times. Not bad, I’d say.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)
September 6, 2005
modern marketing
Just listening to James talking about blogging on shoptalk radio 4. Should be listenagainable soon.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 4:23 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2005
the riot that never was
BBC - Radio 4 - The Riot That Never Was
This was a great listen. Also interesting for linguistic people who are interested in things like cohesion. Here’s a typical extract:
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:02 PM | Comments (0)
May 12, 2005
what the bleep do we know?
I realise that this publicises the movie, but I can’t stop myself from sharing this bit of Simon Singh’s latest newsletter. He’s also known for not being Derren Brown’s number one fan, btw.
B-)
I don’t think I have previously used this newsletter to criticise anybody else’s work, but when it comes to the utter junk that is ‘What the Bleep Do We Know!?’ then I am prepared to make an exception.
I first came across this film when I was in America back in February and now it is about to open in cinemas in the UK and elsewhere. It is the third highest grossing documentary ever and it claims to be about quantum physics, but in fact it makes gross distortions that would make any self-respecting scientist squirm. For example, the film states that experiments imply that labelling a bottle of water with words like ‘love’ or ‘hate’ can change its molecular structure. Indeed, the film suggests that quantum physics can explain why this is the case. Apparently quantum physics can also be exploited to bring about world peace through meditation.
If you have a science background then please do not go and see this film as you will be violently ill afterwards. And if you do not have a science background then please do not go and see this film as you will be submitting yourself to two hours of (badly filmed) pseudoscientific propaganda. If you want to learn about quantum physics then I would advise you to pay a visit to the library or find a TV documentary on the subject - both options cost less and deliver more than this atrocious film.
As you can tell by now, I really do hate this film. Having spent the last fifteen years making documentaries and writing about science, I care hugely about the accurate and honest portrayal of science. I am working on an article that details exactly why I hate this film so much, and I will put it online soon and link to it in my next newsletter.
Posted by Billy at 9:26 AM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2005
obtenez derrière moi satan
‘I LOVE computers’ Kiloh said to me last night. The kids are getting more and more computey. There was much excitement this morning when we downloaded the new White Stripes single, which is as immediate as ever. The kids think ‘Get Behind Me Satan’ is a great name for the album.
A question: do you think it’s appropriate to use babelfish when doing your French homework?
B-)
PS I’m not French but do you think that ‘obtenez derrière moi satan’ is a bit unidiomatic?
Posted by Billy at 11:57 AM | Comments (1)
April 7, 2005
the sounds of silence
Hey, apathetic non-voters. Here’s your chance to let someone hear your silence.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)
March 30, 2005
a fake beard and some high strength glue
Wooster Collective : Stickers / Posters / Graf / Culture Jamming
You might know about this already, but it makes me smile.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:38 PM | Comments (0)
March 27, 2005
London Bloggers
We all seem to be having a relaxing time in Devon (except for Clem who is rather excited and went to sleep in her dad’s storytelling arms at 6pm today - which would have been 5pm yesterday). Somehow it makes sense that it’s while I’m here that I signed up to London Bloggers
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)
March 3, 2005
Demos - Media - Hope is key to future Scotland
Seems that Scottish people have a ‘fatalist tendency’ and need to develop ‘future literacy’. I’m not sure I see why this is different from saying that Scottish people are a bunch of gloomy buggers who need to lighten up a bit.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 11:18 PM | Comments (0)
January 31, 2005
the end of Atlanticism?
A long entry this, but I’m not sure I can point you to it somewehere else and it seems both interesting and relevant to Apoa’s question about communism and capitalism.
B-)
The Wrap: A worm’s eye view31 January 2005
Is Atlanticism dead? Andrew Brown argues it will soon join communism on the scrapheap of discredited doctrines
History is full of honest mistakes. Sometimes they change character and become mistakes that no honest person could make. Communism is an example.
The list of really admirable ex-communists is long. Among my personal heroes, Denis Healey, Robert Conquest, Arthur Koestler, and Claud Cockburn had all been active party members. All of them joined the party in the 30s, when, in Britain at least, it was still an honest mistake to do so. I don’t see how anyone living under Stalin could have been an honest communist then, but this is because I am blinded by hindsight. Solzhenitsyn, for example, was a fervent believer in his youth.
But by 1945, or 1947 at the latest, you couldn’t call communism an honest mistake. Anyone who wanted to stay a communist had to ignore so much evidence about the workings of the Soviet Union that they were in a condition of constant bad faith.
There are no doubt plenty of Guardian readers who would argue that this was not the fault of communism, that it has never been really tried, and that without Stalin, or Russia, or Lenin, or the cold war, or some other excuse, things might have been different. There was a wonderful phrase expressing this in the last days of the Soviet empire, when apologists would take about ‘actually existing Socialism’ by contrast to the communism which didn’t actually exist, but which they would prefer to talk about.
But in the end virtually everyone realised that the actually existing things were the only ones worth bothering with and that the ideals of communism were inevitably opposed to its practice. I still remember and admire the courage and seriousness of some of the hunger strikers I met in a church in East Berlin just before the wall came down. They were not risking beatings and worse for capitalism, but for a more just and purified version of something they would have called socialism.
But we can see now that their hope was doomed. There was no halfway house. Political ideals without a country are twittering shades.
Has the same moment of truth has now struck the conservative, or Atlanticist, movement? Like communism, this is not just a political philosophy, but one that has been incarnated in a particular country. British Conservatism of this sort is not just a theory about which institutions best promote human wellbeing, and about the way that change should be managed. It also supposed that these were incarnated in a particular country and its satellites.
This might very well have been true. I’d have accepted it myself as true without any question five years ago. It seemed to me axiomatic. I had never heard of Alberto Gonzalez, nor dreamed of a Britain where the home secretary could denounce the Bar Council as dangerous liberals.
But as we enter the second Bush term, it becomes harder and harder to see Atlanticism as an honest mistake. The language of liberty, of parliamentary government, and of the rule of the law which had seemed, so to say, incarnated in Anglo-Saxon practice now seem entirely meaningless when used by the Blair and Bush administrations. There has to be a moment when the betrayal of these ideals is so absolute that we doubt they can be properly incarnated in the countries where they had seemed rooted.
It’s like a divorce. This is particularly difficult for Conservatives, who suppose that such an incarnation takes time, and grows naturally out of the small-scale values and practices of society. Constitutions and elections are not enough. They have to be animated by the right sort of pride. Senator Joe McCarthy was finished when he was asked “Have you no shame?”
It’s hard to believe the question could wound our present leaders. To hear Bush praising liberty is like hearing Lenin praise fairness. Obviously this comparison is a little unfair to both men: Bush has not had his secret police shoot tens of thousands of people, and Lenin made his way in the world without help from his father’s friends. But there is one very important quality that their rhetoric shares. The words mean nothing, and in both cases this meaninglessness is what carries the real meaning - which is that the powerful can lie to us with complete impunity.
Conservatives shouldn’t be shocked by this. Suspicion of the powerful and a distrust of unfettered government were the mainsprings of Conservatism. But they are rendered defenceless when the upholders of law despise it.
The result, in Britain, has been a sort of madness among the conservative intellectuals. They excoriate Blair for Bush’s faults, and they have reacted to the Labour government’s proposals to introduce house arrest and internment without trial by blaming the European convention on human rights. It is not a European government that is pressing us to destroy the liberty we should be fighting for.
- Andrew Brown maintains a weblog, the Helmintholog
All comments and suggestions are welcome. Please send them to unlimited@guardianunlimited.co.uk
If you have a query about your Wrap subscription, email subshelp@guardian.co.uk.
Guardian Unlimited copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004. Registered in England and Wales. No. 908396. Registered office: 164 Deansgate, Manchester M60 2RR
The Wrap is one of Guardian Unlimited’s paid-for services. If you were forwarded this email and would like to subscribe, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/wrap
Posted by Billy at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2004
who do u want to win Wilfred?
I’m becoming strangely interested in spam. Not just because some of them are a bit like avant garde poetry but also because of the interesting subject lines. I just got one with the subject ‘who do u want to win Wilfred?’ which is spookily similar to an example we’ve been looking at in class. I deleted it and then recovered it cos I suddenly thought it might be from a student.
B-}
Posted by Billy at 9:58 AM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2004
plus ca change...
Peter sent me this interesting election data
B-)
Posted by Billy at 8:44 AM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2004
'time to resign...'
Just read this on a local email group, from a former Haringey councillor and soon-to-be-ex-Labour Party member:
I thought I would take a quiet moment and announce my resignation from the Labour Party.
Many people have done this over the last few years, and I regret that they have not communicated on this.
There is actually no way of resigning in a way that feels as momentous as it did joining in the first place.
Phoning up Head Office and cancelling your direct debit just doesn’t have much of a ring to it, does it?
After 25 years you feel you want to at least make some sort of gesture.
The Party doesn’t meet any more locally (or if it does, it is in private and I am not invited) - so going along and resigning is not possible. Hopefully some of you are reading this. You guys may think it has been one of the longest goodbyes you’ve seen. I guess it has. Working in recent elections has been interesting.
Of course the Party has changed since I joined it to support the initiatives of the Campaign For Labour party Democracy, and the selection process of Labour candidates and sitting MPs. I was thrilled to be the union rep vote that got Jeremy Corbyn selected in North Islington. What a great MP he still is.
I found it very sad that our ward recently assisted in the automatic reselection of our own sitting MP without the ability to debate or ask her any questions. Not quite so democratic.
But some changes are too fundamental and cynical to allow.
I want to be independent, so will not be joining another Party. I am not leaving so I can now vote for another Party with a clean conscience. Getting people to vote is a challenge in itself, never mind trying to sell the Party’s record. Local and national politics deserves better than this. Reform of Local Government is nowhere on the agenda. Domestic issues seem too crime-centred.
Expedience is the order of the day.
What clinched it for me was the idea of going along to the Human Rights Lawyers Association AGM tonight (being held ironically at Matrix Chambers) and still being a Labour Party member. Impeach the crusader. No more Holy Wars. Another chapter of unnecessary British Imperial history. Could be an interesting evening.
I know that this government has achieved a great deal in social and economic welfare, but these were not Tony Blair’s achievements. Anybody who wants to be confirmed into the Church in their first year at university (I had other priorities I seem to remember) has me wondering. A full third term is not a good prospect. Smacks of over-confidence.
So - time to phone and cancel my direct debit then….
Posted by Billy at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)
October 4, 2004
aren't humans weird?
Godfather horse head prop pillow
B-}
Posted by Billy at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)
aren't humans great?
B-)
Posted by Billy at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2004
links
Finally managed to add some links to this site. Meanwhile, those nice people at The Guardian have just added a link to The Lecture List on their front page.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)
September 4, 2004
technology
Here’s a gratuitous link to The Lecture List just to play with the quickpost option that moveable type have given me. I’m also celebrating the technological breakthrough we achieved last night when Dug came round and set up our wireless network to spread our broadband connection around the house/family. We pretty much just plugged it in and it did what it said on the tin.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:49 AM
August 26, 2004
following Robbie
Robbie’s site now has a blog. It’s one of the best artist’s sites I’ve seen - especially interesting to follow his train of thought as he works on his art. Great to see him being so productive just now as well.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 3:41 PM | Comments (1)
June 4, 2004
celebrity auction
I went to this Alexander McQueen event last night and it seems I might have purchased Madonna’s tights. Anybody want to make me an offer for them? All proceeds to The Lecture List
B-)
Posted by Billy at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2004
underfunded site
Now that I’m working for an underfunded but much appreciated resource, aka The Lecture List, I take even more than my usual interest in the LINGUIST list’s various techniques for raising money. When you type in http://www.linguistlist.org at the moment, you end up at this page
The LINGUIST list definitely is an excellent resource, by the way, and used every day by the majority of linguists around the world.
B-)
Posted by Billy at 9:02 AM | Comments (0)