Admin

June 26, 2011 in admin

A question, 200 or so readers. How many of you also follow the twitter feed?

Embassytown: a partial review

June 26, 2011 in sci-fi

While we’re on drugs, why not a look at China Miéville’s Embassytown, in which an unusual one plays a big role? This isn’t quite an AFOE “Premature Evaluation” as I’m actually reading it, I just haven’t finished it yet. A couple of points… Pass by reference, not by value This is the big-idea high concept [...]

a theory of some people’s moral sentiments

June 26, 2011 in drugs, music, politics, snark, Tories

(Or, imagine you had to make a Homo economicus. Other than money, what chemicals would you immediately look up in Angewandte Chemie?) So Dave from PR’s constituency chairman was found dead in a portaloo at Glastonbury. Who now remembers William Hague in Notting Hill? This made me think of something. There used to be a [...]

Waste is a waste of time

June 26, 2011 in politics

Twitter is no fun when it comes to referencing a whole conversation, so you’ll have to do some work here. So Matthew Turner and I had a row with “Hopi Sen”, who apparently thinks the absolute top priority for the Labour Party is an attack on “waste”. If you browse through the pile o’tweets you’ll [...]

failure of a stinker review

June 20, 2011 in music

So I went to this. Unfortunately I actually thought pretty much everyone was good. Damn good. Brilliant, in fact. So the spirit of this post is not available. By about midnight the floor had got to about optimal density – not quite to the point where you start worrying that you’re going to be knocked [...]

There is no crisis, dammit

June 20, 2011 in economics, press, protest, Tories, unspeak, whingeing

From yesterday’s Obscurer, a story: A senior union source told The Observer that it was clear Alexander had jumped the gun as the Treasury attempted to show it was taking a hard line on the burgeoning pensions bill. “Danny Alexander has been reined in by the Cabinet Office,” said a union source. “What he did [...]

a few thoughts on the exciting world of social media

June 18, 2011 in Internet, London, networks, trains

So how do you get from Shoreditch to the South Bank? Well, as Tom from Boris Watch pointed out, you take a number 243 bus. Or you wait 15 years – one way or another. Or you practice, baby. Or you get a haircut. Anyway, so much for taking the opportunity to reuse what I [...]

I fought the Laws and the half-molten clock seduced a giant tortoise

June 18, 2011 in LibDems

This sycophantic FT piece on David Laws has been kicked around quite a bit already. Personally, I feel it represents a new kind of journalism – writing that should have been kept behind a paywall, so nobody would have to read it. Beyond that, though, it’s pretty weird. Check out this par: From 1987 to [...]

the 1980s considered as a battle in the air war over Germany

June 18, 2011 in economics, energy, networks, strategy

Thinking about my last post brought one of the ideas in this one to mind, especially given today’s front page. That is, was the miners’ strike a strategic bombing campaign? You what? But consider the strategy the NUM adopted. The basic idea was to concentrate on the supply of coal to the steel industry – [...]

MGIs for cleaner skies, and Power Tool of the Week

June 18, 2011 in 4GW, China, class, energy, gas, hacker

Swinging off a discussion at Jamie Kenny’s of climate deniers, I wonder what Jamie thinks about Steve Levine’s thesis here that China’s emerging culture of mass protest, the famous Mass-Group Incidents or MGIs, may have major and positive consequences for Chinese energy policy and therefore for the world. It’s surely time we started calling the [...]