Blog Archive — Page 26
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An Experiment in Dynamic Democracy
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St George is Cross
Tomorrow is St George’s Day, a day of… frankly nothing, in honour of England’s dubious patron saint. Whereas St Andrew’s Day is at least a holiday for the Scots, and the Irish St Patrick’s Day has been exported all over the world as a celebration of stout and silly hats, we’ve kept ours to ourselves, down-played it, almost as if we’re embarrassed by it.
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The World's Best Heat-Sink
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From Beneath the Ash Cloud's Shadow
The morning began with a blaze of contrails across the sky, traces of the early flights to far-off lands. With them came a sense that pent-up tension is being slowly released into the atmosphere, this time the tension of humanity and holidays and business, rather than that of rock and magma squeezed upwards by tectonic plates.
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Why is Che Guevara Cool?
Here’s a question for the interwebs that the combined mental might of our car-pool couldn’t answer this afternoon: Why the heck is Che Guevara cool?
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Sizing in Crisis!
It’s always confused me a little how, in most take-away pizza joints, the smallest size is ‘Medium’. Surely, by definition, it is not? Maybe it’s some sort of cultural adversity to buying a ‘small’ anything, but then surely they would call the smallest one ‘small’ to coerce people into buying larger and more expensive pizzas?
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Dating the Techno-Thriller
There’s little greater testament to the incredible pace of technological progress than the rate at which books set in the present day become dated.
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Proxies and the Law
In light of the passing of the Digital Economy Bill, and Ben Bradshaw’s intent to push for government power to force ISPs to block sites that are “likely” to be used for copyright infringement, the government could in a few months’ time demand that ISPs block access to the likes of Wikileaks, The Pirate Bay and Rapidshare, all sites that have perfectly legal uses. And I’m sure it can’t be long before the government and the IWF together have a go at 4chan.
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Welcome to the New Digital Economy
Despite its sponsorship by a twice-disgraced and unelected politician, despite the fact that it was transparently lobbied for by companies representing the record labels, despite it carrying disproportionate punishments for file-sharers, despite it seeking to undermine the work of content creators, despite a promise to oppose it from the Lib Dems, still the Digital Economy Bill passed through the Houses of Parliament.
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Let's Win it for Britain?
At 5pm sharp, my phone dinged to let me know that a new joyous missive had been received unto my inbox, from a doubtless fine fellow by the name of “David Cameron”.
