Archive for the ‘ General ’ Category

Division of labour

By way of what the blogger formerly known as Iain Dale would call a ‘parish notice’, this is just a quick heads-up of some changes in my blogging habits. I’ve decided to outsource my political blogging onto a different site, which you can now find at Radical Discourse. This blog won’t exactly be retiring, but [ READ MORE ]

Day 39 (9.ix.10)

My observation today is coloured by the fact that I’ve finally remembered a little feature of the daily grind that crops up, without fail, at 17:00 here in Tokyo. Those who’ve been here will probably already know what I’m talking about – and may well sympathise with my view of the practice as intrusive, odd [ READ MORE ]

Keynes vs Hayek

  • January 31st, 2010
  • Posted in General

Macroeconomics meets rap: something of a novel approach to the age-old Keynesian vs monetarist debate! Classic ‘wish-I’d-thought-of-this’ moment&#[ READ MORE ]

Grumpiness is good

  • November 4th, 2009
  • Posted in General

Apparently, being a grumpy git could help you make better long-term decisions where you, your life, your friends and whatever else you might care about are concerned – so at least claims Prof Joe Forgas, a researcher from the University of New South Wales. Seemingly, a “mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, [ READ MORE ]

No Statwatch this week

  • October 12th, 2009
  • Posted in General

Because I unfortunately seem to have acquired piggy flu. Normal service will resume when I’ve nursed myself back to health[ READ MORE ]

In focus: the Eigenharp

In lieu of proper political blogging, since I have university exams crowding out my life till tomorrow afternoon, here is an article I found in what should be called the ‘Weird and Wonderful‘ section of the BBC website: it concerns a recently-invented instrument, the Eigenharp, which looks like a cross between a space-age guitar-synthesiser and [ READ MORE ]

McAmerica

Amusing piece on Comment Central – a gentleman named Stephen Von Worley has plotted the location of each of the 13 000 McDonald’s restaurants in the USA. Apparently the McSparsest area is a gruelling 145-mile distance between burger joints in South Dakota. Might be interesting to see a similar map for other countries in the [ READ MORE ]

101 uses for men and women

Courtesy of the Times: first the men, and then the women (in order of publication, see). My favourite ones have to be: for the men, (number 17) “helping to keep you fit and supple by generously leaving towels, socks and other items of personal attire dotted around the floor for you to pick up”, and [ READ MORE ]

So so true.

  • July 21st, 2009
  • Posted in General

As someone who’s spent the last three weeks commuting to and from work at approximately the same time as the sun comes up and goes down, the cartoon below from xkcd rings very true indeed&#[ READ MORE ]

The first BBC quiz I could actually do

  • July 15th, 2009
  • Posted in General

It’s about Latin, unsurprisingly. Try your luck here too. On a related note, I think the phrase “aut disce aut discede“, meaning “either learn or leave”, could be well applied to the state of the UK’s current education system… oooh, topical&#[ READ MORE ]

Limited blogging

  • June 29th, 2009
  • Posted in General

I must apologise in advance for what will probably be something of a drop in blogging activity over the coming 9 weeks – unfortunately it looks as though I will not be able to keep up the now-habitual one or two blogposts on average per day. During the next two months of my summer holiday, [ READ MORE ]

Swine flu lolz

It may be a little old now, but here’s an article that may or may not have originally come off the BBC – it’s the new mutated variant of H1N1: H1Z1. Hint: it’s not that dissimilar to the Krippen virus in I am Legend&#[ READ MORE ]

Bees!

Apparently the short-haired bumblebee, extinct in the UK since 1988, is being reintroduced from the stable populations in New Zealand. It seems these are some of the most important bees around – they pollinate 80pc of crops vital to humans – so cereal armageddon has been avoided for the moment. Assuming, of course, that our [ READ MORE ]

BBC parody

Again from Samizdata (who clearly felt in need of a break from high-brow ranting): a fantastic if slightly dated parody of your typical BBC News front page. [NB: the links take you to completely unrelated stories, it's only this page that's parodied...] Five particular favourites are: “More global warming: Stop doing anything or we’ll all [ READ MORE ]

Somali cruises

Samizdata has dug out an absolutely genius site for a spoof company called ‘Somali Cruises‘. The tag-line is rather brilliant: “Most cruises offer a mini-bar. We offer a mounted Mini-Gun.” It pretty much sums up the site, although the best part has to be the Testimonials section: “I got three confirmed kills on my last [ READ MORE ]

Eurovision Song Contest 2009

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last week, you’ll have become acutely aware that the final of the yearly extravaganza of trashy europop that is the Eurovision Song Contest descended on Moscow yesterday evening. Norway won with Alexander Rybak and “Fairytale”, deservedly in my opinion, pipping the impressive Iceland to the crown [ READ MORE ]

Berlin Airlift remembered

60 years ago, the Berlin Airlift came to an end, after almost a year of operations begun after the Soviet forces occupying what would later become East Germany blockaded the Western section of the Hauptstadt. Without the help of the 200 000 US and British flights that delivered up to 13 000 tonnes of food [ READ MORE ]

The disappearing car

By way of a diversion from my usual exsperated cynicism, here’s something I found on the BBC that’s really rather cool: an art student from University of Central Lancashire (Uclan) in Preston has shown off her disappearing car. more about “BBC NEWS | England | Art student make…“, posted with vodpod[ READ MORE ]

Wisdomap

I’m very conscious that I’ve completely and utterly failed to write anything substantial over the last, well, 2 months almost, but I’m hoping this will all change once I go back home for the Christmas holidays. To ease the wait, however, I thought I’d flag up a very good software I came across while idly [ READ MORE ]

I, Supervisor

  • October 16th, 2008
  • Posted in General

Came across this highly entertaining psychology test, rather better than much of the pseudoscientific dross that gets peddled on the web nowadays, and certainly much more fun. Apparently I come out as 11% extrovert, 1% sensing, 1% thinking, and a whopping 89% judging. As opposed to introvert, emotive and the like, I assume. This apparently [ READ MORE ]

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