A clipping from a wonderfully witty ‘infographic’.

Political calculations, originally uploaded by jjn1.

Pringle is an Independent candidate in Donegal.

UPDATE: Thomas Pringle was elected after the fifth and final count on February 26.

Here’s a terrible confession from a Prius owner: I was once a petrolhead. Worse: towards the end of my student days I had a 3.8-litre Mk II Jaguar (like the one in the photograph and the one owned by Inspector Morse in the TV series, but not in as nice condition as either of those). It was wonderful for a while. But then came the Yom Kippur war, and the OPEC oil-price hike and suddenly it cost £20 to drive to the end of the street and so, sadder but wiser, I sold it and bought a VW Beetle.

But back then I used to think that maybe it’d be fun to be a motoring journalist.

Reading Sam Wollaston in the Guardian has cured me retrospectively of that illusion: I just wasn’t a witty enough writer. Witness his latest piece — about the Volvo V60 D3 SE Lux Premium:

Do I know how to start it, asks the man from Volvo. Hey, come on, I’m an experienced motoring journalist – of course I know how to bloody start it. Leave me alone. So he does. And within half an hour or so, I’m on the move. You have to insert the key fob thing into the key fob dock thing, put your foot on the brake, then hit the start button. Remember when cars had ignition keys? Wasn’t that so boring? And straightforward. Anyway, thank God I’m not a getaway driver. I wouldn’t have got away.

Some of this car’s toys are more useful, such as the safety ones. So you’re driving up the M1, distracted by something (the kids or the dogs fighting in the back, say), you start to drift into the neighbouring lane… beep beep, beep beep, says the car. That’ll be the Lane Departure Warning kicking in. Or you actually want to change lanes, but you’re too old and stiff to look over your shoulder. You can’t see anything in the wing mirror, it’s probably clear… except suddenly there is a yellow light in the mirror, the Blind Spot Information System telling you another car is there. More lights appear on the windscreen if you get too close to the car in front. There’s also a City Safety System, which makes the car automatically brake if the vehicle in front slows down or stops: this car is constantly sending out radar and sonar and what have you to keep me out of trouble – it’s like driving a bat.

He’s intrigued by the “Pedestrian Detection” system that looks out for person-shaped things on the road in front, warns you, then brakes if you decide not to do anything.

I want to test it out, with my girlfriend as the person-shaped thing, but she won’t, unsportingly – says she’s worried that after all the Christmas bingeing, she won’t be recognised as person-shaped. How embarrassing would that be?

Oh — and another thing… The Jag had a ‘Start’ button in its veneered walnut dashboard. Just like Windows 95.

Picture credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Arnaud_25

Today’s Financial Times finally gets round to an obituary of Daniel Bell and quotes his description of himself as “a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics and a conservative in culture”. Reading it, I was struck by the realisation that it’s probably also a good description of me. Sigh.

I’m not a football enthusiast, but really Rooney’s goal is astonishing.

Nice Prospect Magazine essay by Michael Weiss, who sees a striking similarity between Julian Assange and the 19th-century anarchist and failed Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin.

Born in 1814 and justifiably forgotten today for his lack of theoretical rigor or coherent platform, Bakunin, like Assange, fancied himself a principled anarchist. But it was his personal characteristics that came to define his reputation. To friend and foe alike, he was a chancer, a sponger and a delusional madcap. Bakunin said he wanted to release the “evil passions” of mankind through revolution. Out of a similarly blinding hubris, Assange deflects his colleagues’ criticism by saying, “I’m busy, there are two wars I have to end.”

Both men gloried in the secret society and coded message rather than above-ground operations. Like Assange, Bakunin flitted through Europe with police tails, disguises and an air of conspiracy. He commanded a cult-like following of friends. Edmund Wilson wrote of Bakunin that “he was able to catch people up by the spell of a personality part of whose power resided in the fact that it had the ingenuousness of a child… his conspiracies were always partly imaginary, and he never himself seems quite to have known the difference between actuality and the dream.” Assange is fond of skipping down city streets while journalists are discussing his materials. According to the New York Times, he believes that Stasi agents still control the German secret police archives, which they’re deleting from history.

AOL’s purchase of the Huffington Post has got everyone excited. Except me and the inimitable Om Malik. He reports that AOL CEO Tim Armstrong wants AOL home page to be the start page for information. But, says Malik, it ain’t going to happen. The world of today doesn’t work that way. People have their favorites and start their news day at random places.

AOL’s moves are much like the ending scene from Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. Surrounded by the Bolivian Army, Dos Hombres have no choice to make a gallant dash to their horses, guns blazing, hoping against hope as thousand guns blaze around them. The ever-increasing web inventory is like the Bolivian Army firing on AOL and others who have not yet come to terms with the futility of chasing page views.

Despite what you might read in the newspapers and blogs, AOL is still in A-O-Hell. In the most recent quarter, the company saw its advertising revenues go down 29 percent, at a time when online advertising grew about 14 percent. According to eMarketer, its share of total online display advertising was down to 5.3 percent in 2010 from 6.8 percent in 2009.

It’s funny how stuff gets laid down in corporate DNA and is then impossible to shift. AOL started out as the ultimate ‘walled garden’: it thought it would be able to keep its subscribers corralled inside rather than venturing out onto the Wild West Web. The fantasy about becoming the start page for today’s Web is a reflection of the same mindset.

NoteSlate is low cost tablet device with true one colour display, real paper look design, long life battery (180h !), together with very handy usage and very simple and helpful interface for pen and paper. This easy, compact and portable gadget is used anywhere you want to make any notes, drafts, sketches, any ideas for future reference. Paper for everyone! Write a note and check it later, save it, or delete it. Maybe send it after. Just one colour is enough to express the basics. Keep your life simple. You will love it. For $99.

Interesting blurb. Supposedly coming to market in June at a price of $99.

One of the mot paradoxical aspects of the last week is that, on the one hand, we have seen endless loops of TV footage of what’s going on in Cairo, and yet the only times I’ve felt that I had any real insight into what it was like has been when print journalists on the ground reported what they were seeing — as, for example, with the report by Robert Fisk that I blogged the other day. Here’s another remarkable account — this time by the NYT’s Nicholas Kristof.

Inside Tahrir Square on Thursday, I met a carpenter named Mahmood whose left arm was in a sling, whose leg was in a cast and whose head was being bandaged in a small field hospital set up by the democracy movement. This was the seventh time in 24 hours that he had needed medical treatment for injuries suffered at the hands of government-backed mobs. But as soon as Mahmood was bandaged, he tottered off once again to the front lines.

“I’ll fight as long as I can,” he told me. I was awestruck. That seemed to be an example of determination that could never be surpassed, but as I snapped Mahmood’s picture I backed into Amr’s wheelchair. It turned out that Amr had lost his legs many years ago in a train accident, but he rolled his wheelchair into Tahrir Square to show support for democracy, hurling rocks back at the mobs that President Hosni Mubarak apparently sent to besiege the square.

Amr (I’m not using some last names to reduce the risks to people I quote) was being treated for a wound from a flying rock. I asked him as politely as I could what a double-amputee in a wheelchair was doing in a pitched battle involving Molotov cocktails, clubs, machetes, bricks and straight razors.

“I still have my hands,” he said firmly. “God willing, I will keep fighting.”

The courage of these protestors is awe-inspiring, given the savagery of the regime they are opposing.

What I want for Christmas. Bet the UK Ministry of Transport will ban it — like it did the Segway. Only available in the US at the moment. Website here.