Category Archives: Asides
ID cards — the biggest fallacy
One of the most sinister arguments used by proponents of the ID Card bill (and other measures proposed by security freaks) is the canard that “if you’ve got nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear”. There’s a lovely piece by Muriel Gray in today’s Guardian which shows how wrong this cant can be. Sometimes, innocent people have very good reasons for wanting to maintain absolute privacy.
Steam age communications
When was the last time anyone gave you a telex number? (Does anyone still use telex?) From a manhole cover spotted today.
More: Wikipedia claims that “Telex is still in use for certain applications such as shipping, news, weather reporting and military command.”
And when it’s moving…?
I knew Windows was unreliable but…
… this is ridiculous.
Regular readers will know that I always photograph this display at Cambridge station when it’s showing a blue screen of death. But this morning there wasn’t even a screen, blue or otherwise. What can it mean?
What a difference a year makes
June 28, 2004
In a few days, Iraq will radiate with stability and security.
Iyad Allawi, newly sworn-in Prime Minister of Iraq.
26 June, 2005
The insurgency could go on for any number of years. Insurgencies tend to go on for five, six, eight, ten, twelve years.
Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense
Still life, with candles
Debris of an evening spent sitting in the garden, talking. One upside of global warming.
Let us now praise famous er, men
Tomorrow, Cambridge University will give an honorary degree to Carl Djerassi, Professor of Chemistry at Stanford, and one of the few people alive to whom the description of polymath might properly be applied — see here if you have any doubts. He’s the guy who invented the contraceptive pill, and could thus be said to have changed millions of lives, and indeed whole societies. I particularly liked his account of how he came to have an Austrian postal stamp dedicated to him.
Another honorary degree will go to David Crystal, one of the world’s leading experts on language (and also one of the most depressingly prolific authors in any language). There was a dinner in my college tonight in his honour, and to my delight I wound up sitting next to him at dessert where we had an intense discussion about Blogging and its significance. It turns out that he’s done a second edition of his book, Language and the Internet, to catch up on what has happened, linguistically speaking, on the Net in the years since the first edition came out in 2001. (Just think: when he was writing the first edition, ‘google’ wasn’t a verb!) I look forward to seeing the new version.
eBay and St. Bob
This morning’s Observer column on how eBay management can cope with anything — except an ageing, foulmouthed Irish rock star.
Take a break
Exhausted by concern over the G8 Summit, I thought I would take a break in the Gleneagles Hotel, where the great event is to be held. Sadly, the hotel was unable to offer me accommodation between July 3 and 9, but I could make a reservation for the 10th. Nice range of choice, too — all the way from a ‘Classic Double’ (soon to be known as a Blair-Brown) @ £340 per night for B&B, to the Royal Lochnagar Suite @£1600 per night. I’m sure all those poor folks in Africa will be touched by the thought of the Lords of the Universe communing on their behalf in such modest surroundings.
My good friend, the late Charles Alan Wright, used to stay at Gleneagles — in a suite. I knew Charlie was rich (he was Richard Nixon’s lawyer for a time), but I didn’t know he was that rich.