I love the jaunty look of these houses in Northampton Street, Cambridge. I can imagine Pixar making the one on the right into an animated cartoon character.
Monthly Archives: June 2007
Guardian reaches issue no. 50,000
Yep. Today’s edition is the 50,000th. Quite an achievement and one marked by publishing a facsimile of the very first edition. “It is unlikely”, said the blurb, “we would [today] lead the paper with an ad for a lost dog”. The ad reads:
TAKEN UP
A BLACK NEWFOUNDLAND BITCH, and person having lost the same may have her again on describing her marks, and paying all expences, by applying at No. 80 Shudehall or at the York Inn.
NB If now owned in 14 days from the date below, she will be sold to defray expences.
May 5, 1821
The price of the first edition was seven pence, which I imagine was a substantial sum in those days — equivalent perhaps to the £3.95 that I pay for the New Yorker in a newsagent.
Wonder if there will be a 100,000 paper edition of the Guardian ? I wouldn’t bet on it. (Just as well, really — I won’t be around to collect or pay up.)
Babelgum: the poor man’s Joost?
That’s what TechCrunch thinks anyway.
[Aside] Where do they get these daft names from?
Steal this laptop
Richard Charkin is a Big Cheese in Macmillan, the publishers. On his blog he admits to a heist. He posts a photograph of the Google stand at a trade fair (BookExpo America). Then, he continues:
There’s no computer where a computer should be to the left of the gentleman’s arm. You will also notice that there is no sign saying ‘please do not steal the computers’. I confess that a colleague and I simply picked up two computers from the Google stand and waited in close proximity until someone noticed. This took more than an hour.
Our justification for this appalling piece of criminal behaviour? The owner of the computer had not specifically told us not to steal it. If s/he had, we would not have done so. When s/he asked for its return, we did so. It is exactly what Google expects publishers to expect and accept in respect to intellectual property.
‘If you don’t tell us we may not digitise something, we shall do so. But we do no evil. So if you tell us to desist we shall.’
I felt rather shabby playing this trick on Google. They should feel the same playing the same trick on authors and publishers…
Well it’s one way of making your point. And an even better way of getting attention.
Marc Andreessen has started a blog
Quote of the day
The physicist I.I. Rabi and General (later President) Dwight Eisenhower became friends after Eisenhower was appointed president of Columbia University soon after the end of WW2. When introduced to Rabi, Eisenhower said, “I am always very happy to see one of the employees of the university,” to which Rabi replied, “Mr. President, the faculty are not the employees of the university. They are the university.”
Quoted in J. S. Rigden, Rabi: Scientist and Citizen, Harvard University Press, 2000.
The George Bush Memorial Library
Photographed by my colleague, Geoff Peters. It’s next door to JanetUK’s new offices at Harwell. Funnily enough, I was under the impression that the Bush library was to be based at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Perhaps the protests are getting to him. Harwell’s nice and quiet.
Wikipedia deficiencies
Dan Bricklin has some interesting reflections about the Wikipedia entry on the spreadsheet. I’ve always thought that Dan invented the spreadsheet, but the Wikipedia entry begs to differ. I’ve just looked at it and it fails to give a date for the first release of VisiCalc and doesn’t mention Microsoft’s first stab at a spreadsheet program — Multiplan — at all.
News from the G8
From David Blair’s (no relation) Telegraph Blog…
I have just watched the G8 leaders yawn and scratch their way through a toe-curling session with the so-called “junior eight”. This is an absurd innovation at G8 summits where eight rather dim teenagers are brought before the world’s most powerful leaders.
George Bush and Angela Merkel in Heiligendamm
Bush and Merkel share a joke at the G8 summitEach of the kids gets to read out a pathetic little speech consisting of a string of platitudes. The world’s most powerful leaders do their best to feign interest. OK, none of them actually yawned. But Nicolas Sarkozy took the opportunity to scratch his head and smooth his hair while the French adolescent stumbled through her script. Sarko also forgot to remove his translation earplug while she was talking – in French, of course – suggesting that he really was mentally out-to-lunch.
George Bush began chewing peanuts while the Tanzanian kid was talking. Vladimir Putin looked sinister and bored in equal measure as each of the teens ran through their cringing little speeches. Romano Prodi’s eyelids grew heavier and heavier.
The two most obscure members of the G8, Shinzo Abe and Stephen Harper, the Japanese and Canadian prime ministers, appeared utterly bewildered. (Incidentally, most of my fellow journalists have no idea who these guys are). Only Tony Blair had some success in pretending to be interested…
Still, George Bush got to meet St Bob Geldof and Bono, so the Summic can’t have been entirely pointless.
Health warnings on wine bottles
Er, vintage indignation from Boris Johnson…
And there I was – all set to blame Brussels. As soon as I heard there was some loony plan to put health warnings on wine bottles, my
As I prepared my continental bombing raid, I could see my target in my imagination.
That’s right: it was some Swedish divorcee health commissioner, sitting in her velour slacks in her taupe-coloured office in the Breydel building, Brussels; and I could just imagine the imperious set of her jaw as she put down her glass of Badoit and prepared to Mont Blanc her initials under the EU edict that alcohol was henceforward to be clearly labelled as a poison; and in my rage I reached for another lunchtime glass of Mazis-Chambertin 2000, to fortify myself for the rigours of composing my column, and I can tell you that it was with all bomb bays fully loaded that I arrived at my desk; and I was on the very point of launching the great Brussels-busting task force when I paused.
I had a spasm of journalistic scruple. I picked up the phone….
You can guess the rest. Lazy column, but still amusing.