Witty series of short movies explaining various reasons for buying an Apple Mac. Not recommended for Windows users unless they’ve been retrofitted with a sense of humour. The movies are clearly inspired by Umberto Eco’s celebrated essay arguing that the PC was a Protestant machine whereas the Mac was undoubtedly a Catholic one.
Thanks to Gerard for the link.
My Prius has a playmate. Giles Smith writes about the new (to the UK, anyway) Honda Civic Hybrid 1.4. Thanks to Kevin for the link.
Here’s a really good idea — a website that publishes details of the organisations lobbying for a particular change in public policy — in this case nuclear power.
The Nuclear Spin website is designed to help people find out more about the key pro-nuclear advocates in the UK who are pushing for a resumption of nuclear power. It documents some of the public relations tactics being used by the industry to fool the public into believing that Britain’s future is nuclear.
We need to do one for the copyright thugs.
From a Technology Review interview with Ernest J. Moniz, an MIT physicist and former Under Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy…
Tech Review: President Bush has been talking a lot about hydrogen. Is the hydrogen economy the answer?
Moniz: There are many here on campus who have written about it — John Deutch had a Science paper about it and John Heywood has testified to the Congress about it and has written several reports with colleagues. The hydrogen transportation economy looks to us to be very, very challenging, very far off. And “very far off” could mean: forever far off. Given the cost barriers that must be overcome with fuel cells, the challenges for storing hydrogen onboard, and the infrastructure problems for delivering hydrogen — it makes one wonder whether alternative technologies, which require far less disruption to the infrastructure and are far less of a cost challenge, but are highly efficient, don’t essentially accomplish the same goal…
The current hysteria about the broken metatarsal of Wayne Rooney (see helpful illustration above) reminds one that world cup hysteria in the British media is running true to form. It goes like this:
The one thing missing from the time-honoured script is likely to be English football hooligans, who were once world champions at their sport, but are now apparently eclipsed by Polish thugs. Sigh. And to think that this country once had an Empire on which the sun never set.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Most American young people can’t find Iraq on a map, even though U.S. troops have been there for more than three years, according to a new geographic literacy study released on Tuesday.
Fewer than 4 in 10 Americans aged 18-24 in a survey could place Iraq on an unlabeled map of the Middle East, a study conducted for National Geographic found. Only about one-quarter of respondents could find Iran and Israel on the same map.
Sixty-nine percent of young people picked out China on a map of Asia, but only about half could find India and Japan and only 12 percent correctly located Afghanistan.
[Link] via Truthdig.
One thing mysteriously missing from the discussion about the managerial chaos at the Home Office is the fact that this is the organisation which is going to oversee (and ensure the security of) ID cards.
Photographed this morning by Brian.
Q: Hey, Melinda, what do you call a crank on a computer?
A: Nicholas Negroponte.
From a sharp observation by John Paczkowski.
Good Morning Silicon Valley has an entertaining swipe at Google’s quest for a Chinese name for its local service…
Google’s running into a vocal backlash in China, and it has nothing to do with its cooperation in state censorship. No, the issue that has galvanized thousands of Chinese to sign an online petition is the search sovereign’s choice of a Mandarin name: Guge, represented by the ideograms for “valley” and “song” (see “Unfortunately, access to the lyrics of ‘Valley Song’ is restricted in China”). Google felt the name conveyed the harvest, “the sense of a fruitful and productive search experience in a poetic Chinese way.” The image that came through to many, however, was closer to a stroll in the country than a hunt through cyberspace. “Google gives us an individualistic feel, yet Guge sounds traditional and rural … in other words, it’s outdated,” wrote one blogger. Then there’s the problem of near-homophones. One Web site operator said, “When I first heard the name Guge, I couldn’t help laughing. It sounded like fool, funny and fart.”
The NoGuge.com site is collecting suggested alternatives, and the leader is Gougou (dog dog), which is how Google is already widely known in China. The company says those folks are barking [sic] up the wrong tree: “Names such as gougou (dog dog) could not reflect the responsibilities of a corporate, brand or product name, nor do they reflect fully our goals and mission.” Other suggestions include Goule (enough), Gugu (auntie), Gugou (ancient dog), Gege (elder brother) and one that may strike a little too close to the bone, considering Google’s concessions to the government — Good Gou (good dog).
How about “Running Dog”? That was one of Mao Zedong’s terms of general abuse for capitalists.