I’ve been working in London over the last few days. Although there are still lots of signs of the bombing, what’s impressive is the sense of normality. Life goes on.
The right angle
A detail from my favourite lane in Cambridge. Note the bird suspended in flight.
Another argument for having an iPod?
There’s an extraordinary story in yesterday’s London Evening Standard about a man whose hearing was saved by his iPod. Tadeusz Gryglewicz was on the Number 30 bus when the bomb exploded. He was taken to University College Hospital where doctors told him later that listening to his iPod saved him from having perforated ear-drums. He was listening to Rachmanivov’s Concerto No. 2!
Worse than Watergate
Frank Rich, in a wonderful NYT Op-Ed piece on the scandal enveloping Karl Rove and the Bush White House.
WHEN John Dean published his book “Worse Than Watergate” in the spring of 2004, it seemed rank hyperbole: an election-year screed and yet another attempt by a Nixon alumnus to downgrade Watergate crimes by unearthing worse “gates” thereafter. But it’s hard to be dismissive now that my colleague Judy Miller has been taken away in shackles for refusing to name the source for a story she never wrote. No reporter went to jail during Watergate. No news organization buckled like Time. No one instigated a war on phony premises. This is worse than Watergate.
Junxion Boxes
Just what we need to set up an Ndiyo internet cafe just about anywhere.
Hits and misses
Last Sunday’s Observer column about the Long Tail.
Ever wondered why every bookstore you go into seems to have piles and piles of a few bestsellers, but not a single copy of anything by Henry James? Or why the video section has all the latest brain-dead Hollywood blockbusters, but not a single copy of Manon des Sources? Or why your local multiplex never shows a foreign language film?…
Odeo goes live
Yep. Find it here. Another push for the podcasting bandwagon.
Online Monopoly
No — not another post complaining about Microsoft, but about an online version of the board game that has sparked a million family rows on wet holiday afternoons. There are 18 London cabs equipped with GPS and every time one traverses a piece of London that an online gamer ‘owns’ s/he collects revenue. Clever idea, but…
(Thinks… what’s to stop the cabbies playing themselves? At least in the board game the pieces are driven by throws of the dice and don’t have motives of their own!)
Would you buy software from this man?
Have a look at this before answering!
Serendipity
Andrew Brown had one of those lovely moments today when two parallel universes are brought together by Google technology.
He’s also very impressed by Google Earth, but that’s no good to me because (like that other great Google offering, Picasa) it requires a Windows client.