Following my run in with the estate of Ernst Barlach, the tale has moved on a little since the first installment. Having removed the offending picture from the site and written to tell them so (with an apology), I was hoping they might see their way to closing the matter altogether. Not quite. They did, [...]

Today we read of the shocking news that our PCs are vulnerable to viruses from space. This is the learned opinion of Richard Carrigan, a particle physicist from the US, who writes in Acta Astronautica Journal.
“In science fiction, all the aliens are bad,” the Guardian quotes him as saying, next to a large picture of [...]

There’s been much goings on recently regarding the apparent death of Java, so I’m a latecomer to all this. Nevertheless, it’s getting to annoy me so much now that I just can’t stay away.
The battle scene
To summarise: Bruce Tate, a leading light in the Java world, has written book called “Beyond Java” which outlines its [...]

I was quite looking forward to opening the letter that arrived from Germany last week. I thought it was probably a wedding invitation, although it was a bit odd that it was sent to me, not Anna, as it’s really Anna’s friends who are getting married. And odd, too, that it wasn’t addressed to both [...]

I received a fax this week from Google Analytics, telling me that Dave was one of their customers, and inviting me to a presentation about him. So I went along to it, and they talked about their service and showed Dave’s blog on a big PowerPoint slide with his slogan “in which someone you’ve never [...]

Humour and surrealism interrupt Linda Grant’s tale today about her wish to have “American teeth” — those big, regular things that help us distinguish Americans from anyone else. Her story is every bit as painful as your worst dentist nightmares. At one point, in great pain, and scared away from her usual dentist, she found [...]

Though I admit to hoping the Mirror’s City Slicker James Hipwell gets punished, it’s only to be punished for fitting the stereotype of a loud and brash Loadsamoney. In other words, pure unjustified malice. In reality I find it hard to judge if he did wrong. According to today’s report:
The former Daily Mirror editor Piers [...]

According to Press Gazette there is good news for the Guardian and the Times as they record 7% and 9% year-on-year increases for October. Plus…
There is also cause for celebration at The Independent where sales for October grew to a new peak for its tabloid era, up 0.38 per cent year-on-year to 267,037.
But all of [...]

Express journalists will be getting together to bid farewell to their Manchester office:
The gathering starts at 3pm on Friday, 9 December, in the recently re-opened Crown and Kettle pub.
One long-serving Express journalist said: “The pub will be remembered with fondness by hundreds of executives, reporters, subs, inkies and other staff because it played such a [...]

Blair was “quite rightly” defeated last night in his attempt to allow 90 days detention without trial. His reasoning was spurious. He said afterwards
When the police say they are fighting mass-casualty terrorism and they provide examples of why they need the powers, I think you need powerful reasons to turn round and say no to [...]