Toy of the moment is this, called Geomag, from some kind Santas in Bury St. Edmunds. The rods are magnetic, the ball bearings are just ball bearings. They stick together like crazy and are just fantastic fun. (The website has some good pictures but is slightly embarassing. It needs translation by someone who has English [...]

What was big in 2005? What were things that really changed our world? Frankly, I couldn’t give a toss. What’s much, much more important is what this highly respected blog wasted its time on. Here’s a chart of the top tags used over the last few months, against a count of how many times they [...]

This is the time of year for looking back at our predictions for 2005 (”I said that Google would get into smell-casting in a big way, and their recent advertising alliance with AOL clearly hints that things are moving in the way I predicted”, etc, etc) and making wild guesses about 2006 (personally I think [...]

There’s a funny old thing going on Stateside. The New York Times has published a remarkable story by Kurt Eichenwald, but it causes Jack Shafer of Slate to call into question Eichenwald’s ethics. Yet the whole thing to me sounds peculiarly American and precious.
The story is of 13 year old Justin Berry who innocently buys [...]

Last night The World Tonight interviewed Professor Andrew Oswald of Warwick University, who has found that having daughters makes you more likely to vote for a more left wing party. He discovered this by interviewing about 25,000 people in the UK and Germany over 13 years. An unusual result found through unambiguous methods. You would [...]

The founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, has got it slightly wrong. In the interminable debate over the value of Wikipedia (one, two, three, among others) he is interviewedby Business Week . Asked if Wikipedia should be cited by students and researchers he says
No, I don’t think people should cite it, and I don’t think people [...]

Although I’ve been writing “Have a happy Christmas and a great New Year” in cards this year, I’ve never been sure why “New Year” should have initial caps. A carefully controlled scientific survey of two (Anna and me) indicates 100% of the population don’t know why they use caps for this, but that they do [...]

Here’s a Christmas e-card. I find it utterly nauseating. And since I’m in an office I played it with the sound switched off — goodness knows what the soundtrack is like. No, I won’t switch off the mute and compromise my departmental dignity, even for you, dear reader. It features a dog called Chudleigh, [...]

I missed the news that Home Truths is to be axed. (Which is to say, I didn’t find out within 4 hours of it being announced.) And ever since I dropped my portable radio in the bath I’ve been mostly without the Today programme in the morning. So I missed Andy Kershaw’s moan on Today [...]

The Culture Vulture blog is reliving Don DeLillo’s White Noise, with the events of Sunday recalling its tale of the (always unspecified) Airborne Toxic Event.
I have nothing to say on the subject, other that it’s a wonderful blackly comic book, and recommended reading. In an effort to encourage you to buy it, here’s an excerpt, [...]