Daniel Davies has long had a beef with the government over its PR strategy towards the MMR vaccine, for which he sometimes seems to hold Ben Goldacre responsible. No, it doesn’t make much sense to me either, but as a student of the Davies oeuvre, I think it can be best understood as a system…
Read More now, where’s Hopi Sen when you need him…The Libyan rebels are making progress, as well as robots. Some of them are reported to be within 40 miles of Tripoli, those being the ones who the French have been secretly arming, including with a number of light tanks. Now that’s what I call protecting civilians. They are also about to take over the…
Read More If you’re out of luck and out of work, we could send you to the western mountains of LibyaA question, 200 or so readers. How many of you also follow the twitter feed?
Read More AdminWhile we’re on drugs, why not a look at China Miéville’s Embassytown, in which an unusual one plays a big role? This isn’t quite an AFOE “Premature Evaluation” as I’m actually reading it, I just haven’t finished it yet. A couple of points… Pass by reference, not by value This is the big-idea high concept…
Read More Embassytown: a partial review(Or, imagine you had to make a Homo economicus. Other than money, what chemicals would you immediately look up in Angewandte Chemie?) So Dave from PR’s constituency chairman was found dead in a portaloo at Glastonbury. Who now remembers William Hague in Notting Hill? This made me think of something. There used to be a…
Read More a theory of some people’s moral sentimentsTwitter is no fun when it comes to referencing a whole conversation, so you’ll have to do some work here. So Matthew Turner and I had a row with “Hopi Sen”, who apparently thinks the absolute top priority for the Labour Party is an attack on “waste”. If you browse through the pile o’tweets you’ll…
Read More Waste is a waste of timeSo I went to this. Unfortunately I actually thought pretty much everyone was good. Damn good. Brilliant, in fact. So the spirit of this post is not available. By about midnight the floor had got to about optimal density – not quite to the point where you start worrying that you’re going to be knocked…
Read More failure of a stinker reviewFrom yesterday’s Obscurer, a story: A senior union source told The Observer that it was clear Alexander had jumped the gun as the Treasury attempted to show it was taking a hard line on the burgeoning pensions bill. “Danny Alexander has been reined in by the Cabinet Office,” said a union source. “What he did…
Read More There is no crisis, dammitSo how do you get from Shoreditch to the South Bank? Well, as Tom from Boris Watch pointed out, you take a number 243 bus. Or you wait 15 years – one way or another. Or you practice, baby. Or you get a haircut. Anyway, so much for taking the opportunity to reuse what I…
Read More a few thoughts on the exciting world of social mediaThis sycophantic FT piece on David Laws has been kicked around quite a bit already. Personally, I feel it represents a new kind of journalism – writing that should have been kept behind a paywall, so nobody would have to read it. Beyond that, though, it’s pretty weird. Check out this par: From 1987 to…
Read More I fought the Laws and the half-molten clock seduced a giant tortoise