I don't know what he does to his friends, but he frightens me

Posted on by January 23, 2012
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I got to see Boris Johnson in full, unscripted flow last night. I'm glad I am not one of his political minders, because it must be scary every time he opens his mouth. Not even he knows where he is going.

So, somehow, he got onto the topic of Sappho. He presumably quoted her in the original Greek – it was a rapid babble of something I bet absolutely none of the audience could understand – and continued "the ancient Greeks regarded her as the tenth Muse alongside… alongside… does anyone know who the other Muses were?"

The Times they are a changin'

Posted on by January 23, 2012
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The Times Online website emailed to say that it is about to introduce "a new, improved reader comment system".

They reckon "Times Online attracts the most insightful and informative reader comments from around the world", but that the change "unfortunately .. means that all old comments will disappear from the site."

So… they're about to throw away several years' worth of the world's best comments.

Oops.

Losing content in this way is stupid. As well as losing all of this valuable (and free) content, they're also putting off people from commenting in future. Why bother if they're going to throw it away?

Would they go through the archive of the paper and delete all the letters to the editor because they were introducing a new format? No, people would think they were insane. Same here.

GoD moving money to me in mysterious ways

Posted on by February 5, 2012
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One of the problems with Amazon is that it sometimes shows up your beloved copy of a book to be worth pennies. I particularly remember finding several signed copies of one interesting US book on 1970s sexuality on offer for 1p. I had thought mine was reasonably rare…

And other times, it's delightful. I occasionally browse for books I have to see what the second-hand copies are being offered for. On finding people wanted silly money for the GoD book (Richard Sharp's 30 year old The Game of Diplomacy) I put my copy up for grabs for silly money. Well, it was originally published for the then outrageous price of £7.50 – about £50 today – even if I think I paid around 50p for it a few years ago.

And someone's just bought it, probably because my copy is in much better condition than the cheaper of the two left.

The funny thing (to me, anyway) is that the entire contents of the book are available online.

Two items on this morning's Today Programme: one amusingly awful and one awful?

Posted on by May 8, 2009
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The first was hearing Harriet Harman attempt to say that if MPs' dubious expenses claims were paid, it was the fault of the House of Commons' Fees Office as they made the final decision. Yeah. The electorate in several seats in particular will buy that. They've bought an awful lot of stuff already, of course.

The other was a mention in, I think, the business section, that the Carphone Warehouse has bought Tiscali's UK phone and internet business. Erm, that includes me, that does.

Just how afraid should I be?

And at what point can they change things without being me able to leave? We're still in the minimum contract period for the Tiscali phone service, for example.

An infinite number of correct answers, part two

Posted on by April 22, 2009
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OK, I looked at the question, thought that 'maths is about finding the simplest and easiest answer' and said '120 x 1'. I'm kicking myself slightly for not thinking of sqrt(120) x sqrt(120) first 🙂

JA(7) saw that 120 is a multiple of 20 and worked out that '20 x 6' was 120.

L said '2 x 60'.

Adult visitor P said that seven year olds probably wouldn't know anything higher than their twelve times tables and said '12 x 10'.

You lot had… Continue reading →