Livery Halls

Long time readers (and followers of my Flickr stream) might remember that a couple of years ago I developed an obsession with taking photos of the City of London Livery Halls. The obsession waned when I stop working in the City but over the last couple of weeks I’ve been wandering around the city a… Continue reading Livery Halls

Russell T Davies to Leave Doctor Who

We all knew it would happen sometime (not even John Nathan-Turner went on forever) and there have been rumours flying around for a while, but yesterday the BBC confirmed that Russell T Davies will be stepping down as executive producer of Doctor Who. He’ll stay on for the four specials to be broadcast next year… Continue reading Russell T Davies to Leave Doctor Who

Rationalism 4 – Superstition 0

Over the last two days, as part of the debate on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, Parliament has had four votes[1] where the forces of Medievalism tried to impose the views of their imaginary friends to prevent the advance of science. As you’ll have seen in the news, they lost on all four counts.… Continue reading Rationalism 4 – Superstition 0

How Powerful is Religion?

Today’s vote on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is going to be an interesting test of the power of religion in 21st century Britain. As far as I can see, there are no reasons to object to the bill that don’t have their basis in Bronze Age myths. Gordon Brown has been really rather… Continue reading How Powerful is Religion?

Pointless Battles For Geeks

Geeks invented the internet. And for many years it was inhabited solely by geeks and academics. Over those years a number of unwritten rules arose which controlled the way people used the internet. The unwritten rules were passed on to newcomers who saw the wisdom of the rules and continued to follow them. Everyone followed the rules and all… Continue reading Pointless Battles For Geeks

Opentech 2008

The full schedule for Opentech has been announced. There are three tracks of talks and it looks like that I’ll need a couple of clones in order to see everything that I want to see. The previous Opentech conference (was it really three years ago) was a lot of fun and I fully expect this one to be… Continue reading Opentech 2008

Blog Fixed (Hopefully)

Regular readers will know that this blog has experienced some problems over the last few months. Since I last moved to new hardware this blog has been running really slowly and more often than not any attempt to publish content (whether a blog entry or a comment) has ended with a server error. This has… Continue reading Blog Fixed (Hopefully)

Books I Read in April 2008

A lot of books this month. But you might think that there was a bit of cheating going on. The Bible: The Biography – Karen ArmstrongThis is a book I’ve wanted to read ever since I saw it published in hardback last year. Actually, it wasn’t quite what I expected. I was expecting a lot… Continue reading Books I Read in April 2008

Blogging Nonsense

One of the joys of MPs having blogs is that you often get to see what they are really like without their utterances going through the filter of the party spin machine. And it’s amazing how often so many of them make complete fools of themselves. Today’s example is Nadine Dorries. Of course as a… Continue reading Blogging Nonsense