Writing in yesterday’s Times, A A Gill put his finger on a problem that has been bothering me about the BBC’s latest wildlife extravaganza – Planet Earth. For a science programme, it has very little science in it. The factual content is now virtually nil, just scene-setting and needless telling you what you’re seeing. There… Continue reading Planet Earth
Month: November 2006
Teaching Creationism
I always thought the Canadians were eminently sensible people. From the Ottawa Citizen: The Quebec ministry of education has told unlicensed Christian evangelical schools that they must teach Darwin’s theory of evolution and sex education or close their doors after an Outaouais school board complained the provincial curriculum wasn’t being followed. Not going far enough… Continue reading Teaching Creationism
Why Spam Is Out Of Control
Very worrying article in today’s Guardian technology section. We all know that spam levels are constantly increasing but this article says that 91% of email is now spam. It then goes on to put at least some of the blame on the people who connect completely unprotected PCs to the internet. These PCs then get… Continue reading Why Spam Is Out Of Control
Virgin Media
The company formed from the amalgamation of ntl, Telewest and Virgin have announced that from early next year they will be rebranding as Virgin Media. I really hope that the promotional video on that page isn’t indicative of the quality of their services. I’ve had cable TV services for seven or eight years now. I… Continue reading Virgin Media
Stamp Rage
Oh, this is all just too silly.
Torchwood – Cyberwoman
I thought that last week’s episode of Torchwood was a bit better than the first two, but with this week’s episode, Cyberwoman, the quality plunged again. The pitch probably went something like this: “We’ll have an attractive young woman wandering around with Cyberman technology covering as little of her body as we can get away… Continue reading Torchwood – Cyberwoman
Ridiculous
Did I miss a memo about English spelling reform? More and more people seem to be spelling ridiculous as “rediculous”. Have they all been infected by the same typo? Or is it some street-talk that I’m unacquainted with?
Too Clever By Half
I’ve just noticed that Firefox 2.0 is a bit too clever for its own good. It’s the new RSS autosubscription feature that’s the problem. It’s great that when I click on an RSS feed, it gives me the chance to subscribe to that feed in Bloglines. But it insists on doing that whenever I try… Continue reading Too Clever By Half
Compare and Contrast
From the Amazon.com page for the book Google Analytics by Mary E. Tyler and Jerri Ledford “…very useful.” (dave.org.uk, October 2006) Which is extracted somewhat carefully from the review I wrote In summary, the descriptions of the Google Analytics reports are very useful if you can ignore the over-familiar language, but the sections that contain… Continue reading Compare and Contrast
Subverting Language
This idea of calling “faith” schools, superstition schools is a really good one. And you can take it further and substitute “superstition” for many other uses of the word “faith. For example, I just read a news report that mentioned David Kuo who is apparently the “Deputy Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community… Continue reading Subverting Language