Last June, writer Ariane Sherine wrote an article on Comment is Free complaining about the amount of religious advertising on the side of London buses. As part of the research for the article she calculated that it would take about 4,500 atheists donating £5 each to get together enough money to have an atheist advertising… Continue reading Non-Magic Bus
Author: Dave Cross
42 Days is Dead
It’s a strange world when you have to rely on the House of Lords to throw out ridiculous legislation from a Labour government. But that’s exactly what happened yesterday as the Lords voted against the government’s proposals for 42-day detention of suspected terrorists. Pretty much everyone in the country now agrees that the proposals were… Continue reading 42 Days is Dead
Technology Hates Me
About ten days ago, I took delivery of a new toy – a Dell XPS M1330 laptop. I spent last weekend happily repartitioning and installing Fedora Linux and I was planning to write an entry this weekend about how well I was getting on with it. Except, I’m not. It’s stopped working. I did some… Continue reading Technology Hates Me
War of the Worlds
I’ve always had a massive soft spot for Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of the Worlds. I think that the album must have originally been released pretty soon after I read the book for the first time. And it must have really struck a chord with me. I borrowed a copy from the… Continue reading War of the Worlds
Michael Reiss: Creationist
Following last weeks entry about the media and MMR I have another post brewing which goes into more detail about the central message of Ben Goldacre’s excellent book. That central message is that you usually can’t trust science and health stories in the press because they are usually written by people who don’t understand the… Continue reading Michael Reiss: Creationist
The Media on MMR
This makes me very angry. Yesterday the NHS Information Centre released data showing that take-up of the MMR vaccination was lower than it should be. The national level has stalled at 85%, whereas it really needs to be at 95% in order to achieve “herd immunity” – an unflattering term which simply means that immunity… Continue reading The Media on MMR
Fuzzy Matching
As a freelancer, I’ve got more than a few jobs through Jobserve. In the past, they used to just post email addresses of the agents who were advertising the roles, but recently they’ve got cleverer than that. They now publish an email address that goes to the Jobserve servers before being passed on to the… Continue reading Fuzzy Matching
The BBC’s Merlin
I’ve been a fan of Arthurian legend for as long as I remember. It’s one of my favourite stories. I’ve read and seen countless versions over the last thirty or forty years. But I don’t think I’ve ever come across a version as terrible as the BBC’s new series Merlin which started last night. It… Continue reading The BBC’s Merlin
Excuses
I have spent over a week waiting for an agent to get back to me with an offer of a contract. I saw this company last Tuesday and the manager is apparently very keen to get me working there. The sticking point seems to be the money. When the agent first spoke to me about… Continue reading Excuses
Insane Terms and Conditions
Whilst waiting for my comment to be published on the Daily Mail web site, I took a quick glance at their terms and conditions – just to ensure that there wasn’t some obvious rule that I was breaking by calling attention to their hypocrisy. I didn’t find the “you can’t disagree with us” rule, but… Continue reading Insane Terms and Conditions