I’ve always considered myself to be a Guardian reader. For probably twenty years I bought a Guardian most days and read it on the tube on my way to college and, later, my job. The routine was always the same, I’d read the Guardian in the morning and a book on my way home in… Continue reading Reading the News
Tag: newspapers
He Blinded Me With Science
The story so far: In January 2004, in an astonishing display of common sense the government downgraded cannabis to a class C drug. This didn’t play well in the shires and in January 2009 it was reclassified as Class B. Last week, Professor David Nutt, head of the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of… Continue reading He Blinded Me With Science
The Power of Social Media
In the future, we may well look back on the past week and describe it as the week that the power of social media became apparent to pretty much everyone in the UK. This week social networks have allowed the powers of light to win three victories over the powers of darkness. It started on… Continue reading The Power of Social Media
Checking Copyright
There’s a lot of material out there on the internet. And the nature of the internet means that it’s easy to reuse that material without paying any attention to copyright. If my browser can display an image, then I can save that image to my local disk and then, perhaps, use it on my own… Continue reading Checking Copyright
A Missing Blog
Looks like Nadine Dorries might have gone too far this time. She’s been on extremely dodgy ground for the last week, since the Daily Telegraph’s investigation into MPs’ expenses started looking at her. Over the last week she’s been posting an increasing bizarre stream of consciousness on her blog. She tried to explain what was… Continue reading A Missing Blog
Mail Watch
Blimey, is it really that long since I posted anything. Sorry about that, I’ve been busy on other projects – in the last week I’ve presented two and a half days of Perl courses and that’s on top of my last few weeks at LoveFilm all being a bit manic. There have also been a… Continue reading Mail Watch
Changing Your Story
One of the things I despise most about parts of the British press is the way they assume that their readership has the memory of a goldfish. This means that they are free to make outrageous claims on the flimsiest of evidence on one day and then take the story in a completely different direction… Continue reading Changing Your Story
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
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
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