What makes for a good "quality of life", when looking at a society as a whole? Is it possible to come up with metrics? After all, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. I see that the Dutch Environmental Assessment Agency has released a report that attempts to define that rather slippery phrase.
Year: 2007
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Someday My Prints Will Come…
BibliOdyssey points out that the British Museum has made a large proportion of its collection of prints available online:The size of the database is enormous. There are more than 13,000 satirical prints for instance. A free text search on ‘London’ produces a similar number. There are over one thousand prints by Albrecht Dürer. ‘Ornament’ returns more than three thousand images. Although the image sizes vary, most are at least close to screen size and there is no watermarking.A wonderful resource. -
Useless Gadgets
Wired has a great list of 10 Snake-Oil Gadgets. What is deeply depressing, however, is the long list of commenters who swear blind that dowsing actually works. -
Performance-related Pay
I see that the Vatican is to bring in performance-related pay for the 2,600 lay members of its staff. I also note that the priests, bishops, monks and nuns who form the Papal administration are exempt from this. I’m sitting on my hands, trying not to make a cheap shot about this… -
The March of Technology
It wasn’t so very long ago that portable computers weighed in at 22 lbs (10 kgs). Here’s John Cleese extolling the virtues of the Compaq Portable II.(hat tip to Charles Arthur over at the Guardian) -
Taking the Biscuit
Denis MacEoin accuses Ben Goldacre of ignorance. I came away from this piece with a feeling of embarrassment, a conviction that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The comments on the piece do a pretty good job of demolishing what little argument he has.Update: The comments section on MacEoin’s piece is still firmly in the "Homeopathy is Bunkum" corner, but I see that a few homeopaths are fighting their corner, amongst them is Dana Ullman. Unfortunately, his submission to prove the efficacy of homeopathy is completely destroyed by this laser-like piece of analysis from "Scotty" -
Meditating on History
Flea has another brilliant post. This time she is musing on how best to teach history to her young son. Worth reading. -
All Things Must Pass…
…but many people refuse to acknowledge the fact. A perfect example is the fuss currently underway over the chestnut tree in a garden at the back of the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. Let it go, and plant another one so that our descendants can see the symbol anew. -
Peter Cameron
Doug Ireland has a long and interesting interview with Peter Cameron, a writer whom I have not come across before. That will have to change I think. And they also discuss another writer, Denton Welch, who sounds intriguing. -
Lost in Transit
A quite staggeringly stupid thing to do – lose two CDs containing the bank details and national insurance numbers of 10 million individuals. Diamond Geezer imagines the likely outcome. -
Jim and Pascal’s Wager
National treasure Stephen Fry shows, once again, why he is a national treasure.He weaves together denialism of global warming, the difference between British and American culture, and Pascal’s Wager. Simply brilliant. Jim is a twat, by the way, but of course the fact that I immediately fall on that position whilst Mr. Fry is altogether more subtle merely shows why he deserves the title of National Treasure. He does, and I am merely capable of venting my spleen on ad hominem attacks. -
Moeliker Triumphant
I’m pleased to report that Kees Moeliker has succeeded in his quest… Five old crabs and a fresh one… -
The Electronic Book
While books have been available in electronic form for some time, their Achilles heel, it seems to me, has always been the devices used to read them. The limitations of display technology, battery life, form factor or cost have meant that they’ve never been a viable alternative to a traditional book for me.It’s possible, though, that we may now be seeing the start of a change; driven primarily by a change in the display technology. With the advent of a new technology, electrophoretic displays, we’re starting to see the first devices using it appear on the market. There’s the Sony Reader and now Amazon’s Kindle. Newsweek has a terrific article on the Kindle, which is well worth reading. What makes the Kindle interesting is that it is not merely the endpoint in an Amazon service, but it is an endpoint that potentially can be two-way (annotations can be fed back to be incoprorated into alternate versions of the books). This may be the impetus to change the market. This is unlikely to happen significantly fast, but as Microsoft’s Bill Hill (he who coined the phrase that Homo sapien’s operating system is still at release 1.0) points out:…the energy-wasting, resource-draining process of how we make books now. We chop down trees, transport them to plants, mash them into pulp, move the pulp to another factory to press into sheets, ship the sheets to a plant to put dirty marks on them, then cut the sheets and bind them and ship the thing around the world. Do you really believe that we’ll be doing that in 50 years? -
Doctor Meets Doctor
The Beeb commissioned a special short episode of Doctor Who for last Friday’s Children in Need fundraising in the UK. The fifth and the tenth Doctor meet. Clearly, a great time was had by all. The two actors are perfect, and Steven Moffat’s script is razor-sharp, with jokes for all ages and orientations. Sample:10th Doctor: …Oh, and the Master, he just showed up again…5th Doctor: Really, does he stll have that rubbish beard?10th Doctor: No… no beard this time; well, a wife… -
Missing the Cluetrain
It seems as though many of my (British) countrymen and women are in high dudgeon over this Eurostar advert. Frankly, it reflects badly on their own insularism and ignorance. The advert is placed in Brussels, and anyone with a smidgeon of nous would understand that it’s a riff on the Manneken Pis.Sorry, can I just apologise for my fellow countrypersons who clearly have no sense of humour or knowledge of their fellow Europeans whatsoever. -
Another Kind of Magic
Funny how some folk don’t recognise a mirror when they see it… -
A Kind Of Magic
Ben Goldacre has an excellent piece over at Bad Science that flenses homeopathy in a magisterial manner. Do go and read it. If there is any evidence to show that homeopathy is distinguishable from the placebo effect, then it appears to be doing a damn good job to hide itself. -
Identifiable Human Suffering
Over at BLDGBLOG, Geoff Manaugh makes a telling point about campaigns aimed at raising awareness about climate change in Climate Change Escapism. And that is that pictures showing drowned resorts or dry rivers don’t necessarily have the intended impact. There is no identifiable human suffering in them. That’s the thing that generally hits people in the solar plexus. -
Serbian Biscuits
Nicey, over at a NiceCupOfTeaAndASitDown, discovers some biscuits from Serbia with a rather unfortunate name… I wonder if Kees Moeliker would like them?
Geoff Coupe's Blog 