Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Bless me father for I have punched

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Several newspapers report today (e.g. here and here) that a British judge this week chose not to jail a violent criminal because he was religious. The judge said "You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour." The fact that the judge in question is Cherie Blair, wife ...

Leave them kids alone

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Pope Benedict XVI is apparently set to visit Britain soon. However he has also decided to attack the laws giving gay couples similar rights to married (heterosexual) couples, as a variation on the church's more general disgust with anyone who does not share their own twisted sexual views Aware that this is ...

Passion for nails

Monday, January 11th, 2010

I love the Internet. Not for the more typical use of finding what you need to know quickly and easily, but rather for the effortless ability to tell you what you did not need to know. In the space of ten minutes or so today I moved from fruit juice ...

BMW France – To be avoided

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

More fine customer service from the French arm of a large company... BMW France - you just lost my business. A few weeks ago my wife bought a new car. A BMW. Fine car. Superbly designed and tremendous quality. As a car, we are delighted with it. Next year I'll ...

Amazon France – Adieu, not Au Revoir

Friday, September 18th, 2009

You know how it goes: you discover a company that pleases you and can't stop raving about it to friends and family. I've been like that regarding Amazon for some years. These days I mainly used Amazon France: books, toys, cameras, you name it. In the last couple of years ...

Racist Microsoft?

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

The BBC has a story running about a Microsoft ad on their Polish web-site which has been Photoshopped to change one aspect of the original from the US site. Apart from the translation of the words to Polish, of the three people in the original photo (Asian man, black man, ...

Spark of madness

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

This week's Economist has an article about the possible emergence of a market in house-price hedging derivatives. It's at Housing Derivatives: Spark of Invention and appalls me. Appalls not least because the writer seems to genuinely believe that it's a great idea. Still hungover and bleary eyed from the last ...

Old fogies reunited

Monday, June 8th, 2009

Friends Reunited, a web-site I joined a while ago and which I've rarely accessed, emails me to try and get me to log back in. They've started some sort of "Groups" thing and reckon that based upon my demographic and goodness-knows-what-else I might be interested in some of these: - Over ...

The usual suspects? Or the usual bullshit?

Monday, July 21st, 2008

In a book review of three books (The Economist) each attempting to explore the cause of 2008's global "credit crunch" we are told that it's simply not fair to lay the blame at the door banks. In a telling section we are sternly lectured that "It was the Basel accords ...

Support Dan and his Data!

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

It's an honour and a privilege to elevate two-fingers at the people trying to censor Dan - he of Dan's Data, one of the better (and more idiosyncratic) technology sites on the Internet. Go to his site and see the story posted today, 19th February 2008, about how Firepower are ...