This is an old article but I missed it at the time: Britain is using an extensive network of cameras to track every journey taken by every car and keep it on file for reference by the police and security services. It’s not quite as freaky as the report that schools are fingerprinting pre-school children [...]

My pathetic attempt to observe Lent has officially failed. Too many reasons to make an exception and too many exceptions proved fatal. Luckily, I’m not Catholic or I’d make a pretty bad one.
I wanted to do this partly to see what my willpower was like and now I know. Can I give up meat or [...]

I thought I’d link to this hilarious column written by one of my former editors from my time at The Australian IT. I do look at Aus IT but not religiously and I actually found the article by following a link on Squash, which is a blog run by another former colleague from a completely [...]

UK schools are fingerprinting children to keep track of library books. Has the world gone mad? This surveillance society is creepy.

My friend John speaks Chinese and has a number of Chinese friends and last night they took a group of us to a Sichuan restaurant, Angel’s, in Kilburn. If you want authentic Chinese, this is the place to go. There is also an all-you-can-eat Cantonese buffet in a different room of the same restaurant but [...]

I’m greatly entertained by the court case between Apple Computer and Apple Records, the music label owned by The Beatles, over whether Apple Computer is allowed to use its logo on its iTunes service. iTunes does not carry the Apple name but the service is covered in Apple logos and Apple Records say this breaches [...]

I won’t name names since to do so would diminish her husband’s music cred but I have one friend who is a huge fan of Boney M. I was introduced to the 70s songstress on a road trip to Hotham, a ski resort in Victoria, one year.
So I’m sure this friend will be [...]

I have posted before about the discovery of Royal Society minutes from the 17th century in a Hampshire home. The documents were going up for auction and were expected to fetch more than a million pounds, which the Royal Society could not afford. The documents are written by Robert Hooke and give insights into the [...]

Apparently young Brits are so time poor that they have a combined total of £400 million of uncashed cheques in their wallets because they can’t get to the bank. It doesn’t help that the lunch hour is now an endangered species.
I don’t really understand why cheques are so common here. There are very few upsides. [...]

Europe, like Australia and Japan but unlike the United States and the developing world, has a birth rate below replacement levels and an ageing population. We are told this is bad because declining population and economic decline usually go hand in hand and in the future we will be left with a very small number [...]