'Culture'

Fear and confrontation

Posted on March 8, 2008 ~ Filed Under Culture, Diary

As I was cycling home from work yesterday evening, I decided to stop off at Waitrose at the Barbican. As I pulled up at the bike racks outside the shop, I saw some kids hanging around eyeing up the bikes. I chose an area close to the shop entrance and started to sort out locking […]

Ben Goldacre on biometrics

Posted on November 26, 2007 ~ Filed Under Culture

Ben Goldacre has written a great piece for the Guardian about ID cards and why biometrics are not to be trusted. I have mixed feelings about Ben Goldacre - I think he is too quick to dismiss as quackery things that science can’t explain, but he is truly excellent on pointing out the misuse of […]

Sexual abuse is sexual abuse, regardless of who’s abusing who

Posted on November 2, 2007 ~ Filed Under Culture

Here’s a report on the BBC website about a female tennis coach who sexually abused a girl in her charge. Why mention it here? Because the BBC has chosen not to headline the piece something like “lesbian child abuser”, but instead “Tennis coach jailed for sex abuse” and I am happy about that (the headline, […]

Zoe Williams on accepting new radio presenters

Posted on October 12, 2007 ~ Filed Under Culture

There’s a nice piece by Zoe Williams in the Guardian today about the length of time it takes to accept new radio presenters (and overcome the hatred of the annoying trails they make). She makes the excellent point that most listeners have little awareness of stations other than the one they are loyal to. Jane […]

Finding good pancakes in SE1

Posted on September 1, 2007 ~ Filed Under Culture, Diary

Ever since we came back from Canada, I’ve had a craving for a good stack of American pancakes, eaten out, for breakfast one weekend morning. This simple craving turned into a bit of a quest when I realised it’s not so easy to get pancakes around here. I posted a question on the SE1 website […]

Google suggest scariness - ‘ways to’

Posted on July 6, 2007 ~ Filed Under Culture, Web ideas

I went to Google with the intention of looking for I forget what, starting my search with ‘ways to’. I got a bit freaked by Google’s suggestions:

I am encouraged that “ways to say I love you” comes above “ways to kill yourself”. On the other hand, you’d sort of hope that people could work […]

Two female reasons to be cheerful

Posted on February 23, 2007 ~ Filed Under Culture

Martha Kearney is taking over as main presenter of the World at One - one of the BBC’s flagship news programmes.
Ellen DeGeneres is presenting the Oscars.

My sister the novelist

Posted on November 30, 2006 ~ Filed Under Culture, Diary, Web ideas

My sister Octavia has been taking part in this year’s NaNoWriMo, the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in a month, and she’s done it! She is a NaNoWriMo winner! Her novel came in at 50,250 words (but, for some reason the NaNoWriMo word count squeaked her in with a word count of 50,080), […]

Charity Christmas gifts - perfect for a society that denies itself nothing

Posted on November 18, 2006 ~ Filed Under Culture

I was thinking today about the increase in the last few years of charity gifts at Christmas. You know the thing: a goat for a family in Ethiopia; a pile of bricks for a house somewhere else… You pay the charity and the recipient you know gets a card and a warm, fuzzy glow. I […]

Humphrys in Search of God

Posted on November 16, 2006 ~ Filed Under Culture

A quick heads up for a fantastic series of programmes running on Radio 4 at the moment, called Humphrys in Search of God. It’s a series of interviews with John Humphrys talking to a variety of religious leaders. The first one was with the Archbishop of Canterbury and was good, but not incredibly inspiring (probably […]

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