A petrol station on Clerkenwell Road has been turned into a cinema. This is a disaster; an act of war on the Motorist that must be condemned. The BBC’s Andrew Sully explains why this epidemic of sudden garage death should be such a worry to us. Continue reading at At […]
This is another archival repost from the old blog — this one from March 2008. Wow, a slow news day, eh? The BBC, shunning predictable Chinese military aggression, another turn of the tides in Iraq, and yet more boring news about the economy, lead with “Brown criticised over embryo bill“. […]
From At War With The Motorist today… From the World Health Organisation’s Multi-Sectoral Forum on Road Safety in China (March 2008), on driving in a country where over a quarter of a million die on the roads each year: Both lack of awareness to risks and inexperience means that people […]
Another in the ongoing project to archive posts from an old blog – this one from february 2009. Not in the television programme — well, I don’t know, I haven’t seen it yet due to pesky tennis fans capturing the remote control — but in the Simon Mayo interview (page […]
Several my usual topics collide as pseudoscience exploits photography for some bad marketing. The Society of Homeopaths, an organisation representing British homeopaths (including many who advocate the use of their failed medicine as malaria and HIV/AIDS treatment), are employing the cheap trick of the “photography competition” rights grab. They’re not […]
I have an underused “I get mail” category over here, which could easily get filled with sarcastic posts about the incompetent and irrelevant marketing crap with which I am constantly bombarded. Instead, I’ve been saving up for the truly special ones: the delightfully, spectacularly, jawdroppingly incompetent marketing idiots. People like […]
Over at Journalology I discuss the issue of academic fraud in China, again. Academic fraud is an issue that few take seriously enough anywhere, and while China has a particularly big fraud problem, I worry that people allow that to distract them from the fraud problem at home. Read it […]
From At War With The Motorist, on our co-blogger Dawn’s new creation: Somebody called Dawn Foster writes in The Grauniad Bike Blog today about her latest blog, A Hundred and One Wankers, a rigorous academic exercise mapping London’s wankers — specifically, the wankers who just can’t control themselves when confronted […]
This is another archival repost from the old blog, first published way back in March 2008. I’ve been following CBC’s How To Think About Science series, and caught the Evelyn Fox Keller episode the other day. It was interesting, but there were a couple of issues that I just can’t […]
TfL’s consultation on proposed changes to the Congestion Charge ends today. This is your final chance to send in your comments. Briefly, the notable proposed changes are these: Abolish the Western Extension Zone (WEZ) — the section in Kensington and Knightsbridge, west of Park Lane and east of Shepherd’s Bush. […]
Over at At War With The Motorist I consider what the effects of the London Bike Hire scheme will be — how the bikes will be used, and how they will change London. The conclusion is that they should make a small contribution to solving London’s problems, by helping the […]