At War With The Motorist‘s tongue-in-cheek name and sarcastic attitude is usually to make fun of people who misuse and overuse the private car. But at least as big a problem with our transport and built environment is the misuse and overuse of freight and delivery vehicles, especially in London […]
In last week’s the week before the week before last’s post, if you build it they will come, I described why we should expect that building proper cycle superhighways — fast, capacious, direct and sensible routes that are segregated from high volumes of fast moving motor vehicles — should unleash […]
The awesome Science Is Vital campaign organisers kindly asked me to accompany them to Downing Street to capture the delivery of their petition of 35,000 opponents of science cuts. Over at cotch dot net, I have a short photo essay on how to deliver a petition.
With everything that has been happening, I’ve neglected to mention the Thames Barrier to Teddington exhibition at the gallery in Foyles bookshop at the top end of Charing Cross Road, or indeed even been to look myself. I usually ignore calls for entries in photography competitions, since 99.9% of them […]
I love the Durham Township photoblog — all the fabulous atmospheric shallow-focus photos of rural Pensylvania. Especially the ones of the traditional county fairs and farm shows. The kids with candyfloss, prize livestock on display, and old fashioned family entertainment. Continue reading at cotch dot net…
This is another archival repost originally written for the old blog in april 2008. I listened to a sermon[1] by Ken Ham, creationist head of Answers in Genesis, the other day. I was erm … researching a role? Anyway, it was great fun. My knowledge of church services is limited […]
On saturday, a couple of thousand nerds gathered outside the treasury to be noisy, and to argue the case that science is vital. The scientists are getting their contribution in early ahead of the “comprehensive spending review” that is to be announced this month. Having been accused by their secretary […]
The “I Pay Road Tax” campaign has done an excellent job of reaching out to cyclists. Every cyclist now knows that “road tax” was abolished in the 1930s, that what motorists pay is “vehicle excise duty”, and that VED goes to the treasury and not directly to the highways agencies. […]
On the London Cyclist thread “is there anything super about the Cycle Superhighways?,” we hear Chinese whispers on the reason why TfL decided against making real superhighways and instead came up with the overpriced and failed PR exercise that are the blue lines on the side of the road: “TfL […]
This is another archival repost first written for the old blog in 2007. On Monday I mentioned John Maynard Smith’s videos at People’s Archive. They really are marvelous, and you should watch them all. One of the topics he discusses is horizontal gene transfer in bacteria, a subject I discussed […]