There is a little trend I have noticed in newspaper and magazine writing recently, which I find rather off-putting. It’s where the author invites me to be a member of their little gang, and I instinctively reject the invitation. The word used to achieve this effect, is ‘that’, or its plural, ‘those’. An example. Someone [...]
I wrote to my MP the other day, something I rarely do. The issue that caused me to make my feelings known was the proposed sale of many of England’s forests – currently owed by the state – to private companies. It is a complicated issue, with no simple right or wrong, but, in my [...]
Many of us have heard some version of the famous story at the start of Stephen Hawking’ Brief History of Time: A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the [...]
I was rereading some Raymond Chandler the other day, for the first time in several years, when I came across the following sentence, in the middle of nowhere: He put his head on one side and rubbed the back of his left little finger along the lower edge of his chin. It reminded me of [...]
In computing, a checksum is like a canary in a mine. It’s a number used to confirm that a much larger group of numbers is consistent and has not been been changed in some way. A tiny little indicator which does nothing by itself, and only serves to confirm the whole. My favourite example of [...]
Every year in November I feel I really should be trying to write a novel like all the contestants of – or are they contributors to? – NaNoWriMo. I am not sure why. I have not tried to write anything fictional since I left High School, and have no clear idea of a story I [...]
A while ago, while on my way to work, I saw a woman pulling out of her enormous, palatial home in a large SUV. She was stationary in the driveway, repeatedly clicking a remote control which was meant to automatically close her wrought-iron gates. But she couldn’t seem to get the angle right, because she [...]
English people use signifiers in strange ways. They feel a strong need to send out signals to the world as to their place in it. I know this is not unique to English people; but my experience suggests that the English do it in more ways, and more subtlety. Clothes, for example. Where I grew up, clothes were [...]
I feel uncomfortable with the idea of geek culture, on principle. The reason I self-identify as a geek is because I have interests and enthusiasms which other people do not share. I persist with them anyway, because I don’t often care as much about the conventional wisdom as I do about satisfying my personal wishes. [...]
Anyone who talks to me discovers I have a frustrating tendency to go from rapid speech to complete silence in the middle of a sentence. This is because I am trying to find just the right word to complete my thought, but my irritated conversational partner often gets there ahead of me. They supply the [...]