More or less opposite the spot where I wait for the Tube of an evening, there has been for quite some while now a poster in the excellent cause of research into leukaemia and blood cancers.

I'm just not sure that the slogan that 'We're not going to hang up our white coats until we have the answer' is one that I'm wholly on board with.

Because, er, ( Read more... )

But a couple of incidents recently made me think that when I see praise for 'helpful archivists' it may mean that the institution itself is not very sorted and the researchers actually need the hands-on help.

(This is partly brought to you by serious miff on receiving a copy of a PhD thesis in which My Own Beloved Institution is not included in the ( Read more... )

Was given to fume by reading this in the Guardian Society Supplement: Philip Blond, a self-described 'Red Tory' (mi oxymoronz, let me show u them):
argues eloquently that the "vertical lines" between citizen and state have, over time, rubbed out the "horizontal lines" between people. Where once we looked to each other for solutions, we now look ( Read more... )

I am somehow less than convinced by the Church of England Children's Society's doom-mongering report on the parlous state of childhood today, especially when I muse upon those factors which, presumably, led this body to be set up in the C19th.

In that report linked, there is an astonishing segue:
Compared with a century ago two changes stand out. ( Read more... )

Okay, in terms of what the purblind doomsters might be throwing at me, none of these are that frightful: it's the coming all together that justifies the Spiny Sea Urchin icon.

Item: my iPod has taken to having fits of the vapours, claiming that there is no charge left in the battery, and either making a frightful '78 played at 33 rpm' effect (whoa ( Read more... )

Triumph of niceness: reader, I did not murder or even commit GBH upon either annoying readers/particularly clueless colleages/random twittery on the Tube.

WIN.

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I diskard utterly that meme thinggy that is going around about because I think its basic premises are flawed. I.e. writing in a blog is not like 'writing for the Web', and that using 'I ( Read more... )

Britons give more to donkey sanctuary than abuse charities. Okay, maybe this is just All About The English and Animals (no, this is not another bestiality post, honest) - read in, er, Journal of Saw It Somewhere Studies that the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds had more members than any political party (it might even have been than all ( Read more... )

Kathryn Hughes, A museum is not an iPod: There's something unique about visiting a real exhibition in real time that you miss online:
According to a new study, led by London School of Economics academic Tony Travers, 42 million visits are made each year in the UK. Apparently this beats the number of people who watch Premiership and league football.
( Read more... )

or do other people get enormously pissed off when all sorts of sites insist that you register with them in order to avail oneself of whatever they're offering? I've had it this week with booking several events, with trying to sponsor someone for charity via a giving scheme, and recently, when trying to subscribe to an organisation via PayPal, there ( Read more... )

Sexual health experts are seeing a dramatic increase in the number of cases of syphilis - although this is still under 3000 cases, at least, seen in Genito-Urinary Medicine clinics. Of course, I have absolutely no idea whether these days the average GP could diagnose syphilis anyway before the sufferer's nose fell off.

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Super-rich donations are ( Read more... )