Two of us have been happily wasting ti - er, increasing our word-power - with this all afternoon:

http://freerice.com/

Oh, and it claims to be in a good cause, too.

http://censusalert.org.uk/index.html

I'm another person who doesn't normally do these petitions*, but the prospect of a US arms company being contracted to run the next UK census sends shivers down my spine.

*yes, I've also signed the HE funding one.

Saturday 3 March ( Read more... )

Breaking a longish silence to celebrate the standing ovation given to the folk-singer Roy Bailey at Towersey Festival earlier today, when he read out the letter he'd written last week giving back his MBE in protest against the British government's current foreign policy. Yay!

We spent yesterday in Kew Gardens, at the Islamic music festival which was part of the Salaam Music Village festival event. Got there early, had coffee outside among the hanging baskets at a pavement café near the station, where the whole area feels so old-fashionedly civilised, or perhaps I just mean affluent and middle-class. We strolled down ( Read more... )

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later … beloved laptop has given up the ghost, died, snuffed it, turned up its little grey toes. Quite suddenly, too, with no warning, just Poof! I suppose over the next few weeks I’ll discover what I lost (that is, what I’d put on it, and not also put elsewhere, since I last backed it up); it’s probably a ( Read more... )

Another good Dr Who tonight ... but why, when they have historical settings which are within living memory, don't they get someone who was there at the time, and actually remembers the period, to run through the script?

If you played the National Anthem in 1953, even on television, no-one stayed sitting down.

... and an Awful Warning to all of you wrestling with laptops, theses, etc ...

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/48461&rss=1

I seem to be making a habit of getting to exhibitions only when they’re on the point of closing. Today it was Rachel Whiteread’s “Embankment” at the Tate Modern, which is only on until 1 May. http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/whiteread/Read more... )

I am utterly entranced by “Geoffrey Chaucer hath a Blogge” at http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/ .

And it’s not as if I haven’t other things to do. Someone wants to pay me £100 for a cartoon …