Elephantstrunk

David Cameron’s Scarman lecture
and the same in html. It can’t be bad news and I find little to disagree with, at least at face value, but it also means that Cameron is not content merely to copy Blair’s policies but will also imitate him in adopting policies previously owned but now neglected by his opposition.
Voting […]

Wrapping the internet with elephant pictures.
Somewhere on the internet somebody has written down any thought you might have and sometimes they’ve done it better. It’s just a matter of finding it.
This, for example, about James Bond is very good but undermines my claim that in Casino Royale, James Bond might as well be Alan Partridge.
Brad […]

Winterspeak marvels at an Onionesque combination of headlines on the New York Times: “North Korea Explodes Nuclear Weapon, Colorful Bird Discovered in Columbia”. It’s quite likely that the actual source of the bird story is the noble AlertNet, home of the unironic “Choose a crisis” menu.
It may also be responsible for the use of cute […]

When I was young and naively thought that terrorists were mostly attention seekers I was depressed by their lack of imagination. Why not have giant paint bombs covering public landmarks with appropriately coloured paint. It might have looked like this. (Via Crooked Timber).
It’s not the higher salaries for ivy league professors that makes me happy, […]

Digit Reversal Without Apology
GH Hardy and TJ Kaczynski (yes him), six pages, only algebra modulo a prime necessary.

Tom Slee’s “No one makes you shop at Wal-Mart” should be bundled with every copy of “The Wisdom of Crowds”. I like “The Wisdom of Crowds” but it always seemed dangerously incomplete. NOMYSAW is not exactly a counter argument but shows that life is a lot more complicated than the TWoC might suggest.
Mr. Slee is […]