While I’m clearing up things I drafted but didn’t have time to post, I took this photo at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon earlier this year. As you can see, the museum seems to think it is appropriate to hang Australian Aboriginal artworks with the dead dinosaur, despite them being contemporary, made by humans…
Read More Those aren’t dinosaurs.Part of the point of this post was that this is, in the end, an awful way to make a decision. Yesterday I was arguing about devolution to Yorkshire, again, and my opponent, Jonn Elledge, kept coming out with the same point. Manchester has signed! Don’t be left behind! This is something, not nothing! Hurry…
Read More Don’t buy politics the way you wouldn’t buy electricityThis essay on war with Syria by Robin Lustig annoys me intensely, primarily because of point five: Can IS be defeated militarily? My answer: No. As experience in Afghanistan has amply demonstrated, defeating a terrorist group by military means is an impossibility OK so. You’ve just conceded in advance that intervention will be ineffective. In…
Read More Whatever happens, it probably won’t happen to Robin LustigSo, I read Robert Coram’s Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. This is a classic high-style American biography. It may help to read bits of it aloud in the voice of Ken Burns. On the downside, John Boyd’s high school swim team is apparently hella important. This may be annoying. On…
Read More Book: Boyd.So I was saying to Dan Hardie that every couple of days, I feel relatively optimistic about Labour. Thousands more members sign up. And then either Jeremy Corbyn or John McDonnell does something incredibly strange. Actually, I was literally interrupted at this moment by a notification on my phone, because Ken Livingstone had just done…
Read More the problem with a dead cat strategy is that you end up being that guy with the dead catAs an update to this post, somebody asked a representative sample of Yorkshire folk what they wanted. What happened? Well. A directly elected, Yorkshire-wide regional assembly Stronger powers that would include some tax-setting and law-making powers; this is to ensure actual power is achieved over issues such as transport infrastructure, economic development and education. To…
Read More #devono doesn’t have to be negative, you knowThings I argue with @thomasforth about: "We'll sign the deal as long as the announcement on gov.uk calls us 'Britain's second city'" > bet this happened. https://t.co/G2dk6MQBHz — Tom Forth (@thomasforth) November 17, 2015 The problem here is that Tom thinks devolution to Yorkshire, or some subset of Yorkshire, will be all like this old…
Read More Vote no in the referendum that doesn’t exist.Here are two statements for you. This flow of refugees must mean that terrorists are flocking into Europe hidden among them. Therefore, we must pull in even more telecoms data in order to find the terrorists. They are linked by an extremely important and subtle assumption. What is it? Well, both statements concern a process…
Read More Rate limiters, communications data retention, and terrorists.So, England-New Zealand test football. This should only be good? Right? After last week’s killer? Not so much. It was my first visit to the Olympic Park. As you know I don’t think it should ever have been built, I left the country to avoid the event, and I also want everyone involved surcharged until…
Read More Odsal rugby in an Olympic stadiumI do wonder what Tom Barry would have made about this photo. All that money we spent on converting the Olympic Stadium to be football-ready for West Ham, and the new seating is literally a bunch of scaffolding.
Read More An example