Archive: 2004-04
TV for Pets?
The BBC always used to show an advert to try to persuade people to pay the TV Licence, a charge which has never been popular. Perhaps because it’s inequitable and regressive, or perhaps because it’s a lot of money, people don’t like paying it.
Microsoft Word
Chris Pratley, one of the Microsoft Office developers, has written a very interesting blog entry, in which he explains how Microsoft Word tied up the Japanese market.
No Sexual Intercourse?
This:
Powered by Windows?
Beautiful Sunset
Explosion in the DPRK
It appears that 3,000 people have been killed or injured in North Korea in an explosion caused by a train full of gas crashing into a train full of petroleum. I doubt that we’ll see much more information coming out of that secretive nation.
Rock ’n’ Roll ’n’ Crash ’n’ Burn?
The RAC Foundation has put out a press release about the effect on safety of listening to music whilst driving.
This is a Demonstration
Unlucky Spider
Marathon Bus Journeys
I saw an advert on the wall of the tram today, promoting bus journeys to assorted European cities at very low prices, including this:
Conspiracy or Incompetence?
From 1910 to 1945, the Greater Japanese Empire occupied the Korean Peninsula. Various bespoke-tailored theories were constructed by tame anthropological historians to claim that the Korean and Japanese races were two closely-related branches of the same tree (Oh, what irony! How different from the modern treatment of ethnic Koreans in Japan!) whilst political means were extended to attempt to graft Japanese culture onto Korea—teaching the Japanese language instead of Korean in schools being a good example.
Killer Cyclists
Bicycles are a common mode of transport in Japan, thanks to several factors: high population density means that many journeys are too short for a car but too long to walk; cars are very expensive to keep and run (parking charges are astronomical in the cities); finally, most cities are built on flood plains (the only habitable parts of three-quarters-mountain Japan) so there are few hills to struggle up.
R&R
I spent a fantastically relaxing week in England. The first four days I spent in London, where I spent lots of money on the inexcusably overpriced Tube. Not everything in London’s expensive, though: I spent a happy afternoon wandering around the Tate Modern gallery (entrance £0), although to my infinite disappointment, the nudes gallery was closed for renovation. The recording of The Now Show was extremely funny, although completely different to how I had imagined it just by listening to the radio.
