en – Page 72 – Denseman on the Rattis

Happy Birthday, EU!

2007/03/26 20:23

All the newspapers of course bring some articles to celebrate the EU‘s 50th birthday. One of the better ones is this interview with Max Kohnstamm in EUobserver.

EN · POLITICS

Tax rise for incomes under £19k

2007/03/21 17:27

Gordon Brown’s reduction of the basic rate of income tax from 22% to 20% is going to be paid for by people on low incomes because it’s paid for by raising the reduced rate from 10% to 20% (that is, the 10% and 22% rates are conflated). I know it won’t apply for another year, but if it kicked in now, according to my calculations, it would hit incomes under £18,605. For people on £13k a year, the increase in tax will be more than £100. On […]

EN · LINGUISTICS · OBITUARY

John Sinclair has died

2007/03/14 22:15

John Sinclair, one of the founders of corpus linguistics, and driving force behind the COBUILD dictionaries, died yesterday in his home in Tuscany. He will be buried in the English Cemetery in Florence. I spent a bit of time with him six months ago, working on a secret dictionary project, and he was definitely still full of ideas then. It’s odd to know that he will now never see this project completed.

ELECTION · EN · POLITICS · SCOTLAND

House of Lords

2007/03/12 21:19

House of Lords Originally uploaded by Mashus. Now that the Commons have voted to create a wholly elected House of Lords, perhaps I could suggest another solution to prevent two almost identical chambers?What about letting all councils (county councils, district councils and unitary authorities) appoint one representative each, and then add representatives from the parliaments/assemblies of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London, and finally add all the UK members of the European Parliament.In this way, the Lords would provide a very different view from the Commons, and […]

EN · FOODDRINK

Gizzi's

2007/03/12 20:41

It seems the refurbishing of the Bistro du Sud is finally coming to a completion. However, it seems to have changed its name in the process, to Gizzi’s. Update: I’ve found out what the connexion between Bistro du Sud and Gizzi is!

EN · POLITICS · SCOTLAND

Liberalism and nationalism

2007/03/07 22:51

Sir Ming said in a recent interview that “there is a sense in which liberalism and nationalism are the antithesis of each other.” I guess he means that liberalism is partly about creating equal opportunities for all people, and that doesn’t mix well with borders and national laws. However, I’m sure Sir Ming doesn’t seriously propose to abolish all countries anytime soon, and if he did, he would be violating another liberal principle that says that decisions should be taken as close to the involved people as […]

EN · POLITICS

Massive cuts to Research Council budgets

2007/02/27 21:07

I just saw today on /. that the budget for the British Research Councils has been slashed from £196 million to £128 million. This is just horrible! Don’t Labour understand that research is important?!?

EN · WEB

The problem with eBay

2007/03/20 22:38

I’ve now sold a few items on eBay, and I’ve bought a few too (and been a low bidder for several more). So I think I’m qualified to comment on the process now. Novice eBay users think the auction period is for bidding, and that eBay will make sure that you pay as little as possible. However, in practice only inexperienced people bid early – all others watch the item and try to snipe just before it ends. So in practice, the auction period functions as a […]

EN · KIDS · MEDIA

Eat it, baby!

2007/03/20 21:53

I love this video to go with Weird Al’s song:

EN · MEDIA

£10

2007/03/13 22:28

One of the good things about working for a major publisher and book distributor is that we can buy books at a very low price. However, yesterday was an exceptionally good day: I managed to get the three-volume collection of Calvin & Hobbes for only £10 (DKK 109)!

EN · TRAVEL

Google bus

2007/03/12 21:05

It turns out Google have built up a network of buses to take their employees to work. Really nice idea! It’s obviously mostly suited to people without kids, but for many people, it’s a great solution.

EN · FOODDRINK

Gizzi’s

2007/03/12 20:41

EN · LINGUISTICS

Why spelling reforms are hard

2007/03/08 22:45

I found an excellent article by John Wells today in which he discusses why an English spelling reform is hard because of the varieties of English. In his terminology, I’m a maximalist: If English spelling is reformed, I think it’s important to keep as many words as possible distinct in writing, even if it means spelling will never be really easy. Keeping only distinctions made by all speakers would make the written language unnecessarily hard to understand. But the consequence of this is of course that it […]

EN · SCIENCE

Neanderthal genes

2007/03/07 22:28

Neanderthal woman Originally uploaded by different_views. In the latest issue of New Scientist, there is a long article (“The Neanderthal within”) about the feasibility of early humans having absorbed some Neanderthals into the population. While the evidence still looks somewhat flaky, I realise the possibility cannot be totally ruled out yet (but we’ll see when the Neanderthal genome is finally sequenced). However, one bit of the article troubled me: “Like it or not, we may have to accept that our species is, to some extent, a hybrid. […]

ELECTION · EN · POLITICS

Anderston/City

2007/02/27 21:18

I’ve finally found out which ward I live in with regards to the upcoming elections to Glasgow City Council. It’s called Anderston/City and seems to consist roughly of the old wards Anderston, City and Kelvingrove. Now I just need to find out who’s standing for election. Based on various websites, here’s what I’ve found out so far: LibDems: Ann Laird SNP: Craig Mackay SSP: Peter Murray (of Garnethill) Labour: Philip Braat and Gordon Matheson Greens: Nina Baker Tories: ??? Others: ???

ELECTION · EN · POLITICS · SCOTLAND

Scottish elections

2007/02/26 22:26

I finally found a great site about the upcoming Scottish elections: Scotland Votes. It can predict seats based on number of votes, it has candidate profiles, information about the constituencies and much more! It’s not the best site about the city council elections that will take place on the same day, and which for the first time will use the Single Transferable Vote (STV). For that I recommend Vote Scotland or the Electoral Reform Society.

Earlier stories »