I have just come across some humourous (although very serious) sites on dining etiquette . One is a list of standards and conventions that allow one to make a ‘favorable impression’ when dining. The other is a list of table manners that vary slightly to significantly from country to country. For instance many customs […]

There are some interesting services that exploit the power of data mining in the field of news and recent events. We all know sites like Google News, which have for a while used network power to find subtle (and more often not-so-subtle) connections between news items and link them together. Google News (and sites like […]

The Rodney of Kuhn pointed me to an interesting series of audio clips that demonstrate how the brain makes use of sense data to construct or reconstruct your reality (or sense of it). Go here and listen to the Virtual Haircut clip with stereo headphones with your eyes closed. I won’t spoil anything and altering […]

I came across an excellent site this afternoon that allows you to edit photos online. Pixer is simple and intuitive and has all the tools you would need to upload, crop, resize, and generally edit photos without spending a fortune on offline software.
There is a movement that many people are aware of in moving applications […]

After trying desperately to get through to a human at one of this country’s many monopolies (this one has this annoying interactive voice response system), finally getting through to one and explaining my predicament, I was told a secret. And the secret I was told is far more useful than that pseudo-scientific new age rant […]

Why did Shakespeare write Shakespeare
If vilia meritur vulgus* is true,
The groundlings who made up his theatre
Would find his language hard to chew.
If wealth were Shakespeare’s ‘lighted shaft’,
As modern historians deduce,
Then nonsense would more hit the mark
Than the brilliance he produced.
But, desiring immortality,
He wrote ‘So long lives this’,
This shows his partiality
Towards eternalness.
So I think both accounts […]

I read a lot and, like most people, would like to read more in less time (here I’m not talking about reading for pleasure). Over the years I’ve done extensive research and practice into different reading methods and ways to improve reading speed and retention. Here’s an overview of what I have discovered (obviously from […]

Some of us who have or have had piano (or any other classical instrument) lessons will remember the days when our teacher (usually old and bad-breathed), used to scrounge around in an old wooden drawer for a particular manuscript or piece of classical music. When they eventually found the piece they were (or weren’t) looking […]

I’m a big Ayn Rand fan and used to be an Objectivist, that is, someone who believes that knowledge is gained through reason, that it is universally objective (as opposed to subjective), and that (amongst other things) man’s (and women’s) rational self-interest is in pursuing laissez-faire (hands-off) capitalism. Then I came to realise that ‘reason’ […]

I’ve always found it odd how great culture is confined to the fringes of society, such as Art Nouveau cinema houses, specialist book stores, and obscure art galleries, whilst poor (for lack of a better term) culture dominates from the centre. In a perfect world it should be the other way around. ‘Mass’ culture should […]