Describe a decade in 24 words…

“Apart from the miniskirts, Britain in the 1960s produced the Beatles, James Bond, the Profumo scandal and a decent riot outside the American embassy.”


Britain on film | Through a pint glass, darkly | The Economist

If it was that easy…

…we’d all build a copy and make a fortune.

“Despite the aura of heroic young enterprise that still miraculously attaches to the web, what we are seeing is a much older and toxic capitalist model – the classic monopoly that destroys industries and individual enterprise in its bid for ever greater profits. Despite its diversification, Google is in the final analysis a parasite that creates nothing, merely offering little aggregation, lists and the ordering of information generated by people who have invested their capital, skill and time.”

Henry Porter: Google is just an amoral menace

Google should consider this a compliment. They’ve made the impossible seem so easy that it looks worthless.

Service or Profits…

You have to wonder.

Customers are supposed to look beyond poor service and thank a company for making an increased profit. Maybe this is from their own experience; the readers of the Economist look beyond the papers lack of good reporting at the profits the parent company is making!

“Back home, First is best known as Britain’s largest train operator, lambasted for every late arrival in Reading, Bath or Bristol (its biggest route) rather than being lauded for increasing profits in the six months to September last year, despite the credit crunch and a collapsing economy.”

Moir Lockhead of FirstGroup took the bus to America | Ticket to ride | The Economist

Scary…

At this point I’m not surprised but I’m at least still shocked. 

Basically this now means that you can’t run a darkroom at home anymore.

“This is the first step in making it illegal to debate whether the surveillance state is a good or bad thing. It’s the extension of the ridiculous airport rule that prohibits discussing the security measures (“Exactly how does 101 ml of liquid endanger a plane?”), conflating it with “making jokes about bombs.”

London cops reach new heights of anti-terror poster stupidity – Boing Boing

Do they sell the smell in a bottle?

The smell of a View-Master is part of my childhood, and probably millions of others. 

It’s one of those strange things, do I mourn the passing of this or do I salut the fact that the world has moved onto a new technology?

“A piece of the American experience has faded away. Fisher-Price, the toy company that used to market them, has just eliminated almost all the View-Master titles that have been a staple of young lives for almost 70 years.”

The demise of 3D viewers | The final reel | The Economist

Random thoughts…