Links to the best chat on the web
ISSUE #14 - Tuesday, 21st October 2008
- Boris Johnson, The Daily Telegraph
"Barack Obama: Why I believe he should be the next President"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/10/21/do2101.xml
DJR's gist: It's always good to see a Conservative supporting a Democrat candidate in the US (it's really not that surprising given that the Democratic Party would probably be more right-wing than the Tories if their policies were translated into a UK context). In this case, it's none other than London's legendary mayor and general source of amusement, Boris Johnson. It takes him just three lines to point out that "Unlike the current occupant of the White House, [Obama] has no difficulty in orally extemporising a series of grammatical English sentences, each containing a main verb". That's exactly the kind of sentence I want to see British politicians using on a much more regular basis.
- Philip Collins, The Times
"Karl Marx: did get get it all right?"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4981065.ece
DJR's gist: Marxism is back in vogue. As the global economy collapses further and further every day, people are bailing on capitalism like rats from a sinking ship. 40,000 "pilgrims" have made a trip to Trier in Germany, the town of Marx's birth, are definitely such people, and the internet is full of clowns who seem to think half the world has adopted Das Kapital as their Bible. But as this article points out, for every bit of sensible stuff prescribed by Marx, there are equal measure of crap about "centralised communications and transport" and "elimination of inheritance" etc. etc.. That kind of chat is never going to fly with the Home Counties.
- Jason Zengerie, "The Plank" blog, The New Republic
"Is Palin Posing for Posterity?"
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/10/20/is-palin-posing-for-posterity.aspx
DJR's gist: This blog has long established that Sarah Palin is complete idiot who should never be near the reigns of power of a household, leave alone a state or, God-forbid, a country. But questions have to be asked about what, exactly, she is doing criticising the same robocalls that John McCain was defending the previous day. If she's manoeuvring for her political future, she's doing a damned bad job of it. But then this is Palin we're talking about...
- Mike Harvey, "Mousetrap technology" blog, The Times
"Clicks win prizes: Microsoft's extreme search tactics"
http://timesonline.typepad.com/technology/2008/10/search-and-win.html
DJR's gist: The latest figures of internet search usage in the UK suggests that Google command just under 90% of the market, with Yahoo!, Microsoft Live and Ask! fighting over second place. So Microsoft have pulled out a classic move to get new customers - bribery! People who use their new search page have the chance of winning one of 24 prizes (John Lewis vouchers) every day up till Christmas. First place in the market is out the window, but the race for second could be very interesting.
- Christopher Beam, Andy Bouve, and Jim Festante, Slate
"Barack Obama Crank-Call Generator"
http://www.slate.com/id/2202493/
DJR's gist: This is great fun. I don't want to ruin it by saying anything about it. Just make sure you have your speakers on and have some American friends you can call on speakerphone.
- Jamie Lillywhite, BBC Sport
"India thrash Australia in Mohali"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/7681312.stm
DJR's gist: If you're not interested in cricket, you should be. This is significant not just because it's the largest margin of victory ever recorded by India, but because it's only the second Test match Australia have lost in 3 years since the 2005 Ashes. There is every chance that India will win this series - making it 3 out of 4 at home against the Aussies, and with England touring India immediately afterward there will be obvious psychological games at work ahead of next summer's Ashes in England.
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