the corner office

Speaking of which, mother and son pay a visit to Ikea, son returns with two stuffed toys - a large and small fox.

Father gets home and pops upstairs to give son a goodnight kiss.

"So what are your friends' names?"

"Gus"

"... mkay, and the other one?"

"Big Gus and little Gus"

It's been quite a month on the work front, and not a lot of time for bloggery. Not much to report other than that the days are shortening rather quickly again, and I'm grateful that summer's swinging back from Mercurial towards British in temperament.

Also ... I've been in the UK for more than seven years... I've resisted as best I could, but I have to confess: I'm developing a taste for British Fanta Orange. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's as good as South African Fanta Orange... I'm just saying I'm finding it drinkable. And kind of tasty.

That, and my current guilty pleasure is Gus The Fox.

London is a great big heaving, glistening mass of inadequately deodorised humanity at the moment.

Apropos today's packed lunch story, I think this pretty much sums it up:

The artificial is everywhere; everywhere food is adulterated, filled with ingredients that supposedly make it last longer, or look better, or pass as 'enriched', or whatever else the industry's ad men want us to believe? [W]e are in the hands of the food companies, whose economic clout and advertising make it possible for them to describe what we can and cannot eat... we shall take energetic steps to prevent the ruin of our people by the food industries.

-- Heinrich Himmler

(via)

I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right.

Paul Graham: What you'll wish you had known

It's been a busy few weeks, and I missed an auspicious day. I didn't go 'live' until October 2003 or so, but my first blog was on the 20 June 2003.

The world's changed a lot in 10 years, as have I. There aren't many of you, but if you're reading this, thanks for reading!

I was surprised to see this take on Wonga from the BBC's Robert Peston. A change from the ubiquitous and standard Evul Lenders line.

Every time I hear someone express the usual opinion about a microfinance lender, I like to ask one question:

"These people lend money to people they don't know at 6000% a year. What interest rate do you charge to complete strangers when you lend them your money?"

The way I see it, if you don't lend your own money to complete strangers, then the interest rate you charge to people (who badly need help) is effectively infinity. Compared to which, Wonga's 6000% doesn't look that evil at all.

Speaking of engaging with current issues, one of the magazines quickest to tell the government where to put their 'press regulation' ambitions a few months back was the Spectator. Now, dear reader, I'm not one for Making Statements and the like, but I was sufficiently taken by their principled stance to take them up on their quid-an-issue introductory subscription offer. And so it came to pass that a new copy of the Spectator arrives in the post every Friday, and is duly added to the pile on the coffee table, and dutifully worked through over the coming week(s), and then added to a nascent collection on the bookshelf, alongside the National Geographics and Popular Sciences and Astronomys which mark earlier M-P dalliances with periodicals highbrow and improving.

I am, as Hayek once said, Not A Conservative, and I remain wary of being tarred and feathered thus, but I've always enjoyed the Spectator online because while notionally 'right-leaning,' they endeavour to stir none of the reactionary outrage of the Torygraph or the Mail, nor do they tend to the dear-god-why-can't-stupidity-be-painful posturing and pontificating of lefty rags like the Grauniad or the New Statesman. Instead its views, to the extent that there are any official views, are generally on the more libertarian side of things, and there's enough diversity of thought to allow columnists to have near stand-up rows with each other about Islamism, or gay marriage, or whether investing in gold is sensible or not. And for that, a number of left-leaning authors contribute, too. In fact, what I like most is precisely the fact that should any columnist or author spout an opinion which I find annoying, then the odds are pretty good that someone will come along and disagree, and do so in a way that isn't just the usual us-vs-them left-vs-right sniping that usually goes on across papers and blogs, but is more in the vein of 'I think so and so was talking crap and this is why.'

Politics and current affairs aside, what I'm really enjoying about the Spectator, is first the writing, which is usually just excellent, and second, dare I say it, some of the more 'sophisticated' content. Only on reading the paper version, do you start appreciating the wry style of the weekly summary of the news, the side-column which contrasts some Pressing Issue Of The Day to what was going on in ancient Greece, or Rome, the writing feature (just called 'Competition', in which people compete by submitting funny writing or poems, and succeed in being funny), the agony column, the words column, and more.

On top of that, the reviews section is fascinating. I'll admit I skip the theater and opera (guiltily - I paid for those pages dammit), but the book reviews - of books I'm mostly likely to never read - are nonetheless enlightening, and interesting, and fun to read about, and you never know: I've lost track of how many 'add to Amazon wish-list' mental notes I've filed and forgotten already - but the magazines are there, on the bookshelf, waiting for a quick whip-through in future, for when a bookish me with more free time starts casting about for things to occupy my commute.

I had promised myself that I'd wean myself from internet news, and feed my mostly pointless giving-a-shit-about-what's-going-on-in-the-world habit purely via the paper version of the Spectator. I still succumb occasionally and click around online (some guilty pleasures remain), but for the most part it's working.

Oh yes, and there was actually a point to this post. This week the Spectator has opened up its archive, dating back to 1828. It's an amazing piece of history, incredible stuff.

Two quotes from an interesting article:

I expect you are familiar with the inspiring story of publisher Allen Lane, who, when coming back from a stay with Agatha Christie in 1934, found that he couldn't buy a decent book at Exeter train station's bookstall. He resolved to fill this gap by reissuing good hardback books in cheap paperback format ... and so Penguin was born.

and

There is a certain cache in being seen to be reading a clever topical book, announcing your thoughtful engagement with a current issue to anyone who cares to glance your way. This is lost on a Kindle, or iPad, when people tend to assume you're either reading erotica or playing Angry Birds.

We're less than two weeks away from Midsummer and walking home tonight I was shivering from the cold.

All I have to say is this: if you think this is a lousy summer, imagine how miserable it would be if it wasn't for global warming!