High Street
Posted: Mon 3 October, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 1 Comment »Over the last couple of weeks (probably longer, but I’ve noticed this to think about only in the last fortnight or so – so there!) I’ve noticed a bundle of stories about how major “high street” stores are yet again burbling on that sales are down in the high street, that people are buying less, we’re heading for a recession, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, it’s made me do some thinking. Not a common occurrence, admittedly – but hey, it still happens on occasion.
So – OK, sales in “the high street” may be down – but do reports like this take into account the number of people who now prefer to buy things online, rather than queueing in the shops behind a bunch of people for whom the description “thicker than pig-shit” would be a step up? I know I do this – in fact there’s very little that’s “easier” to buy in a shop than it is using (archaic expression alert) e-commerce. Books and music? That’ll be Amazon then. (Or Play.com, but more often Amazon) Getting photos printed etc.? Photobox ahoy. OK, clothes are easier to buy in a shop, but I’ve even been doing more of that kind of shopping on-line too.
So – is it a looming recession? Or is it more that the market assessors and so on actually still rely on a source of information that’s outmoded as more people go for the simpler option?
Kyoto
Posted: Thu 29 September, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 1 Comment »Is it just me that finds it rather amusing that the scientists currently banging on about the Arctic ice shrinking far faster than it should be are Americans, and thus part of the nation that refuses to acknowledge that it needs to reduce it’s emissions of greenhouse gases and the like?
From the article…
“The melting and retreat trends are accelerating,” Ted Scambos, of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Centre, said in a statement released by the university. The results have not yet been published in a scientific journal.
“The one common thread,” Scambos said, “is that Arctic temperatures over the ice, ocean and surrounding land have increased in recent decades.”
The scientists stopped short of directly blaming the melting trend on global warming but said they have few other explanations at this point.
Let there be light
Posted: Mon 26 September, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, News 6 Comments »Now I have to say, this is a pretty cool idea – one of those where everyone suddenly goes “Why didn’t I think of that?!?”
Henman
Posted: Fri 23 September, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 2 Comments »BBC Story : Henman says “I may quit” – since when is this news? He does that in every competition he enters…
Grauniad
Posted: Thu 22 September, 2005 Filed under: News, Reviews(ish), Thoughts 4 Comments »On Monday 12th September, the Guardian newspaper changed it’s paper size, reducing from the old broadsheet (AKA the “impossible to read without folding, or laying it on the floor”) to the new “Berliner” size. Still a bit bigger than normal tabloids, I find that the entire thing is a great improvement on the broadsheet, and that feeling was an immediate response, rather than the “oh, it’s new, I don’t like it” response that seemed to come from a lot of people at the time..
A lot of people weren’t impressed with the change – Mike TD wrote a fair and balanced view on the plus and minus points – although the main protests seemed to be the loss of the daily cartoon thing, “Doonesbury”. Frankly, I would have to work really hard in order to care less about things like Doonesbury. Then again, maybe I just don’t “get it” – something I’ve been accused of many times in the past.
Anyway, personally I like the new format. I always found the broadsheet Guardian to be more effort than it was necessarily worth, so I ended up not reading all of it. This was particularly true of the Saturday edition – too much guff, too much hassle. Since the re-size though, I’ve found that I read far more of the paper. It’s easier to handle without needing to have degree-level skills in Origami, and that makes the entire thing a lot more accessible. In short, I like the new size a lot more.
My only question, though, is why resize the Guardian, yet leave the Observer at the full-whack broadsheet size?
Attention Deficit
Posted: Wed 21 September, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 5 Comments »I find myself in somewhat of a quandary when it comes to the story of the heavily edited/abridged “100-minute bible” (helpfully described on TV this morning as “The Ronseal Bible” – it does what it says on the cover) and my response to it.
While I would never refer to myself as a Christian (even the concept of that one should have some readers wetting themselves with laughter) I have actually read the Bible from cover to cover. Hey, I was bored, what can I say? Mind you, I’ve also read the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, and a couple of other major texts in a similar vein. I know that puts me in a minority, but I don’t mind – at the time I wanted to read them, and see what all the fuss was about, along with balancing out all the biggies at once. Sad, but true.
Anyway, I find myself wondering about the purpose of this 100-Minute bible. Basically, it’s “the good bits” or “the relevant bits” while getting rid of all that guff about who begat who and why. But what’s the point? If you weren’t going to read the Bible anyway, this abridged edition isn’t likely to change your mind. If you’re of Christian mind anyway (some, less charitable than I, would say this was a tautology – but I won’t be that harsh) then you’re more likely to want to have the full thing, rather than Bible-‘lite’.
Somehow, I just don’t see it being the next “Harry Potter”, with people sitting on the train reading the thing “because it’s easier to read than that big full version”. I could be wrong, but there we go.