Robert Sharp

My del.icio.us links: 7th June to 21st June

• Is Google Making Us Stupid? - As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, we risk turning into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button
• 2008 Design Trends - Its the year of the 'Vintage' and 'Texture' look, of which I am a purveyor.
• Project Gutenberg - There are over 25,000 free books in the Project Gutenberg

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My del.icio.us links: 30th May to 5th June

• Four Days in Denver - A 'West Wing' Writer Imagines the Showdown at the Democratic National Convention
• The Body's Grace - If the creator were quite so instrumentalist in "his" attitude to sexuality, these hints of prodigality and redundancy in the way the whole thing works might cause us to worry about whether he was, after all, in full rational control of it. But if God mad
• We Hate the Kids pt1 - Laurie Penny on Liberal Conspiracy: "And suddenly the biscuit-eating public is frightened again."

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My del.icio.us links: 25th May to 28th May

• Hallelujah! - Brian Appleyard on Leonard Cohen's modern masterpiece
• Jesus Rodriguez Velasco - Striking design, reminds me of Borges for some reason.
• Democratic Candidates and Technological Metaphors - Clinton is Yahoo, Obama is Google. McCain is Microsoft.
• Why I wrote PGP - "If you really are a law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide, then why don't you always send your paper mail on postcards? Why not submit to drug testing on demand? Why require a warrant for police searches of your house? Are you trying to hide something
• Interracial Intimacy - White-black dating, marriage, and adoption are on the rise. This development, however, is being met with resistance—more vocally by blacks than by whites
• HisSpace - The Internet Presidency - How would Obama’s success in online campaigning translate into governing?
• Wanted: new-thinking pioneers - Martin Bright: "Even exceptional behind-the-scenes strategists such as Dan Corry, the present head of the No 10 Policy Unit, or Nick Pearce, Brown's strategy adviser, are in no position to think in the long term."

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My del.icio.us links: 20th May to 25th May

• Is politics stuck in the present? - Jack Stilgoe on the Demos blog: "The future of science is too capricious to be reduced to Yeses and Nos. Politics needs to be able to talk about the Yes-buts, the No-buts and the Maybes."
• Structured Procrastination
• Election typography - The fonts used by the three main candidates.

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I’m glad someone has taken Magnus Linklater to task over his cavallier use of Google:

Sir, Magnus Linklater quotes 1.5 million Google entries matching “I hate Gordon Brown”. But to reach this number of hits requires the words to be entered without the quotation marks. When you add them Gordon attracts only 143 entries. It may be some comfort to the Prime Minister that “I hate Tony Blair” retrieves 836 and “I hate Thatcher” 525. They all pale into insignificance against the 22,900 for “I hate George Bush”.
Cyril Berkeley
Kuala Lumpur

As I have said before, typing something into Google and reporting how many hits it receives is not evidence of everything. I repeat, let us do away with this cliche, please.

My del.icio.us links: 12th May to 16th May

• My gateway to infinity - Clive James again: "It can talk about value, saying not just “This is what I have done” but “This is what others have done, and I find it valuable beyond price”.
• clivejames.com
• Music Gives Me Hope - Daniel Barenboim on the decline of Israeli socialism and the unifying power of music: "Before a Beethoven Symphony, all human beings are equal"
• USA political election logos 2008 - 1960 - I think Nixon's use of a full stop is particularly interesting.
• normblog: Israel at 60 - “Those who cannot celebrate the existence of Israel but only criticize it, put themselves beyond all sense of sympathy with the legitimate concerns of the Jewish people - as if these had no basis, no rationale, no historical genesis; as if Israel’s history was solely about usurpation and error; as if it was not itself born under the threat of annihilation, a threat that is ever renewed.”

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Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris, with parliamentary colleagues, at an event in support of the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill, which will protect and extend the right of scientists to perform crucial stem-cell research.

My del.icio.us links: 9th May to 12th May

• all streets - Ben Fry presents a map that is comprised of all the roads in the USA and nothing more
• Let Them Eat Arugula - Bill Clinton recently declared, "The people in small towns in rural America, who do the work for America, and represent the backbone and the values of this country, they are the people that are carrying her through in this nomination." The corollary–that
• 50 More Excellent Blog Designs - Smashing magazines present some unique blog designs. Food for thought for when I get around to redesigning my own place. Some seem rather generic, though.

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I saw this aged notice tatooed onto a wall in Westminster, just off Smith Square. That’s the nice thing about living in old cities - there’s a piece of history on every corner.

I wonder if the vaults are still there, or whether they have been turned into luxury, windowless apartments for rich agraphobics.

As previously discussed, I have a new laptop, and feel reincarnated. ‘Tis a lovely MacBook Pro.

I thought I would note down all those programmes and plug-ins that I downloaded and installed immediately. Someone may be interested, and it will save time if I ever get burgled again.
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