In a recent post, I listed the titles of all 53 of my unpublished blog drafts. This obviously prompted me to go back and look at some of them.
Among those still languishing in ‘blog purgatory’ was a post ‘On Punching White Supremacists’ and was written in January, when the dos and don’ts of Nazi Punching became a hot topic of conversation after a particular proto-Nazi was punched live on TV.
The post appeared to be a complete thing, and I am unsure why I did not publish it at the time. Perhaps I forgot. Perhaps I felt I should not be ‘on record’ as being either for or against Nazi Punching—Both positions are morally perilous, as the post itself explains.
Or perhaps I felt that the world simply did not need another ‘hot take’ on Nazi Punching.
Anyway, it seemed silly to keep the thing in limbo. The arguments for and against are a useful aide memoir, even if my conclusions are ambiguous. So I published it.
You can read the post here. Continue reading
Category: Diary (Page 32 of 301)
Things that happen to me, or things I do
Its Banned Books Week, a time for all the family to gather round the dinner table to discuss free speech and censorship. One book that often comes up in such conversations is Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence, which was the subject of a famous obscenity trial in the 1960s.
I have been reading the Wikipedia page for the trial, and found this marvellous section on the testimony of academic Richard Hoggart, who was subjected to a snide cross-examination by the prosecuting barrister, Mervyn Griffith-Jones: Continue reading
Oh Lordy Lordy, I have 53 separate blog posts sitting unpublished in the drafts section of this website. None are in a state to be published, but I thought I would post the titles for your examination.
Ten years ago, Michelle Kazprzak did the same thing, which is where I got the idea. She wrote:
It’s pure blog purgatory, where I toy with some of these posts once every few months, but they never reach a postable state. In fact, most of these drafts are just titles, with no body to them at all, or body text consisting of one line to remind me what the post should be about. This paucity of text combined with the passage of time (every day a small sip of the water of Lethe), makes the probability that these posts will ever be completed quite low. The titles of these unfinished posts confront me each time I open my blog software as a series of blazing headlines demanding attention. The last time I looked at them all, it occurred to me they might be worth sharing in and of themselves
Just as ancient shopping lists give historians insights into lives past, so this litany may actually be a good representation of my addled mind.
Perhaps other people should do the same? Continue reading
As the extent of the humanitarian crisis facing the Rohingya people becomes clear, many people have harshly criticised the response of Aung San Suu Kyi. On Facebook, one of my friends even expressed shame at having campaigned for her.
I was an active campaigner for Aung San Suu Kyi’s release. I picketed the Myanmar Embassy on a few occasions (see my photos here) and even addressed a rally for Burmese dissidents in Trafalgar Square (from whence the banner image at the top of this blog). I also collaborated with the Burma Campaign on #64forSuu, a campaign to celebrate her 64th birthday, while she was still under house arrest. On her release in 2012, I was invited to attend an event with her and other dissidents (including Zarganar) at the Royal Festival Hall.
I regret none of this. Continue reading
After my post about postcodes earlier this week, a couple of people asked me what a ‘lookup table’ was in that context. I thought I’d write something quick about their use in the context of spreadsheets, because they’re such a timesaver.
You can probably divide the world into people who have no idea about VLOOKUP tables in spreadsheets, and those who use them every day. Until recently I was firmly in the former category, but now I’m part of the latter group. Continue reading