“Groovy Motherfucker”

The story of Sir Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry is being turned into a one-off BBC comedy-drama. To British nerds of a certain age, this is the most exciting news ever.

Stonking article by David Mitchell on the strangeness of people being offended by profanity. “It’s daft to say a particular sound, regardless of context, must never be uttered, and ironically only guarantees it will be, by giving it rebellious cachet.”

I normally can’t be arsed with Steve Yegge, but this one is good — describing the very real disconnect between “I have an idea!” and “How will that idea work in practice?” (Read at least up to where he goes off on Marijuana legalization — it becomes repetitive at that point)

Useful survey of the quality of 3G cell networks in the US. Now you know that when AT&T’s ads say “America’s fastest 3G network”, you can respond under your breath “Yeah, but you only have a 68% chance of connecting”.

This makes me tremendously happy — The Economist is now available as a Kindle subscription. Interestingly, it’s priced almost identically to the dead tree subscription, which is causing a rare amount of bitching in the Amazon reviews from those who don’t understand the, erm, economics of magazine production. (Clue: Adding dead-tree subscribers increases the rate you can charge advertisers. Adding advertising-free Kindle subscribers doesn’t.)

I definitely agree. Rare is the conversation in which you can’t use the phrase “Cats and dogs, living together”.