confused of calcutta

I’ve never been a fan of e-mail, and I won’t bore you with my rants. Suffice it to say that it worked once, could work again, but only as an electronic equivalent of snail-mail; that it is not fit for purpose today as a multilateral communications medium; that misuse of e-mail is rampant, particularly via [...]

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I’ve been reading William Gibson’s Spook Country for the past few days; it feels different from his earlier books, there’s an increased sense of curious detachment in the observer/narrator. Somewhere within the early pages of the book, Gibson mentions a wooden top in passing.
And that’s what this post is about. Wooden tops. And the other [...]

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I keep getting told that perception is everything. I don’t know about you, but I’m one of those guys who finds that statement puerile. It’s like telling me “Hypocrisy is OK, live with it”.
Not getting my drift? Let me take an example. “Laziness”. Some people get called lazy because you see them lounging around at [...]

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I love being led astray. Probably not in the sense you imagine.
I really like illusions. Someone making me see something that is not there.
I really like sleight-of-hand and prestidigitation. Someone making me not see something that is there.
I really like mystery novels and films. Someone making me draw false conclusion after false conclusion.
You know something? [...]

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Every now and then I get a message I dread, telling me that my password has expired and that I need to set a new one.
Why do I dread it? Let me think. I have no problem with the majority of my web accounts and signups and subscriptions. For the most part, I set my [...]

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Some of us are passionate about our faith and our beliefs. Some of us are passionate about science and things scientific. Some of us are passionate about both. (I belong to this category). Some of us believe that being passionate about both is not possible.
Whatever your particular position in the debate, I would urge you [...]

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I had to read this a second time, just to make sure somebody wasn’t pulling my leg:
The group is accused of erecting a massive structure in the shape of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for the Hindu festival of the Goddess Durga, which celebrates her killing a demon and the victory of good [...]

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which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not:
Jeremiah 5:21, KJV 
Madonna is reported to be leaving Warner Music and moving to Live Nation.
This, at a time when, as the AP report states:
Regulatory filings show that Ticketmaster’s revenues jumped 14 percent to $1.1 billion in 2006 and generated almost a 25 percent [...]

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Last Friday was Byte Night. Every year, people from the industry sleep out “rough” for one night. Their aim? To raise funds for NCH’s projects to do with leaving care and youth homelessness.
This year I was privileged. Privileged to take part, privileged to have a number of my colleagues with me, privileged to be sponsored [...]

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I learnt recently that Bungie, the people behind Halo 3, has done something quite unusual. For the last decade or two, most start-ups have had acquisition by Microsoft (or, more recently, Google) as their goal. Bungie, having achieved their goal, have apparently agreed terms with Microsoft to go back to being an independent company.
This by [...]

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