Christmas was always associated with Bond films, back when I was a kid and actually watched regular TV. I understand why. They are generally fun and entertaining, and combine action with adventure and mystery. Also, Bond girls. Despite Bond being something of a relic of a character from a 1950s male fantasy, I still really enjoy watching the films and tend to watch a few every winter holiday period. I realised this year that I’d actually seen most of them, […]
Given that I recently upgraded my digital camera after spending quite some time researching the options, I thought I would share what I have learnt about the various camera systems available at the moment. I am generally company agnostic for the most part, so I was interested in learning what the relative strengths and weaknesses of the camera manufacturers are at the moment. I’ll leave the disclaimer here that I am not a professional photographer and I have not tried […]
The electric car revolution has been underway for a few years now. Elon Musk and Tesla have clearly had quite a lot of influence on the future of electric vehicles from a technology standpoint, whilst cars like the Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe, and BMW i3 have tried to bring electric motoring to the masses. Yet, we still have some way to go before electric cars become the norm. In this article, I want to briefly cover some of the main […]
A few weeks ago, I was at the supermarket and decided to buy a different cut of meat. As I pay attention to my caloric intake, naturally I checked the nutrition information on the back. I noticed something odd… This is the labelling for the chicken breasts I regularly buy. It’s quite clear, and gives values per 100g to allow for easy cross-comparison between foods. However, this is the labelling for chicken thighs. Notice anything different? This gives you the […]
The five-star review system you find on most websites today is inherently flawed if you want information about how good something actually is. Famously, on websites like Amazon, there is a ‘J-shaped’ distribution of review scores. That is, there is a small mass of 1-star reviews; relatively few 2-star, 3-star, and 4-star reviews; and a huge mass of 5-star reviews. This, on it’s own, means that most reviews are somewhat useless. But, when you remember that some of these reviews […]
“Thank you for answering my questions. Do you have anything you would like to ask me?” “How often do you get to see the impact you have made with the work you do? I like to do something where I can solve a problem and see the fruits of my labour, so to speak.” “In the past, to be honest, we really didn’t see what happened that much. But it is more and more the case that we get to […]
As you may have heard, the legendary blues guitarist BB King died recently. Following this though, there were some comments on the internet that got me thinking. Intermingled with the usual condolences and such, a few commenters were critical towards him because of the fact that he did not have a strong understanding of music theory. Their argument seemed to be that his lack of theoretical knowledge about what he was playing somehow diminished his achievements. He is not the […]
My cousin and I both share the view that choosing friends or associations based on group attributes rather than individual attributes is a dangerous idea when aggregated. Rather than choosing to associate with others based on common interests, ideas, personality matches etc, there are many people that have a tendency to forge ties based on some stereotypical or socially constructed rule. The most obvious of these rules seems to be to gravitate around others of similar race or religion, though […]
Adopting a different way of doing things – one that undermines the implicit way your mind has been conditioned to think about something – is painful. I’m not sure that there is much getting around that. When you have a bandage or plaster applied to a wound, you can peel it off slowly and feel every uncomfortable pull sequentially as unique signals, or you can clench your teeth and rip it off. The latter method tends to be the way […]
Economic growth and technological progress have brought us many privileges, especially in the last 200 years or so. Inventions like computers and the internet have indeed completely changed the face of the world. But we owe a lot to ideas such as specialisation of labour. The modern economy has basically evolved from a series of fragmented (and primarily self-serving) tribes into a giant machine with many gears to be oiled and turned. The idea is that each individual has turned […]
A few years ago, in one of my first articles, I wrote about the shambles that was Quantum of Solace. Not only do I think that was a rubbish Bond film, it was a very confusing and poor film in general. As you can imagine, then, I didn’t have high hopes for Bond’s latest outing – Skyfall. However, I had heard at least more positive things about it than for Quantum of Solace. I figured it was only fair for […]
Earlier today, my mail slot was rather firmly penetrated by this wonder of wonders. “Stop!”, it commanded. Apparently the Prime Minister is destroying Britain’s families! As you can imagine, I was quite alarmed by this. After all, we all come from some sort of family, no matter how broken. I wouldn’t like to think that there would be more breakage. I read on, wanting to know exactly how this destruction would be caused. Supposedly, it’s down to same sex marriage […]