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On December 9th 2007, a curious event took place at the University of South Carolina football stadium. As 29,000 people filed inside, each was given a piece of paper bearing four names and phone numbers. During the event, each person called those names and asked them to vote for Obama in the coming primary election.

Those [...]

…and the Case for Public Service Games
The BBC is a world-class broadcaster that produces some of the very best TV, radio and news. It’s also an organisation that is desperately holding on to its past glories, while ignoring the potential and importance of the internet.
What is the BBC for? According to its Royal Charter, the [...]

In case you aren’t in the UK or haven’t been following the news lately, there is something of a crisis in British politics. Partly caused by an expense scandal in which some MPs have been making rather dubious claims, the Labour government is now seeing cabinet ministers resigning more or less every single day. Forget [...]

“You’re better off reading a bunch of blogs than most columnists.” – me, earlier today.
Every time I open the Guardian, or the Times, or any other newspaper, I am disappointed by the poor quality of the columns and editorial. For the most part, they’re barely-informed polemics that are constrained by word limits and motivated by [...]

The energy and public participation in the 2008 US Election has made many in the UK very jealous, and is raising questions about, say, why we don’t have primary contests to choose party leaders. Here’s how leadership contests currently work:

Conservatives: MPs choose two candidates, who party members can then vote on
Labour: the totality of party [...]

This is almost exactly a year late, but Vernor Vinge, one of my favourite SF authors and perhaps the most insightful prognosticator I know of, gave the keynote lecture at the Austin Games Conference in 2006. He covers so much ground in the lecture that I suspect he lost a few people not familiar with [...]

It’s a shame to see what’s happening at the BBC now. With the TV license fee not increasing anywhere near as much as the BBC had hoped, something’s got to give, and people are all trying to point the finger at anyone but themselves. Jon Humphrys from the Radio 4 Today Programme suggested killing off [...]

Did you know that the UK’s statutory holiday entitlement is increasing to 24 days on 1st October, and then 28 days a year after that? Because I sure as hell didn’t. For the majority of people in the UK, that’s an extra eight days holiday every year. Another eight 3-day weekends, or almost two whole [...]

Sometimes, when I come across a particularly interesting article, I try to find the research paper that it’s based on. I don’t always read the entire paper (in fact, I normally skip over huge chunks) but it’s always instructive to see the results and analysis as the original author wrote them; it’s not rare for [...]

Philip Pullman, along with a couple of other people from New Line, gave an interesting talk at the Oxford Literary Festival yesterday about the process of adaption The Golden Compass for the cinema. There was a bit of a thrill of seeing some effects shots for the first time, although it turned out to be [...]