cutting it fine, but just did my tax return, it’s getting easier! …
Black Cabs
Walking to the bus stop last night, I passed three black cabs advertising separate hailing apps/circles and none of them were Uber. Obvs. …
Snowing
And we’re in Chamonix… and its snowing …
Abstinence
Why whenever the Guardian does an article on boozing and/or abstinence it decorates it with a lovely picture of (usually) wine. Why? …
Rhetoric
In this article, Julian Baggini tests the speeches in Parliament on the resolution to bomb Syria/ISIS against Aristotle’s three parts of rhetoric, ethos, pathos and logos, morality, emotion and reason and finds that most, including Hilary Benn’s come up short. He explores the decline of reason in political decision making and while he quotes Chi Onwurah on the issues of reason, he does not quote or highlight any of the Tory MPs who spoke against the resolution who showed a deep understanding of the situation in Syria. At the end of the day though this is an essay on the quality of rhetoric in Parliament and Baggini like me finds it wanting. I recommend you read this.
Search
I just found pdfbit, a .pdf search engine. Rather terrific.
Five vowels
They have renamed Warwick Avenue Tube station, and added the phrase “for Little Venice”, thus making it only the second TFL station to have all five vowels. …
Snail mail latency
Just signed in to see where my book on the Spanish Civil War is an they say not ’till the 8th January; just under a month and it was despatched in days. Another reason to renationalise the Royal Mail, I say! …
Bears
The Stock Exchange lost 135 points today, what caused that? …