Matthew Henry John Bartlett

A helpful discussion of Christian Socialism on BBC4’s Beyond Belief programme. It’s relevant to Ben’s earlier comments.

Perhaps this will be of interest. Since May last year I’ve been keeping a history file, which I add to when I learn some new historical factoid. Of course it is an eternal work in progress. I suppose that most of the value in it is in manipulating it and adding new items, rather than just reading it. Here it is.

I recommend Doubt (the movie, not necessarily the state of mind). Philip Seymour Hoffman and Merryl Streep. You think you’ve seen sufficient movies about possibly paedophile priests, but you really haven’t.

If you find copying large numbers of files in Windows frustrating (because a 5GB copy will stop on a single file error, and you won’t know exactly how far you got; because you can’t queue up a batch of files to copy sequentially rather than ‘simultaneously’; because you can’t pause; or because you can’t overwrite only older files), I recommend TeraCopy. I’m even (gasp) thinking about shelling out for the Pro version.

After the march today I read the paper and it made me angry.

The Dom Post editorial proposed that all that needs to happen to stop the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza is for Hamas to stop firing rockets.  The editor was joined in this view by a columnist on the following page; I’m sorry I can’t remember who.  At some level this is true, but it is offensively simplistic.  I object on four main grounds (so far): (more…)

My facebook photo album of today’s protest, feat. comments controversy

Unless you are my mother or mother-in-law, the best way to find out what is happening with the baby is to follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/mhjb That will save me having to send n-1 text messages. You may wish to pass on that link to interested older people.

Bruce Sterling on the fiscal crisis:

If the straights were not “prone to hostility” before that experience, they might well be so after it, because they’ve got a new host of excellent reasons. The sheer galling come-down of watching the Bottom Line, the Almighty Dollar, revealed as a papier-mache pinata. It’s like somebody burned their church. (more…)