In all this discussion of inequality, nobody has mentioned "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid", which I believe is a proximate cause of much of that inequality.

Why is David Cameron promising a social fightback? What has the government got to do with it? It's spent years making itself irrelevant in social issues, and by the policy of "big society" in governmental issues too. Now it wants "in"? I find this dubious.

My talk at the weekend was titled "How to get fired with the Java type system." Making good use tricks like this will either make you the master programmer of your organization, or get you fired. I am not responsible ( Read more... )

[Ed: I have been dealing with some very poor code recently; my tone in this post reflects that ( Read more... )

I was at Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus the other week, and they asked me to write my own name badge, so I wrote "Anonymous" in big, clear letters. The goon on the door clearly didn't care what my name badge said, as long as I was wearing one. Later, however, was a different story. One conversation went like this ( Read more... )

I have now watched many films, and come to the conclusion that in any fight, one should kill the people with the more complicated hats first.

Yesterday was my first day back at work after two and a half weeks of fairly severe illness. I only lasted about an hour and a half, but today I managed most of the day. I'm now half asleep, and hoping to be back to it tomorrow ( Read more... )

We are watching Snatch, with the subtitles for the benefit of the Americans.

I have been reading the California Drivers' Manual. It is the California equivalent of the Highway Code, and it scares the living daylights out of me. It is available for free on the internet. It is hard to condense the horror to one or two gems, so I offer the following extended list ( Read more... )

For anybody who needs a little help, or wants a good laugh, I made this poll. I'm quite curious to see what people's ranking of "badness" is (maybe overall ranking in a comment?) and I want some fun.

Poll

Did I miss anything important?

I wish you could answer a poll multiple times.