ANTISEMITISM ON FACEBOOKA friend drew to my attention a truly nasty Facebook group called "Sweet Memories of The Holocaust" which,  while claiming "we dont have brplem with jews our problem is with izrael and zionz" (their spelling), is predictably full of anti-semitic filth. It seems to have been set up by some death-metal mentalist but is attracting a depressing number of members. I shan't link to it but I will point...

Read more

IF HARRY'S PLACE IS DOWN.......this is probably why.....And if that is down too, then in brief, Harry's Place posted an interesting piece about neo-Nazi websites. An academic mentioned in the piece, Jenna Delich, took exception to a sentence in it that linked her with the website of David Duke, the neo-nazi ad former Ku Klux Klan leader. Harry's Place retorts that evidence for their claim is in the public domain. I trust...

Read more

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGINGWhat an interesting figure Dylan Jones is. In the mid-eighties I used to see him at warehouse parties in places like Battlebridge Road, King's Cross. If memory serves, he may even have organised some of them. It always struck me as a very lucrative enterprise: find a warehouse, get a sound system, buy hundreds of cans of Red Stripe from a cash and carry, charge a fiver at the door, confiscate any drink...

Read more

MET POLICE CRME MAPReally good use of Google Maps by the London Metropolitan police to provide local crime information by postcode. You can drill down to ward and sub-ward, which is as micro-local as one can reasonably expect to get, see the number of incidents for an area and track trends. It would be nice to know more about the kind of offences - were the five in my area last month burlaries, muggings, murders, thefts from cars...

Read more

PRESS OFFICERSWhen I worked for Yahoo!, I occasionally had to do radio interviews and very often a press officer would accompany m e. She was very nice and efficient and made sure I got where I needed to be in time and knew what I would be asked about. However, she insisted on scribbling notes on a large piece of card and waving them at me during the interview to remind me to say, or not say, one thing or another. It was extremely...

Read more

SPARE A THOUGHT FOR THE FAMILIES OF CONFESSIONAL COLUMNISTSSome journalists I know refuse to write about their families. Others have made a career of it: one thinks of the noxious and self-obsessed Liz Jones and Nirpal Dhalirwal. At least those two had a right of reply to the other's whingeing; the relatives of most confesional writers don't have this opportunity. I enjoy Tim Dowling's column in the Guardian Weekend magazine...

Read more

WORDSCRAPERThe clever Agarwal brothers have come up with a replacement for Scrabulous. Wordscraper is now available on Facebook and it looks, at first sight, not unlike Scrabble/Scrabulous: a similar sort of board, albeit with circles instead of squares, letter tiles that you use to make words, albeit the letters don't have numbered scores attached to them. The circles on the board are labelled 2/3/4L or 2/3/4/W which evidently...

Read more