NYPD CIA Anti-Terror Operations Conducted In Secret For Years. At a time when the inadequacies of the British media stands so starkly exposed, the above article is a wonderful reminder of what real journalism looks like. An unprecedented blurring of boundaries seems to have occurred between the CIA and the […]
I had a fascinating conversation with Martin Eve earlier about alternatives to commercial academic publishing. One of the most thought-provoking bits of the discussion was the question of what ‘prestige’ means in terms of academic journals: reputation or influence arising from success, achievement,rank, or other favorable attributes. distinction or reputation attaching to a person or thing andthus possessing a cachet for others or for the public Journals seen as prestigious have a reputation for possessing favourable attributes: they are […]
There was an old woman who swallowed a fly, I don’t know why she swallowed a fly, Perhaps she’ll die. There was an old woman who swallowed a spider, That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her, She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, I don’t know why she […]
One Term Tories – Guy Fawkes’ blog. I can’t remember ever reading anything on Guy Fawkes’ blog which made me as happy as they did. Wonder if it was Paul Stainers or Harry Cole who wrote it? One thing to add to their otherwise effective analysis: there’s been an internal […]
Doorstep rubbish collections scrapped after 130 years – Telegraph. In a way you have to admire the ingenuity of the Tories in how they’ve pursued their local government agenda. While preaching localism, inevitably attractive after years of New Labour authoritarianism and centralisation, they have also deliberately placed local councils in […]
I’m planning a paper about the cultural impact asexuality is/will/might have on non-asexuals. The method obviously isn’t particularly scientific, at least not in the sense it’s commonly used, though I do think it’s a useful tool (when combined with twitter, facebook and helpful online friends) as part of the research […]
Perhaps one of the best things I have ever seen on Youtube:
England’s riots shouldn’t be blamed on ‘moral decline’, says Tony Blair | UK news | The Observer. Rather interesting. This is without doubt the most sensible thing I have ever heard this man say. My only point of contention is the apparent contradiction inherent in what he’s saying: he talks about […]
I’ve been reading Chavs by Owen Jones all day and I’m surprised by quite how broadly thought-provoking it is. From the reviews I was certainly expecting a good book but not such a sensitive and wide ranging engagement with the culture and politics of modern Britain. One thing that particularly piqued […]
The first paper I ever wrote has finally been published, only 2 1/2 years after I wrote it, feels like so long ago now: Asexuality is becoming ever more widely known and yet it has received relatively little attention from within sociology. Research in the area poses particular challenges because […]
As a type of social man, the intellectual does not have any one political direction, but the work of any man of knowledge, if he is the genuine article, does have a distinct kind of political relevance: his politics, in the first instance, are the politics of truth, for his […]
Currently in the process of extending the literature review for my thesis. After intensive trawling through Google Scholar, I’ve found about 60 papers I’m trying to download into drop box for easy day-to-day reading on my iPad. Turns out that, even with my University of Warwick log in, I can […]
An absolutely superb letter in the Guardian from the British Sociological Association about the contribution sociology can make to understanding the UK Riots: One of the first things that disappears when considering disturbances such as these is perspective. One loses sight of the fact that nine out of 10 local residents aren’t rioting, […]
So with London in flames for the third night in a row and, for the first time, disturbances spreading outside of the capital, the British population are asking the natural question – what the fuck is going on? The most frequent, as well as understandable, response to this question has […]
In response to this article which castigates ‘the left’ for political opportunism and point scoring without any evidence before swiftly going on to argue that the riot proves the need for traditional Tory hang ’em and flog ’em policies (without providing any evidence for this) with a claim that Tory cuts don’t go […]
In this RSA talk the pioneering online campaigner Eli Pariser talks about a crucial and, as yet under-discussed, danger facing the the social media web: the expansion of filtering into every aspect of our online activity. Sites collect data on usage patterns, particularly our reactions to being presented with content and […]
1) How did this process get you started on the study of Asexuality? My first reaction when I came across the idea of asexuality was actually non-comprehension. In common with a lot of the sexual people I’ve spoken to about asexuality since then, I found it very interesting but I […]
We create and identify with things that aren’t real yet on all the levels we experience; and when we do, we recognise how to restructure our currentl world to morph it into the ne one, and experience an impetus to make it so. Things that have your attention need your […]
Following up on what I was writing about Getting Things Done (GTD) and reflexivity last night – the further I get into David Allen’s second book, the more aware I am of the countless empirical claims he makes about how internal conversation and reflexivity operate. I agree with many of […]
I increasingly find myself obsessed by David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. In part this is because, through the almost indescribably useful Omnifocus and Omnioutliner software package, its introduction into my life has started to diminish a near constant feeling of information overload (and sometimes emotional disorientation) which had developed […]
