Posts by James Butler
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Hard News: Any excuse for a party, in reply to Russell Brown,
It's not a projection. A VisitBritain study found that tourists spent tourists spent more than £500 million visiting attractions associated with the British monarchy and its history in 2009. There were nearly a million visits to Windsor Castle alone. I don't think there's any doubt that royal tourism is a major earner for Britain.
A relevant question would be what fraction of that money would still be spent in the absence of the monarchy? People still visit the palace at Versailles, after all.
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Cracker: RIght On., in reply to Raymond A Francis,
I am interested in the claim that Brash is a racist
Danyl has a very succinct summary of the argument here. PLUS we get to play Race-Based Policy Bingo in the comments!
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Up Front: Home is Where the - Ooo, shiny!, in reply to Danielle,
I do have a semi-serious defence of Jersey Shore, but I imagine it would be rather wasted here. :)
Oh, it depends on what you consider a waste. If you'd be happy to start an off-topic dissection of Snooki's love-life as an example of the uphill struggle of modern feminism or something equally worthy and serious, then go for gold. If however you want me to start watching Jersey Shore, then I'm going to rudely prejudge your argument and say it won't work. I don't even watch good TV anymore :-/
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Up Front: Home is Where the - Ooo, shiny!, in reply to Danielle,
Last night, I did paying work while watching Jersey Shore.
Yeah, you'd have to pay me to watch Jersey Shore too.
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Up Front: Home is Where the - Ooo, shiny!, in reply to BenWilson,
I’m sure there are programmers who regularly meet deadlines, but I’m also pretty sure they do it by massively overestimating how long things will take.
But if overestimating just means you meet your deadline, then it wasn't an overestimation, was it?
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Up Front: Home is Where the - Ooo, shiny!, in reply to Andre Alessi,
I don’t know, kids seem like a pretty expensive alternative to an alarm clock.
Unreliable too. My daughter would sleep until 10 every day if possible; my son gets up at 7, but he knows that if he wakes us his unencumbered computer time is over for the day.
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Re. chairs, this got me thinking recently about my own workspace arrangements. I'm cycling less and less recently because of time, weather and health, so the more passive exercise I can get in, the better.
Also, I just realized another salient fact about my abortive attempts to study at home - I had barely any internet then! No Facebook, no Twitter, and especially no PAS. I'd be totally doomed now.
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I'm pretty envious of people who are able to get anything done at home. When I was at uni, and could easily have just popped into lectures and labs a couple of hours a day and been with my wife and kids the rest of the time, I found I had to do 9-5 days (well, 9-3 with the occasional 9-12 thrown in) on campus to achieve anything at all. Even in the office I find it hard enough to focus (eg. what am I doing right now?).
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Up Front: Home is Where the - Ooo, shiny!, in reply to Emma Hart,
That's the one. Where were you last night, hmm?
Hint: not my favourite flower shop in London.
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“hire a housekeeper and a nanny so those little everyday tasks don’t keep distracting you”. [Try to remember the name of that parenting advice that actress whose name I can’t recall writes, fail.]
You are surely referring to the charmingly tone-deaf (as in charming-my-head-into-my-desk-repeatedly) GOOP. Well, it's OK, Gwyneth feels your pain:
Q: When actors or artists do something different, they open themselves up to criticism. How would you respond to the people who are critical of your latest endeavor?
A: I think part of the problem is people get a hit of energy when they are negative about something, and it is a very detrimental way for them to get that hit of energy. They do not understand why they do not have a happy life. That kind of stuff is just noise to me. I just feel sorry for them.