Adam Gopnik’s excellent article on H. G. Wells in a recent New Yorker contained a brief passage that made me reach for a note.

Wells’s elevation was made easier by the booming press of the time. P. G. Wodehouse, who was, improbably, a good friend of Wells’s, recalled, “There were so many morni...

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This is something new, on two counts. It records a hike we took together in the country, The Squeeze and I. And it uses a new template I made specifically for photos. That is explained elsewhere.

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Twitter passed me by at the start, and if I am honest I still don't really get it. Today, though, I was bringing in old posts as usual, and they included links to a couple that were, to put it delicately, skeptical about Twitter's chances. Tim Bray got one thing very right:

The basic problem i...

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I was very disappointed by the latest Thinking Allowed. Paul Freedman explained why, as his new book claims, Food Matters, but Laurie Taylor gave the distinguished perfesser a very gentle ride. Freedman said that academe denigrates and dismisses research into food, which it surely does. He then re...

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I had a delicious lie-in this morning, and extra 40 minutes asleep. When I looked at my sleep stats, however, I had been robbed. Apple says I woke up at 6:59. I happen to know that I did not actually get out of bed until 7:40. I was awake, briefly, at around 6:59, but only to tap the Stop button. Th...

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