Anything, Anywhere But Under Sufferance

I rather like this image, it is a visual description of just one portion of the internet. I think it's rather beautiful and almost ethereal. Strange really when you consider that the vast number of people on this are using the internet to tweet that they've just taken a dump or are watching cats fall comically into swimming pools. Today, we tackle the internet. It probably wasn't in the minds of the scholars at Stanford University first began to develop the groundwork for what would become the Internet, that their creation would not only be arguably the most important in modern society, but that for many the epitome of it would be to spend the day watching hedgehogs learn to ride a bicycle. A lot of debate on the internet is on whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. This is rather a facile and pointless argument. It is like arguing whether humankind is a good or bad thing, or religion is a good or bad thing. There are plus and minuses to every facet of human life. On pl...

It's been a few years since I spent most of my day watching my children grow from young babies into toddlers and taking the first tentative steps into school. During that period, although I still worked, for a large part of the day I was a house-husband and spent a lot of my time trying to understand what children today see in the television programmes that educational psychologists have decided are best for them. Take Tellytubbies. Four a-sexual, monitor-bellied conduits of video, who live together in a big house with a rampant vacuum cleaner and who's daily diet consists either of tubby toast (which is fine) or tubby-tustard (which has since become a euphemism for various bodily outpourings, enough to make Ben Dover blush). Now if that didn't emotionally scar your children, then todays offerings most certainly will. Have you seen "In the Night Garden?" Honestly, Lewis Carroll, even in his most doped up days, would have looked at this and gone "Sorry man, I ...