Kester Brewin

The people at ‘Boredom Research Labs’ have designed ‘the world’s first webmail service using real live snails.’ Yes you read that correctly. Actually, the thinking behind the project, or at least post-event justification, is to slow technology down, as a form of discipline or meditation. You send your email in the normal way, and this [...]

This month’s Believer documents a strange case from Hungary of audio-kinetic synaesthesia. The subject, whenever he hears certain words, ‘sees’ them as discrete and definite actions or gestures. Colour synaesthesia is more common: sounds or numbers are seen as distinct colours, and some estimates reckon that around 1 in 23 experience it. And I just [...]

I enjoy most things about city life, but one of the perennial frustrations is noise. Light pollution, on the micro scale at least, is fairly easy to manage. We can shut our curtains or buy special blinds, and shut our eyes if need be. And, while some objects are foul to look at, we only [...]

What’s the point in having a 42 day detention limit for terror suspects… if the best intelligence we have is just left lying around on trains?

You guessed it. I’m going through one of those ‘bored of blogging’ phases. With TSK pumping out on average 5 posts it’s not like there’s a paucity of stuff for people to read. Sure it’ll pass. Or may be it won’t. The sun’s shining, so I’m not fussed which.

“We turn from the light to see.” Don Paterson, The Book of Shadows. Technorati: Paterson

I finally got round to watching ‘Reverend Death’, Jon Ronson’s documentary about George Exoo, a Unitarian minister who has performed around 100 ‘assisted suicides’, mainly for those who have been turned down by other organisations practising legally in places/states where it is carefully controlled because they do not have terminal illnesses. Most of the people [...]

An excellent week away, helped by the fantastic sunshine that rayed on us every day, while the South got soaked in rain. Reading material for the train/ferry/bus etc. on the way up/down was this month’s Prospect, which contained an article from some old Blairites challenging Brown to move away from top-down centralised governance to a [...]