Oh Google, could you do me a little favour please? I know you have a lot on your plate, what with Google Plus and whatever company your probably planning on buying next, but I really think it would be worth your while. You see, I’m a fan of Android, I like that adults are allowed to use it, as opposed to the mollycoddling iOS, but there is an area it falls short on, and that’s music. You’ve been making all the right gestures, but unusually Google, you just don’t seem to be thinking in the right direction. People have ranted before about how poor the standard Android music player is, and clearly you’ve listened. It really is quite pretty now (even if it does still occasionally just stop playing mid song), and functions pretty smoothly and intuitively. The big problem is, which you don’t seem to have noticed, is that I don’t want to just listen to music on my phone, I want to listen to it on my pc too – and that’s where Apple resoundingly trumps you. It might be a lot easier to create ...

HP Lovecraft has been on my 'to read' list for sometime, but it was only recently I picked up the lovely penguin paperback edition of the short story collection 'The Dunwich Horror' while browsing in Waterstones. The book is conducive to being read, and I quickly worked my way through the first story on a bus trip to Wales, the scenery of which perfectly mimicking the tale. It was a pleasure to find a story written in 1928 so enthralling and atmospheric in a distinctly contemporary way, and a delight to realise that the praise heaped on Lovecraft from various horror writers (there's a quote on the cover from Stephen King) is thoroughly justified. The modern sensibility of the horror is no doubt a reflection of the massive influence his stories have had on modern horror and fantasy. It's quite palpable. Lovecraft is clearly writing at a time in the early 20thC when modern science as we understand it was coming to the fore, yet there still lingered a residual ...

I've been having fun with Google plus this last week, while getting my head around the hybrid Facebook/Twitter structure of it. I found a great post by John Tropea on the differences between Google+ and Facebook/Twitter , and he sums up my initial confusion on how sharing with circles works. Essentially, when you post something to a circle, that whole circle won't see it in their stream unless they are all following you back, which is necessarily the case. I agree with John that this isn't very intuitive. So, @Google, here's my simple suggestion to make it a little more intuitive: the little grey circle graphic next to each of your circles could represent what percentage of that circle follow you back - like a little circle graph. So if only half the people in one of your given circles follows you back then, then the circle outline is half red, half green (or some other colours), if 90% follow you back, then 90% of the little circle would look green, while a little 10...

Listening to an Economist podcast recently, I was interested to learn how China has been trying to develop its soft power on the international stage. They have been trying to promote Confuscianism, and values of hierarchy and authority. Basically, 'wow, look how good authoritarianism is!' and there definitely are some benefits - the govt can make quick and sweeping decisions in response to large problems, such as the gfc and the environment according to the Economist. It strikes me that when authoritarianism and popular consent (through democracy) are juxtaposed in the context of govt achievements, the former is better at getting things done, while the later is better at accountability, ie ensuring the right problems are addressed, in the right way, and that they are actually completed and successfully. The reason China can interact successfully with countries that are supposedly diametrically opposed to their fundamental values, is that liberal democracies act as authoritarian...

It was quite exciting to see the US federal court strike down Prop 8 the other day, even if that does feel a little premature given that it was going to be appealed to the Supreme Court and that could take a few years. What made it so exciting though was how emphatically Judge Walker struck down the ban, in his 138 page ruling - calling out all the nonsense spouted by the anti-gay marriage brigade. What infuriates me is the level of response in the media from the loosing side. I want to scream every time I see another idiot claim that the will of 'seven million Californians' was ignored, it's the end of democracy, blah blah blah. Of course it was ignored, that was will was prejudiced and bigoted. Do people not understand why we set up political systems that protect all people's rights, and that we don't subject the rights of a minority to a popular vote. That is one of the reason the federal and supreme courts exist - I know this and I'm not even American. It ...

I was pleased to see Katrin Bennhold's ' Feminism of the Future Relies on Men ' in the NY times, and I continue to be surprised the point of view she put forward isn't more common, as it has seemed damn obvious to me for sometime. It seems commonly acknowledged that previous feminist movements 'pushed women into the world of men' (as stated in the piece), which would seem to imply the logical question 'Where do the men go?'. If feminism has failed in achieving the equality it had hoped for, it is surely because it made the men's world very crowded, and didn't give the men there anywhere else to go. In her booked 'Stiffed', which I must admit I never finished reading, Susan Faludi interrogated the 'crisis' in modern masculinity, which is surely a result of the lack of progress in redefining the role of men in a society in the wake of attempts to redefine the role of women. While for the mainstream of many liberal-democratic socie...

[Inspired by long political debates in online forums] Sometimes we want something, but to get it we have to endorse a group that does something bad. Like persecute a minority, one that you might even be part of. Say for example you want to vote Tory because it benefits you in some way, but you’re gay, and they have tendency to wish gays didn’t exist. Fear not! All you need to do is convince yourself you’re right, and that conscience will just have to shut up. There are tried and true methods for this, passed down through the ages to excuse all sorts of atrocities, and they are so simple anyone can use them! Even you! Step 1 – MINIMISE what it is that your conscience objects to. For hundreds of years people have justified doing bad things by minimising their assessment of its impact or meaning. You don’t even want to do something bad, you just want to ignore something bad someone else did, so it’s even easier! Just take the awful thing that was done (such as passing homophobic...