There's a train of thought, among those fed up with the government of the day or cynical about politics in general, that all politicians are crooks, and that only bad people could even want to be in politics. But I've known some very nice people who have been politicians, so I know this isn't true.…
I've answered a lot of questions about sexuality, sex, orientation and gender on Quora. There's often an element of personal opinion in such answers, but I try to stay objective, evidence-based, ethical and compassionate…
Answers on religious topics. Obviously this is much more about my opinion than the previous set of answers about Java and programming. But it has also been a chance for me to share what I've learned about Buddhism…
I've been using the question-and-answer site Quora for almost exactly 3 years, and I've written nearly 1,000 answers…
Finding the source of a quotation has always been a problem. Before the internet, if a quotation wasn't in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, you had little chance of tracking it down unless you were a journalist or an academic…
As an alumnus of three UK universities, I regularly get communications from them written in a tone of breathless excitement about some new development concerning their organisational structure. Birmingham University constantly reorganises, renames and rebrands itself and throws abbreviations at…
Single people have traditionally hated St. Valentine's Day (in our modern, secular world now just called Valentines Day) because it supposedly celebrated coupledom - though personally it was always the crass commercialism of greetings-card makers that I found repugnant. Greetings…
Google has been running self-driving cars in San Francisco's Bay Area for some time now, and big car manufacturers are starting to make noises about self-driving cars too; which seems to be leading some people to assume they're coming in…
Manhattan's “High Line” - a disused elevated railway line that has now been repurposed as a public footpath - wasn't open yet on my last visit to New York, in 2011. I went to visit it this year. It's brilliant.…
...and What-If History The reburial of Richard III is in the news. I don't approve of burying Richard of York in Leicester, his only connections with the city being that he was murdered nearby and buried secretly in an abbey…
...but it still isn't. Today people are rightly celebrating that gay couples can now get married in the UK. But while this is another huge step towards equality, I'm frustrated that we're still not quite there yet. Now we have…
Today's xkcd airs the debate over people (aka “kids nowadays”) who constantly photograph themselves in front of things. White Hat criticises them for “taking pictures instead of just enjoying the view” because “documenting your life distracts you from living it”…