I heard someone on the radio saying of the England cricket team, 'I think the team don't mind that their success isn't attracting media attention, they're just happy to get on with the job', or words to that effect.

For most jobs that's true, but the aim of a professional …

Silk is like a small, neatly wrapped Japanese package. A poem, a haiku.

I read it this afternoon, sitting in the garden. It has that Japanese device of repetition, which Baricco uses to brilliant effect. Each of the descriptions of Herve's journeys mention the local name for a lake. It's …

What are the other books like? As good as the first?

Glad you liked it. I've got books two and three ready and waiting.

Anonymous, and not on facebook!

My profuse thanks to Bill for lending me The Traveller, it was an exciting and interesting read. The book involves people living 'off the grid', out of the clutches of the Vast Machine, the network of surveillance devices and databases that track what everyone is doing.

The privacy issue is …

A Fire Upon The Deep and A Deepness In The Sky by Vernor Vinge are among my top sci-fi books. I borrowed Vinge's Rainbows End from Janos, a novel set here on Earth in the near future. The implicit predictions contained in the descriptions of the lifestyles and technology are …

A few weeks ago I went to Oxford to say hello to my friend Matt, and we went to a lecture on the singularity by David Chalmers. He covered many aspects, but one idea he talked about was that for safety reasons a superhuman AI should be developed in virtual …

I started off with The Vengeance Of Rome, the last of the Pyat tetralogy. I guessed the twist at the end, but it was heavily signposted. Many of the characters lead glamorous lifestyles, taking lots of cocaine. It made me want to be like them and snort cocaine. I won't …

New Scientist asked me to write a piece on the mathematical
paradoxes associated with elections. I had 1500 words to
play with. Many items were passing references
to alert readers to interesting related topics. I wasn't
writing a technical treatise.

Any interested reader can
get the full story from the …

Yeah, the author didn't include Score Voting. He replied to me:

New Scientist asked me to write a piece on the mathematical
paradoxes associated with elections. I had 1500 words to
play with. Many items were passing references
to alert readers to interesting related topics. I wasn't
writing a technical …