Hectic day: I arose in a Peak District hotel very early this morning, and drove straight back to ClientCo via innumerable traffic jams on the M1. Knackered now 
Happy invoicing!
- Atari Teenage Riot: The Inside Story of Pong and the Video Game Industry's Big Bang - "On Nov. 29 1972, a crude table-tennis arcade game in a garish orange cabinet was delivered to bars and pizza parlors around California, and a multi-billion-dollar industry was born. Here's how that happened, direct from the freaks and geeks who invented a culture and paved the way for today's tech moguls."
- The statisticians at Fox News use classic and novel graphical techniques to lead with data - "Depending on where you land in the political spectrum you may either love or despise Fox News. But regardless of your political affiliation, you have to recognize that their statisticians are well-trained in the art of using graphics to persuade folks of a particular viewpoint." I don't know which is worse: that Fox News think they can get away with presenting such ludicrous distortions of the figures... or that they can get away with it
- From Bulldozers to a Bright Future: 21 Years of the Bletchley Park Trust - Excellent account of how the museum came about: "Opinions vary on exactly when and even how it all began but undoubtedly a farewell party held for the World War Two Veterans at Bletchley Park on 19th October 1991 was of major importance. During the party, local historians who’d come to realise the significance of the work carried out at the Park during World War Two asked the Veterans for their support in a campaign to save the wartime Huts and Blocks from developers’ bulldozers. Plans were already afoot to build a hypermarket and hundreds of houses on the site. Those first few campaigners begged, borrowed and battled their way through a jungle of bureaucracy to stop the historic buildings from being razed to the ground. The site you see today came close to being reduced to a plaque on a housing estate – and not just once."
- Admiral Shovel and the Toilet Roll - Transcript of James Burke's talk at the dConstruct 2012 conference in Brighton a couple of months ago: "…in order to rectify the future I want to spend most of my time looking at the past because there’s nowhere else to look: (a) because the future hasn’t happened yet and never will, and (b) because almost all the time in any case the future, as you’ve heard more than once today, is not really much more than the past with extra bits attached, so to predict, I’m saying we look back."
- The Hater’s Guide To The Williams-Sonoma Catalog - "The people at W-S aren't the least bit self-conscious about getting you to pay $35 for mailed gravy. So I thought I would go through this holiday season's catalog, which has spent a solid week atop my tulipter, and point out some of the more ridiculous items. Because there are people out there who buy this tulip. The question is ... who? And why? Let's try to figure that out now." I'm not sure what the UK equivalent of the Williams-Sonoma catalogue is, or if we even have one.
- Could It Happen In Your Country? - "How hard is it to disconnect a country from the Internet, really? That's the number one question we've received about our analysis of the Egyptian and Syrian Internet blackouts, and it's a reasonable question. If the Internet is so famously resilient, designed to survive wars and calamities, how can it fail so abruptly and completely at the national level?"
- Document Deep Dive: Rosa Parks’ Arrest Records - William Pretzer studied the official records of a misdemeanour arrest that would inspire fundamental change in the USA: "There is nothing that makes this event look extraordinary. It is being treated as a typical misdemeanor violation of the city code. In fact, that is exactly what it was." Here are facsimiles of the documents, with annotations by Megan Gambino based on Pretzer's work and Parks' autobiography.
- Ask an Economist: Which Bond Villain Plan Would Have Worked (and Which Not)? - "The Bond villain is often deranged and grandiose, sure, but he (or she) is also capable of hatching elaborate plans to increase their bottom line, often by secretly manipulating the world’s economic systems (sometimes with the aid of a clandestine nuclear weapon or two)... If James Bond hadn’t foiled these plots, could these Bond villains have fulfilled their dreams of financial glory? We looked through their schemes, and asked Jean-Jacques Dethier, a development economist at the World Bank (and a lifelong Bond fan), what he thought." The remarkably-named Bilge Ebiri considers the odds.
- Cockleshell Raid - "Operation Frankton is a story of how a handful of determined and resourceful men achieved what thousands could not by conventional means. They were not supermen. In the main they had enlisted for ‘Hostilities Only’ and, except for their leader, none had been in a canoe before. However, with a few months training they carried out what one German officer described as, ‘the outstanding commando raid of the war’." Good account from Paul Oldfield's new book on the 1942 raid that gave rise to the soubriquet "Cockleshell Heroes".
- Planning Notices in Brighton - Phil Lucas has been putting planning notices around the place, such as:
Happy invoicing!
