Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Three points

I have been told that Margaret Thatcher, when Prime Minister, refused to read briefs of more than three bullet points. If not too hot on detail, she did always appear to be on top of the myriad issues that people might ask her about.

My three bullets for you today are:
  • ITEM! A talk next Thursday addresses human remains and display, and probably won’t include my one-liners:

    “The Stories of Sara Baartman – the ‘Hottentot Venus’”
    Written and presented by Dr Debbie Challis
    National Portrait Gallery (in the lecture room, downstairs)
    Thursday 26 April 2007, 13:15 - 14:00

  • ITEM! M’colleague Mr B. Aaronovitch has joined the 21st century, and marks this auspicious occasion by… er, railing against the 21st century

  • ITEM! M’colleague and soon-to-be neighbour G. thinks he knows where Martha Jones gets her look from

4 comments:

Ben Aaronovitch said...

Well I had an epiphany and realized that the dominant mode of discourse in the early part of the 21st Century was whiny self pity.

I'm not railing against the 21st century I'm embracing it. Say No! to stoicism, self sacrifice and good manners. Embrace your inner white van driver - run people over and complain that they're clogging up the roads.

Remember there are always just enough people who are stupid enough to hold society together - take advantage of them now.

Remember a technical is just a 4by4 with an anti-aircraft gun mounted on the back.

See, now I'm railing - spot the difference.

0tralala said...

Does railing mean you stop using bold?

Ben Aaronovitch said...

Of course you can visit my kinder, gentler, contemplative site at http://temporarilysignificant.blogspot.com/ where I hardly rail at all and only use bold to make things clearer.

Anonymous said...

I bet Mrs T didn't sit through many PowerPoint presentations either. here's a recent Telegraph article about how useless they can be (as if we needed telling): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/19/nppoint19.xml

(I have a 70-chart deck that explains this, should you need it.)