Not really a great article, but thought I'd share it

At London IA last week, Oli Shaw was reprising his EuroIA talk about serendipity. It is, he said, a lovely word on the tongue, but has been rated as one of the hardest English words to translate into another language. The origin of English language usage comes from a folk tale called “ The Three…

“You’re easily forgotten in the world of cycling,” Lewis said. “It’s a small sport. There’s always old guys leaving, new guys coming in. I’m not going to be missed. It’s not a loving sport.”

From 15 December 2008

One of the common methods that politicians use to strangle debate is to pass description off as explanation.

The Ancoats scuttler Alexander Pearson, pictured in 1892.Photograph: Staffordshire Record Office 'L ife in parts of Manchester is as unsafe and uncertain as it is amongst a race of savages." With these words, Mr Justice Wills jailed 19-year-old Owen Callaghan for 20 years for the manslaughter of Joe…

Here is an example of an email I received last week from Kevin from Yishun Bike company. I get one of these almost every week from different suppliers: Dear customer, How are u? Hope everything goes well with you all along! Here, i am very glad to introduce our company. I am kevin from Yishun Bike…

March 18, 2011 30- add yours » It’s easy enough to determine that a point is 1/​72 of an inch, and used to be about 1/72.27 in the days before digital type. But the challenging question is, when you look at printed type on a page, what part of a 12-​point font is 12 points high? The short answer is…

A childhood in Christian pop. Photograph via Flickr by Charlie Hallin It’s 1994, and Michael Stipe recently lost his religion. It’s before Bieber and bling, before ordering a latte required six qualifying adjectives. In coffeehouses across the country, bored teens slouch on thrift-store couches…

THERE have been some sweeping historical claims made in the wake of last week's unrest, with commentators of left and right decrying an unprecedented collapse in moral standards, parenting and discipline among the young. There have been cultural claims too, with calls to blame African-American rap…

Follow Us Facebook Twitter Instagram LinkedIn Facebook Messenger Email Trump taunts LeBron James on Twitter: 'I Like Mike' President Trump slammed frequent critic and basketball superstar LeBron James... North Korea's foreign minister calls US diplomatic moves 'alarming' The North Korean foreign…

We're not footballers or movie stars so we have no police escorts, but the Tour guests and VIPs always seem to be waved through traffic while we're stuck in the middle of the jam with the fans. Today we had a later start than usual but as we had a two-and-a-half hour drive to the start we were still…

Wind tunnel testing is an essential component of the sport. Teams use it to evaluate sponsors’ equipment, or fine-tune a rider’s position to shave drag and save valuable watts. But beyond the cost – upward of $1,500 an hour for some of the best low-speed tunnels that are suitable for bike and…

"The human brain is not prepared to understand this – even on the steps of the gas chamber" … Claude Lanzmann. Photograph: TODD HEISLER/New York Times / Redux / eyevine Claude Lanzmann went to Iran recently. "As you know," the 85-year-old director, a Jewish Frenchman, tells me in his Paris office,…

Those involved in the riots and looting are from a diverse range of backgrounds and age groups. Photograph: Simon Dawson/AP The crowd gathered outside Chalk Farm tube station at 1am on Tuesday morning was representative of those who had been at the frontline of other riots over the previous 72…

HTC-Highroad's personable, passionate assistant director Allan Peiper didn't mince words in the media room at the start of the Tour de France when I asked him to comment on the team's financial limbo. "Incomprehensible -- that's the word that comes to mind," Peiper said, his lilting Australian…

But nutrition isn’t that simple. Studies use different levels of athletes, different preparation, and different measures of performance. Regardless I decided to have a crack at pooling the best available science, to at least put a rough figure on the benefits of nutrition to cycling performance.…

So why did Cadel Evans win this year's Tour de France over the Schlecks? Leopard Trek had the two of them to use tactically. They had numerous mountaintop finishes suited to their climbing abilities more than the gutsy Australian. On paper, the new team looked a stronger unit than BMC. There was…

Officially, the Tour doesn't know where it is with the lanterne rouge . Technically, it's an honour which doesn't exist. But check out the Tour's Guide Historique and, each year, there he is, given his dues and singled out among the podium fillers and the jersey winners. The lanterne rouge . The…

Jon Ronson as James Bond. Photograph: Duncan McKenzie This is the centenary month of Ian Fleming's birth. Consequently, everyone is going Bond crazy. There's an exhibition at the Imperial War museum dedicated to Bond aesthetics, and so on. It's all a mystery to me. His expensive cars and elegant…

April 3, 2009 at 9:30 am cityscape The man behind the hand-painted signs at Honest Ed's. By Matt Kim From time to time, the landmark store on the southwest corner of Bloor and Bathurst will turn on its famous storefront sign and wash the street in the effulgence of its twenty-three thousand bulbs.…

David Millar was scathing about Bradley Wiggins, who he says did not give the Garmin team credit for his fourth place in the 2009 Tour de France. Photograph: Tom Jenkins David Millar has a terrible hangover. On a sunlit morning in Soho, just after 10, not too many hours have passed since he…

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The phenomena of path dependence and lock-in can be illustrated with many examples, but one of the most vivid is the gear we use to launch things into space. Rockets are a very old invention. The Chinese have had them for something like 1,000 years. Francis Scott Key wrote about them during the War…