MetaFilter posts tagged with Telegraph

The Bicycle Diaries

Burhanistan — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:26:07 -0800

The Bicycle Diaries - UK cyclist Douglas Whitehead rides from England to India. He just left Uzbekistan.

They sure don't make nostalgia like they used to anymore.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 11:42:39 -0800

Punctuality, privacy, dead time, concentration: all dead or dying at the hands of the Internet, according to this list in the Daily Telegraph.

Only at festivals with no Wi-Fi signals can the gullible be tricked into believing that David Hasslehoff [sic] has passed away. Insta-spoiler – the full list, with UK-centric or possibly obscure references linkified: 1) The art of polite disagreement 2) Fear that you are the only person unmoved by a celebrity's death 3) Listening to an album all the way through 4) Sarah Palin 5) Punctuality 6) Ceefax/Teletext 7) Adolescent nerves at first porn purchase 8) Telephone directories 9) The myth of cat intelligence 10) Watches 11) Music stores 12) Letter writing/pen pals 13) Memory 14) Dead time 15) Photo albums and slide shows 16) Hoaxes and conspiracy theories 17) Watching television together 18) Authoritative reference works 19) The Innovations catalogue 20) Order forms in the back pages of books 21) Delayed knowledge of sporting results 22) Enforceable copyright 23) Reading telegrams at weddings 24) Dogging [possibly NSFW] 25) Aren't they dead? Aren't they gay? 26) Holiday news ignorance 27) Knowing telephone numbers off by heart 28) Respect for doctors and other professionals 29) The mystery of foreign languages 30) Geographical knowledge 31) Privacy 32) Chuck Norris's reputation 33) Pencil cricket 34) Mainstream media 35) Concentration 36) Mr Alifi's dignity 37) Personal reinvention 38) Viktor Yanukovych 39) The insurance ring-round 40) Undiscovered artists 41) The usefulness of reference pages at the front of diaries 42) The nervous thrill of the reunion 43) Solitaire 44) Trust in Nigerian businessmen and princes 45) Prostitute calling cards [possibly NSFW]/ kerb crawling 46) Staggered product/film releases 47) Footnotes 48) Grand National trips to the bookmaker 49) Fanzines 50) Your lunchbreak

Steamtwitter

ericbop — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:10:24 -0800

The wonderful Ben Schott (previously on Mefi) has posted an awesome excerpt from the 1891 Anglo-American Telegraphic Code, showing how folks got around (economically-induced) character and word limitations over a century before Twitter. Too wacky to be true? Gleam tus!

Bantoro = Henry Ford

Miko — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:25:07 -0800

Museum archivist, exploring Henry Ford's office records, stumbles into the interesting world of commercial telegraphic code.

A little piece of Middle England

MuffinMan — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:04:39 -0800

More than 20 years ago, Matt Pritchett, the son of a newspaper columnist, began his daily cartoon in the Daily Telegraph. Generally accepted as the best daily cartoonist working today on these shores, he actually wanted to become a cameraman originally but failed to find the work. Always wry, understated and pithy, Matt's cartoons typically summarise the absurd and the humdrum in modern day Britain, often at the same time. Here's his effort for today. Some of his classics here, here and here.

"the precious jewels of Jao-chou"

paduasoy — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:13:30 -0800

In 2006 in the Fitzwilliam Museum three enormous porcelain vases from seventeenth or eighteenth century China were smashed by a museum visitor who fell down the stairs. This presentation "follows the vases' progress from scattered fragments to their redisplay in the Fitzwilliam Museum. The site includes slideshows, film clips of the conservation process and a timelapse of one of the vases under reconstruction". Also: interview with the visitor who smashed the vases - My precious vase hell; two versions of a picture of the visitor sitting among the shards, Daily Mail and Times; information about the man's arrest (he was released without charge); the lack of insurance; the columnist Craig Brown on the affair; and an article on the reconstruction. And here're are translations of three letters written by Père Francois Xavier d'Entrecolles about porcelain manufacture in China around the same time the vases were made.

The World's Fifty Best Works of Art?

paduasoy — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 04:20:33 -0800

The World's 50 Best Works of Art (and how to see them) in the opinion of critic Martin Gayford. This sort of list is pretty personal, of course (no work by artists known to be women at all? Really? What about Kauffman, Valadon, Gentileschi, Kollwitz?), but is a good starting point for travel and armchair explorations.

Hugh Massingberd joins the majority.

languagehat — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 12:08:01 -0800

"Hugh Massingberd, a celebrated former obituaries editor of The Telegraph of London who made a once-dreary page required reading by speaking frankly, wittily and often gleefully ill of the dead, became the recipient of his own services after dying in West London on Christmas Day." The linked NY Times obit (by Margalit Fox; print version) contains many good quotes, like "The Telegraph’s send-off of one Lt. Col. Geoffrey Knowles, 'who as a subaltern was bitten in the buttocks by a bear — he survived but the bear expired'"; The Telegraph's own obit is much longer (and, of course, unsigned) and contains, along with more good zingers, a well-written account of his life ("The inevitable consequence of his bingeing proved another triumph of style, as Massingberd, a tall, slim and notably handsome youth with hollowed-out cheeks, transmogrified into an impressively corpulent presence whose moon face lit up with Pickwickian benevolence"). Previous MeFi posts about obituaries: 1, 2.

RENDITION = reply by private code immediately

Horace Rumpole — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 18:04:51 -0800

ADMIX COCKADE SIGNATION EXPERTS SEPTUAGINT I can account for | telegraph according to private code | you are sending too freely | very considerable expenses | must have better security The development of commercial telegraph codes can be explained by the need to compress messages into the shortest possible form at a time when an international cable could cost 25 cents per word. Thus, codebooks matched stock phrases and sentences of use to businessmen with random dictionary words. Although many of these codebooks were commercially published and widely available, some businesses created their own codebooks for greater customization and secrecy. The above message was (laboriously) encoded using the ABC Universal Commercial Electric Telegraph Code, published in 1873. (See the "SEPTUAGINT" link)

Must-See Web Clips

milquetoast — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:11:31 -0800

The Daily Telegraph's 50 must-watch web video clips features this classic Attenborough-narrated clip of a lyre bird perfectly imitating a chainsaw.

No rest for the dead...

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 01:51:31 -0800

My post-mortem to-do checklist, so far: 1. Study marine biology. 2. Accessorize my hot, wealthy widow. 3. Relay a few spooky telegrams to my spooky new friends. 4. Try to look as suspicious as possible. And that's even before rigor mortis sets in!

If I could talk to the aliens...

blahblahblah — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 06:54:34 -0800

Call the aliens using first intentional intergalactic communication system. Just $3.99 a minute, though prospective callers should know that they aren't really breaking new ground. Do you need inspiration about what historic message to send? The first commercial telegraph message was the poetic "What hath God wrought?" The first telephone call was the famous "Come here Watson, I want to see you." The first email, rather boringly, announced the availability of email. Stuck on the first word? Follow the path of Edison, who coined the word "hello" as a telephone greeting over Alexander Graham Bell's "Ahoy Ahoy." (Audio version) Just hope that you don't receive a collect call in return.

Is the president not expendable?

SilentSalamander — Sun, 16 Nov 2003 20:16:26 -0800

The U. S. Secret Service is going to extraordinary lengths to ensure the safety of George W. Bush's visit to London - including some not insignificant structural changes to the Palace (which have not as of yet been approved). The article claims that "There will be more armed men on the streets of London this week than at any time since the end of the Second World War." British security officials further describe operations as has having been "hijacked by the US secret service."

Everyone knows there's a possibility of violence against the president, especially in light of recent events. A measure of security is thus justified. However, are economic concerns being considered? Now, I have the utmost respect for the president's life - as much as I do for just about anybody. I hate the callousness of associating any sort of price on human life. But when security measures require 5,000 police officers and £4,000,000 (that's merely the cost footed by UK taxpayers, mind you), have we not yet reached the point where that money would have been better spent? -especially when the U. S. executive branch has a very robust official policy of succession in place. It's not like the government will suddenly evaporate if the president were to be killed.

I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam

ericost — Sat, 22 Mar 2003 22:40:35 -0800

I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam

cohiba — Tue, 01 Oct 2002 08:10:30 -0800

A story of village life A witty analogy for the current world situation. Here is another one. If anyone has a good justification for war I would like to hear it, come on convince me!

percine — Sun, 30 Jun 2002 04:03:09 -0800

Pork chop shoes results in a lawsuit in Australia. A man who slipped on a grease trail left by pork chop shoes in a pub is awarded £23,000. I guess Nike better think twice before they release their filet mignon basketball shoes. What would be their marketing campaign?

skallas — Sun, 12 May 2002 12:34:13 -0800

Katarina Witt's Stasi connection. SECRET police files on Katarina Witt have revealed that the most glamorous and popular sporting figure in the former East Germany was so close to the Stasi that she considered them a "partner".

Voyageman — Mon, 11 Feb 2002 08:45:24 -0800

The America-Hating British? In the UK's Spectator : "And this time it’s not just the usual America-haters at the Guardian and the BBC, but the likes of Alice Thomson, Stephen Glover, Alasdair Palmer, Matthew Parris, my most esteemed Telegraph and Speccie colleagues...many people over here had no idea quite how ridiculous you are. You’re shocked by us, we’re laughing at you. In fairness, instead of coasting on non-existent diseases and wild guesses at the weather, the always elegant Matthew Parris at least attempted to expand Guantanamo into a general thesis. ‘We seek to project the message that there are rules to which all nations are subject,’ he wrote in the Times. ‘America has a simpler message: kill Americans, and you’re dead meat.’ This caused endless amusement over here. As the Internet wag Steven den Beste commented, ‘By George, I think he’s got it!....’ PS What is an internet wag anyway?

Jubey — Mon, 26 Nov 2001 03:06:38 -0800

Naughty Children to Be Registered as Potential Criminals in the UK UK police are to set up a secret database of children as young as three who they fear might grow up to become criminals. What next, DNA testing on embryos to find out if they have a genetic leaning towards criminal behaviour? Link courtesy of Backwash.

mkn — Thu, 15 Nov 2001 10:20:53 -0800

The stuff from which Myth is made. A recent discovery of a meteor impact crater in the middle-east, dating around 2300BC, is shedding new light on the decline of many cultures and the rise of many legends.

owillis — Sat, 10 Nov 2001 19:35:23 -0800

Bin Laden: Yes, I did it "In a previously undisclosed video which has been circulating for 14 days among his supporters, he confesses that "history should be a witness that we are terrorists. Yes, we kill their innocents". In the footage, shot in the Afghan mountains at the end of October, a smiling bin Laden goes on to say that the World Trade Centre's twin towers were a "legitimate target" and the pilots who hijacked the planes were "blessed by Allah". The killing of at least 4,537 people was justified, he claims, because they were "not civilians" but were working for the American system." (via lgf)

Evidence enough? Will this cause any in opposition to reconsider? (it's even from a British newspaper...)

timetostepback — Fri, 28 Sep 2001 06:01:13 -0800

Women Fear attacks more than Men More Women fear terrorism are the men afraid to say so

monkeyJuice — Fri, 15 Jun 2001 03:26:17 -0800

If im paying £400 for these A level papers - i want the answers as well, not just the questions..

lagado — Sun, 10 Jun 2001 18:03:27 -0800

"Mr. Dyson, I'm pleased to inform you that your grandmother didn't sleep around."

methylsalicylate — Fri, 25 May 2001 10:30:50 -0800

Death toll from nCJD passes 100. Is it me, or were we expecting a lot more than that? SEAC called for more post mortem examinations to be conducted on elderly people who die with suspected dementia, in case vCJD is being misdiagnosed as Alzheimer's or senility. Seems unlikely that a diagnosis of Alzheimer's or dementia could be made *without* a postmortem, but there ya go.