2005.07.22 : Administrivia / Armed Police
Due to popular demand (well, the two people who made these demands are popular with me), I've implemented a few improvements to the dispatch commenting system:
- A new combination of text and background colours on the comment input boxes cleverly allows you ACTUALLY TO SEE what you're typing.
- The system now remembers your details (name, e-mail, URL), so you'll only ever need to type them once. (Well, once more.)
- The link at the bottom of the dispatch pages now only invites you to "read/write comments" if there are actually any comments to be read. Otherwise, the link just reads "comment on this". This should be a big timesaver. (Though I could think of a bigger one.)
- It's been explained to me that if I put up a comments engine, I'm under some obligation occasionally to reply to comments people post by commenting myself. (Rather than just lurking and reading in smug silence.) I'm having a go at that. In any case, I'm really enjoying reading folks' comments.
In unrelated news, you'll have seen that armed London police gunned down a suspected suicide bomber at Stockwell Station in south London this morning. I can't sufficiently stress the fact that this is the kind of thing you REALLY don't hear every day in Britain. (Most American cops probably consider it a wasted morning if they haven't shot somebody before lunch. Not so much here.)
Actually, this morning it occurred to me that there are two expressions you only hear on this side of the pond (and hear a lot) - because they're totally redundant in the States:
- "Armed police"
- "Detached house"
And, oh, the Unite Against Terror manifesto is well worth taking a look at, for a breath of sanity in the debate on the "causes" of Islamist mass murder. And, as always, Christopher Hitchens' particular comments on that site are essential.
