William Heath’s blog

Last night I was invited to a small monthly spiritual book club. They’d just read Advices & Queries and each of them had taken the trouble to attend a Quaker meeting also. They’re all Catholic, and pretty much happily committed to that form of religious practice.
It was a funny, emotional, deeply revealing evening.

As I try to put into words for El Reg why Microsoft’s acquisition of Stefan Brands’ privacy-protecting products and patents is important for civil society in the UK and our interactions with public services I come across these resonant words from 1919 by William Charles Braithwaite:
“Evils which have struck their roots deep in the fabric [...]

Fingerprinting is what we do to recidivists. It’s not how we should treat generally law-abiding taxpayers. I’d rather boycott Terminal 5 than pretend to be happy about being fingerprinted for some purpose I don’t understand (or just because they designed it wrong, as their PR people assert).

Now deputy Information Commissioner David Smith has said the [...]

Oh look – someone posted two Mystery Girl videos on YouTube: Ash in Drag and Prohibition. It’s good to see them, and it’s just as I remembered: songs I loved, a sax I never really learned to play properly, great performances from Robert Girl and Simon Girl and far too much makeup all round. But [...]

We just reduced the average age of attendance at Godalming Meeting for Worship by about 50 years with a visit this morning from Priors Field School RS students. They joined us for full Meeting, with a discussion afterwards on what it felt like. We put the words they used on an old blackboard:

I gave a morning assembly talk at Priorsfield Girls’ School today about activism, discernment, why governments continue to do dumb things and why privacy matters. Technology was not my friend; there was no sound so I couldn’t play the fab Obama/Will-I-Am We want Change video (which is a far better way to wake up in [...]