Charlie Tims
Associate
Charlie Tims recently co-wrote Video Republic, a look at the social and political significance of internet videos. He is currently involved in producing a part of the TED prize in London.
- Last Minute Shopping Help 1. Outputs like this potentially present a more meaningful way for think tanks to communicate and bring about social change. Surely it would be the ultimate way to diffuse our work on public behaviour. Shame another organisation?s beaten us to it. But could we for instance do, the ?Disorganisation Handbook?, or 10 steps to a richer childhood based on ten years of work on learning and children. Something like that. Or is that not really our place? I think there?s something there. Any... continue reading on 23rd December 2004 Comments (1)
- Demos Flickr As the Greenhouse buckles under the weight of 22,000 million spams, you might want to unleash your comment fetish by checking out the soon-to-be-mighty demos flickr. At the moment you can look at pictures of a recent demos away day, our old home, a decapitated pinata or nominate your favourite public space. If you've got anything you want to stick on it, send me an email and I'll upload it. But be warned, you can expect something altogether more serious and research related in the new year, so... continue reading on 22nd December 2004
- The death of cool (good riddance; long live communities of interest). In its last years The Face feature a monthly barometer of things and people that were ?up? in the cool stakes and things that were ?down?. Towards the end it became impossible to tell the difference between the lists. Unwittingly the primary espousers of ?cool? seemed to be admitting that our hyper-obseletism had killed any hope of a grand message of what might and might not be cool.Back to the cool list. Interestingly top of the pile are The (nearly defunct) Libertines. They are perhaps to... continue reading on 2nd December 2004 Comments (3)
- Pick me Up, Put me Down Pick me up, Put me down aspires to "kick start a new British youth culture" by constructing an entirely open source magazine, co-editored and authored by readers. Their weekly email is as incoherent as it is entertaining. I'm probably the last to pick up on stuff like this but it seems to combine the randomness of blog commentary, but the managed coherence of a published magazine's letters page. Having spoken to the man behind it this morning (an exciled writer from The (now defunct)Face)I was... continue reading on 2nd December 2004
- Personalised Wails Went to Cardiff a few weeks ago and this made quite a splash. Seems as though "Personalisation" may be getting a more receptive ear in the Big Policy debate west of the border."At last week's annual Labour conference Mr Blair talked of increasing choice in the public services. But Mr Morgan said the people of Wales would rather see more collaboration. "Amplifying the voice of users collectively is a much better way of improving services in Wales, than extending the choice of users... continue reading on 20th October 2004
- A Little Greatness The report recommended that Nanoparticles should be treated as new substances under UK and EU legislation, and that policy approaches should be drenched in the precautionary principle. We organised a seminar on Friday, bringing together key players in the debate to discuss the report?s implications. The report also discussed that fact that hardly anyone in the UK actually knows what Nanotechnology is yet. If you feel similarly unsure, here?s a mini-briefing:Nanotechnology refers to the... continue reading on 2nd August 2004
- choose life, choose a job, choose a.... Smacking children, smoking in public places, car lanes for multiple passengers and binge drinking have all fluttered around the headlines for the last week. Efforts to influence public behaviour range from efforts to illegalise the wrong choice (smoking and smacking) to coercing individuals into making the right choice (car usage, rampant boozing). With the spectre of manifestos casting a shadow over the political theatre, is it only me who sees a vague contradiction between the promotion of... continue reading on 5th July 2004 Comments (7)
- Females: Blogged Off The passing of March 25th sees what I think is the first calendar month without an entry on the blog by a female. Back in Feburary in our anniversary blogged debate about how blogging had changed us, women notably didn?t participate. So, why is this blog so male dominated? Is it to do with the nature of blogs, the type of things we post or something festering in the heart of politics? I seem to recall somebody sending round a link to a website that could deduce your gender from your sentence... continue reading on 26th March 2004 Comments (3)
- The Mouse is Mightier than "The Man" Using an arsenal of technical jiggery pokery and raiding a superstore of intellectual property, Danger Mouse's "The Grey Album" takes the Beatles "White Album" and Jay-Z's "The Black Album" and cuts them together to form the bootleg to end all bootlegs. For those of you not familiar with any of the above this is the musical equivalent of boiling up mustard and strawberry ice cream to make turkey roast.Unsurprisingly, as soon as EMI got wind of this they served a "cease and desist" order on... continue reading on 25th March 2004 Comments (2)
- "It takes a nation of museums..." Last night I went to City Hall to witness the launch of ?Holding up the Mirror?, a report by the London Museums Agency into cultural diversity in the capital?s museums. The report makes for a scathing indictment on equitable representation amongst the employees of some of our flagship cultural institutions. There was a definite consensus that, if we want a substantial portion of London to view the term ?cultural institution? as anything other than a rather oxymoronic, un-holy welding of two... continue reading on 28th October 2003 Comments (1)