The government is worried about the economy and rightly so. It’s in a bit of a state. When Value Added Tax was raised by 2.5% to 20% at the turn of the year, there were nervous glances to see what impact it might have on consumer confidence. The VAT increase was probably carefully calculated to ensure that people out shopping would not be deterred from their purchases, so that the consumption merry-go-round would keep on turning.

Ben Goldacre wrote a short blogpost today to bemoan the habit of many media outlets of not linking to the primary sources for their reports and headlines. He was referring to stories that have appeared today about Asian gangs abusing white girls (e.g. this form the BBC). In typically trenchant terms he dismisses such shoddy reporting, “If you don’t link to primary sources, you are dead to me.” I sympathise.

Henry started it by banging on about his iPad. Somehow the subject of blogging came up and I mentioned the BlogPress app, so here I am testing it out. I used it once on MT4 but this is my first go on WordPress. Seems OK so far… Second, what exactly is this thing called Quora? I came across it on Twitter earlier in the week and, like a social media addict, signed up straight away. Quite a few other people seem to have done the same thing.

For the longest time I thought he was French. It’s the name — Joule; it sounds French and in my physics class at school no-one thought to explain otherwise. In fact, Joule was not even introduced as a name — the word was simply handed to us as the SI unit of energy, a replacement for Calorie who, for all I knew, might also have been from France.

I wasn’t going to do a review of the year’s blogposts but, on the off-chance that the recent move to the shiny new site at Occam’s Typewriter has attracted some new readers, I thought I would provide a brief guide to my personal favorites of 2010.

It’s Christmas Eve and the Curry household is getting ready for the big day. All the shopping is done and work has been put aside for a couple of days. Now I can turn my mind to the serious business of recording the festivities. This is not something to be undertaken lightly.

It’s all been rather unsettling but I guess that’s life these days. Moving the blog to its new home was a bit more fraught than I had been anticipating. Though I can piece together a rationale for Nature Network’s rather precipitate decision to change the locks, I’ve not really had a satisfactory explanation from them for their actions.

This amused me. It might amuse you too. The other night Ed Yong asked on Twitter if anyone could remember mention in a recent blogpost of the fact that salts of arsenic often contain phosphate.

Hi All – this is just a short placeholder post for anyone who may have wanted to leave a comment about my farewell post at Nature Network, which is now up. I’m afraid I am unable to respond to comments there, so thought I’d make a space here.

The time has come to say goodbye to Nature Network. I am moving Reciprocal Space to at new site at Occam’s Typewriter, which launches today. In part, to be perfectly honest, the move is motivated by the frustration accumulated in the transition to MT4 and other problems that have been aired thoroughly in the discussion threads and don’t need to be revisited today.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Dublin Airport,” says the pilot. “Please remember to turn your watches back thirty years.” So goes the time-worn joke but last weekend that’s more or less exactly what I did. I flew to Dublin to hear a band I first saw in concert in the summer of 1977 when I was just thirteen years old. It was a little bit crazy but I’m glad I went — I was not the least bit disappointed.