May 5, 2009
So one of the many questions rolling around my head, particularly since living in the United States, has been: was is American beer so bad?
It really is bad. I know Brits get mocked for flat, warm beer (I love it - taste is terrific), but American beer - your Coors, Buds and Millers - really is absolutely dreadful. Tastes of nothing at all, doesn’t refresh or quench. Just about the only thing it does is get your drunk if you can stand to drink enough of it.
Well, I have found out the answer. There was a History Channel documentary on US brewing history at the weekend and it was easy to define from that this peculiarity that an entire nation loves drinking rat’s piss while everyone else in the world has spent centuries savouring their beer.
And this is the three-part answer:
Read the full article →
April 30, 2009
For the past year, the company that runs the UK’s Internet registry has been the unlikely location for a corporate soap opera, complete with scandals, villains, twists and turns, allegations of corruption, resignations, grand plans thwarted at the last minute and some nasty in-fighting that had left people alternatively amazed, entertained and worried.
The dust finally began to settle in January this year when a second director resigned (loudly) from not-for-profit Nominet and ever since the management team has been frantically trying to tidy up. In an effort to avoid the same problems emerging further down the line, a big spring clean was ordered and an independent expert brought in to assess what had gone wrong and what needed to be done.
Last week, that expert – Professor Bob Garratt - delivered a surprisingly frank and blunt assessment. In it, he told Nominet – and Nominet’s members – that they had to sort out a list of issues, and they had to sort them out fast.
In effect, he gave Nominet three months to live. If the warring tribes can’t find a settlement before then, Garratt warns, the UK government is going to step in and Nominet as it has existed since 1996 will cease to be.
It now rests on the shoulders of Nominet’s CEO, Lesley Cowley, to make enormous progress within an extremely short period of time, and persuade groups that were until recently at war with another to come together and rebuild the organization.
Here’s what needs to be done and how Cowley says she is going to do it.
Read the full article →