Round up (slight return)

Apologies for bulky nature of what follows. Seems like there's a lot that's been going on; thought I'd fill you in on some of it. To whit:

1. 26 recommendations for January here. In addition the Common Ground website is up, and looking for contributions from all parts of the UK.

2. and / or / if are close to going live, so please forgive the single page that you see. Instead revel in this quote, to be found on the back of Simon L's business card:

Herbert Alexander Simon (an economist and Nobel Laureate) had something interesting to say about information:

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficient among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

What we do helps people allocate that limited attention span efficiently.

3. Mitchell and Webb as PC and Mac, respectively. Roles they were born to play. Seriously. 'Pie chart' is brilliant.

4. Richard Armitage, former deputy US secretary of state, describing US foreign policy:

"Look, fucker, you do what we want."

As quoted in The Economist, 20 January 2007.

5. From the FT on Saturday, in a piece on why the supremacy of English football is an anomaly:

Jacques Herzog, the prize-winning Swiss architect, built the Munich stadium for last year's World Cup and is building Beijing's Olympic stadium. Explaining why English stadiums are his favourites, he says: "The people become the architecture."

Think that's more than enough to be getting on with...