September 2006, and deep in the bowels of the Adam Street private members' club in London a very special group of people is crammed into a private room, supping imported Spanish beer from a free bar. The value - on paper at least - of the companies owned by those squeezed into this tiny, boiling space would dwarf the debt of a small African nation. Among those present are some of the key players in Europe's Internet industry. The content creators, the entrepreneurs, the inventors, the investors; these are the new media moguls. And tonight they're in their element. I'm hiding at the back of the room getting slowly drunk with the event's organiser, an entrepreneur who helped raise a ridiculous sum of money for a business networking site that had projected revenues of precisely zero. His mantra, he tells me, is 'revenue is the enemy'. It's not clear what that means, but I have to admit it sounds great. A microphone is being passed around and we're watching and listening as a succession of young - mostly under forty - men - they're mostly men - rattle off their CVs and their future plans. 'He,' whispers my drinking buddy, pointing the neck of his beer bottle at a short, well-groomed man wearing a yellow checked jacket and bright red trousers, 'was in the FT yesterday. Apparently BT are going to buy the company he co-founded for half a billion dollars.' 'Fuck,' I half-whisper back. One habit you soon pick up, hanging out with dot com entrepreneurs, is swearing. 'That's a terrible fit. It's like Friends Reunited* all over again. What the hell are BT going to do with them?' 'Nothing.' 'Nothing?' 'No, the story's bullshit. Totally made up. And they fucking printed it. ' 'Fuck.' 'Of course they printed it. They called the investors to check it out, but they refused to comment. So they ran it as a "rumour". And why not? It wouldn't exactly be the most outrageous deal of the year, would it?' He has a point. How long will the party at the private club last? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - An hour. - Several hours. - All night. - not enough information
Several hours.
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If you turned on the TV towards the end of 2002 you could have been forgiven for thinking that Britain had gone absolutely horseshit mental. Every week, it seemed, another pretty young girl from a nice family, who was happy and popular and always did well at school, was being kidnapped or murdered by what the Sun newspaper cheerfully termed 'evil paedo scum'. Naming and shaming was as popular a feature in the Murdoch press as Page Three girls and discounted holidays to Butlin's. Of course you can't blame parents for wanting to keep their children safe; that's pretty much the job description of a parent. And, on the face of it, the tabloids were doing a public service in warning us about the paedophile menace lurking in our midst. The problem came when it turned out that a huge number of these concerned tabloid-reading parents were also absolute fucking morons. For every story of an actual sex offender being driven from their house by a baying mob there was one like that of Dr Yvette Cloete, a doctor at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, South Wales, who returned home from work to find that a group of 'concerned parents' had daubed the word 'paedo' on her front door in bright red paint. Dr Cloete was a consultant paediatrician. Easy mistake. If you're an absolute fucking moron. And so it was that one hung-over morning, after reading yet another story about vigilantes who had threatened to stone Maxine Carr, the girlfriend of Soham killer Ian Huntley, to death during her high-profile trial for perverting the course of justice, I decided to set up a website parodying this collective national madness. The result of two or three hours of hung-over labour was thinkofthechildren.co.uk, a spoof campaign site which claimed to offer a handy online guide for crazy vigilantes of all stripes to co-ordinate their crazy vigilante efforts. Although there are a few parts of the site I'm still a bit proud of, the majority of it was, I freely admit, satire of the lowest order. What color paint did the vandals use? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - Red - Blue - not enough information - Yellow
Red
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I have always been a "handyman" involved in various building projects around the house. One particular time I was refinishing a section of ceiling. I had laid in the wiring and insulation by myself and all that remained was nailing a number of heavy 4ftx8ft gypsum wallboard panels onto the rafters of the 8 ft ceiling. I had arranged for a paid assistant to help me since the height of the ceiling and the weight of the wallboard was more than I could handle. When the time came, the assistant didn't show up and did not even call. I was pissed as hell. After my messages were not returned, I had what can only be called a "rage" of determination. Using a six foot ladder, three 2x4s and my head(literally) I hefted the heavy wallboard, Using leverage I placed them one by one on the overhead rafters, held and braced them with my head, glued and nailed them there all by myself. About a half hour after I finished, I was standing there smugly trying to figure how I did it so easily when there was a knock at the door. Of course it was the assistant with a lot of excuses. He seemed surprised when I told him I was finished. He looked up at the ceiling and said "how in the world did you get those up there by yourself?" I said, "Oh, believe me, You helped more than you will ever know!" I learned a lot from that. Anger has its place in your life. You have to control it and use it directly to solve a problem. To this day I do not know how I accomplished what I did the way I did it. But, if I hadn't been so angry I would never have attempted it at all. Life is full of little lessons. Pay attention to them and learn. If you have to lash out, lash at solving the situation you are in instead the person who caused it. It is significantly more productive that way. Why was the handyman angry? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - Because the assistant was late - Because he was running out of time - Because he had to use a ladder - not enough information
Because the assistant was late
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