Cara (above red) and her longtime best friend Nadia Lindstrom (above blue) had their Sweet 16 party last night, and everyone had a terrific time. The girls looked beautiful, their friends were fun and well-behaved and enthusiastic, and the food was good (a tip of the chef’s toque to Donnie Alecci for deciding to use …
The very helpful Kevin Clack of the London Underground sent me pictures of me taken by CCTV cameras in the Whitehall Station of the Tube. In the photos, you can see Kevin and station manager Pete Bashford helpfully keeping an eye on me. In the top photo, Kevin is at far left, Pete is at …
Another busy day, led off by a phone interview with David Davis, a conservative member of Parliament who was shadow Home Secretary. For those who don’t understand the British system, the out-of-power party has a shadow cabinet, so that when an election is called, voters know who will hold post if that party is elected. …
Above, an ad posted by atheists on the underground, to counter the WWJD ads put up by fundamentalists. The tube leads the way in video ads. One of the most compelling is a ten second version of a longer commercial for T-Mobile, in which a flash mob comes together to do a bunch of line …
It didn’t seem reasonable to go to London to write about CCTV, and not make a pilgrimage to quiet Islington in North London, where, at 27B Canonbury Square, George Orwell wrote 1984. Today, within 200 yards of the building, 32 CCTV cameras are in unblinking operation. The building, by the way, is for sale. I …
One of the side benefits of being the friend of Tim O’Toole, most especially when you are writing an article about CCTV, is that as Managing Director of the London Underground, Tim runs one the largest CCTV systems in the country. Presently he has nearly 10,000 cameras, and soon he will have 12,000. On Monday …
As luck would have it, my friend, college roommate and the best man at my wedding, Tim O’Toole, lives in London, and a more generous and better informed guide would be hard to imagine. On Sunday he and I visited the Tate Modern on the South Bank. Frankly, I was disappointed. I had heard that …
I went to London for the last week in January to report on the UK’s unbelievably extensive use of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) to watch out for (or simply wach) its citizens. On the first day I visited the flat of a friend who lives on Palace Green, which is part of the Crown Estates …
I was recently interviewed by Dan Schawbel for his blog Personal Branding, and here it is. Jamie, how does one get a really cool job like being the managing editor of Playboy? In a specific way, I knew the right guy at the right time. Prior to being hired, I had contributed to Playboy for …
My eagle-eyed friend John Connolly spotted this complimentary comment about Spy in, of all places, The Tube City Almanac of McKeesport, Pennsylvania: With My Little Eye: One of my purchases during the recent Book Country outing was a history of the late, lamented Spy magazine called Spy: The Funny Years. I started to page through …