Society

It’s hard, being a technophobe today. The condition is defined as ‘a fear, dislike or avoidance of new technology’, which in slow-moving times — involving a popular shift from the fountain pen to the rollerball, say — should be manageable, but electronic change is coming so fast now that one is rarely without an encroaching sense of panic. We technophobes are often compelled to use technology, of course, and we can certainly sniff the magic of its portal into a world of limitless information. And so we pick up rudimentary skills, painstakingly and with a grudging suspicion, and our second-greatest fear becomes that this old, now-familiar technology will suddenly break

This article first appeared in Apollo magazine Apollo magazine are pleased to announce the Apollo Awards 2014 shortlist for the Museum Opening of the Year, which recognises some of the most important new museum or renovation projects to be completed between October 2013 and September 2014. The winner will be announced in the December issue of Apollo. Find out more about the Apollo Awards. Aga Khan Museum, Toronto Highlights from the Aga Khan Museum’s collection have been touring the world for several years. Now for the first time, more than 1,000 artefacts spanning as many years of Islamic history and three continents have a permanent home designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki. The collection includes

Facebook is responsible for hosting a conversation Rigby murderer Michael Adebowale had about killing a solider, according to the Telegraph. Both the ISC’s report and the committee’s chairman Malcolm Rifkind have been critical of an ‘internet company’ for not alerting the security services to the conversation. ‘Had MI5 known about the conversation,’ says the report, ‘there is a significant possibility that MI5 would then have been able to prevent the attack’. Facebook are on the defensive and have refused to comment on the speculation Adebowale discussed killing a solider on their site. According to a spokesman: ‘Like everyone else, we were horrified by the vicious murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby ‘We don’t comment on individual

Even by the low standards of English lawyers, the men and women who run the Law Society have behaved like shameless hypocrites. Instead of confining themselves to offering professional advice, they set themselves up as Islamic theologians. In a practice note on Sharia-compliant wills, the Law Society advised the 125,000 solicitors in England and Wales to urge Muslim clients to discriminate against women, non-Muslims, adopted and ‘illegitimate’ children. ‘Male heirs [should] in most cases receive double the amount inherited by a female heir,’ it said, and ‘non-Muslims may not inherit at all’. Likewise ‘illegitimate and adopted children are not Sharia heirs’ and should not be left a penny. The Law

The books I liked best this year were all richly detailed. Why read a book unless it’s going to go into all the nooks and crannies? Everyone is going to recommend Sofka Zinovieff’s The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me (Cape, £25) about the ménage at Faringdon House. And rightly so — it is the story that everyone wanted told, and she was the person to tell it. Stephen Lloyd’s Constant Lambert: Beyond the Rio Grande (Boydell Press, £45) was wonderfully complete, and this composer-conductor, epic drinker and best friend of Anthony Powell is exactly the sort of minor enchanting figure who too often gets fobbed off with a brief skate-through. I

The call for scenes describing a well-known character from children’s literature past grappling with a 21st-century problem drew an entry full of wit and variety. Pamela Dow reimagined Louisa May Alcott’s girls posting selfies and practising mindfulness, while Harriet Elvin’s Eeyore longed for someone to invent anti-social media, and Adrian Fry provided a thoroughly 21st-century exchange between William and Violet-Elizabeth Bott: ‘“William thexted me. And I thexted him. We’re going to thext and thext until we’re…” “Thick.” William concluded, self-pityingly.’ Commendations to Paul Wheeler for his portrait of Paddington Bear falling foul of immigration and to Josh Ekroy. The bonus fiver goes to G.M. Davis’s ‘Jabberwocky’ reworked for the digital