This is a list of other places I have accounts on the interwebs, in rough order of the amount of time I devote to them: Twitter Google Plus Pinterest Tumblr Spotify Flickr Linked In I do not have a Facebook account any more. Anyone you see on Facebook pretending to be me is not me. I do have an account on Delicious, but solely for the purpose of making the blood is the life posts on here, and I never look at other people's accounts on there. Other places where vestigial and/or barely updated accounts remain are Posterous, Last.fm, Flattr, ...
Earlier this year, I wrote this post, lamenting the covers which Little, Brown had given to recent additions to the Iain Banks' literary canon. Today, when I was out, I noted that the Abacus paperback of Stonemouth, the hardback cover of which inspired that last post, has been published. Whilst not returning to the format of the earlier Banks' covers, it is a distinct improvement on the cover given to the hardback publication: You can read my review of the book here. Andrew
View Poll: Lesbian Victorian Cross-species Adventuresses [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
This is a detailed and yet very readable survey of the British music hall, from early days in the 1850s to death by competition from cinema and broadcasting after the first world war. I was surprised by both how little I knew about this - I had read about some of the stage magicians, but otherwise it's basically The Talons of Weng Chiang and my childhood memory of trailers for The Good Old Days and The Black and White Minstrel Show. In particular, the music hall is absent from my distant cousin Frederic's survey of British (and American) actors of ...
I'm not going to do a full-fledged review here, but I want to flag up a couple of things. Firstly: I really liked it*. I really really liked it. I especially liked ( SPOILERS! ) [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
There is a continuing debate about Marriage and the meaning of Marriage. In 2011 Mostyn J addressed the all party parliamentary group on family law and spoke about what marriage was from a legal perspective. The speech can be read via the report here Historically marriage was more about children than adults. Today, however, from a legal perspective it is mainly about an ill defined economic
BBC News reports: Gerry Anderson, creator of the Thunderbirds and Joe 90 puppet superhero TV shows, has died at the age of 83, his son has announced. Anderson had been suffering from Alzheimer's Disease since early 2010, and his condition had worsened in the past six months, Jamie Anderson said. Gerry Anderson also created Stingray and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. Thunderbirds was filmed on Slough Trading Estate in Berkshire and was first broadcast in 1965.Thunderbirds was one of my very favourite programmes when I was a small boy, and its excitement is well captured in these opening titles.
This weeks selection is from Sandi Thom whose career flickered briefly in mid- to late- 2000's but never really took off in the way that her first hit (which reached number 1 for a week in 2006) promised. Here is that hit, I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair): Andrew
I've been giving some thought to the pacing of my write-ups of New Who. When I did my rewatch of Old Who, I chose to group stories in blocks of six, regardless of their overall length and number of episodes. That gave me the neat result of grouping he great tom Bake seasons together, but was otherwise pretty arbitrary. So far I have written up one standalone spoof and four webcasts with twenty-one episodes as a group. I think what I will try to do henceforth is to stick to watching/listening to the stories in broadcast order, but breaking at ...
[IMG: Lynne honeycomb] Liberal Democrat hero of everything to do with equalities, Lynne Featherstone, has used her blog to take a coach and horses through the arguments that various church leaders have been using this Christmas to attack the Coalition's plans to introduce equal marriage. Sometimes MPs' and Government Ministers' blogs can become quite bland. This is not the case with Ms Featherstone's. It's good that she is quite comfortable with the idea of talking directly. It's important that someone does. Willie Rennie did exactly the same up here in Scotland where the Catholic Church in particular (although not exclusively) ...
Where Howard Zinn's "A Peoples' History" falls short (Professor Sam Wineburg): The influence of Howard Zinn on modern left-wing interpretations of America seems, to me, to be exceptionally strong. Yet, as Professor Wineburg eloquently and devastatingly points out, the nature of the history that Zinn offers students today suffers from a lack of complexity and nuance. Further, this lack of complexity is compounded quite often simply by his being flat out wrong, or under-researched, on key turning points in American history. I've whined and lectured and hectored before on the importance of nuance and complexity in politics; the same must ...
FROM: Kenneth Spotlessnob, Assistant Chief Executive and Director of Transformational Excellence, Strategic Vision and Directional Signposting TO: Edelbertha Spengler, OBN, Chief Executive Ed: Just to alert you that a Right to Know request has come in from Cllr Makepeace of the Undrezing First group on the Council for a full breakdown of Cllr Pond's expenses on his OCC credit card while he was Leader. I've had one of my people conducting an overview of the available information and there may be one or two items that could give the wrong impression. Kenneth. FROM: Edelbertha Spengler TO: Kenneth Spotlessnob. Thanks, Kenneth. ...
All quite heartwarming – and not a single word about politics. That will come at New Year. Enjoy. * Caron Lindsay is Wednesday editor at Lib Dem Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
January I remembered the day that the IRA bombed Leicester railway station in 1939. And the Black Beast of Harborough was sighted near Foxton. I attended Nottingham Liberal Democrats' winter mini-conference and discovered the former headquarters of the Women's Social & Political Union in Leicester. February I had an article published by the Guardian website on why chess deserves a place in schools, a letter published by the same newspaper about my participation in the 1977 British Monopoly Championships and was rather proud of this photograph of my road in the frost: I posted a video of Alastair Cook as ...
Wed 26th
14:03
December Books 9) The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, by Ronald Hutton
A brilliant book which has been on my reading list for far too long. Hutton looks thoroughly and critically at the records of ritual celebrations in England, Scotland and Wales over the centuries, and comes out with some very revisionist conclusions. I had always assumed, for instance, that the Bonfire Night celebrations of 5 November were direct descendants of ancient Celtic Samhain ritual, shifted by a few days; Hutton shows that in fact the evidence is that Bonfire Night started as a direct commemoration of the events of 1605, that earlier Samhain celebrations are recorded, if at all, elsewhere in ...
"Nick needs to listen to the experts in the party who may be able to help him find a way through this. The risks of being so dismissive of the overwhelming view of the party are clear." Caron Lindsay, writing on Lib Dem Voice, calls on Nick Clegg to talk to the opponents of secret courts in his own party. More in sorrow than anger, Lib Dem Minister Lynne Featherstone takes on the critics of gay marriage. Paul Linford offers his review of the political year. Phil's Purple Bus Blog comes across an inconveniently honest customer. "There's a second-hand bookshop ...
Civilized Indecency - [Fly by Night series, Frances Hardinge] "We must do something about these disruptive tendencies of yours, Mosca. Oh, yes, they're endearing on a certain level, but that hardly balances the inconvenience, not to mention mortal peril, your revolutionary little heart brings upon us with stunning regularity." Mosca and Clent delve into the world of law. The characterization is perfect and the compressed plot awesome. No need to have read canon, for this one! (But you really should!) The Young Chants – [Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Diana Wynne Jones] I'm so pleased I finished this book series in time ...
Way back in March, I wrote a few words of advice to Nick Clegg in the wake of the NHS debate at Spring Conference. They seem relevant today as activists and leaders are at loggerheads over Part II of the Justice and Security Bill. That's the part that introduces Closed Material Procedures, or secret courts. This would mean that if national security, Government vetted Special Advocates would represent the non-Government side, but would not be allowed to share any details with them. You can see how difficult it would be to prepare a case if you aren't even allowed to ...
In seeking to comment on the Christmas message of the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, that government's plans to introduce same-sex marriage, arem"shambolic" and the product of "shallow thinking", I can do no better than quote the chief executive of the organisation Stonewall, Ben Summerskill. He has pointed out that polling evidence has suggested that a majority of the general public are in favour of same- sex marriage: "We do think it's very sad that an archbishop should sully the day of the birth of Jesus by making what seem to be such uncharitable observations about ...
Last July after the 'Batman' killings I wrote the blog below. Most of what I wrote is still relevant although fortunately Obama was re-elected instead of a total fruitcake. However, the killing fields just get worse. Sandy Hook just features ... Continue reading →
If you've ever released an app - or, indeed, any creative work - you know that one of the worst things you can do is read its reviews. Oh, yes, sure - it's important to listen to your customers, it's vital to act on their feedback, and you should always take their suggestions seriously. But when it comes to reviews... well... perhaps it's best to ignore them. Start reading them and you'll find that they follow the exact same pattern as the bottom half of the Internet - vain, vexatious, and vicious. If you're an average customer, reviews can be ...
The Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols and The Rt Rev Mark Davies of Shrewsbury are both quoted in The Independent today as using part of their Christmas messages to oppose the government's proposals on equal marriage. I profoundly believe and fight for freedom of speech and I defend their right to say what they have said. So I pen this not in anger – but in sorrow. Of course you can disagree with equal marriage. You can believe that it can only be between a man and a woman. You can ultimately resist getting married to someone of the same ...
Wed 26th
11:10
Governor of #Gibraltar laments 'deeply frustrating' challenges to Rock's sovereignty in 2012 Christm...
In what he describes as "almost certainly" his final Christmas message in the post, the Governor of Gibraltar Sir Adrian Johns has recalled the joyous events of 2012 including the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the Royal visit to the Rock and addressed the challenges to Gibraltarian sovereignty by Spain which he called "deeply frustrating". He said: "There have been so many good things to
[IMG: Glass of red wine being poured - Some rights reserved by moonrhino] The main dish of the government's current consultation on alcohol licensing in England and Wales is of course the proposal to establish a minimum price of 45p per unit for alcohol sold in supermarkets and off-licences. You may have your views about this proposal - I know I have mine (cough: illiberal and inequitable). However, the attention given to this particular proposal has overshadowed some of the side dishes served up alongside it in the consultation document, not least a proposal to review the provision of temporary ...
I don.t remember all my dreams from last night, but the one that's stuck in my mind this morning involved Sir Ian McKellen, in full Gandalf makeup, doing the John Travolta dance routine to Stayin' Alive. My brain is an odd place sometimes. [IMG: comment count unavailable] comments
Custard is an interesting substance. It's normally thought of as a liquid but it actually behaves like both a liquid and a solid at the same time. That is to say, under normal circumstances it acts like a liquid but as soon as you place any pressure on it it becomes solid. A great example of this property is this video where a man is able to walk on custard thanks to this property: Now, recent theoretical models of blackholes in six dimensions have found that they form something called branes, which, interestingly enough, behave like both a fluid and ...
Science and scientists are generally misunderstood. For example, I came across this complaint by a prominent scientist in a book that I read earlier on this year. It is in some measure to be attributed to the defects of our system of education, that scientific knowledge scarcely exists amongst the higher classes of society. The discussions in the Houses of Lords or of Commons, which arise on the occurrence of any subjects connected with science, sufficiently prove this fact, which, if I had consulted the extremely limited nature of my personal experience, I should, perhaps, have doubted. The book wasn't ...
Was poet John Milton the father of science fiction? It's a point of view. (tags: sf ) How the Queen of England Beat Everyone to the Internet Elizabeth II as early adopter. (tags: royals Internet ) Kenny vows to back abolition of Seanad in referendum next year But pathetic @Labour Party backing out of manifesto commitment. (tags: Ireland ) nwhyte: Seanad Éireann (and a bit about the House of Lords) My Jan 2011 praise for @Labour's abandoned policy. (tags: Ireland )
Another Lovejoy book, from the later end of the series, and operating very much to the formula of richly realised foreign setting (in this case a cruise ship going round the Baltic, with special attention to St Petersburg), with Lovejoy mixed p in a heist most of whose details are incomprehensible (and remain so) and his supernatural sense of detecting genuine antiques a key plot point. The harder edges of the character from the earlier books are considerably toned down, no doubt under the influence of the TV series, and he doesn't actually manage to have sex with anyone until ...
So now I got my initial flailing about my gifts over with in a different post, I can start collecting recs of the rest of the archive together. Starting with the other fandom I requested (Sungkyunkwan Scandal). Of which I may have beta'd a couple of fics: Keeps On Slipping - a crossover with another KDrama called Dr. Jin, which I hear is about a time travelling doctor. The warning is for "major character death" and the tags include "velociraptor" and "fetus." I'm not saying it's completely obvious who the author is, I'm just saying this fic is amazing. Step ...
