Monthly Archives: May 2007

got it. The common feature of Warriors’ Gate, The Power of Kroll, The Pyramids of Mars, Planet of Evil, Revenge of the Cybermen, The Mutants, The Abominable Snowmen, The Moonbase, The Smugglers and The Rescue, plus, in its own special … Continue reading →

26) Northern Storm, by The second in Juliet E. McKenna’s Aldabreshin Compass series. Here we have Kheda, central character of the previous book, struggling to balance the interests of his new realm, his new wife, and the woman he loves … Continue reading →

Two Who stories from almost a decade apart to write up. Planet of Giants was the first story of the second season, back in October/November 1964. The original Tardis crew arrive in a contemporary Earth (for the first time since … Continue reading →

What do the following classic Doctor Who stories have in common? Warriors’ Gate The Power of Kroll The Pyramids of Mars Planet of Evil Revenge of the Cybermen The Mutants The Abominable Snowmen The Moonbase The Smugglers The Rescue and, … Continue reading →

So are Sydney Newman and Verity Lambert now canon? Will there be Sydney/Verity rpf? Also has a typically well-argued reflection on why there should always be more than one DW companion, by analogy with the Beatles.

There is much more to be said than this, but I will save it until next week.

…in my speech today I made a point about how Islamic extremism isn’t a serious risk in rabidly pro-American Kosovo; there are indeed bearded clerics preaching hatred of the West in the Balkans, but they are mostly Christians. And I … Continue reading →

Lots of people have been asking me what I thought of Thursday’s election. To be honest, since the Irish Times started charging for access (which is years ago now) I have been following Southern politics much less closely than I … Continue reading →

I´m incandescent with rage. This doesn´t happen to me often; I think of myself as a calm and unflappable person. I arrived at the hotel at 1245, having had an email from my London colleagues to the effect that a … Continue reading →

Type “*your name* likes to” into google and see what comes up. The presence of 101 stocks in the portfolio, each accounting for less than 2 percent of assets, shows that Nicholas likes to spread his bets. In the spring, … Continue reading →

25) Palace Walk, by Naguib Mahfouz This is my “serious” novel for this trip (still have two decently thick fantasies for my homeward journey). It is the first in Nobel Prize winner Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, and tells the story of … Continue reading →

24) Urban Shaman, by . The first of C.E. Murphy’s stories about Joanne Walker, policewoman and reluctant gateway to the spirit world. I had previously read the next two in the series, which is certainly the wrong order; while the … Continue reading →

Apparently these are the top 50 tourist destinations in the world. Have bolded the ones I’ve been to. 1. Times Square, New York City, NY: 35 million visitors every year 2. National Mall & Memorial Parks, Washington, D.C. (Washington Monument, … Continue reading →

There seems to be some kind of sinister travel curse going around. I turned up too early for my flight yesterday, and I see on my f-list one tale of woe involving getting on the wrong train last night, and … Continue reading →

Here. (With thanks to and .)

got it through nifty googling, and makes an impressive argument from first principles. These are the numbers with f factors which are also multiples of f. 1) 1: has one factor, 1. 2) 2: has two factors, 1 and 2. … Continue reading →

23) Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman Gaiman’s latest collection of short stories, including this year’s Hugo nominee, “How to Talk to Girls at Parties”, several other pieces that I knew and liked already (such as Hugo winner “A Study in … Continue reading →

OK, while I am waiting, here is another maths quiz: Which two numbers go in tenth place in this sequence? 1) 1 2) 2 3) 9 4) 8 5) 625 6) 12 and 18 7) 117649 8) An infinite set … Continue reading →

Got to the airport in bags of time to check in for my 7 am flight. Indeed, I have even more time than I had realised; because the flight is not, in fact, until 0850. Must remember to chesk itinerary … Continue reading →

The usual: bold the ones you’ve read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved. These are the Pulitzer Prize winners for the Fiction (since 1948) and … Continue reading →

22) George’s Marvelous Medicine, by Roald Dahl I’ve been feeling very under the weather today (which explains how come I have been reading so many books); F, dutiful son that he is, sent me a “get well” email from the … Continue reading →

21) Gilead, by Marilynn Robinson And so from a book about the writings of a clergyman's son to a book about a clergyman writing to his son. This is a lovely, understated novel about the distance between generations, family histories, … Continue reading →

20) The True Knowledge of Ken MacLeod, ed. Andrew M Butler and Farah Mendlesohn It is too long since I have read the Fall Revolution Quartet, because most of these essays would have meant a lot more to me if … Continue reading →

19) Troubled Images: Posters and Images of the Northern Ireland Conflict from the Linen Hall Library, Belfast, ed. Yvonne Murphy, Allan Leonard, Gordon Gillespie and Kris Brown Lots of pictures here, many of them very familiar to me from my … Continue reading →

18) Sailing to Sarantium, by Guy Gavriel Kay I’ve read two very bad novels about Justinian, Belisarius, and seventh-century Constantinople, one by Robert Graves and one by David Weber Eric Flint and David Drake. This is a damn good novel … Continue reading →

I caught this interview with Peter Davison this morning, about his secret life as a song-writer. If you click on “Listen to the show” his bit starts at 28 minutes in (marked for some reason as 1h 28m, but it … Continue reading →

what’s this chirpy music? Lucky Martha with the phone. But she’s not Rose. Hah, future gender-balanced space crew. Very Firefly. Nice line, “42 minutes until we crash into the Sun”! Boo, Chris Chibnall; but yay, Graeme Harper. Hah, ship is … Continue reading →

17) Islam in Azerbaijan, by Arif Yunusov This may seem a somewhat obscure subject, but the author gave me a copy of this book when we met at a conference in July 2005 so I have finally got around to … Continue reading →

16) The Age of Kali, by William Dalrymple I admit to a youthful fascination with William Dalrymple, who was at Cambridge a couple of years ahead of me and was much talked of (though rarely seen) in the Catholic chaplaincy, … Continue reading →