Monthly Archives: October 2012

Airport Reviews | The Guide to Sleeping in Airports Important information for the weary traveller!(tags: travel ) Sorting the Real Sandy Photos From the Fakes That stunning image might be PhotoShopped. But it could be real too!(tags: photos weather )

Phobos: Doomed Moon of Mars Looking stressed…(tags: astronomy ) The progressive case against Obama Linking / RTing is not endorsement, but this is an interesting read.(tags: uspolitics ) Light Entertainment · LRB If you are appalled about Jimmy Savile, read … Continue reading →

Well, new-ish, released in May, July and September – another is due out this week and there will be one more in December. Day of the Cockroach, by Steve Lyons, is a classic base-under-siege story, the sub-genre that Lyons has … Continue reading →

Eleven of the Best Movies You’ve Never Seen Actually I’ve seen very few films anyway, but may look out for these.(tags: films ) Time in Indiana – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (tags: history usa timekeeping ) Newmarket sausages granted European … Continue reading →

It’s been a sad time for Who companions recently, with several untimely losses and rumours of illness for others. But meanwhile William Russell, who turns 88 next month, is still going strong, launching the new series of Companion Chronicles from … Continue reading →

My regular reader will be glad to know that I’m taking a break from Lovejoy at present, but I am well behind with book-blogging so here is one I finished a week or so ago. Actually it is rather a … Continue reading →

Despite the title, this is actually a novel whose unnamed narrator, a light-skinned African-American of the late 19th/ early 20th century, undergoes various travails including whether to abandon his career as a (black) musician and settle down for a dull … Continue reading →

Lord Russell meet Lord Russell But which is which?(tags: philosophy funny ) The one million tweet map #onemilliontweetmap Saved to look at later.(tags: map twitter ) 585 – Poitiers All Over Again: Pastry, Islam and Isoglosses The secret history of … Continue reading →

Blogging has been very light round here for the last week or so – I have been travelling a lot, with some unexpected wrinkles and last-minute changes of plan, am behind in bookblogging and also in the middle of three … Continue reading →

America Forgets the World by Jonathan Freedland “At one point the two candidates had an animated conversation about small business in Massachusetts.”(tags: uspolitics ) 16 Ways I Blew My Marriage Sage advice.(tags: lifehacking ) Age of Reason Jacques Barzun died … Continue reading →

Texas threatens to arrest international monitors sent to watch US election — RT Russia Today reports.(tags: ) Thomas Edison Audio: Recording From 1878 Unveiled Tinfoil secrets revealed by digital scanning.(tags: technology history of science ) FACEBOOK: I WANT MY FRIENDS … Continue reading →

Because I know you are on the edge of your seats: our mayor lost his bid for a seventh six-year term in yesterday’s elections. His independent (but backed by the Liberals) bloc got only five seats, with the separatist New … Continue reading →

Diary of a Benefit Scrounger: Open Letter to Mark Hoban The inhumanity of British disability bureaucracy.(tags: ukpolitics disability ) Palestinian women look to Bethlehem to boost their role In that a well-known feminist is running for mayor.(tags: sexandgenderandsexuality middleeast ) … Continue reading →

An interesting development from my earlier post about the local political parties – the sixth has now written back to me, less than 24 hour before the elections, as follows: Dear Nicholas, I’m quite convinced that our lives silently have … Continue reading →

My two annual reading projects this year have been War and Peace, which conveniently has 366 chapters, and the Bible, for which I generated a reading scheme of my own, based on reading roughly the same amount of it each … Continue reading →

Doctor Who: P.S. – Series 7 2012 – BBC One – YouTube What happened to the Ponds…(tags: doctorwho ) UK US Life and style Technology icon.Martha Raddatz and the faux objectivity of journalists How neutrality between the two parties leads … Continue reading →

We have municipal and provincial elections tomorrow, and I’ve found it very difficult to make up my mind who to vote for; everyone claims to love our little village in a very special way (and nobody seems to know what … Continue reading →

Busting Teenage Partying with a Fluksometer Geek dad’s long distance intervention on New Year’s Eve.(tags: socialmedia ) Dominique Strauss-Kahn: I was naive to think I could get away with orgies – Telegraph Er, yes.(tags: sexandgenderandsexuality ) Exclusive Excerpt: Nobel Winner … Continue reading →

I have no idea why I got this book. The cover art is quite remarkable in its own right and possibly caught my eye. (My wife wondered how the nipple shields might be attached; myself I wonder how much practical … Continue reading →

The Biden Doctrine – By James Traub How the Vice President is shaping President Obama’s foreign policy.(tags: uspolitics ) In Defence of Politics Quintin Oliver say the political situation in Northern Ireland is not so bad.(tags: ) In defence of … Continue reading →

I had got this 1977 account of the Elizabethan wars in Ireland in the expectation that it might be a somewhat traditionalist approach to the period, to counterbalance the more revisionist accounts I had been reading over the last few … Continue reading →

Mitt Romney’s Most Dishonest Speech A strong claim, but the that foreign policy speech was pretty bad.(tags: uspolitics ) Georgia: Netizens react to the Saakashvili-Ivanishvili Meeting I think this will amuse even those who know little of Georgia!(tags: georgia ) … Continue reading →

Romney’s Evolving Security Policy: Unreality and Distinctions without a Difference – democracyarsenal.org Identifying (some of) the challenger’s weaknesses.(tags: uspolitics ) Top Seven Errors President Obama has made on the Middle East Identifying (some of) the incumbent’s weaknesses.(tags: uspolitics )

I was interrupted by other events last week, so now I want to commemorate the centennial of one of my favourite underrated orchestral works, The Music Makers by Edward Elgar, first performed in Birmingham on 1 October 1912. I was … Continue reading →

One of those moments when you realise that the four guys behind you in the queue are the Dutch Minister for Finance and his entourage…

Damian McBride, 5 Years On: The Election That Never Was Fascinating insider story of how Brown’s premiership collapsed after three months.(tags: ukpolitics ) ‘Doctor Who’: Series 7 – out of order? An interesting theory!(tags: doctorwho ) Why Time Travel Stories … Continue reading →

Former Ulster Unionist David McNarry, expelled from his party for slightly obscure reasons back in May, has joined the UK Independence party. UKIP have 12 MEPs but McNarry is the first of their representatives in any UK-based elected parliamentary body. … Continue reading →

Mount Everest Records Deadliest Year in over a Decade “The disaster in May was a signal that the mountain urgently needs a break. But it won’t get it. There’s too much money to be made on Everest.”(tags: everest ) The … Continue reading →

This was the first, and I think only, book of short stories about Torchwood, and a fine collection it is too. We start with “The Baby Farmers” by David Llewellyn, set in the Victorian Torchwood era which generated so much … Continue reading →

Another of the two-in-one Doctor Who books for younger readers starring Eleven with Amy and Rory. The first of these, Terminal of Despair by Steve Lyons, has monsters that consume hope from their victims. Lyons normally cranks out a good … Continue reading →