City life is millions of people being lonesome together. Thus spake Henry David Thoreau. The late Gerry Rafferty, meanwhile, noted that “this city desert makes you feel so cold: it’s got so many people but it’s got no soul.” Urban loneliness – the curious sense of being alone in a crowd ... Read More...
Month: May 2011
According to the outcome of the Cambridge Union Society’s latest debate, classical music is still relevant to today’s youth… but do they actually appreciate classical music? As the worlds of classical and pop converge, the music we’re exposed to is increasingly lumped into one category: entertainment. Not so long ago, schools ... Read More...
Right, time for this 1p Book Review series to get ambitious. It was Gaw’s recent post on Cockney Cuisine – “lugubrious spoonfuls of silvery eel and golden jelly” and “suck[ing] on the odd piece of protuberant cartilage” that put me in mind of Ulysses, and particularly of our introduction to ... Read More...
Sometimes it can happen that you find yourself confronted by a foe, or enemy. This may be on account of some ancient blood feud, or vendetta, or it may be more recent. You might, say, steal some fruit from a greengrocer and thereafter the greengrocer becomes your foe. I am ... Read More...
Jonathon "Mr Slang" Green allows us a glimpse of the curious life of the lexicographer... This is what I do. What I have done for at least 25 years and what I intend to do, audience and body willing until on some unspecified day I crash forward into the keyboard – or ... Read More...
Sue Gee is an acclaimed novelist whose books include The Mysteries of Glass and Reading in Bed. Described as ‘poignant, haunting and immensely readable’, Last Fling is her first collection of short stories -- it is published on 19 May 2011 and is available to order from Amazon. Sue Gee's stories are remarkable ... Read More...
Cream buns aplenty this week. Well done to Ian, Jonathan, Adelephant, Joey JJJ and anyone else who got answers or the connection... Click continue for the full answers. 12913 ... Read More...
Continuing from yesterday’s RB Quiz Part A, here are the answers to the first five clues: 1. Generator of Monday chaos? (6) = DYNAMO (anagram of Monday = generator) 2. Light equipment made from cobalt or chromium. (5) = TORCH (embedded in cobalt or chromium) 3. Part of what might fall on the ... Read More...
The Dabbler reviews the first episode of The Apprentice 2011. Why does Lord Sugar (I preferred him when he was humble ‘S’ralan’) keep doing this? Is he perhaps relying on income from The Apprentice to prop up his business empire? Does he hope that continued exposure on telly will propel him ... Read More...
Continuing our series of aesthetic appreciations of sublime machines... My interest in the aesthetics of technology always brings me to early eras of device. In the first generation of a technology, the device physically is at its most pure and evocative. Often times, the implementation is bad, but it is rare that ... Read More...
