Images of 2011, Part 3

Stop the year! We've just received a last minute entry for our Images of 2011 feature. Rosie Bell: There was so much news this year.  You had barely digested one item when another meaty one was put down in front of you.  Here’s a picture that for convenience combines two news ... Read More...

Marathon of machine versus mind

How many of your Christmas gifts were made in China? Ongoing upgrades in transport and technology will no doubt make the world an even smaller place in 2012. Translation innovation think tank, TAUS, believes that translation will become a ubiquitous service, “like the internet, electricity, and water, translation is one of ... Read More...

Images of 2011, Part 2

We've invited Dabblers to contribute their image of the year. Today, in our second installment, we hear from Brit, Noseybonk, Mahlerman, Jassy Davis and Daniel Kalder. Brit: I've picked this image of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and others watching news from Pakistan of the mission that would kill Osama Bin ... Read More...

Images of 2011, Part 1

We've invited Dabblers to contribute their image of the year. Today we hear from Gaw, Mark Pack and Susan. Gaw: My picture of the year (top) is in memoriam: the cover shot from Christopher Hitchens' recent memoir. A grave-dancer left a comment on the New Yorker's remembrance accusing Hitchens of being full of himself. ... Read More...

To celebrate that kingdom

An eerily perfect etching casts a chilly spell over Jonathan Law. Winter in the cathedral city – somewhere in the north of England, some time (we might guess) in the earlier 1500s. Gothic structures rise from the earth, rear ponderously skyward, and lose themselves in the glistening, frosty light. Snow on ... Read More...

Ghosts of Christmas

There is no end to the talent contained within that Brit. Here's his Christmas poem. Festive doesn't always equal blithely happy, you know... Ghosts of Christmas Christmas, like revenge or copulation, Is mostly fun in the anticipation. It’s weeks, it’s days, and now it’s here, it’s here! And now it’s gone, in a haze of ... Read More...

Stille Nacht

A Christmas Day treat for you, from Mahlerman... That Johann Sebastian Bach was the most inspired master of polyphony (the mixing of two, or several, melodic voices) to arise since the dawn of Western music is no longer disputed, but it is worth reminding ourselves that he was nothing if not ... Read More...

Images of Christmas

Today we present a Dabbler Christmas extravaganza. Later Susan takes us on a 3D Christmas Eve adventure, but first we invited Dabblers to contribute an image of Christmas and here are those of Nige, Skipper, Philip Wilkinson and ZMKC. Nige: Let us define our terms. As the scrupulous Nigel insisted in ... Read More...