In today's dispatch, Rita recalls her very own courtroom drama... “Moon pie! Moon pie!” A young man’s voice shouted this nonsensical phrase over and over in the background of the 911 recording as the voice of an elderly woman calmly explained her emergency. Her back door had burst open and a ... Read More...
Month: March 2014
Can reading fiction ever really be justified when there are so many more 'important' things in the world? Douglas ponders a question that occasionally troubles all bibliophiles... My first year of college I took a course in Arthurian literature. There were fewer than ten of us in the class. After a ... Read More...
They don't make politicians like this any more (and it's probably just as well, really)... In today's media age, politicians are subject to such a high degree of scrutiny that it encourages a culture of blandness and conformity. Where are the mavericks? Consider Sir Gerald Nabarro, whose autobiography I discovered one ... Read More...
Following his post on Andrew Young, Stephen introduces another overlooked poet... James Reeves (1909-1978) devoted his life to poetry -- as a poet, an editor, an anthologist, a teacher, and a critic. But his devotion was a quiet one. Hence, his poetry does not receive the attention that it deserves. I ... Read More...
This week's weird wikipedia search brings up a rare instance of a politician admitting that they are talking nonsense... The term Fedspeak (also known as Greenspeak) is used to describe the American Federal Reserve Board's intentionally wordy, vague, and ambiguous statements. The strategy, which was used most prominently by Alan Greenspan, ... Read More...
In Frank's cupboard this week is a hardboiled thriller based on real-life events...and featuring dead cows!... Ned Mossop sat in his office nursing the last dregs of a bottle of hooch and smoking his umpteenth cigarette of the day. He stared out of the window into the gloaming, at the mean ... Read More...
Journalist and author Peter Watts, proprietor of The Great Wen blog, gives us a run down of some of the latest book releases exploring our capital city I don’t think anybody, with the possible exception of Will Self, really knows what psychogeography means but that doesn’t mean there’s not a lot ... Read More...
Nige discovers that the author of some rather dry zoology reference works was anything but dull in his private life... One of my most treasured books is a battered copy of Butterflies by E.B. Ford, the first in the Collins' New Naturalist series. I value it partly because it was a ... Read More...
Ever wondered why the date of Easter is so unpredictable? Professor Nick Groom explains the bewildering mathematical equations required to calculate Easter, and why our day-to-day lives are still to some degree governed by theological arcana... Saturday just past was Egg-Feast Saturday – the time for eating up eggs. The Sunday following ... Read More...
To Liverpool, a foreign island city-state that somehow got itself attached to mainland England. An ‘island’ because, as with the fauna of Galapagos, it has evolved in isolation into something very strange. Let’s start with the voices. It is widely believed that there is a ‘Scouse accent’. In fact there ... Read More...
