Huge article in the November issue of Scientific American asking (cue doodly synth music) “What is the secret behind music’s strange power?” I’m a sucker for music/brain articles–it’s one of my favorite subjects to[…]

Is it because she is blind that she feels for me? Or that the lights are off? Either way the last thing I want is a woman with scary hair groping me up and down. Especially if she is then going to drag along fellow blind man Stevie Wonder on harmonic[…]

The literal mening of “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day”was made clear on Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway this weekend. On an evening where half the country was out at an organised fireworks display, they finished off[…]

Macaulay Culkin is a funny looking chap. Was he ever a cute kid? I’m not sure. His popularity may well have been more based on his resemblance to Edvard Munch’s Scream. Is it any wonder that the Scream horror franchise traded on this imag[…]

POP FACTOR: 342 CONTROVERSY RATING: 247
Simultaneously lazy and ballsy, a rum way to end a pop career but weeks away from its brief radio life at least it sounds like a footnote, so not as undignified as it might have been. As a track on one of the[…]

You cannot libel the dead. Which is why it always suprises me that bio-pics are often completely reverantial towards their subject. For example Finding Neverland is a film designed to rehabilitate the reputation of a man whose reputation is, since hi[…]

Neo-Coms
Rich Johnston’s comics gossip column reports an upcoming book from Marvel, Combat Zone: True Tales from GI’s In Iraq. How true, precisely? Here’s what Johnston has to say about the credentials of co-writer Karl Zinsmeister:[…]

EXTREME SCIENCE LIVE
1: Being shot by a firework
AIM: To discover what happens when someone is shot by a cherry bomb style firework at a distance of five metres.
APPARATUS: A “Five Stars” Firework, some slighly softer ground than expected[…]

Bonfire night food: I went to a bonfire night party Saturday (frankly mentioning Guy Fawkes seems pointless). All the usual food suspects rocked up from our extremely generous hosts including the baked potato and sausages. There was however a grand a[…]

The Last Dance by Ed McBain
This may be as inconsequential 87th Precinct novel as I’ve ever read, and I’ve read nearly all of them. Nothing changes for any of the regulars, no character development that amounts to anything, a very dull my[…]