Lem was a Polish SF writer, occupying a strange place within the genre. He despised most SF (Dick was the only American SF writer he admired – an opinion that was not remotely reciprocated) for its vacuity and shallowness, which accurately impl[…]

Apologies for the late arrival of this podcast, technical difficulties combined with having to run it past the Lord Chamberlain delayed the posting.
Tom Ewing, Anna Fielding, Mark Sinker and Pete Baran talk about eyes, lies, Google Street View, eleph[…]

I think this is the last track I made go to number one.

Sorry, I’ll clarify that before hubris catches up with me. Your Woman, by White Town (or officially the Abort, Retry, Fail?_ EP) is the last single I bought which, in the week I bought […]

(This is the text of a five minute talk I gave at the Market Research Society’s Research 2009 conference, on 24/3/09. I was allowed 1 slide, and naturally selected a large scale reproduction of the cover of Prog 93 (see below))
Who is the Might[…]

I see a book has been published on DUCK. (Victoria de Rijke, Reaktion Books, 2008). My subject. No-one asked me, but I certainly have an opinion.
Well, my ducks, it could be so much braver, so much more than the sum of its careful, scholarly parts. I[…]

Maybe it was Emily Blunt’s big stamp head on the side of all the buses in London that made me want to see The Young Victoria. Maybe it was the surprising use of the definite article in the title. Whatever I went to see the costume and facial ha[…]

I find it interesting when a song has an “actual” meaning completely other than that which it has for a particular person. The most obvious examples of this are all the songs like ‘Angels’ or ‘Perfect Day,’ ‘[…]

The “Confessions” Movie sequence has to be one of the most schizophrenic (non-medical usage) of the movie sequences out there. As such the films have run the gamut of movie stylings from bawdy sex comedy to rom-com via spy and teen movies[…]

Last Friday was a terrific return to form for Poptimism, for the first time south of the river at the Horse Bar in Lambeth. Much dancing and interesting records played in the correct spirit of bonhomie. Well except for the bloke who dissed Scooter wh[…]

I’d like to propose a science historian’s version of Godwin’s Law: a historical conversation is over when a technology gets linked back to the Nazis in an effort to make it sound a bit sinister.
Actually it doesn’t have to be […]