LOSERS
by Michael Lewis
Lewis is one of those guys who has inadvertantly become — I would never call him a favorite author per se of mine, in that I rarely read him or think about him. Instead I just keep stumbling across him, often by chance […]

Who is Alexander Kowalski? — well, actually I don’t need to ask that because first I found this Discogs.com bit and that led me to his homepage and now I have the basics. But I only just heard him today, specifically the Progress and Res[…]

READING COMIX MAKES YOU DUMM: the disproof is in the discussion surely?
this post-plus-comment at the usually-slightly-up-itself crooked timber is fascinating (abt teaching EngLit via neil gaiman; abt how modern tech-literate popculture-compexity-bo[…]

Are ACADEMIC CONFERENCES the SPORT of THOUGHT?
(viz CONTENT vs STYLE who will WIN??)
i. see you get up and say stuff and (if you don’t overrun yr time hem hem) then field clever questions ii. and some ppl carefully write every word up beforehan[…]

Just because it’s Friday
Two music writers, one of whom has a prominent regular writing gig, the other of which is giving music fans something actually useful and getting no money at all. Can you guess which is which?
1. Jess Harvell, whose sit[…]

FOOT-IN-DOOR PEER-REVIEW :
andrew wakefield is the doctor who kicked off the debate about the MMR jab – and whether combining the measles mumps and rubella inoculation was possibly responsible for an as-yet unexplained surge in cases of autism[…]

LOVELY VIEW:
the dying sun is staining the little rococo tower pink, but [office co-worker E] cannot see it properly as her window is still yucky and smeary from the tropical plant that used to stand against it until her predecessor left
as an art[…]

I am going to a gig tomorrow! I had thought that – Glastonbury aside which is of course “not about the music man” (i.e. the music is atrocious) – this was my first gig in three whole years but I’d forgotten about Brian W[…]

On the last chapter of Vernon God Little. Yes or no? See a similar issue I had last year about a film for potential clues to this question. You will need to read the much more entertaining than I expected* book to make up your own mind about the answ[…]

BBC3’s go at serious documentaries recently actually consists pretty much solely of a docusoap called Paparazzi. Beyond the chummy calling of said photographers “Paps” the programme’s problem is in its identification with its […]