The Scar – China Mieville
I’d been meaning to try Mieville for a while, due to recommendations and reviews. Weirdly, I found the book pretty different from what the critics has led me to expect. The first one inside the cover has the Tele[…]

Fundacio Miro and other Barcelona notes
One major point about this excellent museum: don’t think you can walk up there from the nearest metro station – it’s a long way up. Anyway, it restructured Miro in my mind: this has some magni[…]

Portrait Of An Artist, As An Old Man – Joseph Heller
I’m a sucker for metafiction, and this is full of it. Heller, in his last novel before his death, tells of an old writer who started with a critical and commercial smash, who is trying […]

Gates Of Eden – Ethan Coen
I didn’t know that one of my favourite filmmakers ever had written a book until I came across this. It’s a collection of short pieces, a few reading like radio scripts, and it has all the strengths of his […]

HUR HUR HUR
Diagram from the news story that Pete links to (below) LOOKS A BIT RUDE. (Tilt head to left)[…]

o tempora o meerkats! As a child the little painted pirate heads I only ever saw in shops on the Aberdovey sea-front somewhat fascinated me – you put them up on the wall (eg like flying ducks) but I have never discovered the proper name for the[…]

The days of private spaceflight are almost upon us. Which means that perhaps my ambition of going into space before I die still may happen. If I managed to become a billionaire. But before we cheer the incoming privateers of space (and the attendant […]

Songs About Science in MP3 format. I’d be amazed if we haven’t linked this sometime before, but who cares – it’s 1950S SCIENCE SONGS IN MP3 FORMAT!!??!![…]

“Purple is the international colour of equality”
Hein?? Clearly it’s been taken up by some groups as such, and this lot seem, well, harmless enough – but the choice of purple still seems odd. Until the 19th century and the dev[…]

Molvania
This is the first travel book to be written about Molvania. Why has it taken so long to write a guide to this Central European backwater? Well, it’s had its fair share of civil wars, natural disasters and brutal dictators, but also bec[…]