It’s no PBS yet (it’s only a few days old), but here’s Chicago physicist Sean Carroll’s Preposterous Universe blog, plus manifesto: “Let’s cast this as a shrewd, techno-savvy blow against the hyperspecialization of[…]

Selected lines
“They have female external genitalia, a blind vagina, and no uterus.”
“His skin became very thick and formed loose spines that were sloughed off at intervals. When he grew up, this “porcupine man” married […]

Fans of Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon should check out Garry Wills’s Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, if only for Part Two, ‘A Scientific Paper’. It’s not a novel – it’s filed […]

I’m not an instinctive fan of the works of Anton’ Gaud’. I find much of his work excessive and overwrought, and I just can’t get to the sense of awe others do. What’s more, a look at the facade of the Sagrada Familia dem[…]

Firkin Pubs: Classic Or Dud? – I must shamefacedly admit to becoming nostalgic for Firkin pubs. There seem to be so few of them around now. In their pomp they were certainly the enemy, buying up and homogenizing a variety of venues. But later i[…]

The Searchers is about some people searching. The Missing, which has ostensibly the same plot, is not really about the missing people at all. Its about The Searchers. In both senses.
The Missing articulates acutely how difficult it is in 2004 to make[…]

ILM At Its Finest: The collective knowledge of 200 music heads pooled for the common good – this is more like it![…]

UNHEALTHY VEGETABLES: PART TWO: aka the The Parsnip Paradise: – hey you know, I don’t think I’ve ever started a post with so many colons. And on which tenuous and probably not-at-all-proven-by-science link, I do wonder what the eati[…]

Do You Hear? I just found on [file-sharing network] the BBC’s Lord Of The Rings dramatisation, first broadcast when I was 8 or 9 and unheard (by me) since. Much though I like the films this is my LOTR, and the opening theme still makes me quive[…]

Can something be smug and heartfelt? After seeing three or four elderly dying person movies in the last few weeks, I am wary of how heartfelt any of them have been. Instead the dying relative is a universal way of ticking the viewers emotional boxes,[…]