oliphaunts vs mumins: WHO WILL DIE?
in the interests of havin a social life clearly mumin wins, in the sense that to watch 10 hours-worth* of DVD-mumins IN GERMAN at starry’s house w.various pals = bettah than stayin in and watchin ep3 of the […]

APPLYING OCCAM’S RAZOR — Part 2 of 2
(The first part of this post can be found at the Brown Wedge.)
While Martin Gardner’s book on Urantia’s crazy-quilt scheme of science (fiction) Christianity was a flawed mess, the impulse t[…]

APPLYING OCCAM’S RAZOR — Part 1 of 2
URANTIA
by Martin Gardner
For many years, I was a subscriber to the Skeptical Inquirer, the quite marvelous journal dedicated to a basic principle: treat any claim involving the paranormal with scienti[…]

Monty Python’s Fliegender Zirkus — after some delay I’ve finally gotten around to seeing the first of two of the strangest comedy ventures ever, namely the nearly hour-long German-only episodes (nearly all of which, a couple of mome[…]

DAFT PUNK
Human After All
Yes, it’s hardly out yet or anything, but after the leak on Monday I witnessed what had to be one of the most intense fracturings of opinion over a long-expected album in a while. To pick just one example, the ILM thr[…]

Adventures In The Alaskan Skin Trade by John Hawkes
Hawkes had been on my mental list for a while, since he seemed to be grouped with some Postmodernist writers I love – there are blurbs on the back of this from Barth, Gass and Barthelme, rathe[…]

The Physics Detective Part Two — The Investigation Begins
This week’s installation was about 100 times funnier than last week’s. As a result, I now have the enthusiasm and motivation to see this story through to the end — and […]

Day 14: Massachusetts
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 LOUSY TUNES
Jail. Four walls holding me in. Bars on the window. Really rather oppressive. Not a place for a sophisticated girl like me. It turned out that they did not have the kind of specialist holding f[…]

SCOOTER – “Shake That!”
There is a very common trope in science fiction whereby a society of the future has evolved curious and inexplicable customs which turn out to have – oh irony – been based on misunderstandings of […]

secret pash residue it’s actually kinda NICE to rediscover (potential quickly-abandoned series alert):
i guess all of us (except maybe those who occasionally throw stuff away above and beyond eg crisp packets) have things like these – cu[…]