Mike’s Pop Pilgrimages
No.1 – Nick Drake, Tanworth-in-Arden
I sat on a bench opposite the pub. An elderly lady was sunning herself. “Are you here because of Nick Drake?” she asked. I said I was, um, how did she know? “We[…]

Constantine
This film IS half bad. The second half. Actually the first half isn’t great either. There are some great comic-book visuals (though come on, the slow-down/speed-up thing is tired for everyone now isn’t it?), and for a short wh[…]

Hank Williams Exploding Heart

I saw the footage of his funeral for the first time (kodachrome from the 50s) for the first time today, on a trashy cmt biodoc . The footage was edited badly and the voice over was distracting—but there were thou[…]

The American Chemical Society held their annual National Meeting last week, March 13 – 17. It was held in San Diego and around nine thousand papers were presented. The ACS and APS (physics) meetings are quite different. At the physics meeting, […]

The Physics Detective Part Nine — de Bruijn is Mr. Cranky
He certainly doesn’t pull any punches.
This week, I started getting a funny feeling that this story will end with Lister declaring that Jaeger committed suicide, or some similar ty[…]

* Okay, we haven’t taken a vote and there may be no more than one – this is just me remembering something I’d intended to write way back in the Month Of Fear but forgot.
Years ago, my then-wife started getting seriously into photogr[…]

A political rant that only barely belongs here…
I had hugely mixed feelings about something I saw outside the Spurs ground earlier today, when I walked past while Tottenham were beating Man City. It was one of those weird narrow vans with sides[…]

(an occasional series reviewing all of music* a few seconds at a time)
The late ’50s were an awkward time for Louis Prima. He’d had a terrific career as the Italian-American answer to Louis Armstrong, but rock ‘n’ roll was gro[…]

Penguins are so great that you could easily construct a top five of penguins. So easily that even though Blogger just et the first run round of this post, I am doing it again.
5: The Emperor Penguin
Looks like a butler, yadda yadda. Falls over when p[…]

Does it have a name?
This, you know, guitars and ties and actual high sales thing we’re drifting through at the moment? Is there a useful agreed name for it yet? If there isn’t, I think that’s quite interesting. What are its backers[…]