Holidays seem to be a time when I curl up with fantasy or sci-fi books: in August in France I read Larry Niven’s Protector, and over New Years I read R Scott Bakker’s The Darkness That Comes Before. (GOTH ALERT – this is part one of[…]

When a tabloid journalist wants to find out the dirt about a celebrity what do they do? Well these days they probably talk to their publicist and between them they concoct a story between them which gets the sleb some column inches and the journo the[…]

The Podcast Panel tracks, in order of popularity, with link to the discussion on LiveJournal:

Keke Palmer – “Music Box” – 7.27
Lancelot Link and the Evolution Revolution – “Sha La Love You” – 7.20
Silv[…]

Here’s a selection of some of the most entertaining/interesting posts on the site this year – thoroughly incomplete, as it doesn’t include much of the frothing ephemera that makes FT so good (in my partisan view). As usual when I lo[…]

I’ve seen Battlestar Galactica: Razor twice now, and I finally feel free to say that which I was scared of after the first viewing. Yes, it is an entertaining two hour film, filling in details which probably did not need to be filled in, but tellin[…]

so last night i discovered two inter-linked and utterly heartwarming cookery FACTS
one is that in cookery, if angels are played by OYSTERS then devils are played by PRUNES!
two is that in these recipes, for every horse (= small piece of toast) there […]

The following excerpt arrived in my inbox over Christmas and appears to be from the journal of an anonymous Merchant Navy skipper.
23rd December ’07
After 3 days fogbound, we found ourselves under clear skies in open sea. The navigator swiftly […]

I’m in severe danger of starting to hate an excellent song. Not because of what “Fairytale Of New York” is – whole-hearted, rambunctious, sad and sentimental – but because of what it’s being used for: “the gr[…]

This is my favourite song of 2007: (more…)[…]

I haven’t listened to it all yet, so I still don’t know what happened in it either. Err someone put in a proper description some time, eh?