QUOTE OF THE DAY!!
“I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves” ? dave q August Strindberg (1849-1912), Swedish vagabond (?) playwright
haha sometimes i totally heart fact-ch[…]

The Politics Of The Future II: From ultra-market, to communism: China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh. Written in the eighties, when the idea of China’s economic plan was only just taking shape, a world dominated by China’s communism was[…]

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[…]

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[…]

Sad tale: I am sure that many of the comics creators I grew up reading are now poor as a church mouse, but unlike most of them Messner-Loebs was actually very good, and read as likeable as this story makes him seem. Strong characters, quirky and surp[…]

The Key 20th C Artists, as proven by science
So I have this Phaidon book, The 20th Century Artbook. It has one page each, a reproduction and brief text, on 500 20th C artists. Each entry also has 3-6 other artists from the book mentioned as links &#8[…]

The Politics Of The Future I: Science fiction is often not THAT speculative about science. Postulating future politics is almost as much fun. Perhaps for satirical effect, or for plot reasons, or just for fun: mooting a future society does mean gett[…]

Joe Sacco watch your back. After allowing an admittedly sluggish time for your Sacco’s graphic novel journalism of Palestine to be diseminated, the Israeli’s strike back with HOMELAND: THE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL.

And […]

CBB5*: PUBLIC IMAGE LTD:
i. treble turner prizes all round ii. i spose to be on top of the FACTS i shd actually read everything written by and abt GG’s involvement and exit: from a semi-distance (ie i only watched the tv bits) i deduce that (c[…]

I can’t remember who it was who recommended Pelecanos to me, but I had the impression he was well worth a try, that he might just be someone to join my other big favourite current crime writers. This is pretty good, but nothing has really made […]