Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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Recent Books
It feels like ages since I wrote about some of the recent books I’ve been reading. Let’s try to put that right with this handful of recently finished books. Taipei Story by Rebecca F. Kuang I first discovered Rebecca F Kuang when I read her fantasy epic Babel a couple of years ago. Her lastest…
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The Undercover Economist
The success of Freakonomics was almost certainly the reason that this book got the green light from the publishers. That’s not to say that it’s bad, because it’s not. Seemingly based on a column from the Financial Times, the author attempts to use economic theory to explain day to day things that we experience. For…
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Tescopoly
Ah. The new evil empire. This book probably isn’t available for £3.73 in your local branch of Tesco (and what is it about that .73 price point?), but you should seek it out in your local bookshop – assuming you still have one. We’ve all heard many of the stories about Tesco, and I’m not…
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Murder in Samarkand
This is the book that the British Government really didn’t like being published. Indeed I’ve even heard stories of people being stopped from taking it on the plane with them! Nobody stopped me at Stansted with it when I went away with it recently. Murray was the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan where he was something…
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IoS
I didn’t pick up a copy, but it seems that The Independent on Sunday’s readers aren’t overjoyed at the changes that were made over the weekend…
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Alcohol Ban on Kids Football Shirts
Wow – finally football clubs are doing the decent thing, and withdrawing alcohol sponsors’ logos from their kids size football strips. Other sports including cricket clubs are doing the same thing. Well – I say “football clubs” and “cricket clubs” when I actually mean the Portman Group is doing it (they’re the people who are…
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Alan Johnston Video Released
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6710863.stm
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Neon Saturn
In this false-color image, the Cassini spacecraft captures Saturn’s glow, represented in brilliant shades of electric blue, sapphire and mint green, while the planet’s shadow casts a wide net on the rings. The colors represent different wavelengths: red is thermal heat originating within the planet; in blue, icy ring particles shimmer in sunlight scattered through…
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Scoop
I love stories set in newspapers. Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop is quite probably my favourite ever book – riotously funny. TV has had its fair share of programmes set around plucky newspaper reporters; most recently State of Play, but I even remember Lytton’s Diary! And then there are films. Another favourite is The Day The Earth…
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Z. for Zachariah
I didn’t actually know that Z for Zachariah was actually a book. I remember it as a Play For Today back in the eighties (1984 to be precise – ah the power of the internet). I remember it starring Anthony Andrews (late of Brideshead) and not a great deal else. Anyway, my interest was piqued…
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Dalek I Loved You
Nick Griffiths is a writer on the Radio Times amongst other places, and this is a memoir interspersed with Doctor Who. That sounds a bit strange but it all makes sense. Sort of. He begins with Jon Pertwee and takes us through his early years and Tom Baker. He misses out ther rest, largely, which…
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New Versions of Classics
Why do we keep getting new versions of TV and film classics adaptations? Every Jane Austen novel has now been adapted on countless occasions and you just know that there’ll be more. Even “definitive” versions of the classics don’t stop someone else making the same story again a few years later. So we had a…
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No Idea
Read this. This is quite easily the single worst “scientific” article I can remember ever reading. I really simply don’t know where to begin. Why is it acceptable for journalists on a national newspaper to write about science when they clearly have no qualifications, background or plain and simple knowledge of the subject? In any…
Hadrian’s Wall
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