What I read
Finished Dead Famous, which I felt was perhaps trying a bit too hard to be demotic and audience-friendly, and possibly relying over-much on certain specific Famous People, but it did not make me utterly cringe and I did not feel he actually Got Stuff RONG, I think he may actually be a sound historian who works in The Popular Mode.
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The appropriate white-knighting defence to people calling a woman 'fat and ugly' is not, I depose, giving her an unwanted 'forcible and sloppy kiss' and frankly I don't consider it an act of chivalry to make that your defence.
The former England footballer Paul Gascoigne wept as he was found not guilty of sexually assaulting a woman he kissed ( Read more... )

I recently met a well-known actor at a party, and we talked, as one often does with successful actors, about his work. Eventually he asked me what I did, so I told him. “Journalist, eh? I’ve always thought I’d be rather good at that,” he replied. And maybe he would be because, let’s be honest, the kind of journalism I do is not brain surgery. But ( Read more... )

Thinking about the recent plagiarism scandal -
Okay, I don't know what a law professor in Brazil earns - and of course, one does not know how much of the surrounding story was true, either - and maybe she was hiring cheapo ghostwriters because her salary would not run to dearer ones (although dearer ones might, we suspect, have cavilled at being ( Read more... )

I see there's a question on Captain Awkward about what to do when people come up and say things like, 'haven't we met before', and try to place one, and one does not know them from Adam or Eve or the serpent -
And without going all Ernest Hemingway and saying 'Don't You Know Who I Am?' I do have the recourse of saying, 'Well, perhaps you spotted ( Read more... )

I have probably seen the odd movie or two with Bill Nighy in that I enjoyed, but there's something about any role in which he is massive amounts of *EPIC MANPAIN* that makes me wish you could hurl movies at the wall as well as books (he was not the only thing wrong with the movie of I Capture the Castle, but his being entirely wrong as Mortmain was ( Read more... )

Fascinating thoughtful post by
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You know that ghastly future where we are all under surveillance all the time, and our protags have to try and break out from under...*

Well, some people appear to be running towards this with arms outstretched for Big Welcoming Hug, going 'O Hai, I can haz panopticon!!!':
Mr. McDonough is in the forefront of efforts to change that, to record ( Read more... )

David Mitchell, in today's Observer:
But I work in the media, a field in which you get to boast about your personal ignorance as if it's insight into the popular mood.

That's this week's Golden Codfish Award Honoree sorted, no?

I also liked this, but I don't think it's quite in the same class:
The media is always desperate to find the "real" person ( Read more... )

How to become a celebrity academic.* Broadcasters are looking for academics** who can fascinate and sparkle***. How do you get in on the action?*So that they can call on you whenever they need somebody to give a spurious slick of srs academe to their programme ( Read more... )