Reading this review of a book which kicks off as a reversal-riff on Kafka's 'Metamorphosis', and then proceeds into what even the reviewer suggests is 'slightly clunking' political satire. We note that the author has suggested that his protag champions an 'unorthodox economic theory', which is one that seems similar, but not entirely the same, to ( Read more... )

- Lo, this thing is the next thing.
[T]he joy of divorce parties.
Okay, rites de passages, they are a thing, and the article cites cultural traditions which have rituals to mark the transition from married life to singledom. In Judaism, a divorce document called a get is presented from husband to wife, in the presence of rabbis and witnesses, to ( Read more... )

I was reading this today and boggling more than somewhat:
Athleisure, barre and kale: the tyranny of the ideal woman: How we became suckers for the hard labor of self-optimization.
Because I feel whoever that is addressed to, I am not among the the 'we' or the 'you' who is being addressed.
Which is perhaps because I am now An Old, but I don't think ( Read more... )

A few recent niggles and peeves.
Eurostar onboard wifi FAIL: I can bear with a proper announcement that alas, it is not working on this particular trip, but I am yay irked when it is, apparently, functional, only, really only in some very specialised sense that means, pretty much not, actually.
Hotel which did indeed provide free wifi but room ( Read more... )

This is downright depressing: Your starter for 10: why are so few women taking part in University Challenge?: Women say online abuse is barrier to University Challenge. Former contestants cite social media hostility and ‘confidence gap’ as barriers to taking part in TV quiz.
Okay, nearly half a century ago (yes, I'm still thinking about that peach ( Read more... )

Letter in today's Guardian that made me chortle and go WTF more or less simultaneously (second one down): Another Trojan horse is revealed by Amanda Blanc’s belief that “children born today will not need to learn to drive”.... yet another human skill is set to vanish. Driving a car is one of those complex learned activities we need for our mental ( Read more... )

Or, Nature comes to the city, further to yesterday's thoughts.
Last night on the way home a - probably youngish - fox crossed our path.
Thinking further on the migration of vulpes vulpes into the urban environment, do we not suppose that elderly foxes go, 'These young foxes could not tell a vole from a shrew or a fieldmouse: but ask them whether ( Read more... )

Should probably say that my part of London is pretty distant from Parson's Green.
***
Dept of Fortuity: when you see news of a book that you would be really interested in reading, at eye-watering academic press prices, even for the ebook: and in a day or so having a request from the very same press to referee a book proposal for them, in return for ( Read more... )

Mixed martial arts is the fastest-growing sport on Earth.... what does this bloody spectacle say about the world we live in?
I don't know what, if anything, it says about the world we live in, but that article suggests to me someone who does not know a great deal about the history of sport/popular entertainment - I am like, o tempora, o mores, what ( Read more... )

Regular readers will have noticed that I will allude to earlier panics about the Evils of Modern Life and these here things that the current generation do that were entirely unknown in the blissful Wordsworthian days of the writer's own childhood (the equivalent phenomena of which such jeremiahs have clearly forgotten) whenever someone starts ( Read more... )