Just in case anyone misses this, here are some moving comments from an Eastern European, Milena Popova, on the "bigotgate scandal" (the "scandal" being that Brown apologised ( Read more... )

Every now and then historians get bad reviews. But it was noted that Amazon.co.uk was posting bad reviews by the same anonymous person of all Russian history books except those by Orlando Figes, the celebrated historian of Russia; the same reviewer was ecstatic about Figes' books. Figes was suspected of doing the reviews himself, and defended ( Read more... )

He's won!

Last year I celebrated St Patrick's Day by getting the management of the hotel in Orlando where the Conference in the Fantastic in the Arts takes place to withdraw their sponsorship of a cut price cocktail: the Irish car bomb. (I am still in shock at the insensitivity this reveals, and-since I am not in Orlando this year-can't quite bear to ask ( Read more... )

According to Johann Hari in today's Independent:

The right-wing magazine US Investors' Daily claimed that if Stephen Hawking had been British, he would have been allowed to die at birth by its "socialist" healthcare system. Hawking responded with a polite cough that he is British, and "I wouldn't be here without the NHS".That's only one of the ( Read more... )

rhionnach reminds us that it is Towel Day today. But let's not forget John Keel either; let's wear our sprig of lilac, and eat our egg.

"They did the job they didn't have to do, and they died doing it."

How Do They Rise Up.

Here's an intriguing project. Rhett Dashwood (there's a name right out of a romantic novel) has found an architectural or geographic feature for every letter of the alphabet by studying Googlemaps very obsessively and coming up with appropriate aerial views... Some of them are obvious (a stadium for O), but some are rather beautiful, or surprising ( Read more... )

Can any brilliant LJ person help here ( Read more... )

I have read three out of the Clarke shortlist so far, although have so far only blogged one; only another three to get through (including the shortest and the longest) before next Sunday's "Not the Clarke Award" panel at Eastercon, which I am chairing. I am going to be busy ( Read more... )

I bought Steven Saylor's A Gladiator Only Dies Once: The Further Investigations of Gordianus the Finder at the same time as Wishart's Illegally Dead; in both cases I think I have completed my sets of my two favourite Roman detectives. Gordianus is the slicker, the more sober, and the less inclined to come out with twenty-first century ( Read more... )