gaspode_girl

• FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: The Odds of Airborne Terror
  
  
  How likely is it that your flight will be attacked? Roughhly one chance in 10 million, according to Nate Silver.
  
  
  (tags: war)
  
  
• Sesame Street - Monsterpiece Theater: Waiting for Elmo
  
  
  
  (tags: funny youtube)
  
  
• God bless Twitter
  
  
  Pete Birks makes a good point about how Eurostar's problems demonstrate that the public are increasingly gaining access to mass media as producers
  
  
  (tags: internet twitter)
  
  

A few months back I did a poll on books published in 1959, 1909, 1859, 1809, 1759, 1609 and 1509. For the publications to be commemorated in 2010, I found the pickings much slimmer for the older set of anniversaries, but on the other hand 1960 appears to have been a rather good year (indeed, deserving a poll of its own). Here are the top books from 1910 and 1860 (again ranked by LibraryThing popularity).

( poll )

I'm in the middle of Framley Parsonage at the moment.

These 50 books were all published in 1960. (I have selected them by the scientific method of identifying the top 46 from that year on LibraryThing, plus another four that I happened to have read myself.)

( poll )

NB some of these I wasn't sure of myself and had to check, as follows:
For Your Eyes Only - is a collection of James Bond short stories
Jeeves in the Offing - is the one which starts with Bertie discovering that he is engaged to Bobbie Wickham (when her mother phones up, sobbing, to ask if "the dreadful news" is true); also features Aunt Dahlia, the psychiatrist Sir Roderick Glossop and the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn, but not much Jeeves
A Burnt-Out Case - is the particularly depressing Graham Greene set in a leper colony in the Congo
Dorsai! - an episodic book about Donal Graeme, warrior extraordinaire
The Adventure Of The Christmas Pudding etc - is a short story collection mainly featuring Poirot
False Scent - is the one with an aging actress who is murdere with ehr own insecticide
The Clue in the Old Stagecoach - is the one where Nancy Drew searches for an antique stagecoach that, according to legend, contains something of great value to the people of Francisville

Happy to clarify any other cases where confusion is possible...

A letter of 22 September 1590 from Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin, to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, recommending fines and imprisonment as a method to force the Irish to accept the Reformed religion. Noted here because Sir Nicholas Whyte is mentioned as a dangerous liberal.

( Read more... )

From State Papers concerning the Irish Church, ed. W.M. Brady, 1868.

A couple of interesting screenshots of recently encountered FAIL. The first is from the BBC News Scotland website, where you would think they had some understanding of the geography of our fine nation.



It looks as if they just took a photo from the window. The second is something that came up in my Amazon recommendations. The reasoning they give for recommending it is bizarre. I think what it means is that they can recommend it because they know I have the tools with which to kill myself after attempting to use the recommended product:



Yes, that must be it.

Update: Should those of you with Cheezburger accounts wish to vote on the top one, here you are.

One of the early Torchwood books - set just before Cyberwoman, I think. Andy Lane has written some good Who novels and this too is excellent; good depictions of all the team (not much Ianto, but lots of Owen), and of how alien tech threatens to infilltrate Rhys and Gwen's relationship. I was also impressed by the first season Torchwood novel Border Princes, and on the basis of that and this will now be looking out for more of them.

Another dip into the sub-genre of African-American romance, as told by Beverly Jenkins, whose books are among the highest-rated on LibraryThing. If anything I enjoyed this slightly more than Jewel. Most of the action takes place in 1897 Philadelphia, with the last section in a free black town in Kansas (the fictional settlement of Henry Adams, where a lot of Jenkins' other books are apparently set). There is not much to the plot; former bank robber Teresa July and businessman Madison Nance are obviously destined for each other, and some detailed and well-written erotic passages explain how they make up their minds to accept this destiny. Jenkins does throw in a fair bit of political commentary as well - the dispute between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois, corrupt Republican party bosses, feminism (Teresa's sister-in-law is mayor of Henry Adams), certainly enough to keep me happy and maintain my interest. It's really not a type of book I would normally read, but I'll look out for more Jenkins in the charity bookshops.

• Reading Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" - Chapter XIV: The Rise of Constantine
  
  
  Diocletian's system does not long survive his abdication. His four succesors squabble among themselves, and at one point there are six mutually recognised rulers of different bits of the Roman Empire. But one of them, Constantine, defeats all the others, through superior statesmanship and military skill. "The successive steps of the elevation of Constantine, from his first assuming the purple at York, to the resignation of Licinius at Nicomedia, have been related with some minuteness and precision, not only as the events are in themselves both interesting and important, but still more as they contributed to the decline of the empire by the expense of blood and treasure, and by the perpetual increase, as well of the taxes as of the military establishment." The whole chapter is an impressive marshalling of historical facts, complex narrative and geography running from Britain to Asia Minor over a period of almost two decades.
  
  (tags: gibbon)

Well, I enjoyed it. RTD tends to do much better with penultimate episodes and then fumble the climax, so I hope that doesn't happen again this time. Particular comments below the cut, but if you want the collected wisdom of (part of) the internets, check here.

( Read more... )

...I could never get the missing line.

Yes, I know what the canonical version is, but I don't really believe it. What should it have been?

(And I never understood why it was always listed as "Boss Cat" in the BBC TV schedules, but that would be an ecumenical matter.)

Top Cat! The most effectual Top Cat! Whose intellectual Close friends get to call him TC... [dah dah dah dah diddle de dee] Top Cat! The indisputable Leader of the gang! He's the boss! He's a VIP! He's the championship! He's the most tip top - Top Cat!

I'll be posting more about this next week. The story's done, I've got permission to use the cover art, I've created some test ebooks in various formats. Now I'm finishing off the cover design and working on the press release.

So, what is it and what's it about? It's a 13,000 word CSI with magic novelette ... with something very different.

It's called Magical Crimes. It'll be priced at $0.99 and it'll available for download in all the popular ebook formats (epub, lit, lrf, prc, mobi and pdf), DRM free, in early January. Yes, there will be free snippets and, yes, there will be a competition. You'll be able to purchase it from Book View Cafe and all the major online book retailers.

I'll be posting the cover next week. It's ... eye-catching.

I some how have volunteered to drive himself some of the way into work.  Am I nuts??  I can't even walk outside my house let alone drive!!!!
I realised that I would have to do some driving tomorrow so I might as well get it over with however tomorrow I will have somebody in the car with me all of the time.  Oh Eeek!

I shouldn't even be up!  ok I know I would be on a normal Saturday but normal Saturdays don't follow Fridays that contain that amount of food.  I really was stuffed last night.  However beddy-byes had a new duvet cover on it and it's really lovely.

The up side of this morning is that it's 10 degrees warmer (4C) than this time yesterday (-6C)  but looking out you wouldn't know it.  OK now I wittering 'cause I'm trying to avoid getting dressed.  

I think that I'll snooze to Bridge to Terabithia - sorry sweetheart I know your in work.   However in taking full advantage of house to myself I'll be watching last nights Poirot (I don't think it's a repeat)

Ah well I'd better go :(

Young F got this jewel in his cracker yesterday:

Q: What kind of relationship does coral have with algae?
A: A symbiotic relationship.

Now, this answer turns out to be perfectly sound biology (so I at least learned something) but doesn't seem to me paticularly funny. Am I missing some point about, perhaps, two popular celebrities or fictional characters called Coral and Algy? Or is it just meant to be funny because coral is generally hard and algae generally squishy?

Yep, I have read the first of my Christmas presents: a nice half-dozen Tenth Doctor stories, originally published as separate comics and here as a single volume by IDW. I really bought it to read the first story, "The Whispering Gallery", which is by Leah and John, and am glad to say that I enjoyed it and most of the others (the exception being a typically cliched cute robot story in the middle). The standout, however, is Tony Lee's "The Time Machination", featuring Ten teaming up with H.G. Wells against Torchwood, with lots of other pleasing references to both New and particularly Old Who. Lee's The Forgotten was also excellent, and I shall look out for more of his work. And the collection as a whole is excellent value.

• bugshaw: Merry Christmas
  the Dalek nativity
  (tags: doctorwho christmas)

If you're having roast parsnips, drizzle some maple syrup over them just before they go into the oven. Nom!

Rereading this classic, which combines the horrors of the 1945 bombing of Dresden with the sfnal captivity of the hero by the aliens of Tralfamadore. Having first come to Vonnegut via Cat's Cradle and The Sirens of Titan as a teenager, I wasn't really sure what to make of this. Coming to it again a quarter-century later, I have a much deeper appreciation of Vonnegut's savaging of the surrealism of war, and of how trauma throws the rest of your life into a weird perspective. But I also find his attitude to women much more annoying - at least, to the women in the main part of the story, the mothers of Billy Pilgrim's children, Valencia Merble and Montana Wildhack (and Pilgrim's daughter Barbara). Having said that, the sanest character in the book is probably Mary O'Hare from the ostensibly autobiographical foreword; and it must also be admitted that most of the male characters are pretty unpleasant too.

Anyway, I can't think of many other sf novels which take the Second World War as their subject, and this is probably the best in that rather small set.

As seen here: Passengers rescued by Tornado.

It's rather wonderful in its way that when the electric-driven trains were being disabled by ice and snow, a good old-fashioned A1 Pacific steam loco could carry the stranded passengers to London.

He said: "It was a nice way to finish for Christmas, though I think some of the rescued passengers didn't realise they'd even been travelling on a steam train until they got off."

Hmm. I wonder what they thought the plume flowing back along the train from the front was, then.

(Steam trains are wondrous things, but I wouldn't really want them back in bulk. Electrics can run in almost any weather, as the Swiss can demonstrate, and they don't have to run on hydrocarbons.)

Turkey Ballentine from the butcher. Check.
Stinking Bishop. Check.
Wensleydale. Check.
Christmas cake. Check.
White Stilton. Check.
Gjetost. Check.
Cheese crackers. Check.
Peach Bellini mix. Check.
King Edwards (a rather ridiculous quantity, but they can live in the nice dark garage). Check.
On-stalk Brussel sprouts. Check.
Drive salted. Check.
Chocolates removed from doorstep into kitchen. Check. (I wonder how long they'd been there.)

That was a nice busy hour. Expensive, too.

Not a good day to be flying it seems. Especially not on a 737-800.