Shiny and Chrome

The man who cut out his own appendix. There’s a potential joke to be made here about socialised medicine, but I’m too in awe. (The jokes could go either way, I suppose... mine would be on the “Bow Down to the Awesome Resolve of its Surgeons!” side.)

If you don’t speak French, how can you judge if Charlie Hebdo is racist?

Inspirational Tasmanian MHA and Senator Christine Milne’s journey.

Windows is Shutting Down.

Why the New York of the movies doesn’t exist any more.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter Twenty.

Self-driving trucks are going to crash into the US economy.

Time-lapse mining from internet photos. The coolest image-manipulation I’ve seen since seam carving.

“Why should you thank someone for not killing you?”

Octoploid, Bartholomew the Rhinoceros, and more sculpture by Jud Turner.

On the road again with George Miller. Fourteen-year-old me from 1982 grabbed me by the throat and dragged me to the nearest cinema to watch Mad Max: Fury Road on the big screen. It was stunning: every bit as good as the hype has it. Rewatching the originals over the weekend was worthwhile, too; even Thunderdome came off better than I’d remembered.

22 May 2015 · Weblog

Y’all Doomed

There’s no point posting most of the post-mortem links I gathered after the election, but here’s a few that stuck.

Paul Mason: Labour haven’t just failed to win—it’s worse than that.

John Prescott: Labour lost the election 5 years ago.

Inside the Milibunker: the last days of Ed.

The reinvention of the SNP.

Six reasons you don’t want to be George Osborne right now.

The arguments against the Human Rights Act are coming. They will be false.

Which human right would you give away?

22 May 2015 · Politics

It Had to Be Done

14 May 2015 · Politics

It was a record year for turnover at the top of the UK single charts, but I haven’t had much to say about many of 2000’s number ones. Here are some more of the honourable exceptions.

Fixed Terms

With only a few days to go, some legal and economic views on the General Election. Minority governments under the Westminster system. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act. The myth of British Euroskepticism. Paul Krugman on austerity.

Australia, Renovation Nation. Episode 2. Episode 3.

Have these solar-powered blood banks saved lives in Nepal? You can only hope.

Gone.

India searches for the perfect cookstove. (We got a rocket stove to take camping last year. It’s so efficient we’ve ditched our portable barbecue and bags of charcoal; a few handfuls of dry sticks can cook a meal.)

Why can’t we read anymore?

Class privilege and “doing what you love”.

Many undergraduates don’t see plagiarism as a big deal. Looks like they should.

4 May 2015 · Weblog

I’ve spent the past week and a half preoccupied with Blur’s new album The Magic Whip, which is better than anyone had any right to expect. It’s fast become my favourite Blur album since The Great Escape, possibly even since Parklife, which for an unexpected comeback is some sort of miracle; it’s as if they never went away.

A few blurry links: interviews and analyses at DIY and The Sunday Times; reviews at Drowned In Sound and The Guardian; Graham Coxon and Stephen Street talk about it.

4 May 2015 · Music

April 2015