Yearly Archives: 2007

Weasel me up

Posted on September 13, 2007 by acb

Out they come, dazed and bewlidered,1 from their bunkers to explain what they meant all along. The latest is Sir David Manning, Blair’s ambasador to Washington, who told the New Statesman: “He [Mr Blair] believed the WMD story. It’s not … Continue reading →

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A bad film

Posted on September 10, 2007 by acb

I am a huge fan of Aki Kaurismäki so the latest film he’s made was a correspondingly large disappointment: Lights in the Dusk is the story of a remarkably stupid and stubborn man who goes to jail rather than betray … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Hot from the dept of the Bleeding Obvious

Posted on September 6, 2007 by acb

I have grown interested in something called Terror Management Theory, which suggests that people find cultural escapes from the burden of their own mortality; in general they become more attached to their own traditions and more hostile to others. In … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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An unusual comment problem

Posted on September 4, 2007 by acb

An interesting story from the Swedish blogosphere: Carl Bildt, the former Prime Minister, now foreign minister, has a blog. He is in fact a natural blogger, picky, aggressive, articulate and contemptuous of lower beings; and his blog is a real … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Sweden | 2 Comments

Quick Notes

Posted on September 1, 2007 by acb

Getcha getcha kulcha here … Torrent links to every one of Bergman’s films. Found through the blog of a leader writer on SvD: it’s hard to imagine any British paper’s leader writer doing that, or, indeed, any British cabinet minister … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather | 1 Comment

Brief Lit Crit

Posted on August 29, 2007 by acb

I’m seventy pages into Oliver Morton’s Eating the Sun but that’s all right because I only started last night and I am writing at the breakfast table. It’s very good indeed. Go out and buy it if you have any … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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It’s a miracle, not a pension

Posted on August 28, 2007 by acb

The Times of India had the excellent idea of finding out what happened to the woman who was meant to have been miraculously cured by a miracle blessed by Mother Teresa. There are, or course, disputes about the cure. Medical … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in God | 5 Comments

Bundle of stuff

Posted on August 28, 2007 by acb

Connotea — a sort of deli.cio.us for scientists, which picks up bibliographic information from sites like pubmed when it stores bookmarks therefrom. If you are doing something else while running a registry optimiser, you, too, can set all your personal … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Posted in Blather, nördig | 8 Comments

Reading Jared Diamond makes me hopeless

Posted on August 19, 2007 by acb

I’ve been wanting to read Collapse for ages. It’s perhaps a quarter too long, where he tries to be encyclopaedic; but it has some really first-class, thought-provoking parts, at the end of which I am even more pessimistic than before. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Low Score in TCR defender

Posted on August 18, 2007 by acb

The rules of Tottenham Court Road Defender are simple: you start somewhere near Leicester Square,and walk up Charing Cross Road, then Tottenham Court Road, between the book shops, the camera shops, the musical instrument shops, and the emporia of electronic … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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