Try this one for size. Lovely.
My piece here on how far if at all one should feel sympathetic towards a motorist who gets distracted and causes the death of a cyclist has prompted several interesting comments: But “unlucky accident”? Sorry, no. I am a motorist and a bike rider. Several years ago, during an urban […]
Some US trials mutate into epic morality plays or vasty political metaphors that (it is said) are a Microcosm of Society. Especially when there is a ‘racial’ element involved (or said to be involved) the fairness or otherwise of the process and the eventual outcome is scrutinised in astonishing detail […]
Here is a nicely turned piece by David Mitchell at the Observer (yes, it still exists) about manners. I think they both sound horrible and they deserve one another. The more time people like that spend arguing with each other, the less chance any of the rest of us will […]
It is interesting how quickly these heroic WikiLeakers plummet into self-ridicule. Here is E Snowden moaning about his current situation: He says President Obama is putting pressure on the countries from which he has requested political asylum. “The president ordered his vice president to pressure the leaders of nations from […]
What a great story over at PunditWire about the mysterious life and suicide in 1913 of Colonel Alfred Redl, a senior officer in the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s army. Was he spying for Russia? This passage caught my eye: But the detectives had been favored by a second stroke of luck that […]
My own meetings with Margaret Thatcher are described at the Commentator: My final substantive meeting with her came in 2009 at a small private dinner in London. She was frail but on lively form, making many religious references. There was a cheering consensus that Jesus had been ‘sound’ in his […]
A most elegant article by John Jeremiah Sullivan about consciousness in both humans and animals, describing how over many centuries human views on this subject have changed as we have come to know more: Entomologists mastered the dance code of the bees and spoke it to them, using a tiny […]
Those readers who have a significant pond may have problems with extracting voluminous pond-weeds. We today were advised on how best to clear them. Tie a rope securely to a metal rake, then heave the rake out into the middle of the pond. Wait until the sharp end sinks as […]
Read this fine article at by Derek Thompson at The Atlantic on how the cost of flying has fallen so far over the decades: … consumers have enjoyed an amazing (and unsustainable) three decades in cheap flying while the price of fuel, which accounts for more than a third of […]
