[There’s a nice shiny PDF version of this post, if you’d prefer that.] I should explain. This is a blog post that got out of hand. The starting point was straightforward enough. In November 2013, the BBC broadcast Steven Moffat’s ’The Day of the Doctor’, the centrepiece of its year-long programming to celebrate ...
[The week that both George Martin and Ken Adam died . . .] PRESENTER: [Off-mic] . . . just leave it at the top of the stairs. No, no, it’s fine. Yes. Yes. Thank you. FX: HEAVY BOX BEING DROPPED. PRESENTER: This week saw the death of great Anglo-German film designer, Ken Adam. Dr. Strangelove, ...
No, it’s no good. I just don’t have it in me to be all cheery and supportive and welcoming, in the manner of Bonnie’s genuinely meme-ish idea. Anyway, if my stats are any guide — and if they’re not, why do I have them? — most of the hits to this blog are from people ...
[A comment made elsewhere, turned into a rough-and-ready post here, because it mostly stands on its own.] IMO one of the best things about approaching the world from a rational/sceptical perspective is the ability/willingness/whatever to avoid either ad hominem attacks or argument by authority: arguments are supported and ...
A few days ago I was a bit of a dick on Twitter, about Twitter. The specifics of the issue aren’t really worth rehashing — except to be clear that they related to private accounts and the swirl of surrounding etiquette. This post is more of a general tour of some thoughts about Twitter, and ...
I’m leaving Los Angeles. Not tomorrow, not next week, not even later this year, but tempus doing the fugitting thing it does will mean that it seems scarily soon. At any rate, it’s something I’m working towards, and that’s a good thing in my life. It’s not hard to come to the conclusion, ...
[Many spoilers ahead, so caveat lector.] Among many other factors — financial, emotional, psychological — the theoretical factor that drove my work towards a PhD (in automatic story generation) off that Thelma and Louise cliff was the growing realisation not just that meta-level processing by readers/viewers of a story is, ...
Watching an episode of Miranda Hart’s new sitcom tonight pulled me back to something I’ve been thinking about for a while — and slightly unsettled by. The co-writer on much of the series is James Cary, whose work I’ve come across a few times. He’s also co-written the majority of Milton Jones’s ...
The debate sparked by this year’s billboard campaign by Ariane Sherine and the British Humanist Association — not the campaign itself, which is crystal clear, but the subsequent debate — turns out to be as muddy and straw-man-ish as one might expect. The campaign slogan itself — “Please don’t label me. Let ...
Two quick thoughts on the Berlin Wall’s 20th. The first is how moving it was to see the photos of Gorbachev with Merkel in the middle of the crowds on the bridge that I mostly — in a cheap, pop-culture sort of way — associate with Michael Caine and the film of Funeral in Berlin. ...