It's in the news again today: Israel-Palestine peace talks. So Channel 4 News naturally seized the opportunity with both hands to make an in-depth report into how evil Israel is last night. It's amazing that a major, well respected source like that can get away with such plainly biased reporting. But then again most aspects of modern journalism are ( Read more... )

It's funny. I really don't find supermodels attractive. And I'm not just saying that to try to appear like a 'new man'. I just think there's a point at which being beautiful becomes something ugly in itself; we can picture beauty as a circle, where if you follow the curve too far around it lurches back into unattractiveness. Most supermodels cross ( Read more... )

I'll be going back to Japan in three weeks' time, and let me tell you, my mouth is already watering at the prospect of again being able to eat out at truly great, cheap restaurants every night of the week.

I think people are aware that the Japanese have a distinct cuisine and that they like their fish, but that's mostly where knowledge ends. Well, ( Read more... )

One thing that annoys me about being politically conscious or aware in British (and probably Western) society is that there are basically only two 'packages', sort of like different set menus in a Chinese restaurant, with everybody subscribing to one or the other. So, either you read the Guardian, like contemporary art, are pro-choice, pro- ( Read more... )

Let me tell you three things that I've discovered happen to a man after he starts living with a woman.

1. His tee-shirts and shirts are no longer his own property. They're on loan to him to wear when he's out shopping or at work, of course, but they're always ready to be recalled at a moment's notice and used for pajamas by his woman. He doesn't ( Read more... )

I have a hard time getting worked up about civil liberties. They're the talk of the town at the moment in British public life, mainly because of two things: the government is planning to issue ID cards to all legal UK residents; and there are calls for extending the time limit for detention of terror suspects without charge from 28 days to 56 ( Read more... )

We watched 10 Things I Hate About You last night; one of those films that just happens to be on and which you become unavoidably sucked into, like a televisual mind-flayer. Actually, I loved it. It could hardly fail being based on such foolproof material - it would be difficult not to make a good high-school reworking of The Taming of the Shrew, ( Read more... )

Bilbo linked to a damn interesting damninteresting article today, about mate-choice in guppies and what it can tell us about the "wedding ring effect" - the commonly noticed phenomenon that women seem to slightly prefer men who are already spoken for. (I've actually noticed this phenomenon myself - when I got engaged to Mamiko I suddenly saw an ( Read more... )

There is a certain meta-narrative of war these days that sees it as unremittingly brutalising, hellish and cruel. Mostly it stems from the Cold War, I think - all of those mean, nasty conflicts in places like Vietnam, Angola, El Salvador and Afghanistan were like hammer blows against the very profession of soldiery. It was Remembrance Sunday this ( Read more... )

My Master's thesis is going to be published in a legal journal. It's not finalised yet, so we'll have to wait and see, but it's something to be excited about. I've always wanted to see my name in print - I just never expected that it would be at the top of an article about cultural pluralism and the Human Rights Committee. I was hoping more for the ( Read more... )