With David Bowie, Victoria Wood, Prince and many others, there's a lot of it around. Some argue George R. R. Martin is scripting 2016; others point to more prosaic factors, like it being about the time you'd expect Baby Boomers who came to fame in the explosion of celebrity in the 60s to die off. (Although that doesn't work for Victoria Wood or ( Read more... )

As the man said, it's an absolutely brilliant name. But the forces of repression are seeking to steal this minor crumb of circus fun from the good people of Britain.

Jo Johnson was not getting it on multiple levels. Firstly, and more boringly, he was seeming to claim it as a Departmental responsibility, on the grounds that the Department for ( Read more... )

My kids are getting old enough now that it's easy enough to make the mistake of assuming they're adults who happen to be pretty short, and very naive about a lot of things - but patchily, since there's plenty stuff they know more about than I do (and they often like to talk about that stuff). Most things you can explain to them, provided (a) you ( Read more... )

I saw the film of The Martian recently, and noticed that several reviewers called it competence porn. There's Apollo 13, too, which until The Martian came out is one of the few examples of a film with adventure and excitement but no bad guys. More recently, there's James May's The Reassembler, three short TV episodes of nothing more than James May ( Read more... )

The new 12-sided pound coin is in production, and will be introduced from March 2017. And it has 12 sides!

That means that when I said, back when it was announced in March 2014:I confidently predict that one result of this will be that the shape will change, so that it's constant-diameter, like the 50p and 20p pieces. Which I think in turn means ( Read more... )

I have a general issue with misreading things as being funnier, weirder, or ruder than they actually are. Or even all three.

( Cut for the f-word... )

What do you lot think about console gaming platforms?

What I can gather quickly:
( Read more... )

I am currently loving the Wikipedia article on unintended consequences and particularly the template box at the bottom, that includes gems like the Abilene paradox, the Jevons paradox, and the Streisand effect.

This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/315162.html, where there are
( Read more... )

Things I'm not posting about:

• Climate change and the frankly terrifying recent weather
• Donald Trump
• Political attacks on the weakest in society because let's face it, they caused the great recession in the first place
• Brexit and the average quality of political argument
• Macroeconomics and negative interest rates

**FIXME: Daddy, I heard on Newsround that they're thinking of making the school day longer, so it goes on to 4.30 ( Read more... )