Category Archives: Uncategorized

Tomorrow Never Retires

“We’re replacing you, Bond,” said M. “It’s nothing personal, but you’ve become a bit slow on the trigger. There is a performance plan that HR could do with you but -” “It would just delay the inevitable,” said Bond, never a … Continue reading

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castling

“If chess were being invented today, it would never get past the test stage,” my brother said at Christmas, in one of those comedy riffs of his that could be original or borrowed from the classics and I’ll never know. … Continue reading

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rip the things we forgot to save

An emerging list of lost Internet value: Television Without Pity, where the best posts ever were Stee’s reviews of the original Temptation Island Fametracker‘s “Two Stars One Slot” feature. Where are we now supposed to go for verification that Leo … Continue reading

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my other bus is a volvo

I used to laugh at Jonathan Richmond‘s passionate advocacy of buses as more flexible and cost-effective than trains. If you put in a train line, it stays, I thought, while bus lines are easy to cut in times of austerity, … Continue reading

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munich games

A great joy of visiting other universities is reading their wall junk. (Mine has little wall junk, preferring table litter.) At LMU Munich, there are numerous ads for rooms in shared apartments (Wohngruppe, WGs) and for human experiment subjects. Psychology … Continue reading

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local news values

Permissible news topics in England: 1. What the Prime Minister and other top pols say officially, and what the opposition says about what they say officially, and what the government says about what the opposition says about what they say … Continue reading

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television: kennedy center honors 2013

The Kennedy Center Honors are where power briefly pays homage to talent, especially unpolitical, upbeat, pretty talent. Britain has its Queen’s Birthday and New Year honors, Finland has its Independence Day medals and gala, and this what we have. Every … Continue reading

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requiem for an empire

I understand something happened in Finland today. Two years ago I might have learned about it in a very unpleasant 6 am phone call. Today I learned about it when the US woke up and my father and brother sent … Continue reading

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film: still the boss (springsteen and i)

Springsteen and I is a brilliantly unusual rock documentary made from films taken by fans of themselves talking about themselves and Bruce. They include a Danish groundskeeper who speaks with the twang of the American South, suburban mums, factory workers, … Continue reading

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art: british open

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, June 10 to August 18 (hurry!), London A few weeks ago I went to the RA Summer Exhibition, guided by Liz Z, who was going for the fourth time. I had never heard of it. Apparently … Continue reading

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to tweet or not to tweet

This flyer comes from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet. The quality of the production is not at issue here; Hamlet isn’t one of my favorite plays but I thought this was amazing and would see it again. I particularly … Continue reading

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theater: pulse fringe report

When I Was Old / When I Get Young, Lucy Ellinson: A dozen Ipswichers representing most of the healthy age groups presented monologues, all interesting enough and some brilliant. The staging looked easy, reproducible – in a word, franchisable – … Continue reading

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