Month: August 2007
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Reason and Superstition on TV
What an interesting week for sceptics on television. On Monday night, Richard Dawkins began a two part documentary entitled Enemies of Reason. Dawkins takes on a great many things – aside from religion – under that premise that superstition has taken over from reason. I can’t really fault him on much. At one point he…
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Amazon Recommends
I love Amazon. They contribute literally pennies to the running of this site. Let’s put it this way, I’ve never actually reached the threshold for getting even an Amazon token from them from people clicking the links on this site. Nonetheless, I use Amazon a reasonable amount, and they send lots of email advertising as…
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MusicFirst
I’m often going on about the iniquity of record companies and the things that they do or try to do. In particular, the foiled (so far) attempts to increase the performance copyright from the current fifty years. But I must admit, I do have sympathy with the current campaign, highlighted in this week’s Music Week…
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Scotland for Scottish People
In this week’s Marketing magazine, Ray Snoddy discusses the Alex Salmond proposed Scottish Broadcasting Commission (not online currently, but it should appear somewhere here – free registration may be required). The gist of the argument is that national news emanating from London, does not cover Scottish issues properly and indeed ignores them. Many discussions about…
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Ascent
Jed Mercurio first sprang to attention with the wonderful medical TV series, Cardiac Arrest. At the time he was a practising doctor and wrote under a pseudonym. He went on to write a novel, Bodies, in a similar vein, and of course this was made into that rarest of things – a decent BBC Three…
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End Games
Earlier this year, Michael Dibdin died, aged 60. But he left us a final Aurelio Zen novel. I’ve been reading the series about the Italian detective for years, and so it was with a slightly heart that I picked up this latest tome, knowing that it was be my last acquaintance with the man. If…
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9Tail Fox
A couple of years ago, I went along to Borders after work one evening and saw Jon Courtenay Grimwood and a couple of other authors talk about their new SF books. Prior to that, the only Grimwood I’d read were his science fiction book review columns for The Guardian. This tale is quite intriguing. Bobby…
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Dumbing Down?
I’m all for inclusiveness but, let me list the specialist subjects on Mastermind this evening: The life and career of Henry Ford German wines The life and works of Frida Kahle The life and career of Jennifer Aniston No. That last one is not a typo. Guess who came last? You guessed right! At the…
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Why B*g B*****r Does More Harm Than Good For Channel 4
Every year, when the likes of me complains that one quarter Channel 4’s peak time output over the year is used up by a single programme, others will point me to all the viewing figures it achieves. It massively bumps up the channel’s share across the year, and reports even suggest that it accounts for…
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Disappearing Children
Over the weekend, during the start of the Premier League we saw pitchside advertising, and yellow bracelets in rememberance of Madeleine McCann. News coverage was also ongoing, marking 100 days of her disappearance. Now I won’t talk about her particular case any more because I have no real knowledge of it. But it does seem…
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Piracy On The High Street
The last time I went to the cinema, there was a table just past the ticket desks where, should a guard have been on duty, they checked bags for nefarious things such as video cameras. In fact, I had my DSLR in my bag at the time and was looking forward to having a conversation…