April 22, 2013 – 10:46 pm
Chrissie Amphlett and the Divinyls provided a decent chunk of the soundtrack to my young life; reports of her early death (aged 53) hit me in the childhood memories, hard, much like the arrest of Rolf Harris, or pictures of Berliners crawling over the remains of the Wall. I have, by saying those things, disclosed [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Also posted in Books, Fark!, Literature, Popular culture
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Tagged Ayn Rand, Bleak House, Chrissie Amphlett, cultural capital, DC Comics, Dr Who, Ender's Game, geekiness, geeks, high culture, Jane Austen, Jarndyce v Jarndyce, literary criticism, National Organisation for Marriage, Orson Scott Card, Reason Foundation, Star Trek, Star Wars, Superman, the Divinyls, Tolstoy, Ursula Le Guin
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February 3, 2013 – 9:06 am
A laugh out loud moment. From here (via) Something for all the Star Trek fans out there. For those not Star Trek fans, an explanation: After sitting through four years of dull interspecies protocol seminars and tactical maneuvers groundwork, you successfully graduated from Starfleet Academy. As a newly commissioned Federation security officer, your first assignment [...]
For those of you who read either the Age or Andrew Bolt, you will be aware of this article, which points out the following: More than a third of the winners of Australia’s most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award, are now out of print. Of the 53 books that have been awarded the [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Also posted in Australia, Books, Bring Laws and Gods, England, Literature
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Tagged Andrew Bolt, Antony Harwood, Michael Heyward, Miles Franklin Award, Text Publishing, The Hand that Signed the Paper, The Kindly Ones
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The title of this post reveals the Latin quip (by the Roman satirist Juvenal, in his 10th Satire, 77-81) from which Suzanne Collins derived the name of her fictional dystopian country in The Hunger Games (Legal Eagle’s review and commentary is here). It means ‘bread and circuses’ and is part of a lengthy whinge where Juvenal [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Also posted in Children, Law, Literature, Popular culture, Welfare
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Tagged Ancient Rome, Juvenal, Marcus Aurelius, Martial, panem, panem et circenses, steven pinker, Suzanne Collins, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Hunger Games
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August 26, 2011 – 7:38 pm
Since getting linked to by three large blogs (Butterflies & Wheels, The Money Illusion and Marginal Revolution), our blog stats have gone up considerably (as in, they’ve doubled), and many of the new people seem to have stayed, at least as lurkers. With that in mind, it seems like a good idea to revive the [...]
For people who haven’t experienced online virtual worlds, no doubt they sound like a pretty weird thing. Although if you’re reading this post, you’re probably more than usually open to the idea of online communities in the first place – what is a blog but an online discussion point? Nonetheless, I don’t think I could [...]
By Legal Eagle
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Also posted in Animals, Economics, Intellectual property, Internet, Law
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Tagged Amaretto, Intellectual property, Law, online virtual worlds, Ozanimals, property, Second Life, tamagotchi, tamagotchi effect, virtual horses, virtual property, World of Warcraft
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[SL: I used to think I'd read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, and I have, but my reading depth in the two genres pales in comparison with Lorenzo's efforts, and probably with Legal Eagle's, too, if I'm to be honest. I've read enough, though, to appreciate that readers can become ghettoized, much like [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Also posted in Books, Guest Post, Literature, Religion
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Tagged C. S. Lewis, deepak Lal, isaiah berlin, Jacqueline Carey, Julian Gough, Kylie Chan, L. E. Modestit Jnr, Lois McMaster Bujold, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Norman Cohn, Sarah Monette
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It’s really annoying. You go to all the trouble of arranging a Royal Zombie Wedding Celebration and nobody comes… …because they’re kettled by the police a few blocks away being stopped and searched, questioned, arrested and drug tested. “Sorry son, you’re positive for formaldehyde. We’ll have to take you in…” We asked if we could [...]
By DeusExMacintosh
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Also posted in Britain, Events, Fark!, Free Speech, General, Human/Civil rights, Law, Media, Personal liberty, Philosophy, Politics, Popular culture, Sexuality, Skeptics, Society
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Tagged Banksy, british monarchy, british police, Chris Knight, constitutional convention, FITwatch, flashmob, Forward Intelligence Taskforce, Liberty, London, magna carta, metropolitan police, muslims against crusades, parliament, police, protest, public order, quakers, queer resistance, royal family, royal wedding, section 44, section 60, starbucks, stop and search, street party, the westminster system, UK parliament, zombie arrests, zombie flashmob, zombie royal wedding celebration, zombies
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February 1, 2011 – 9:09 am
It’s no secret around the place that I’m a bit of a cricket nerd, but my childhood fondness for cricket opened the door to a whole field of knowledge: that field was statistics, and to this day it’s the only area of mathematics in which I dare claim any competency. Batting averages. Bowling averages. Run [...]
October 15, 2010 – 4:38 am
[SL: This follows on from here, and gives more backstory to Andreius Linnaeus, who is in the process of turning into the Roman version of a Chartist. It's a bit too British for the final version, which is why it's been excised, but it still works as narrative. Note: The first post on my forthcoming [...]
