What is it about Ian Bell? By which I mean, why does the poor fellow arouse such animosity? No other player in the current England team sees his failures magnified and successes downplayed to such an extent. Even when he bats well, his critics use this as evidence that, damn it, he should be batting
Via Isaac Chotiner, I see The Times’ movie critics have compiled a list of the “Top 20” movie endings of all time. Isaac is more enamoured than I am of the list, which concludes thusly: 5.Chinatown 4. E.T. 3. Casablanca 2. Butch Cassidy 1. Carrie Well, fine. But what about, in no particular order: The
That’s the wicket-keeper not the misanthropic terrier. In the light of my defence of Ian Bell, a reader asks if I could write something about Gloucestershire’s Jack Russell. Certainly! Jack Russell was a blazing beacon of excellence. He was, in his pomp, the best wicket-keeper in the world. Obviously, he was traduced by England and
Good grief. Just to be clear, if you’re the Prime Minister and some hack puts it to you, idiotically, that “Some women say you remind them of Heathcliff”… you do not reply, even jokingly, “Absolutely. Well, maybe an older Heathcliff, a wiser Heathcliff.” Madness. Needless to say the papers are having some sport with this:
Reihan: If [David] Cameron embraced an agenda like the one outlined in Grand New Party, he would likely be accused of being a libertarian radical hellbent on destroying the most cherished parts of Britain’s welfare state. This, alas, is true. Too bad. Which reminds me that I’ve been lax in not blogging about Messrs Salam
A BBC Scotland documentary on organ sales is on TV tonight. The reporter discovers, shockingly, that: There is a black market in kidneys here in the UK. I secretly filmed people trying to sell me their kidneys, exploiting the vulnerability of someone who is desperate to help a family member. They are also trying to
Matt Yglesias writes: the reality is that as long as Obama thinks he’s going to be wielding executive authority, he’s going to be useless as a check on out-of-control executive authority. This is entirely, even obviously, correct. In a British context, this is why David Davis’s seemingly quixotic campaign is immensely valuable: his re-election and
I don’t know who you are and I have, bless, no idea how you ended up here but for some strange reason I am happy that this blog is where you come to when you Google “libertarian spiders“. We’re all armed arachnids here… I mean, what could be better than that? UPDATE: On the other
I am puzzled. Puzzled that is, by the British attitude towards America’s gun culture. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s (in my view) common sense ruling that the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual, rather than a collective, right to bear arms, British commentators responded by, well, by throwing their hands up in the air
I may have been too harsh recently. I scoffed at the idea of a lettuce “bolting” and made merry with the New York Times leader writer who suggested that, now that summer is (allegedly) here, lettuces were prone to do this. Now, rather inconveniently, my sister, who in addition to being a very fine artist
One’s not supposed to say this, but by god it’s boring since Hillary was beaten… (Ditto, though in a minor key, Romney’s defeat. He was at least, like Hillary, properly and rightly hateable…)
Apparently Facebook has a new “blog network” facility. To what end, I know not. That’s not the point, surely? Anyway it’s obvious that good things must come of this somehow, somewhere down the line. So, there you have it: join the Debatable Land network here. You know it makes sense.
Newspapers are comfortable places to work. True, you find yourself working with a disturbing number of misfits and socially inadequate neurotics. But there are compensations. For instance, there are few more comfortable berths in any trade than settling down to life in a newspaper leader writing office. Other pleasing stations – foreign editor, golf correspondent,
Words fail me: re: Civics [Kathryn Jean Lopez] A totally crazy Saturday-morning thought: Wouldn’t George W. Bush make an awesome high-school government teacher? Wouldn’t it be something if his post-presidential life would up being that kind of post-service service? How’s that for a model? Who needs Harvard visiting chairs and high-end lectures? How about Crawford
It’s that time again folks so here is the M XI, to follow those led by Armstrong, Benaud, Constantine, Dexter, Edrich, Fry, Gower, Hutton, Imran , Jardine, Kapil. and Lloyd 1. Arthur Morris (AUS) 2. Vijay Merchant (IND)3. Charles Macartney (AUS)4. PBH May (ENG) (Capt)5. Stan McCabe (AUS)6. Keith Miller (AUS)7. 8. Rod Marsh (AUS)
To all my American friends, and readers, have a wonderful 4th! Here’s a classic American movie trailer, matched to Gene Pitney’s song of the same name: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Colour me unmoved. I notice that, so far at any rate, all the contributors at The Corner are too busy hailing the former Senator’s service and lauding his fervent anti-communism to note that these convictions led him to embrace some, shall we say, distasteful allies? From a British point of view, Helms’ most significant, or
Via Clive, here are some of the “more difficult” questions from the new US naturalisation test given to all would-be Yanks. Foolishly, I forgot the first words of the US constitution but, happily and much to my relief, got the other 19 correct. I suspect y’all would pass too…
Heaven knows, Bob Geldof is a bore these days. But one of the splendid, indeed agreeable, elements of David Davis’s civil liberties campaign is that it forces one to question some of one’s own prejudices. It compels us to think again and remember that allies can be found in unlikely places. Thus it was that
Henry Farrell has a new paper on blogs, blog readers and political polarisation (Pdf here). Finding: First – blog readers seem to exhibit strong homophily. That is to say, they overwhelmingly choose blogs that are written by people who are roughly in accordance with their political views. Left wingers read left wing blogs, right wingers