[ezcol_1half][/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end]I saw this, originating in the New Yorker, on FB just this morning. An Escher admirer for forty years and more, how could I resist? We don’t need this information to appreciate the New Yorker humour but as it … Read More »
[ezcol_1half][/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end]Remember Martin Shrkeli? He launched Retrophin, a company that acquired rights to drugs for rare diseases, then ramped up their prices. One example was Thiola, used to treat a disease causing kidney stones. After it came into the Retrophin … Read More »
Saw Grandma tonight and have to say I was underwhelmed. As vehicle for uncovering the high principles, low cunning and wrinkled foibles of septuagenarian feminist and hippie, academic and poet, lesbian and life-loving misanthrope, a picaresque day in the life … Read More »
I’ve known a couple of guys beat up their women. Probably more; they’re just the ones I’m sure about. Never went in for it myself, though I once returned with reciprocal force the single slap an ex gave me. But … Read More »
Well, was he? Maggie comes fleet foot, face full of black soot Talkin’ that the heat put, plants in the bed but The phone’s tapped anyway, Maggie says that many say They must bust in early May, orders from the … Read More »
Listening to the news from Paris these past few days I, like so many Britons, think of climate change as a terrible possibility which may or may not materialise: an appalling possibility we learn to live with, like the threat … Read More »
Sunset Song. The title’s a giveaway. This isn’t a story as we usually expect on our screens; more a lyric poem, Hardy transferred from Wessex to rural Scotland, losing along the way not only those bizarre but convenient coincidences but … Read More »
I’ve been writing scathing posts for too long. Need to lighten up. There’s beauty in the world yet … A few years ago a Radio 4 Saturday slot had listeners sending in the stories behind cherished possessions, the things they’d … Read More »
Few things musical exemplify more perfectly the acid-drenched clarion call to sixties hedonism than the west coast sounds of Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the greatest of these was Dead but … Read More »
do nine men interpret – nine men I nod. Thanks to Pete for this gem: a song by Weird Al Yankovic that’s not only a classy parody of Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues but whose every line is a palindrome.