(b)logophile

Catching up on blog posts from my holiday I saw the cover for a book named Northworld: Vengeance on Good Show Sir (a blog devoted to “only the worst sci-fi/fantasy book covers” — and indeed, this one is awful). “Northworld,” I thought to myself, “what kind of nonsense is that?” According to one commentator the [...]

My brother sent a letter to a New Zealand tv channel, saying that in Mongolia, where he works, he can’t see the Rugby World Cup games and is there anything they could do about it? Apparently there isn’t, but they did interview him over Skype. The segment is online on the 3News site (after an [...]

We spent a weekend in Bath recently. Among other attractions of the area, it turns out there is a quarterly auction of musical instruments quite close by. This trip didn’t synchronise, but I’ve been browsing the catalogues of previous auctions to see if it’s worth trying to be there at the right time next year. [...]

I got a giggle from a couple of judicious put-downs in this week’s TLS. A review of Max Hastings’ “family fable” Did you really shoot the television? picks out his headmaster’s observation that “his contemporaries do not like him, and they are not bad judges of character”. I actually suspect the other one is not [...]

Municipal elections are coming up. I’m not paying much attention, but an amusing piece of self-assured advertising pushed itself under my nose this evening. There’s a smart initiative here, issuing stickers for on your mailbox that say “No unaddressed advertising, no house-to-house newsletters” (or no to one but yes to the other). They’re nationwide and [...]