Hugo is a beautifully made film with a big heart. Every frame is overflowing with the director, Martin Scorcese’s, obvious love and enthusiasm for the medium in which he has immersed himself during his career. Every part of the film fits together as neatly and as intricately as the clockwork mechanisms that feature so frequently […]
The Cost of Inequality: Three Decades of the Super-Rich and the Economy (Gibson Square, 2011) by Stewart Lansley is an interesting book that seeks to build on recent works, such as Wilkinson and Pickett’s The Spirit Level, by arguing that the case for a more equal distribution of national wealth isn’t just ethical and social […]
One of the things that I’ve got back into thanks to the purchase of a tablet is regularly reading comics bought via Comixology. Having got the taste electronically, I’ve also started to pick up a number collected editions and graphic novels. So I thought I might start off putting together a monthly review of the […]
Chronicle is the story of three high school kids: Andrew, a “troubled” loner from a poor family with an abusive father and a sick mother; Matt, his smarter, more popular cousin; and Matt’s friend Steve, the token ethnic character. “Troubled” Andrew has recently taken to carrying around an improbably large video camera, which is lucky […]
So, the 60 novels submitted to the judges for consideration for this year’s Arthur C Clarke Award have been revealed over on Torque Control. There’s also a competition to pick the likely shortlist, which I’m not eligible to enter as I’m on the BSFA Committee – although I should make clear before going any further […]
This week I have been reading Sparta: The Body Politic (The Classical Press of Wales, 2010, editors Anton Powell and Stephen Hodkinson), which contains a number of interesting essays on ancient Sparta but the one that really got me thinking was “Gynecocracy: How Women Policed Masculine Behaviour in Archaic and Classical Sparta” by Thomas J […]
I originally wrote a post attacking the household analogy for American debt on July 30, 2011. It remains one of the most frequently visited posts on the site. Yesterday Chris posted a lengthy (and sometimes angry) response. I wanted to reply to his points seriously and at length but it was uncomfortable doing that in […]
I’m a bit late to getting around to David Estlund’s Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework (Princeton, 2008) but it’s a major work of political philosophy. It is very much in the American tradition of political philosophy strongly influenced by John Rawls’s political liberalism. Estlund defends the core of that project and makes the case that […]
Half term means I’ve not had much time to blog this week – but it does means I got to spend time with my daughter watching The Muppets, swimming and letting her thrash me at ten pin bowling (ahem!). Anyway, instead of something new, here’s something from Focus 56. I’ve been writing little pieces of […]
This week I picked up Andrew Pearman’s The Politics of New Labour: A Gramscian Analysis. It’s a book with a title that seems designed to disappoint readers as it isn’t really an analysis of New Labour, Gramscian or otherwise. Much of the book is an excuse for an ex-communist (turned Green) to complain that New […]