This new book on EWL is a political page-turner.
Category: books
It’s amazing to think that had circumstances been different, the western world might have developed its road transport around electric engines rather than fossil fuels. That’s one of the key points made by “A Most Deliberate Swindle“, by Mick Hamer – the tale of the London Electrobus company, which pioneered the use of electric buses ... [More]
In the days before home video, we had to resort to other means to re-live movies and TV shows. Novelisations of productions were common. I knew people who had hundreds of Doctor Who novelisations — virtually every story had a book published. I had perhaps a dozen. Other books made it into publication — scripts, ... [More]
These days, some people are so addicted to their portable reading devices that they barely look where they’re going.
Look! It’s Tintin on a bus… And here’s Tintin on a tram (and a tram in Tintin)… So anyway, we went to the Tintin movie yesterday — in 2D, as 3D doesn’t work on me. I enjoyed it a lot. They did a good job of recreating the look of Herge, and there were plenty ... [More]
The Slap I finished reading The Slap. Great book, provided you don’t mind a little fruity language and adult themes in your novels. Looking forward now to the TV adaption. Possums I was just thinking the other day that despite seeing a lot of possums around the neighbourhood, I never heard them in the roof. ... [More]
Blog: Amazing – I actually saw a @PTUA sticker IN THE WILD
A few quick reviews of things I’ve read or watched recently… (The DVDs fall into the category of “I’ve been meaning to watch that; I’ll buy that if it’s less than $10. Ooh, there it is!” One book was borrowed, the other I got for Christmas.) A Hard Day’s Night — got this cheap on ... [More]
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The mathematics of school textbooks
It’s all easy in primary school. You send the money in, you get a box of goodies. There’s few textbooks, and almost all are kept at and owned by the school. It gets more complicated and expensive in secondary school. So here’s the scenario: Two kids, two years apart. The school has a secondhand book ... [More]
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NASA to prove Herge right?
Tintin and friends landed on the moon in 1952, some 17 years before Apollo 11 got there. While writing the story, Herge and his team researched what the moon would look like on the surface, and as anybody who’s read the book would know, it’s uncannily accurate. After Apollo 11 made it to the Moon, ... [More]
The Example, by Tom Taylor and Colin Wilson (published by Gestalt Books), might be the first graphic novel to be set entirely within the confines of Flinders Street Station. It’s a short but thought-provoking read, combining a most-of-Western-world issue — paranoia over terrorism — with a more decidedly local Melbourne issue: the trains. Speaking of ... [More]
A fire in Springvale, to which the CFA responds. C’mon, Springvale. What is this, 1960? East of Westall Road isn’t paddocks anymore. Surely it’s time to re-draw the MFB/CFA boundaries? The metro/country taxi boundaries are similar, aren’t they? Time for an update. Odd. I found a quarterly magazine that retails for $7, but is $44 ... [More]
I’d completely forgotten about this until M reminded me of it last week. For some reason I didn’t blog about it at the time. Better late than never. A couple of years ago (actually, 2006, when the kids looked much younger than they do now) Flat Stanley (this one from friends in the USA) came ... [More]
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Print’s not dead yet
If you’ve wondered how many people read the magazines you see in the newsagent, here’s the figures. The only magazine I subscribe to, Australian Personal Computer, is sitting at 34,111, down 8% in the last year. Perhaps IT-related mags are more likely to be dropping with competition from online, though what caught my eye was ... [More]
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A buncha brief things
Some brief thoughts and half-arsed things that I can’t be bothered developing into fully-fledged blog posts: Luz Station in Sao Paulo. Looks externally very similar to Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station, well if you don’t look too closely. Coincidence, or is one modelled on the other? Probably the former. I haven’t seen anything that suggests Luz ... [More]
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The last Tintin
We all did stupid things when we were young. I’m ashamed to admit that one of the sillier things I did in my teenage years was to dispose of my Tintin books. After a while I realised my mistake, and started collecting them again, book by book. (I decided I preferred the full-size versions, not ... [More]