Wednesday, 14 July 2010

TV

Top Gear
15x03 (11/7/10 edition)
It sometimes amazes me how entertaining Top Gear still is -- you'd think they'd've run out of decent stunts by now.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Hipster Priest: A Quietus Interview With Alan Moore by John Doran
(from The Quietus)
Interviews with Alan Moore are always interesting, if often odd. And they remind me that I still haven't read the first issue/book of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen III. Not sure where I've left it either...

Mr. Sherlock Holmes by Dr. Joseph Bell
(from Wikisource)
Bell was Conan Doyle's inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, not something he mentions in this essay, which is more generally about the detective's appeal. And its ending is a pretty fine summation of why Holmes and his adventures endure:
in addition to the creation of his hero, Dr. Conan Doyle in this remarkable series of stories has proved himself a born story-teller. He has had the wit to devise excellent plots, interesting complications; he tells them in honest Saxon-English with directness and pith; and above all his other merits, his stories are absolutely free from padding. He knows how delicious brevity is, how everything tends to be too long, and he has given us stories that we can read at a sitting between dinner and coffee, and we have not a chance to forget the beginning before we reach the end. The ordinary detective story... really needs an effort of memory quite misplaced to keep the circumstances of the crimes and all the wrong scents [in mind]. Dr. Doyle never gives you a chance to forget an incident or miss a point.

Muse: 'We sold our soul to Twilight' by Clare Wiley
(from Digital Spy)
It's a little bit reassuring that they feel that way about it.

You Can't Appreciate How Completely Apple Has Humiliated The Cellphone Industry Until You See These Charts by Henry Blodget
(from SAI (Silicon Alley Insider) at Business Insider)
Does what it says on the tin. Thoroughly.

the double rainbow saga continues...

The funniest take on "Double Rainbow" so far




(For the start of this double rainbow thingamie, look here.)