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The Dumas Club
The Dumas Club is another of Arturo Perez-Reverte’s novels with historical riddles seemingly leading our hero on the trail of something. In this instance, we have a book collector who’s after a collection of three copies of a demonic books, of which only one copy can be the real one. At the same time, there’s…
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House of Flying Daggers
The House of Flying Daggers is Zhang Yimou’s latest film, except that unlike his last film, Hero, we haven’t had to wait three years to get it. The plot involves lots of double-crossing and a secret society – the House of Flying Daggers – of whom Ziyi Zhang is a member. She seems to be…
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National Treasure
I don’t know exactly when this film began production, but a smart mover like Jerry Bruckheimer could probably have greenlit and turned around this film in pretty short order. To say that it shares certain traits with The Da Vinci code would be putting it loosely. It’s a romp around north eastern America in search…
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Thirty Years Later
It seems that Roy Jenkins wasn’t a fan of ID Cards. At the time it was being discussed as a way to combat Irish terrorist atrocities. Just replace “Irish” for “Islamic Fundamentalist” and see what difference it all really makes.
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The Da Vinci Chronograph
While the Dan Brown phenomenom roles relentlessly on, I was amused to see an advert for the Da Vinci Chronograph. A bargain at just £145, made by an ancient German company or something. Anyway, I’m not exactly a horologist or anything, but it strikes me that Da Vinci owned no such watch. He died in…
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ID Card Vote Goes Through
306 MPs voted for it, and 93 against. I don’t know who the MPs who voted against are at the moment, but there was an estimate of 18 Labour rebels. The suggestion is that those against the card were asked to make themselves scarce rather than voting against. I watched a fair amount of the…
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ID Cards Bill – Second Reading
Well it’s due to be debated in the House anytime now – well once everyone’s finished talking about Blunkett’s rail ticket. The Guardian’s Newsblog has a good summary of what some of the key supporters are saying in putting forward good reasons for the card and databases’s introduction (incidentally, I’m hearing far too little about…
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Madcap: Privacy and Information
On January 1 2005, the Freedom of Information Act comes fully into force. This will give us the right to ask various government departments and public authorities what data they hold on us. Remarkably, the Cabinet Office has suddenly decided that now would be a good time to delete all emails older than three months!…
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MT Comments
Wow. This article scares the hell out of me in regard to comment spam that I’ve been suffering. And it may well be the case that something to do with comment spam was the cause of my massive file issues. Although that may have been a broken RSS link. In the meantime, I’ve got to…
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Blunkett’s Gone
Well I can’t say I’m sorry he’s gone.
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Terrestrial Live TV is Out
Well the ECB have done it. They’ve gone completely to Sky for live coverage. All live cricket is now exclusively available to satellite and cable subscribers. The sop to the rest of us is that channel Five are going to show highlights between 7.15pm and 8.00pm. Of course large parts of the country don’t get…
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Is It Stumps For Terrestrial Live Cricket
Today’s the day when the ECC decide whether or not they’re going to deprive the masses and do for themselves what rugby (union and league) already does by removing themselves entirely from terrestrial television. Do they take the extra £20 available and go exclusively to Sky? How much less should nPower, Vodafone and other sponsors…
Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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Yellowface/All The Lovers In The Night
Yellowface by R F Kuang I first came across R F Kuang with last year’s very enjoyable Babel, an alternate history of the British Empire told in a world where magic exists and is controlled by an elite group of individuals. Yellowface is very different, but no less enjoyable. It’s a book about books, and…
Hadrian’s Wall
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