Recently updated blogs

The official Tour de France race guide ALWAYS SELLS OUT. It has all the info you need to follow the Tour de France. Here is how to find it.

Passage Brady is an interesting experiment in lying. Like every other arcade in Paris, Brady spills over two different streets on either side: 22 Boulevard de Strasbourg and 43 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin. Depending on which the side of the arcade one lives, one quickly starts believing that side to offer the one true opening into the arcade and the other opening is reinscribed in their minds as a deferred …

So without rehashing all the details, there is a non-profit in Canada called CIPPIC, whose work I respect, and who has provided me with assistance in the past on an unrelated matter. CIPPIC does good public interest work at the intersection of law and technology. They recently submitted a filing in federal court in Canada (a few months ago now) to ask for the correction of a copyright registration which …

The lovely Swan Public House in Clewer won a huge award last month. This 18th Century pub close to Windsor was awarded the nation’s best community pub in the Great British Pub Awards. The Swan is truly a special place with the amazing Green Room School having a classroom there. There is something going on every evening with groups as diverse as tabletop gaming, bicycle repair, German language practice and …

I've long maintained a set of interactive network frequency maps showing where Melbourne's frequent public transport goes. There are sets for various times of week and day and you can select layers by frequency threshold. But I have never quantified the population near frequent public transport at various times of week and day. But Philip Mallis has. And has presented figures and maps at last Friday's Transport Camp and earlier …

I live in El Granada, California. Wikipedia calls us a census designated place - we don't have a mayor or city council. But we do have a Community Services District - originally responsible for our sewers, and since 2014 also responsible for our parks. And we get to vote for the board members in the upcoming November election! My partner Natalie decided to arrange a "candidates forum" - effectively a …

Reviewed by JONATHAN LEWIS: THE PHANTOM SPEAKS. Republic Pictures, 1945. Richard Arlen, Stanley Ridges, Lynne Roberts, Tom Powers, Charlotte Wynters, Jonathan Hale. Screenplay: John K. Butler. Director: John English. The Phantom Speaks is an unusually downbeat crime/horror hybrid programmer from Republic Pictures. Overwrought and over explained, the story centers around a paranormal researcher’s quest to bring the dead back to life, albeit in spirit form. Dr. Paul Renwick (Stanley Ridges) …

‘The New York Times reports that Bob Wordward’s new book War includes a few stories about donald trump being Putin’s stooge. When the world, including the United States, was suffering a dire shortage of COVID-19 tests, trump was sending tests to his pal Putin for “personal use.” After leaving office, there are stories of donald rushing aides out of his way to take a private call with his good buddy, …

A fun book to draw from when teaching modern Japan is Soeda Azembo and Michael Lewis, A Life Adrift: Soeda Azembo, Popular Song and Modern Mass Culture in Japan ( London: Routledge, 2009). You can’t assign it, since it is not in our databases and costs too much, and maybe would not work that way anyway. You can pull a lot of songs from it though. There is a short …

Reading Time: 3 minutes Does testing actually improve student memory better than studying? Even when tests are given without feedback, retrieval practice enhances later retention more than restudying the material. For definition, research often refers to retrieval practice as the ‘testing effect’, and when the word ‘testing’ is used, people outside education become concerned, and often associate any kind […]

Reviewed by Harriet William Boyd’s latest novel has been almost overwhelmingly greeted with admiration and praise. ‘A Spy Story to rival Restless’ is the Guardian’s headline, harking back to Boyd’s 2007 masterpiece. Like that novel, this one is set in the past – this time, the 1960s. In fact the novel begins in 1960 with Gabriel Dax, the young protagonist, travelling to the Congo to interview the newly elected prime …

Read on to learn how you can help share Amos’s story with Black students at historically Black colleges and universities. With a gorgeous and astute design from lauded creatives Gail Anderson (a 2008 AIGA medalist) and Joe Newton, as well warm and charismatic portraits of Kennedy at work by Aundre Larrow, Citizen Printer also celebrates the printmaking process of one of our most exuberant artists. To Be Young, Gifted, and …

ALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTALTI really enjoy tracking down self-portraits from retro sci-fi artists.

Hard Times of 1975 is a lovely film about the unlovely sport of bare-knuckle boxing. Walter Hill’s first directorial effort, the movie came out in the 1970s nostalgia boom, and its cinematographer, Philip Lathrop, shot it in a dark, dingy glow; its surface seems coated with an old Kodachrome’s antique glaze. Its first scene could have come out of an early-1930s Warner Bros. road film: A lone man stands in …

Perfume PossePerfume Presents Heya Posse, March and I were chatting in the comments of my Boucheron Serpent Boheme post in August a little about how special Perfume ... Perfume PossePerfume Presents