Another blunder on the prestigious UK quiz show University Challenge yesterday, as Birmingham took on Magdalen College, Oxford in a very close contest. The question went something like this:
Jeremy Paxman: “Which hydrated ferrous salt used to be known as green vitriol?”
Answer: “Iron sulphate.”
Jeremy Paxman: “No, just sulphate.”
That’s akin to asking who composed Eine kleine Nachtmusik, [...]
How do you domesticate a zebra? You can’t, or at least that’s the justification put forward by Jared Diamond in his Guns, Germs and Steel for why these wild beasts were never used as draught animals or cavalry in sub-Saharan Africa. Much of what Diamond writes has a logical ring to it, and whilst the [...]
» Read the rest of this entry ...With some of the highest scores awarded for a real-time strategy, being one of the Top 20 Metacritic All-Time High Scores, Company of Heroes ended up being one of those games I had little excuse not to try out, given that my PC could (just about) run it. Admittedly I’m unable to comment on the [...]
» Read the rest of this entry ...Occasionally there’s no better way to spend an evening than sitting down around a table with friends and family, having a few drinks and playing a board game. That stands particularly true when the game is something new. Every player goes into the game trying to learn, meaning everyone is that little bit more focused, [...]
» Read the rest of this entry ...There are some pretty banal programmes on television at times, such is the role it plays, but Animal Park - Wild on the West Coast really caught my eye today. It served up the job of a nature programme from California, but it was a real eye opener to some of the ludicrous crap that [...]
» Read the rest of this entry ...I recently caught a TV screening of The Boys from Brazil, a film adaptation of Ira Levin’s novel, concerning the nefarious actions of Dr. Josef Mengele in South America, and his pursuit by a Nazi-hunter presumably modelled on Simon Wiesenthal. Certainly a rather motley cast, with Laurence Olivier showing why he is so often cited [...]
» Read the rest of this entry ...Ever wondered why the spines on your books and DVDs aren’t all oriented the same way? Why some read top-to-bottom and others read bottom-to-top? Admittedly, this phenomenon is rare with books printed in the Anglophone world, where the top-to-bottom approach is preferable, but take a look at a bookshelf in continental Europe and you’ll probably [...]
» Read the rest of this entry ...
Poor Story: An Insider Uncovers How Globalisation and Good Intentions Have Failed the World’s Poor by Giles Bolton
If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi
