In Tom Chivers' article categorising abortion arguments he quotes David Foster Wallace's argument: We should be pro-life and pro-choice. Pro-life because we can't really say that human life isn't being destroyed, and pro-choice because because while in doubt how can anyone say what someone else should do with their body? In Wallace's words: "Every time someone I...
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While Battlestar Galactica is seen as the sci-fi show that is most clearly a thematic reaction to 9/11 and the 'post 9/11 world' (complaints about how it's ripped from the headlines nature negate it's own ability to world-build notwithstanding), something I've started to noticed is sci-fi shows using the imagery of 9/11 in a distinctive...
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(This post contains spoilers. But spoilers are good for you.) The first installement of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror is, if nothing else, clever. The name of the anthology itself is clever, being both the literal 'dark mirror' that looks back on us from any screen that's turned off and the idea that technology has created a...
Read more →“It's like when we used to let kings take over from their fathers: that's the craziest rule that ever existed. If the king dies they let his kid be the king – what are the odds that he's not going to be a piece of shit? That's one of the weirdest things that we've...
Read more →Assorted 'Let’s Kill Hitler' thoughts: The one thing you can say about Moffat stories is that they are bursting with ideas, sometimes they don’t mesh well (a problem I have with the Library two-parter) but when it works the show is just alive with creative energy. This week we had: many, many details of...
Read more →I've just finished Andrew Rawnsley's The End of the Party and in the period when Brown thought a Lib-Lab coalition was a possibility there's this brief anecdote: 'He felt his legacy could be a progressive coalition. Brown imagined a final six months at Number 10 as the sort of benign, presidential 'father of the nation' figure...
Read more →To break away a bit from our 'ALL PHONE HACKING ALL THE TIME' postings, let's kick off part one of a million part series where we explore how the West Wing relates to everything in life. The (now a litttle old) story that Scalia holds the 14th Amendment doesn't apply to women reminds me...
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