Tuesday, August 18, 2009

top 30 no. 1

Louise Redknapp on a more useful mission
Claire Sweeney's big fat... What exactly was Claire Sweeney's motivation to put on as much weight as possible in a short time?








Gilad ShalitThe curious case of the compassionate politician Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, has been treated with a level of compassion that, say, abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit markedly has not.










An early appearance of the golliwog in gallant modeGolliwog-gate:the racism of anti-racists When Carol Thatcher, daughter of the former prime-minister, was accused of racism, were there sinister undercurrents at play?










celebrity culture eats its own children, and nobody profits more than editors like Abigail BlackburnAbigail Blackburn and the truth about pregorexia Celebrity culture eats its own children, and nobody profits more than editors like Abigail Blackburn.











there's more to life than teethThe orthodoxy of orthodonty There's more to life than perfect teeth.











misrepresantation from British reds?The British left meddles in a very American dilemma A British bride who was told that she couldn't have smear tests until the age of 25 and who, now at that age, is dying of cervical cancer, is saying she has been misrepresented in the US media debate over proposed "Obamacare" healthcare reforms.










contains spoilers!Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows From Harry Potter through such stopping points as Odysseus and back - but contains spoilers: big ones!











the seventeenth-century architect of much of the last century's conflictsLockerbie and the moral limits of diplomacy What happens when politicians with the skills of neither a Richelieu nor a Bismarck try to fill their shoes?










Maureen Hamilton, former solicalite who wanted photos of her last days to discourage young people from smokingUnderage smoking is more stupid than criminal An unorthodox but time-honoured way to discourage an underage smoker.









an unborn crocodile inside its shellCrocs, giraffes and the vagrant nerve: inside nature's giants Richard Dawkins attends the dissection of a giraffe's recurent laryngeal nerve by,among others, Joy Reidenberg, but fails to forward his agenda with the innervation of unborn vertebrates.









Oh Gillian, why didn't you become a dentist?Blood, tears and celebrity dentists An NHS dentist resembling Brad Pitt comes to the rescue of a woman badly served by profiteers.











Pigs might fly Like their human counterparts, Butch and the Sundance Pig were only taken after a long fight. By this time, of course, questions had been asked in Parliament.









Mill Road, CambridgeAll I want to do is shop in Tesco's Did the Co-op and Cambridge City Council, who funded the Cambridge Folk Festival, know that there was going to be an anti-Tesco demonstration?









True Brit: Sri Lankan-born postmaster Deva Kumarasiri, who was sacked for insisting English be spoken in his outletHappy St George's Day! As a fellow exile living in England - though from not nearly as far away - I liked the introduction to the Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu's speech on Englishness at the Sunday Times Literary Festival in Oxford.










then three come at the same timeDon't go down the road to hell, it's jammed with bendy-buses How an amusing article by comedienne Ariane Sherine was subverted by radical militant atheists with sinister agendas.










cover of Night-FightersNight Fighters Some wars are with us for a long time - Colin Heaton's and Anne-Marie Lewis's authoratative history of the night-war over Europe 1939-1945, and the advances in many fields which came about as a result.











spooky: Edgar Allan PoeTop ten songs about ghost stories Storytelling forms as much of the human experience as eating, breathing and sleeping, and ghost stories are an intrinsic part of this. What lies beyond? What if...? What comes after?









The ichneumon delusion Review of the first of three programmes in which Richard Dawkins ostensibly celebrates the bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birh, but in reality announces his self-apotheosis.











Master of Space and Time One of Rudy Rucker's earlier novels (1984), the author demonstrates that obituaties of science fiction are misplaced.









Top ten songs about places Sometimes songs about places strike a chord, and can stay with us over a lifetime.










Sarah KennedyHot gossip: Sarah Kennedy and the obvious observation Sarah Kennedy committed the closest thing to a mortal sin in the BBC by calling Enoch Powell the greatest Prime Minister Britain never had.









population control is a fatal misconceptionFatal Misconception - the struggle to control world population Indira Gandhi's first government collapsed in chaos because of population control measures drawn up by white westerners, but eugenics has returned.









this way to meet JesusMaunday Thursday - beyond the comfort zone Sometimes hilarity can be one of Christendom's most powerful weapons.











Rizla - a smoke or a toke? Did Rizla protest too much when it objected to being mentioned in an anti-cannabis campaign?











Sarah PalinTop ten songs about America Here's ten songs about the US, in a post written on Independence day.










Alexander Rybak Eurovision Song Contest 2009 - the music won When Alexander Rybak won Eurovision for Norway, we saw the contest rejuvenated.









students from Notingham Trent University, who won a prize for their campaign raising awareness of cocaine harmsCocaine - heartless, soulless waste The UK has achieved the sinister prominence of becoming the world's cocaine consumption capital.









a faroese stamp depicting fin whalesWhales and unintelligent evolution: Inside Nature's Giants The on-site autopsy of a hue fin-whale that grounded itself and died on Courtmacsherry Bay in Cork.









Jimmy Saville presents Top of the Pops in 1979Margaret Thatcher - it was 30 years ago today The anniversary of the election of Great Britain's greatest peacetime prime-minister.











Travails of the Jabberwock Tracking the mythical beast's decline through its various incarnations from Through the Looking Glass and The Last Mimsy.

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