I certainly think there's a case that he wasted an opportunity because he was trying to do other things: because he believed his own hype about bipartisanship, or because he was thinking about reelection, or because he judged that he couldn't actually do it. I think that a lot less now, though.

Supreme Court Shows Spine, Authors Slightly Foxed

Google's metadata is a bloody joke, unsurprisingly.

Libraries, at least, buy copies of the books. (Plus, some civilised countries have a PLR programme.)

I've thought about it, and I've come to the conclusion that most of my admired directors would do too much to any of my admired plays. I like my Shakespeare like I like my bourbon - straight. For example, I was pretty pleased with Ralph Fiennes' Coriolanus, which for a while at least was my favourite play, but damned…

I have no desire to see Johnny Depp's Bottom.

And more liberal Democrat voters - or, more often than not, 'independents' - disengaged themselves from Obama because he was such a huge disappointment and couldn't Green Lantern his way to single-payer and closing Gitmo.

Do you remember Larry Lessig's aborted campaign? That he was running purely on a platform of changing campaign finance laws, at which point he would resign, and that even if there was still a Republican-controlled House and Senate they would be forced to go along with it because he had won a mandate?

If I wanted to watch a depressing film suggesting that whatever apocalyptic disaster is inevitably arriving, the world may be a better place, with a long-overdue calibration of our value systems I would prefer to pick one with zombies over one with a banjo-playing twat.

Star Quake - the story of how a rag-tag bag of misfits struggle to survive the aftershocks of a seismic-style event on the Sun.

If you/she tries Goldie Vance let us know how it turns out.

The only thing I have against this is people might be reminded of the Keanu Reeves Constantine.

How do we know that wasn't caused by not enough lead in the zeppelin?

Are you seriously suggesting that there is something unscientific about making up what you think cavemen did, taking out all the rape, and turning it into a lifestyle plan?

You just leave it to the market, dummy. Allow anyone who wants to to put whatever chemicals they want in anything they want, and then fifty years later when the health problems arise people will know not to use those products in the past, which information they will transmit using grainy video dreams, much like in…

Try diagramming that sentence…

That wasn't any old MP getting kicked out - that was Dennis Skinner, who has been effectively heckling ministers for so long - he's been an MP for over 45 years, after 20 years as a miner - that he has earned himself the nickname The Beast of Bolsover.

They've kind of had him there before, in silhouette and IM form, so it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that they've thought of a way for them to fight without showing him enough for the audience to realise that it's possible to have a Superman whose main facial expression doesn't suggest that he is one second…

It's an old Frankish word actually - you're feeling spurlocked. As in, "Man, that four-hour documentary about a guy who eats noodles with his fingers on the subway just to see what people's reactions will be spurlocked the hell out of me."

There's a whores/Horus joke there somewhere but… nahhh. I'm too tired.