2007 — Day 68 - surges & carbon offsets
Well, that nice Mr Blair has coughed up about £90 to offset his holiday flight less than 24 hours after asserting it was impractical. The power of the Press, heh?
And pollster Dr Frank Luntz over on NPR tells us how he figures out the words that work (the title of his new book, of course) and reminds us that "if you tell people the same thing enough times, the people will believe it". Wasn't that chap Goebbels of much the same opinion, or did he merely recommend telling whoppers?
I've reminded a reader!
Of the existence of London's Dark They Were & Golden-Eyed bookshop. I wonder if he remembers how it remained staunchly opposed to decimalisation, which could make shopping there a bit tedious.
Looking back less far
So, I'm taking my daily glance at Arts & Letters which points me to a Spiked article on the paradox of prosperity which, to be honest, didn't hold my interest when (like the grasshopper that Mater always called me) I was sucked by the gravitational pull from the right hand column into the piece by Neil Davenport in praise of The Sopranos. From (the bottom of) there, of course, it was a mere mouse click to The Midnight Bell blog and a fascinating look back there, by various people, at a number of cultural artefacts from 2006, aka The 2006 Cultural Awards. (Referring to the year, of course, not the quantity.)
Peter (too) Weir(do)
I set out to watch Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock as Film4 were showing it. I thought at first, with some of the soft-focus images and washed-out colours that either the 31 year old film stock was naff or perhaps I'd stumbled into a David Hamilton opus. Neither, it seems. It's just a bit too weird. Back to Battlestar Galactica!