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Order! Order! Following the Parliamentary Education Services release of their edutainment flash-game ‘MP For A Week‘, I’ve written a bit of analysis over at Nicholas Lovell’s GamesBrief of the title, covering its accuracy, education value and entertainment value.
The axe that the commons authorities want to grind is razor sharp – this game makes the average stolid backbencher look amazingly active and busy, hurrying between constituency and parliament, justifying that great wodge of cash we give each MP every year (around £175,000 including expenses, each), and the huge number of MPs.
I’ll be sending Nicholas my expenses bill later.
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At the start, chance happenings – two good brains happening on each other, meeting by renown and word of mouth. Nothing else, no writing. Then, with writing, papyrus passing from palaces of the kings as edicts, the only minds that were known. Then writing widens, concepts are allowed and others than the kings have raw materials to communicate over long distances. Books are born, but not correspondence – that is solely by couriers, word of mouth and long-distance travellers. Ideas are communicated but not refined by the best, only by the local leisurely.
Then writing becomes commonplace and the [more...]
Dear Maria got up at 5am this morning, so she could get to work for 7. On a Saturday. That’s retail! I spent the afternoon with a plumber, getting our boiler fixed. Her work day done, at 4.30pm we met at Daunt Books in Belsize Park, to go and give Christmas presents to my auntie and cousin, and have a nice dinner.
At 4.35, I was ringing for an ambulance, as Maria had fallen awkwardly on a un-gritted path and bent her arm the wrong way. At 11.30pm, we finally left the hospital, after a Doctor had finally popped her arm back [more...]
(This started out as a Facebook comment then I realised I could write about it for days…)
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie… it’s not so long ago that starlings, pigeons and so forth were delicacies – think quails’ eggs, larks’ tongues in aspic, and that rare Ortolan bird that French Gourmands still eat illegally
Why did we stop eating fiddly things like these little birds? Firstly, cos we killed lots of them – small things go first in the delightful brutalism of man’s kingdom, especially small tasty things with lots of meat on their bones. The ones [more...]
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