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Entries from July 30th, 2012

Alerte générale!

July 30th, 2012 · Comments Off on Alerte générale! · Life

The fourth Taxi film (T4XI) came out 5 years ago but I have only just seen it. I thought the first film was brilliant and only recently re-watched all of the first three films but I had been put off seeing the fourth one. A large part of the hesitatance was that Taxi 2 was […]

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Car tax

July 30th, 2012 · Comments Off on Car tax · Life

I renewed the car tax tonight. It is all very easy to do it online, but wouldn’t it be easier if you could do it on a monthly direct debit? It must be just about the last major bill that you can’t pay on some sort of installment basis. I know it is an annual […]

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Olympics serendipity #2

July 29th, 2012 · Comments Off on Olympics serendipity #2 · Life

During the week I have been working my was through the box set of season 2 of Doctor Who, the first David Tennant season. I think that any nerds reading will know where this is going! Today I watched the episode which was set in 2012 (Fear Her), where the Doctor and Rose arrive in […]

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Olympics serendipity #1

July 29th, 2012 · Comments Off on Olympics serendipity #1 · Life

This week I have been reading Soccernomics by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski. It is a reprint of Why England Lose, with some revisions and updating and a title change to make it sound a bit more like the very successful Freakonomics book. It is a good read, covering all sorts of aspects of football […]

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Battle Royale

July 23rd, 2012 · 3 Comments · Life

One thing leads to another. One night last week I watched Kill Bill – both parts. Watching that, and particularly the performance of Chiaki Kuriyama, led me to re-watch Battle Royale which she was in, and which led to Tarantino casting her in Kill Bill. It really is a remarkable film: Lord of the Flies […]

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New York 1977

July 18th, 2012 · Comments Off on New York 1977 · Life

Tonight I treated myself to a New York 1977 double-bill of films. I started with Saturday Night Fever which I recorded when it was on the Film 4 channel ther other night, and then continued with the DVD of Summer of Sam. Two quite different films about the same place at the same time. I […]

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A slight mistake from Sky

July 17th, 2012 · 2 Comments · Life, Politics

I saw something hilarious on Sky News earlier. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be on YouTube yet. I’m sure it will be soon thoough. I’m equally sure that Sky News won’t be repeating it like they do with all their other interviews. Not in its entirety anyway. They were after some opinions on the G4S […]

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Overdoing it

July 17th, 2012 · Comments Off on Overdoing it · Life

Last night I watched a documentary about Usain Bolt. It was OK, and Bolt seems like a nice bloke, but right at the end the programme makers went a little bit too far. There is a tendency for programme-makers to try and inject a bit of suspense, peril or conflict into any situation and in […]

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Having it both ways

July 13th, 2012 · 6 Comments · Politics

The other day I had the dubious pleasure of watching PMQs, since I was off work. A very grubby spectacle that nobody ever seems to come out of well, least of all that mad shouty woman with her arm in a sling. It consists of questions that often aren’t really questions and answers that aren’t […]

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Economical enigma

July 13th, 2012 · Comments Off on Economical enigma · Life

I’m reading another of those books that covers the overlap between psychology and economics and so I’m awash with terms like cognitive ease, utility, prospect theory and regression to the mean but I’ve just realised that my own behaviour says something about perception of value. Maybe by the time I’ve finished the book I will […]

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