Ragged Clown

I’ve played in a Sunday league for about 6 years now. We had a good few seasons a couple of years back. We were unbeaten in two of them. That’s all hard to remember now though and we have barely won a game since forever. It’s hard to play with a crap team but it’s […]

I’m contemplating promoting Jesus Christ Superstar to Best Movie of All Time. I’m not sure Rick would approve though.

What strikes me is how bleak those times were and how close Britain was to utter disaster.

I am a bit of stickler for intellectual property respect. That’s a trait, I am proud to say, I have passed on to my children. I glowed when one of them opted to buy the latest Phoenix Wright rather than play the pirated copy that his friend acquired. The Ace Attorney  himself would be proud […]

Invincible came into service right before I joined up. It was a big deal at the time.

I’ve been paying a bit more attention to what I eat recently and, for the first time ever, I have started reading the nutrition labels to see how many calories there are in stuff I like. The most surprising thing? The things I like don’t have that many calories. I don’t really like cookies or […]

Ooh! They almost had me. But then i remembered the time difference. A few short weeks from now, with the world looking on, William Arthur Philip Louis Windsor will exchange rings with Catherine Elizabeth Middleton, and much of Britain will rejoice. Yet, at such moments, certain voices – this newspaper’s included – have long expressed […]

This is as fine a definition of virtue as I have ever seen. Why is self-assertion important? “We have a responsibility to live well. Our challenge is to act as if we respect ourselves. Enjoying ourselves is not enough.” But doesn’t self-assertion clash with our moral duties to others? “No. The first challenge is to […]

Here’s another version of Ride a White Swan recorded on GarageBand proper on a Mac with a real guitar, real piano and real microphone. Ride a White Swan (performed by The Ragged Clown) http://www.raggedclown.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Ride-a-White-Swan.mp3 Trivia This was T-Rex’s first successful single. It was the first single released after they changed their name from Tyrannasaurus Rex […]

Another creative evening. This time I share the writing and performing credits with my daughter.   Badada Bomp (Written and performed by Daddy Clown and Baby Clown) http://www.raggedclown.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Badada-Bomp.m4a

Dreamy like a White Swan!

Everytime I learn about some economic miracle that is taking place somewhere in the world, by the time I have internalized the lessons of that miracle, the miracle has turned into a disaster and I have new lessons to learn. OMG! Japan! Economic Miracle! OMG! Asian Tigers! Economic Miracle! OMG! Celtic Tiger! Economic Miracle! Greece, […]

The Times has a great series of essays by Errol Morris on Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. According to the author, Structure is a post-modern work which makes the relativist claim that people in one paradigm (or culture or era) are unable to fairly judge the ideas of another paradigm because the two […]

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called “universal jurisdiction.” Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution. Ronald Reagan’s message urging the senate to ratify […]

Anyone remember the Iraq War? Bush and Cheney made a bunch of claims about Iraq that weren’t true…most people didn’t believe them until they sent Powell up to make a big speech at the UN… …remember? Their source – curveball – has finally spoken up. Not only was he lying all along…everyone – CIA, German […]

When I went to the butcher’s and asked for suet, the lady at the counter said she didn’t think they had any but the butcher was right behind her carving up a cow. “Here you go!” he shouted as he carved off a pound of glistening fat from the carcass. My wife thinks it should […]

Three atheists tell their stories.

I’m trying to learn Objective C at the moment so I can write my first iPhone app (this time next year, we’ll be millionaires). Objective C is just about the ugliest language that I have ever come across (and I have coded in COBOL and Ada). That makes it all the more frustrating to read […]

Stephen Fry loves language so much that he wants to wrestle it away from the control of the pedants who want to control it. Favourite bit: You slip into a suit for an interview, and you dress your language up too. You can wear what you like linguistically or sartorially when you are at home […]

Bruce Bartlett has a post explaining why the budget negotiations are futile. American Public Opinion on Foreign Aid Just based on what you know, please tell me your hunch about what percentage of the federal budget goes to foreign aid. You can answer in fractions of percentage points as well as whole percentage points. Mean……………………………………………………………27% […]

He hovered, and stayed still, striding on the crumbling columns of air, curved wings jerking and flexing.

The Name of the Rose is one of those books that I read at an impressionable age and was terribly impressed by it. I read it again a few years later and it was better still. It’s firmly in my top ten. One of the bloggers that I follow has started a virtual book club […]

It’s so funny to be hearing you after all this time.