July 8, 2008

Good Links

Links of late include “The Cattle-Prod Election” from The LRB: “This endless raft of educated opinion needs to be kept afloat on some data indicating that it matters what informed people say about politics, because it helps the voters to decide which way to jump. If you keep the polling sample sizes small enough, you can create the impression of a public willing to be moved by what other people are saying. That’s why the comment industry pays for this rubbish.”

Rona Maynard writing brilliantly of “The Hillary I’ll Be Watching”: “She has become in defeat the woman she could not be while her victory seemed inevitable, or at least dimly conceivable—a woman freely and fully herself while stretching the bounds of possibility before the assembled cameras of the entire world.”

Luckybeans visits a tea estate. Rebecca Rosenblum encounters a roadside box of mugs. Celebrating The London Review Bookshop (whose success is partly down to cake). Dovegreyreader ponders Canadian Literature (and “A Case of You”) from her Devonshire perch. Fascinatingly, on why you’re probably wrong about probability. Lately I’ve been reading and enjoying Antonia Zerbisias’s Broadsides Blog, and today in particular, her links to comedian Sarah Haskins’s Target Women videos– “Yogurt” is my favourite. Justine Picardie on Henrietta Llewelyn Davies, “a psychic astrologer with a literary client list, and an Oxford degree in English literature” and blood ties to Daphne Du Maurier to boot.

Speaking of yogourt, I just bought three tubs of the stuff. As well as pudding, soups, banana smoothie ingredients, apple sauce, vegetable juice, and ice cream. I’ve got the day off work tomorrow. Any idea what I’ll be getting up to hmmmm?