The Adventures of Shylock Holmes

I was in an English-themed pub on Friday night (in the US of A), watching the Australian Rules Football Grand Final. I don't know why, b...

What charities say on their reply-paid envelopes: Your stamp on this envelope adds to your gift! What charities should  say on their repl...

Barack Obama recently made a speech at the UN talking about the recent attacks on the US Embassy in Benghazi, and the anti-Islamic film tha...

I keep telling 'em , but they just don't listen . Not a Shylock Holmes reader, clearly.

Every time I hear EU politicians speak (other than a few hilarious exceptions ), I like to mentally play a game called 'Six Degrees of &...

One of the things I miss the most by living in an urban environment is the fact that you don't get to see the stars in the evening.  Som...

Point: Counterpoint: "I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, and for twelve years I worked night and day to p...

Over at Hacker News comes another story of patent trolls at PersonalWeb trying to use the legal system to extort money out of a company that...

What a disgrace. What a complete, disgusting disgrace . Ken at Popehat points out , correctly, that this guy has potentially violated his ...

From a few days ago : In the likely event that no serious military response is forthcoming, let me advance the following prediction: Expect ...

Athenios writes to disagree with my previous post : "Sometimes, your posts are pure genius."  Thanks! "Other times, they ar...

So this is  where "democratic" revolution in Libya has gotten us. Some nobody in the US makes a film months ago saying nasty thing...

George Gershwin is rolling in his grave every time you play your sh***y bastardised adult contemporary version of 'Rhapsody in Blue'...

Athenios and I sometimes frequent the restaurant Fogo De Chao . It's one of those all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouses. They give you a...

The great David Foster Wallace, describing the mindset of the suicidal: “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill h...

If I had to submit a candidate for the category of 'music video that adds most to the underlying song', this would have a very good ...

Great sentences from Steve Sailer : Robot & Frank raises the metaphysical question of what makes something human. Can simulacra easily ...

There was a CNN article on Hacker News recently complaining about the amount of wasted food in America today. Forty percent of food in the...

In many ways, I would be a natural demographic for Whole Foods, grocers to crunchy yuppie mums everywhere, to market to. I like high quality...

So I managed to be perhaps the last person in America to watch 'The Dark Knight Rises'. It reinforced everything I've thought ab...

I'm now back from my sojourns abroad, and in the brief period where one is reminded of what is different about one's adopted country...

The most striking feature is the grim look on the faces of all the local men, particularly the young men. It's rare to see them smile at...

If anything captures the 'forced equality at the cost of anything resembling efficiency' aspect of Scandinavia, it's unisex publ...

- If I had to give it a shorthand description, it would be ‘halfway between Helsinki and Amsterdam’. This holds on a number of dimensions be...

Every now and again, I worry that this site may be at risk of being too self-serious. So with rectification in mind, I laughed hella hard ...

-It's very refreshing to see people smoking outdoors in restaurants. Not because I smoke. Nor because I like the smell of smoke while ea...

It seems to be a commonly-repeated trope that the Olympic Village is a crazy party town of non-stop action and poon on tap. Lots of good-loo...

Ozymandias I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on th...

- It's always good when you're watching a group of runners lined up on the track without hearing the earlier announcements, and you ...

Why, that does sound convenient! And some people say that the government doesn't understand customer service. Part 1 here .

People focus on the salient risks. OMG, someone might steal my passport! Fair enough - they might. But truthfully, how high is the risk of...

I finally got around to watching the last episode of House the other day. It wasn’t too bad. I won’t spoil the ending, but it finishes with ...

This is something I'm guilty of myself, and it's a strange behaviour. We can rule out some of the obvious cases. Blogs that discus...

-The Last Psychiatrist has a great essay about self-destructive behaviour . -I got 99 problems, but an incorrect understanding of criminal...

The contemporary mind, as illustrated by Ms. Roiphe's, has fundamental problems grasping useful concepts like "on average" and...

If you want some hilarious reading, check out the website ' Miss Travel '. Lest my screeds prejudice your impressions, let's j...