http://chrisroutledge.co.uk/blog Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:42:46 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en On Sunday mornings my daughter and I like to read together for an hour or so. She's still small enough to sit on my knee while I read to her, but as she grows it gets more difficult to juggle book, child and coffee cup in ways that make the ... http://chrisroutledge.co.uk/blog/2008/12/accidentally-great-apples-answer-to-the-kindle/ [caption id="attachment_501" align="alignleft" width="152" caption="design by Eno."][/caption] I have a piece on crime and Liverpool in Stories from the City, a collection of new writing about the city: past, present and future. My piece looks a the differences between gangsters and legitimate business and speculates about the causes of criminality in ... http://chrisroutledge.co.uk/blog/2008/11/stories-from-the-city/ So the government says it wants to reduce binge drinking because it is a cause of ill-health, violence, and it costs a fortune in policing. You can't really argue with that. But all they have is alcohol duty to keep pushing the price up. And the effect of that is ... http://chrisroutledge.co.uk/blog/2008/11/duty-on-alcohol-is-a-blunt-instrument/ [caption id="attachment_111" align="alignleft" width="103" caption="Cains: The Story of Liverpool in a Pint."][/caption] The list of people receiving order cancellations from Amazon is growing so I'm putting together a collection of alternative places where you can pre-order Cains: The Story of Liverpool in a Pint, which will be with us very soon ... http://chrisroutledge.co.uk/blog/2008/11/cains-still-not-on-amazoncouk-try-here-instead/ Tom Waits. A great song. Photography by Walker Evans, among others. Perfect. via. http://chrisroutledge.co.uk/blog/2008/11/buddy-can-you-spare-a-dime/ This week's New Yorker magazine has a long and fascinating piece by Burkhard Bilger about what it calls 'extreme beer'. This seems to be defined as beer that requires unusual and 'extreme' materials and equipment, or which is at the upper limits of alcohol content, or contains unusual ingredients. What ... http://chrisroutledge.co.uk/blog/2008/11/extreme-beer/ Last week the Shedworking blog announced the third birthday edition of its free e-magazine, The Shed. It's always an enjoyable read and this edition has a delightful piece on fictional sheds: Not all well known garden offices and shedworking atmospheres are actually real. Naturally, sheds feature heavily in many children’s stories ... http://chrisroutledge.co.uk/blog/2008/11/shedworking-issue-16/ The New Scientist reports that Neanderthals may have been driven to extinction by modern humans throwing rocks and spears. Apparently the fossilised shoulder bones of ancient humans show similar signs of wear as those of modern-day baseball players. Who'd have thought it? Well, William Golding actually, in his novel The ... http://chrisroutledge.co.uk/blog/2008/11/the-inheritors/ [caption id="attachment_439" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Gregory Peck bites off more than he can chew"][/caption] There is a great story over at Wired about the whaling ship Essex, which in 1820 was rammed and sunk by a Sperm Whale somewhere in the Pacific. This is the story that partly inspired Melville to write ... http://chrisroutledge.co.uk/blog/2008/11/white-whales-and-wooden-ships/ As every four year-old knows, up there in the loft space, in the dark underneath the tiles, hiding in the shadows, are monsters. Monsters you couldn't imagine in a lifetime of bad dreams. Monsters just waiting to come down into the light and terrorize your daydreams as well. I have only ... http://chrisroutledge.co.uk/blog/2008/11/imperial-good-companion-model-t/