Which Baseball Team Are You Allowed To Root For?

A blue collar team with no Hollywood phoney fans...oh, er...I'm reblogging this from two years ago because after a dreary and depressing off season we're just a few days away from Opening Day.. (And if I can just add that of the four teams I follow across a world of sports (Coventry City FC, Liverpool FC, St Kilda FC, and the New York Yankees I think its not unreasonable to suggest that because of poor long term management thinking the NYY are going...

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The Songs of Molly Drake

In the 1970's the most important member of the Drake family to me was Gabrielle Drake who was one of the stars of the cult Gerry Anderson TV series UFO. Although they only ever made 26 episodes of UFO it seemed to be on all the time and it became as totemic to me as Star Trek, Dr. Who and the nihilistic Blake's Seven. By the 1980's my UFO phase was over and I was beginning to listen to the albums of Gabrielle Drake's brother, Nick. Everybody knows...

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When Will The Oil Run Out?

I haven’t found an adequate answer for this question on the net (just a lot of silliness and/or propaganda) so I’ve had to do the sums myself. Current world consumption is about 26 billion barrels per year. World Oil consumption has been stagnant for the last two years but I think an average growth rate of 1.5% - 2% per year seems reasonable based on the expected continuing industrialisation of China, India and the Third World. That means that world...

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The First American Newspaper Review of The Cold Cold Ground

It's been nearly 4 months since The Cold Cold Ground was released in the US and finally the book has gotten its first full length newspaper review. I know they've been cutting down on reviews especially for new crime and mystery fiction so I'm particularly grateful to Robert Anglen of The Arizona Republic for this review. I don't know how Robert has heard about me and my work, it's true that I've done events at the great Poisoned Pen bookstore in...

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