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Symbolic Forest

A homage to loading screens.

Blog : Posts tagged with ‘terrorism’

End of another week

In which we get back to work

You can see, now, why I wanted to end the London post series early – I didn’t want yesterday’s post to merge into it. Yesterday’s post was prepared some time ago, and the last of the London series was written nearly a week early too – see, there is planning involved in some of this.

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Books I Haven’t Read (part five)

In which we fail to complete Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross

Books I Haven’t Read was supposed to be a regular sequence of articles, but has been on pause since – ooh, last November, by the look of things. It fell by the wayside because of a post I never wrote, about a book I couldn’t finish because I came across a passage in it which seemed to have been blatantly lifted from an obscure Victorian memoir. I’ll manage to write about it, one day. In the meantime, here’s another book I haven’t read. *Iron Sunrise* by Charlie Charles Stross.

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Medals

In which we consider heroism

People often say that the honours system is old-fashioned and out-dated. There are many good reasons to criticise it: the unofficial system of honours-for-cash,* or the automatic medals given to high mandarins of the Civil Service. I don’t even see the point of awarding honours to sportsmen, or celebrities.

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Flash, boom, bang

In which we suggest some healthy and Government-approved alternatives

It’s November the 5th, and so it’s time, of course, to celebrate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot, the cunning plan to murder the King, the government and the parliament, 400 years ago today. I’ve always thought the November timing to be a bit convenient for an event involving warm fires and pretty explosions. What would we do if the Opening of Parliament was in, say, June? You can’t have a nice big effigy-burning in June – that would be silly, and everyone would overheat. You’d have to stay up damn late to see the fireworks, too.*

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Suspicious

Or, how to get arrested

In today’s Guardian, an interesting article with a firsthand experience of being arrested as a terrorist suspect, for trying to catch a tube train whilst carrying a rucksack and wearing a big jacket. And, interestingly, it includes a list of things that the police are looking out for that mark you down as a potential terrorist.

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