Tim Worstall

Clearly, she wrote it herself then.

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Yeah, it’s, umm, OK.
The thing is though, having read just about alll of the man’s output over the years, I can’t place which previous essays and books the jokes come from but I know I’ve read them before.

Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino’s […]

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So, a response piece about how hard the people at Lonely Planet work at writing their guide books. First comment:

Travel writing died the day Max Gogarty retired.

Well done that man!

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Luton causes atheism.
Odd really, because you’d think a vision of a suburban hell would rather increase belief in a deity or two if only to avoid all eternity there.

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Mother speaks out:

“What are these novels where nothing ever happens?” she says.
“This individual, who alas! came out of my tummy, is a liar, an impostor, a parasite and especially, especially, a little upstart ready to do anything for fortune and fame,” Mrs Ceccaldi, 83, writes in L’Innocente, an autobiography. The onslaught on the petit con […]

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Beats coffins with fingernail scratches on the inside of the top lid.

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Gentlemen,
Thank you muchly for your recent electronic missive alerting me to some of your recent output.
In common with a number of other serious (ahem) bloggers I am contacted by a number of publishers. The usual process is that they praise my wit and wisdom, then offer me a free copy (a bribe, d’ye see?) of […]

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So, erm, books are being pirated on the net. The Society of Authors proposes that:

She suggested four possible sources of income at an industry discussion on copyright law last week: the Government, business, rich patrons and the public. Government funding could take the form of an “academy” of salaried writers.

Seriously? Bureaucrats paid to write books? […]

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Those bloggers who have or were thinking of doing a POD book (myself included).
Looks like life just got a little more complicated.
It used to be that you could use any (rather, many) of the various POD publishing housaes and still end up in the Amazon catalogue.
Amazon seems to be flexing some market power: use Booksurge […]

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Yup, another one.
Go here.

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I’d forgotten this story.

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Has died.
If you’ve not read any of his stuff, leave aside the sci-fi and try out "Tales From The White Hart". A lovely collection of tall tales and shaggy dog stories.

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Q Does everyone have a novel in them?
ALK: They have all kinds of things in them - liver, spleen, perhaps recklessly inserted lightbulbs. Whether you want any of those things to be removed and then sold to strangers is the question.

AL Kennedy.

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Some book or other:

….why the sub-prime markets are effecting more than just people looking at foreclosures…

No, it’s affecting, you sub-literate fool.
Please, fuck off.

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So that’s what Dr. Crippen was doing during the blogging hiatus?

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I’m reading some light hearted frippery at the moment, a variation on the historical detective idea: this is a Friar in 1390s (roughly) London. John of Gaunt as Regent times.
There’s something that doesn’t quite ring true to me. It’s the rate of executions.
London at the time was some 100,000 people or so. While there’s no […]

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Tim Harford’s new book is out next week and I’m reading my copy (there are perks to being an econ blogger).

The Undercover Economist, his first book, sold 600,000 copies worldwide, 160,000 of them in Britain. Books based on economics are not supposed to sell that well, let alone be prominently displayed on the bestseller racks […]

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The Times.
A very, very, sad list.
They have room for Hanif Kureishi, but not for Alan Coren, Tom Stoppard nor Terry Pratchett.
Don’t bother with it.

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I think I might be able to explain a little of this:

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian bookstores have been denied access to sell the book, not because of any government ban, but because the US distributor has decided that it will not sell the book outside the US or Canada. The distributor, Ingram […]

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Over at Slate we have this:

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, traveled Europe as tutor to the Duke of Buccleugh. But despite his travels, Adam Smith never actually visited a pin factory. While sitting at home in Kirkcaldy and penning the most famous passage in economics, he was inspired by an entry in an […]

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