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“... Nasa has awarded the contract to build the next generation of human-manned space rocket – called, rather nicely, Orion – to a consortium headed by Lockheed Martin. This announcement was surprising for a number of reasons, but one of the most unexpected aspects was that it happened at all. The Bush administration has been so lavish with its rhetoric and promises of funding and so scanty with its delivery – in relation to the reconstructions of Afghanistan, Iraq and New Orleans, and Aids, for example – that it takes one off guard to see a pledge leading to some cash action ...”

“... A plop on the doormat and Volume 177 in the Library of America is in the house: Edmund Wilson’s writings from the 1930s and 1940s, including Classics and Commercials, The Triple Thinkers and The Wound and the Bow. There is something appropriate and even – without wanting to be corny about it – moving about seeing Wilson take his place in the Library of America ...”

“... Some good news from the airy summits of Davos: ‘Spam,’ Bill Gates told the World Economic Forum, ‘will be solved within two years.’ Great! The problem will be fixed by the creation of a challenge-and-response system to slow down, then block, and finally – and this is the killer – charge money for unauthenticated emails. At the moment, an email can be from anybody: you can fill in the ‘from’ section of an email to claim that it is from anyone in the world, up to and including billg@microsoft ...”

“... Since the LRB went to press with the last issue, climate change has made one of its periodic appearances in the headlines, with David Cameron and Gordon Brown each making announcements about what he will do when in office. This amounts to a green beauty contest, with the public in the position of the pen-sucking judges. Cameron first. The Tory leader has hitherto, for all practical purposes, said nothing about anything: his mission has been to avoid policy commitments while making it clear his Tories were different from the party that a majority of the electorate had come to hate ...”

“... When economic times are hard, big companies take the opportunity to eat smaller ones. This process does not respect national boundaries, particularly when an economy is as open to outsiders as Britain’s. This is an old story, so it’s hard to see quite why the prospective takeover of Cadbury by Kraft, the American food conglomerate, has got people going quite as much as it has ...”

“... To the naked eye Mars is unmistakeably red, the colour of blood and, by association, of war, and its light fluctuates in intensity as it wanders one way and then back again across the sky. It has been an object of fascination and speculation for all recorded history. Looking through a telescope more than a hundred years ago, Percival Lowell thought he spotted canals on Mars and hypothesised the existence of intelligent life, desperately building canals to fight off the encroaching desert ...”

“... Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of the UK’s biggest trade union, Unite, has warned of apocalyptic consequences if the government doesn’t pump some money into the UK car industry. ‘Our industry is on the ropes because of market collapse, particularly for the sort of high-value vehicles produced by Jaguar and Land Rover.’ The car business needs help, right now ...”

“... be the home for the creators of Harry Potter, Inspector Rebus and Grand Theft Auto? What would John Knox have ...”

“... Small boys​ of all ages and both genders look forward to World Cups. Perhaps nobody, though, looks forward to it more than actual small boys. I’ve been looking forward to them ever since my first, in 1970 – the best, I still think. The thing I remember almost as well as the drama and excitement of the football was my incredulous horror at the thought that I would be 12 before this thing came round again ...”

“... It is not true that the exchange of goods at the end of the Cold War was entirely one-sided. Granted, the Soviet bloc got gangster capitalism, rampant inequality and freeish elections; but we got some things too. Prominent among them has been the utterly choreographed, wholly undemocratic party congress. These were once a derided feature of Communist states ...”

“... at the time of the 2015 election. This is the outcome which has been argued for by the Tory MP John Stevenson, who is Scottish, but represents a constituency in the north of England. ‘You can’t have a situation where the government of the United Kingdom is determined by the representation from Scotland, which could then have significant influence in ...”