This could be our block of flats (sorry, apartments):
“In the morning seeing a great deal of foul water come into my parlour from under the partition between me and Mr. Davis, I did step thither to him and tell him of it, and he did seem very ready to have it stopt, and did also [...]

A 1997 competition for Bad Academic Writing hosted by the University of Miami exposes the expected constipated crap. I won’t quote a paragraph because your mind would not survive, but some individual sentences were joyously alarming:
“The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination…” (close [...]

Crooked Timber has taken up the pharmaceuticals FTA issue in a fascinating post, which adds to the discussion of the New York Times article, takes the story further, and nests it in a cascade of fast moving comments.
It’s a British site, which adds to the spice.

Is it dark in London? Cloudy in Tashkent? Dry in Patagonia? Do you want to know all this from the moon’s point of view?
The Fourmilab Planet Viewer is extraordinary. See the world from space, as it is right now from any nominated viewpoint.
John Walker, who provides the service, was the co-author of AutoCAD. “I [...]

The New York Times has provided a US perspective on the Free Trade Agreement and our Prescription Benefits Scheme. It is on the table to be traded.
“WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 ‚Äî Having beaten back price controls on prescription drugs in the United States, the American pharmaceutical industry is trying to roll them back overseas, with [...]

Did Greg Domaszewicz kill fourteen month old Jaidyn Leskie with a crowbar on the same night in 1997 that his neighbour dumped the head of a slaughtered pet pig called Darryn Millane on his front lawn?
Six month’s later, Jaidyn√≠s body was found in a dam near his depressed industrial home town of Moe. [...]

The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, as expanded by “a member of the Whip Club and assisted by Hell-fire Dick…” is “a dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence.”
The Project Gutenberg volunteers have now posted the text. Title number ten thousand was the Magna Carta, and they include an impressive selection from [...]

Screenhub has an interesting interview with an Australian film distributor – the improbably named Troy Lum.
“I just think that our expectations on what we need to achieve with Australian films has to change. I personally don’t measure the success of Australian films through their box office like other people do. I think the odds [...]

I just can’t stop myself. The only thing stranger about Scotland than a haggis is a sporran.
I have tried three times to cook a haggis. Three times I walked into a butcher’s in Glasgow and bought the best, most authentic haggis that Sassenach pounds could buy. Three times I asked how to cook it. [...]

As part of the production process for the JFK film, Oliver Stone incited Danny Schechter to make a documentary about the various conspiracy theories.
As Schechter says in his media newsletter, “The Oliver Stone film did mobilize support for a campaign to get all the JFK assassination records released. A commission was finally formed and [...]