Bell Boy! As is customary at the start of a new year, it is time to honor the fallen of the previous. Perhaps one of the saddest obituaries to write is that of former punk legend, John Lydon. I was born too late to be a punk, but in many ways the punk ethic forms what I [...]

You have to give it to Damien Hirst, he really is a very modern artist. I know it happened a few weeks ago, but it has been playing around in my head, my skull, since then… but his rather aggressive actions towards the teenage artist, Cartrain, just seems so out of proportion. For thopse of you with [...]

It’s an inevitable question – If you’re a humanist, why do you bother celebrating Christmas? The standard answer to be given (as listed in the Humanist Handbook… right after the chapter on why you should say ‘Dawkins’ after somebody sneezes) is to say that we celebrate our friends and family, that it’s a time to get [...]

I was going to end this comic with a different line, insinuating that the person was less geeky than I thought. However, in my experience, most people tend to have hidden geeky tendencies, and so I figured it would be more accurate the other way around. Which is just as well, since I couldn’t [...]

There’s been a mild amount of fuss this last week about a beauty contest for academic girls – Miss University of London. I’m not going to wade in talking about the death of feminism, or the fact that despite having the most valuable thing of all – education – these girls have chosen to fall back [...]

There are a lot of jobs out there that no one wants to do. I was once offered a position at a rendering plant… except they called it ‘fats and proteins’. I don’t know how that was supposed to make it sound any better. I didn’t have to visit the place to know I didn’t want to [...]

So, now that you’ve got it, what are you going to do with it? You could try and cure yourself. All you have to do is forget, permanently, that you have it. Perhaps a bottle of whiskey or a blow to the head? Those of you who read this comic whilst taking recreational rohypnol probably don’t [...]

Censorship can occur in many different forms. It can be a line of text removed, a word obscured or a book not stocked.  It happens a surprising amount – In countries with laws protecting free expression and even online in supposedly liberal sites such as Wikipedia – but the one constant thing about censorship is that [...]

Speaking before you think… it’s a practical impossibility, and yet somehow we all manage to do it. Like the time I was talking to a gentleman in a wheel chair about the lack of ramp access in town and I said that if I was him I wouldn’t stand for it.  Eventually there will be some sort [...]

One thing we have going for us, here at Flowfield Towers, is strength in numbers. And so it’s time to test a little of that might to help one of our members out… after all, if one of us does well, we all do well. Brandy happens to be involved in a voting situation here:  http://2008.weblogawards.org/nominations/best-liberal-blog/ If you scroll [...]

The Flowfield Unity is about to get a manifesto. I need your help to write it… It will start like this: We are scientists, artists and, above all, human. But where does it go next?

*spits the dirt out of his mouth* OK, I’m back… reports of my death were not exaggerated, but why should that stop me doing what I love? Zombies, they’re everywhere these days – TV, Films, Books, Popular Culture – and it seems that I have joined their ranks by rising from the dead. So, whilst we can ponder [...]

So maybe Ms Palin is right, and maybe we really are in the end of days… the world’s economy collapses apace and the (politically) dead have started to rise again. Take the UK’s very own Peter Mandelson, Mandy for short. He’s been dead so many times that I’m starting to wonder why anyone hasn’t realised that [...]

Espionage didn’t start with the Cold War… the Romans were at it, as were the Elizabethans, and it was rampant in feudal Japan too. The only difference is that they did it without all the technical gadgetry – the things that make spying fun… perhaps with the exception of the Japanese, since ninjas have always [...]

Pub games, I imagine, were probably developed as a way of settling drunken disputes.  I don’t know how popular these are across the globe, indeed, in the UK they are dying out. But I have had the fortune to play many of them over the years, sometimes whilst inebriated, other times sober. Here’s a run down [...]

Imagine there is a politician, the best there has ever been – competent, intelligent and considered – unfortunately they are also unbelievably ugly. Not just ‘not good looking’ but actually physically repulsive… make children cry repulsive. What are the chances of that politician being elected? Now imagine another politician, photogenic, stylish and sophisticated (it doesn’t mean what [...]

Today we’re going to try and solve one of life’s great mysteries… how do you fix a broken heart? Obviously there are two types, and we’re not talking about the one that requires a surgeon. That said, if any of you happen to be heart surgeons, do say, I’d be very interested in hearing what you [...]

Did I go too far, putting Yoshi in a gimp suit?  I was tempted to use Bowser, but he kind of comes with his own type of spiked fetish-wear. Anyway, I wanted to have a chat with you about Creative Commons and selling music for nothing. Like Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails have been giving their music away… [...]

The credit crunch, or crisis, it doesn’t matter so long as a little alliteration is involved, is of great concern. People are going to lose houses, their savings, their jobs and their televisions… people already have… I find however, that it is times like these where the best things about humans start happening again. It is assumed [...]

My aunt is more of a real man than I’ll ever be. Real men – they are the ones who can use lathes, fix cars, cut down trees with axes, survive in the rugged out-doors and can communicate with a stare. They can down endless pints without getting drunk and they can carry off checked shirts [...]

Ever since finding out that I was a humanist, I’ve been trying to cleanse most of the religion based idioms from my day-to-day speech. ‘Bless you’ as a response to sneezing was easily replaced by the secular equivalent of ‘gesundheit’, although I have yet to find away to ask other people to do the same in [...]

I didn’t go to have a look at David Blaine when he supposedly starved himself in a box whilst in London. I was in London at the time, but I figured it was nothing special… people have gone without food for longer, mostly because they had no choice… anyway, he could have been cheating. Now water, [...]

My fatal flaw… one of them at any rate, is taking on massive projects within a limited timescale and still leaving all of the work until the last minute. The older I get, the more I realise that this isn’t so much my flaw as it is a feature of humanity. And so, this is dedicated to [...]

I’ve been away… but I’m back now. I was made an offer I really couldn’t refuse… not in a mafia kind of way, well, a little bit in a mafia kind of way. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about film credits. It used to be the case that when the film was over the screen would turn [...]

The dead generally don’t pull their weight. They don’t cause to much harm, except for when they’re rising again as zombies or vampires… but there is a recently risen corpse that is actually helping us. His name is… was… is?.. Sir Mark Sykes, and he passed away nearly 90 years ago. It was his manner of passing, [...]