Inspired by my post on the book The Rest is Noise , my niece kindly bought me a copy of Electric Eden by Rob Young for Christmas, which I have just finished (something of a mammoth feat, as the book is over 600 pages long before you hit the notes. It's sort of on the 20th century British folk music revival and the development of folk rock, though it goes beyond this in many ways. This isn't a musical form that I've had a lot to do with, and it was really interesting to find out more about it. There were three aspects that really stood out for me. One was the early 20th century stuff, where the likes of Vaughan Williams and Holst were rediscovering folk music live from old country performers and bringing it into serious music. Then there was the group, the Strawbs. I knew the name, but I didn't know either that they did a form of electric folk or that, bizarrely, their keyboard player was briefly that wonder of the synthesiser, and now grumpy old man, Rick Wakeman. ...

A car (not the one I bought) I have just bought a car and I hated the experience. It wasn't for me, it was for one of my daughters. (Of itself, this is just wrong . You shouldn't be buying cars for people whose nappies you have changed.) Now, apart from one disastrous experience that put me off buying privately for life, I have always bought cars from a proper dealership. It's a process in which you feel cherished. I know they're only after your money, but they take it off you very nicely. Unfortunately, dealers don't sell cars of the sort of age I was looking for, so I had to look elsewhere. Specifically, I looked at the Car Shop, a huge secondhand car 'supermarket' that apparently has over 1,000 cars on site. And that's where I bought the car - but I wish I hadn't. I didn't mind too much the strange Argos-like operation. You specify the kind of thing you want, the salesman writes it on a card, goes away and comes back with a list of ma...

I get a lot of press releases. Many of them are sensibly related to books, science or technology, but some seem a little off the wall. In fact I got one the other day that had more than a hint of spam email about it. There was something about the way that it was phrased that suggested that English wasn't the author's first language, even though the name at the bottom implied a UK origin. It didn't start auspiciously. 'Dear Editorial,' it said. I can just about understand 'Dear Editor', as I do sometimes style myself editor of www.popularscience.co.uk , but this mode of address seemed to suggest I was an inanimate object. However, this didn't matter too much if the content was spot on. What exciting new development would it reveal? A study has shown that cold calling is becoming customary, according to a group of consumers. What? Cold calling is becoming customary? What does that mean? Could it be that rather than say 'Good morning', the c...

Have you heard, it's in the stars, next July we collide with Mars goes that catchy little number by Cole Porter What a Swell Party this Is . And that is astrology's greatest contribution to human culture. The rest, as they say, is rubbish. Now, I had assumed that this was hardly news. We surely no longer need to hammer out the mantra: Astronomy and astrology are not the same thing. Astrology has no scientific basis. It's something newspaper editors do to fill up the space. It's a bit of fun. But no. It seems that this apparently obvious state of affairs is not at all obvious to some. Apparently the Astrological Association of Great Britain (ahem) has taken umbrage because Brian Cox and Dara O'Briain said both 'astrology is rubbish' and 'astrology is nonsense' on the BBC. The little tinkers. Like alchemy, astrology does have an interesting history, and just as alchemy started people on the way to real science, so did astrology, and for that we...

It's hard to imagine anything more steeped in tradition (even if much of it is rather artificial tradition) than Burns Night. Yet those nice people in the Scottish government have managed to put a few of their Scottish pounds aside to drag Burns Night into the 21st century by producing a Robert Burns iPhone app. If you've ever been to a Burns Night celebration (and I hope all photographs of my improvised kilt have, by now, been destroyed) you will know that as well as consuming haggis, neeps, tatties and whisky (never, ever, whiskey) it is traditional to recite from the works of the great Robert. Download this free little app and you will have 558 of hisself's poems to hand, enough to last more than an evening. I do find it quite amusing that the press release describing the app makes a big thing of Auld Lang Syne. We are told: ‘Auld Lang Syne’ is recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as being one of the top three most popular songs in the English language. ...

I've been writing a lot about sustainable business recently for a secret reason that will soon be revealed. One of the lessons I came across time and again when researching the subject (and one I've already commented on elsewhere) is that it's absolutely great having, say, environmentally friendly products. But if you really want to be serious in sustainability, you have to be able to sell those products at a similar price to the non-friendly alternative. People do want to be sustainable, but not at a huge price. I really thought manufacturers had got the hang of this. Then along comes the Nissan Leaf. My main car use is pootling around on 5 to 20 mile journeys, so for me an electric car would be ideal. (When I do long journeys I swap cars with 'er indoors.) The Leaf looks superb. Usually the cars I feel that I really want are totally impractical. (Words like Aston Martin and Morgan spring to mind.) But I genuinely would love a Leaf. It looks good, the performance is ...

'Detox' has for a good number of years been one of those words that is bandied around by companies to sell products because it sounds good, without actually meaning anything much. Infamously the Prince of Wales' Duchy Originals sells a detox tincture (now available through Waitrose, hurrah!) that is supposed to be 'a food supplement to help eliminate toxins and aid digestion'. Despite the ASA upholding a complaint about their advertising, the stuff is still on sale. Even worse, I saw in a women's magazine the other day (don't ask) blurb for a 'detox diet' that told us 'a detox diet can be just as good as botox!' According to the magazine: This diet will rid you of stored toxins so your complexion clears and skin tone and colour becomes even Excess water is flushed out, taking with it debris and toxins, reducing puffiness and dark circles around the eyes Antioxidant foods combat the aging damage done by free radicals in your body when you...