What I’m reading

When poets fall out: the UK Poetry Society passed a vote of no confidence in its board of trustees, who had already offered to resign. Afterwards, one trustee said:

I feel I will be well shot of it. Quite a lot of poets seem to be rather bloody unbalanced.”

I’m not sure how widely this has been reported: the finalists for the 2011 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, which will be presented on 21 August at the Christchurch Arts Festival, are (in alphabetical order):
 Blood Men by Paul Cleave (Random House)
Captured by Neil Cross (Simon & Schuster)
Hunting Blind by Paddy Richardson (Penguin)
Slaughter Falls by Alix Bosco (Penguin)

Easter Island revisited: it was the rats whodunnit.

More evidence for the Stratford Theory of Numbers from Matt Nolan, who grumbles about the misuse of statistics in a Herald story about wages and inflation, while Rauparaha analyses claims made about how much money you can save by cycling rather than owning a car, and concludes:

It seems more likely that these numbers just make cycle commuters feel even more smug and self-satisfied about their present choices.

Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, has a pulse. It also has geysers of ice.

And tomorrow after netball I shall be reading the new Lee Child novel, The Affair, which won’t be published here until 1 October but I can’t wait that long.