This week I’ve mostly been reading

Picture from the amazing NY mural series, Love Letter (via Making It Lovely).

Ben Goldacre talks good sense about randomising trials in the area of policy-making, not just the lab.

I had myself something of a mini Julie Christie festival this week; from seeing a few films, I can heartily recommend Darling and Don’t Look Now, though they come from totally opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.

A really interesting review from Mark Vernon’s blog of the public discussion between AC Grayling and Rowan Williams in London recently.

Hilarious thread on the Word’s blog/forum in which posters speculate about alternative universes and edit an artist’s career to make a good one great, a great one perfect.  My favourite is Auntie Beryl’s contribution for the Pet Shop Boys, who, in her world, “disappear from view post-Discography, and leave an enviable back catalogue (apart from ‘Was It Worth It?’). Twenty years later, Neil Tennant is Director General of the BBC. Chris Lowe is unmasked as Banksy.”  That’s a world I could live in.